Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

We have heard all this before. The fact is that Labour needs millions on the dole to keep them in power!

The whole of the welfare state needs modernising. Billions are being wasted by Brown with his complex welfare state.

Whilst waiting, could we have a proper investigation of the true situation in the States such as was done by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ One lunchtime news with an impressive young reporter who used to be on Newsround and then moved to the Middle East for the main adult news programmes on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ1? (Have forgotten his name, it has a Welsh ring to it?)

Also an investigation of the private companies lined up to fund benefits i.g. Unum?

By the way, the automatic link above ("read the blog here") cuts to the 9 comments after an isolated description of the Welfare Reform item. The best comments, including the one from America telling the whole truth, are amongst the 31 posts following the main summary of the programme that night containing descriptions of all 3 news items.

Whilst waiting, could we have a proper investigation of the true situation in the States such as was done by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ One lunchtime news with an impressive young reporter who used to be on Newsround and then moved to Palestine for a while? (have forgotten his name, it has a Welsh ring to it). Also an investigation of the private companies lined up to fund benefits e.g. Unum?

Well, well....please note what's played down (or just goes unnoticed probably). It's WHERE this growth will be, and where the nation's 'skills' are not. One can't import smart people as they're scarce elsewhere in Europe, and they're even scarcer in Africa and S Asia given their lower mean IQs.

In the UK, registration of births asks for the country where the mother was BORN, not her ethnicity. The birth rate is ABOVE replacement level (2.1) in the non-White British population, but it is well BELOW replacement level in the White British population. This means it is ageing and falling in that sector whilst it is growing in the other. That is why 99.9% of London's population growth over the next 30 years will be in BME groups. QED.

Given that TFR is NEGATIVELY correlated with IQ, and there is NO evidence that IQ is improved through education, which skills are Mr Brown and Mr Balls' minions going to inculcate in this growing 'unskilled' population?

Please invite some people onto your programme who actually understand the published research in this area. It goes back decades and is being ignored.

And please, no silly remarks that this is all going to be OK. The reason why there is mass economic migration from poor countries is because of the low mean IQs of those countries as there is a very high POSITIVE correlation between IQ and GDP.

If one wants to improve one's country, improve its population genetically. Education won't do that as genes are not responsive to it. It's future generations that matter. All one will do through education is lower the birth rate amongst the educable, exactly the opposite of what any government concerned about the welfare of its economy would try to achieve.

Ask Mr Brown and Mr Balls what they are doing please. Do they know? if not, is it not time they were confronted?

Get Lynn and Brand from the UK on the programme, and Murray and Rushton from across the Atlantic.

hi ed -

No, hugh sykes is wonderful, but he is mainly a radio correspondent. This is a young man - I caught his report by chance on the lunchtime news, but it had been pulled from the 6 o'clock and 10 o'clock that day. It was just going round Americans on welfare and hearing how it is so not working.

brossen99 (#9) Let me be very clear about what I am saying so we are both sure of the radical a point which I am making. I am stating tat there is NO empirical evidence that environment (e.g. education) improves IQ, but there is very good evidence that environment can REDUCE cognitive ability through injury e.g. pre and post natal alcohol which crosses the blood-brain-barrier, drugs, disease etc. Most people don't understand that genes (roughly speaking) take up basic nutrients and manufacture proteins. If inherited genes are slightly broken (polymorphisms) there are physical (behavioural/phenotypic) consequences.

The environment selects behaviours and in the longer term selects genes which express behaviours.

Mr Brown and Balls (like many other non-scientists) operate like 21st century Lysenkoists without knowing that they do so. This is because politicians etc are rarely if ever trained in science, even in adolescence. Alas, the same goes for many teachers, educational professionals and Civil Servants these days. The National Curriculum is being dumbed down and feminised as a consequence of dysgenesis and a desperate attempt to put more females out into the workplace to compensate for the past low birth rate and dysgenesis. But in the long run, this is counter-reproductive and makes matters worse. In fact, in my view/research, it is actually the primary cause of the problem.

This is all highly ironic given that the most effective technology of behaviour analysis and management (i.e. the Experimental and Applied Analysis of Behaviour (see JEAB and JABA)) has always treated operants as phylogenetic and ontogenetic expressions of genes upon the environment, i.e operants, which in turn are shaped by their short and long term consequences (reinforcement). The efficacy of reinforcement itself is, it has to be understood, genetically determined too, as it is a function of genetically expressed neurotransmitter transporters (look up the dopamine transporters and ADHD) which are subject to the vagaries of gene expression/diversity just like all gene expressions.

To change the performance of a school one changes the intake. To change the GDP or political stability of a country one changes its gene pool.

All else is just dangerous talk.

Adrienne - you are barking up the wrong tree, you always are which makes all your hard work a bit sad. We do not want to increase GDP, we want to dramatically reduce it and so does every other country in the world or we will ALL DIE as many other species are doing every day.

Also, you are barking up another wrong tree over IQ. First of all how are you measuring it, and second of all EQ is more important. Amerindians and Aborigines, and Asians and Africans, are 6 billion times more intelligent on every possible count because they still know how to live sustainably whereas we no longer do.

I think you should spend some time rearranging your own genes or we will all die of boredom before we die of too much GDP.

Edith (#12) You do not appear to have understood the forces which politicians are now wrestling with. It is not a matter of our increasing GDP, it is one of not lowering it through dysgenesis (differential fertility and high low-'skilled' immigration). Your vision of 'back-to-Africa' doesn't appeal or make any sense given that so many Africans and S Asians are so keen to come here.

If you don't like IQ, look at Key Stage 1,2,3 and 4 data. This shows the same pattern(s). "EQ" (Emotional Intelligence) is rubbish. If you mean Educability Quotient, see the national curriculum KS data where the core subjects Maths, English and Science are IQ proxies (Quantitative, Verbal and Non-Verbal). These are highly predicted by IQ (e.g. NFER CATs). That's why teachers use them. This s what the 'skills' issue is all about (see ETS and Leitch).

I'm sorry that you don't LIKE what I have to say, but that does not make what I say false, or what you say true. Emotion has very little to do with this (in fact, our paleo-striatal/cortical limbic system is something we pretty much share with our reptilian ancestors) - it's what we've got up top that matters.

brossen99 (#11) "Changing the gene pool may take some time as we are not likely to experience a full scale world war in the near future."

Sadly, negatively, that seems to be exactly what this government (and its ideologically similar predecessor I hasten to add) has been doing, which is why I've controversially described their joint education/immigration policies as demographic warfare against the indigenous British people.

More cryptically (and topically), 'he who pays the piper...'?

/blogs/newsnight/2007/11/the_big_immigration_debate.html

;-)

Ed - Science looks to useful, i.e predictive measures of PAIRS (conjunctions) of observation statements to establish functional relations, it does not deal in absolutes (e.g. water boils AND the thermometer reads 100 degrees ceteris paribus). It was this basic relational insight in the C20th which rendered many old philosophical puzzles (like Zeno's Paradox) redundant. IQ is a RELATIONAL measure which places individuals on a standardised normative (Gaussian) scale relative to their peers. What I have been talking about uses such measures along with other physical measures (such as TFR, GDP) to highlight critically important demographic trends. What matters is not the measure per se, but whether they are useful in helping us to better manage/predict stimulation of our sensory surfaces (i.e our behaviour). The latter is, in the final analysis, a political matter.

There are no useful measures of 'Emotional Intelligence' (or 'Multiple Intelligences' for that matter - the latter just abuses Factor Analysis) that I am aware of.

Good luck in your efforts to establish a valid/reliable useful 'Ecological Quotient'.

I'm not holding my breath for the reasons I've outlined above.

Ed (#20) Science ('knowing') is only about total comprehension to the extent that its domain is quantifiable (reliable) extensional (relational) statements about the world. Unless one can reliably existentially/universally quantify into (i.e. refer) statements extensionally, one can't be certain about what one is talking or writing ABOUT, or that one is in fact talking or writing about anything which has any basis at all in (physical) reality. This is a logical point. Under linguistic circumstances where this is not the case (intensional contexts) communication goes opaque, indeterminate/inscrutable and people end up not knowing what each other are talking about, which is never a good way to run a railroad. Politically this may APPEAR to be very useful, but it rarely is in the long run as we are seeing today. Measurement in itself is inadequate, it's what one does with those measures in pursuit of better behaviour management (be that railroads, bridge building, or even, ideally, good government).

New Labour adopted the right language in 1997, but not the practice - and that's going to be their downfall if they don't bring down the country first.

Ed (#20) Science ('knowing') is only about total comprehension to the extent that its domain is quantifiable (reliable) extensional (relational) statements about the world. Unless one can reliably existentially/universally quantify into (i.e. refer) statements extensionally, one can't be certain about what one is talking or writing ABOUT, or that one is in fact talking or writing about anything which has any basis at all in (physical) reality. This is a logical point. Under linguistic circumstances where this is not the case (intensional contexts) communication goes opaque, indeterminate/inscrutable and people end up not knowing what each other are talking about, which is never a good way to run a railroad. Politically this may APPEAR to be very useful, but it rarely is in the long run as we are seeing today. Measurement in itself is inadequate, it's what one does with those measures in pursuit of better behaviour management (be that railroads, bridge building, or even, ideally, good government).

New Labour adopted the right language in 1997, but not the practice - and that's going to be their downfall if they don't bring down the country first. Maybe they mean well, but they appear to be Lysenkoists through and through, which means they'll do more harm than good through their scientific ignorance. Well placed 'unwitting' Trotskyites/Wreckers ("On Defects in Party Work and Measures for the Liquidation of Trotskyists and Other Double-dealers": A report and concluding remarks at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 3-5 March 1937):

Note how many politicaians have Civil Liberties, Equalities and Human Rights backgrounds. Note also how many of New Labour's policies appear to be Lysenkoist through and through, meaning, they're bound to do far more harm than good through what appears, prima facie, to be total scientific 'ignorance'.

A few links to some well placed 'unwitting' Trotskyites/Wreckers in the 1930s and in very recent history. In 1937, who was playing off whom, as in a couple of years, Stalin had a non-aggression pact with 'fascist' (Socialism in One Country) Germany.

"On Defects in Party Work and Measures for the Liquidation of Trotskyists and Other Double-dealers": A report and concluding remarks at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 3-5 March 1937):

Ed, you appear to have a penchant for metaphysics and sophistry which I don't share.

To the best of my knowledge, C20th philosophy of science ('philosophy of science is philosophy enough' - see 'Pursuit of Truth' and 'From Stimulus To Science' for good summaries) gave up on such things in Quine's 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' (1951) and 'Word and Object' (1960).

It's where all the *talk* of transparency derives from. Not that I expect my saying so will make much differnece to current practices.

I have to say this is the best laugh I've had for years.

Robert (#26) More chuckles to brighten up the day:
/blogs/newsnight/2007/11/the_big_immigration_debate.html