More on John Dean, Bob Altemeyer, and Authoritarianism.

Posted by James Bowery on August 29, 2006, 09:13 PM | #

Attacks on civil authority by ethnicities gifted in monetary and mythic exchanges is simply a way of capuring power over other ethnicities.

Posted by Bob Altemeyer on October 01, 2006, 01:44 PM | #

Someone pointed out this posting to me, which I feel deserves two comments. First, the poster may have felt, after reading our book “Atheists,” that I was biased in favor of atheists. But I think even a casual read of the book will find two rather negative findings about the active atheists we studied: they scored highly on our measures of dogmatism, and they showed a lot of religious ethnocentrism. Each of these gets a full chapter treatment. Also, the last chapter of the book, which contains comments and criticisms from atheists we studied, makes it pretty clear that they did not think we were biased in their favor. (I hope a fair reading of the book will show that we just followed the data, whether the implications were positive or negative, just as we always tried to do in our studies of fundamentalists.)

Secondly, I have no idea why the reviewer refers the reader to a critique of the Frankfurt School. Nobody has criticized the research on authoritarianism which had (some) roots in that approach more than I have. And I have never said authoritarians are pathological.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on October 01, 2006, 06:28 PM | #

“I have never said authoritarians are pathological”  (—Bob Altemeyer)

Not to quibble, but where Theodore Adorno & Co. are concerned, “calling authoritarians pathological” isn’t the rub.  (Surely some kinds of authoritarians are pathological; surely some aren’t — the same as with libertarian-inclined personalities and every other personality grouping.  John Ray would know the research on what proportion are pathological.)  The rub lies in Adorno & Co.‘s having called perfectly normal, ordinary people, whether laypeople, politicians, academics, or what-have-you, authoritarian and pathological for seeing no reason whatsoever to approve of or sympathize with what amounts to liberalism/leftism.

I read somewhere — don’t know if it’s true — that in Germany during the National Socialist period some academics, journalists, or some semi-official body once denounced Einstein’s Theory of Relativity( * ) as “false Jewish science” which, if true, is of course a ridiculous and very sad thing for anyone to do.  There is, however, a body of genuinely false Jewish science which Jewish academics shame themselves and Jews as a group to espouse.  Adorno’s “rightwingers-are-pathological-authoritarians” theory is an example of it; another is the absolutely astounding “races don’t exist” claim (astounding because such an obvious falsehood on its face, as astounding as trying to claim two plus two equals five), essentially a Jewish-invented-and-promulgated brazen, sophistry-based lie first cooked up over a hundred years ago which Jews continue to push for whatever ethno-political reasons motivate them to do these things.  Many top Jewish academics, such as Stephen Jay Gould, marked themselves indelibly and forever as academic charlatans by subscribing to this jaw-dropping purely politically-motivated sophistry. 

Jews, of course, aren’t the only ones who come up with false science invented for the purpose of furthering group interests:  Lysenkoism was false communist science; the German National Socialists had false National Socialist science; the Women’s Lib movement promulgates tons of false Women’s-Lib-Movement science; Creationism is false Christian science; and so on.   
______

( *  The Special Theory of Relativity is more properly called Lorentz’s and Poincaré‘s Theory of Relativity.  They published all its details before Einstein, including the impossibility of absolute spatial frames of reference, proof of the speed of light as a theoretical upper limit, the phenomenon of length shrinkage in the direction of motion together with mass increase and time dilation with increased speed, the derivation of the mass-energy relationship as expressed in the equation E = m(c)squared, and all the rest of it — all the rest of it.  At the very least the theory should be called the Lorentz-Poincaré-Einstein Theory of Relativity.  Any doubters, just look up Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré online and read up on the subject, following relevant links where they lead around the web.  The name Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is going to have to be changed to reflect the fact that the theory was discovered in all its particulars by these two before Einstein.)

Posted by Fred Scrooby on October 02, 2006, 12:06 AM | #

This recent article by a Russian physicist shows not only how Poincaré was first to put forth the Special Theory of Relativity in its entirety but actually had a deeper grasp of the theory and of its implications than Einstein at first had.  On page 112 the author shows that Poincaré, among many other “firsts,” had published the exact equivalent of the formula for which Einstein is famous, E = m(c)squared, in 1900, five years before the latter’s paper.  He even purports to show, pp 121-124 (recalling a 1952 paper by an anti-relativity physicist named Ives, cited in a 1961 Harvard University Press book by physicist Max Jammer) that Einstein’s own 1905 derivation of that equation was fallacious on close examination, amounting to a mathematically unsound instance of petitio principii. 

There’s lots of additional literature on the subject of Poincaré‘s priority:  any article will get one into all the rest of it via its links to the web. 

It’s clear Poincaré was the first to put forth the Special Theory of Relativity, not in part, but in its entirety, and we’re going to see his name attached more and more to the name of the theory in coming years, either alone or hyphenated with Einstein’s. 

The two papers (the culmination of a years-long series of papers, lectures, and private correspondences, with Lorentz and others) in which Poincaré exposed the theory of special relativity were the following (the second being a longer version of the first which was published before the Einstein paper of the same year):

Poincaré H. Sur la dynamique de l’éléctron, Comptes Rendues.
1905. Vol. 140. p. 1504

Poincaré H. Sur la dynamique de l’éléctron, Rendiconti del Circolo
Matematico di Palermo. 1906. Vol. XXI. p. 129

As for Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, all its mathematical foundations were laid in the years prior to 1915 by David Hilbert, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, and H. Minkowski, another brilliant mathematician.  Einstein, not an especially good mathematician, was completely outclassed by Poincaré, Hilbert, Minkowski, and a number of other mathematical physicists of the era.

Posted by Sean Minahan on January 30, 2007, 12:33 PM | #

Two things.
One, a spelling quibble.  “Conscious” refers to a state of awareness.  “Conscience” refers to a set of limiting internal psychological guidelines that exist in most human minds.  The title of the book is “Conservatives Without Conscience”.
Two, the idea of race.  A comment implied that the idea that there are races is obivous.  Well, actually it’s not according to biologists (you are conservatives, so therefore I realize you are omniscient; the rest of us moderate and liberal “mere humans” have to examine facts and evidence either through formal logic or scientific method.  We apologize while we muddle our way to your obvious facts).  The parentheses are sarcasm, back to the point.  This link is to an article from the December 2003 Scientific American.  It shows that whether there are races depends more on the context of the discussion.  There is a strong indication the idea of race may be of value to medicine.  It is, however, still considered unclear whether genetic variation between people who are considered to be of the same race is any greater than the average genetic variation of two individuals between continents (again, you must be patient with us, we can’t see the world as a totality of self-evident facts like you guys, we have to go through this whole examination process).

Anyway, here’s the link:
http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=00071863-683B-1C72-9EB7809EC588F2D7

Posted by Sean Minahan on January 30, 2007, 12:36 PM | #

Wrong URL.

Here is correct link

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00055DC8-3BAA-1FA8-BBAA83414B7F0000

Posted by ben tillman on January 30, 2007, 01:02 PM | #

“A comment implied that the idea that there are races is obivous.  Well, actually it’s not according to biologists….”

Yes, it is.

Posted by Sean Brute on January 30, 2007, 01:06 PM | #

“It is, however, still considered unclear whether genetic variation between people who are considered to be of the same race is any greater than the average genetic variation of two individuals between continents”

Moron, obviously you meant the opposite, as it would be expected that if race is real, genetic distance within a race would be less than, not “greater”, than the variation of two individuals between continents.

The measure of genetic distance is Fst, it’s been known at least as far back as Cavalli-Sforza’s work that Fst within groups is less than that between groups.

Posted by Genetic Brute on January 30, 2007, 01:10 PM | #

Gee, if you need to go through “this whole examination process”, perhaps you need to go further than a politically-motivated article in a popular science magazine:

http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2005/12/clusters-strike-back-ii.html

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2006/01/self-defined-raceethnicity-and-true.html
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1529-8817.2005.00255.x;jsessionid=cKHc6px_hGL_oUaQrR?cookieSet=1&journalCode=ahg

http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=15625622

http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.0010014

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16193326&query_hl=21&itool=pubmed_DocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16152802&query_hl=21&itool=pubmed_DocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16138912&query_hl=21&itool=pubmed_DocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15845032&query_hl=21&itool=pubmed_DocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16151009&query_hl=10&itool=pubmed_docsum

http://www.ancestrybydna.com

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2005/02/80-of-proteins-are-different-between.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16028061&query_hl=5&itool=pubmed_DocSum

http://www.sdss.jhu.edu/~ethan/jFAQ.html

http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=slideshow&type=figure&doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070&id=40173

http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=slideshow&type=figure&doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070&id=40173

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2006/02/more-on-genetic-ancestry-with-10000.html

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v38/n1/full/ng1692.html

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2006/03/recent-positive-selection-in-humans.html

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2006/02/more-positive-selection-in-recent.html

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2006/02/alan-templeton-vs-out-of-africa-with.html

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2006/01/earwax-type-determined-by-single.html

http://www.jonentine.com/reviews/straw_man_of_race.htm

http://www.goodrumj.com/Edwards.pdf

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/09/brad-delong-purifier-of-comments.html
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/30/10604
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v38/n1/abs/ng1695.html
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v38/n1/abs/ng1696.html
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v38/n1/abs/ng1697.html

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v38/n1/full/ng0106-9.html

Posted by Guessedworker on January 30, 2007, 01:14 PM | #

I will add ...

The report is over 3 years old, Sean, but anyway read this:-

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/does_race_exist_the_stance_of_scientific_american/

... which deals directly with the Bamshad/Olson article.

Next time you visit us, check whether we’ve already blogged your problem away.

It might also help to drop the sarcasm.  Lowest form of wit, you know.

Look, why don’t you leave a comment on a current thread ... you know, challenge something from your liberal perspective, and perhaps we will get to why you think and feel as you do.

See you.

Posted by Neil Brute on January 30, 2007, 01:24 PM | #

The following article by renowned population geneticist Neil Risch deftly sums up the science of the issue (as opposed to political correctness:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=139378
Quotes:

“The existence of such intermediate groups should not, however, overshadow the fact that the greatest genetic structure that exists in the human population occurs at the racial level.”

“Two Caucasians are more similar to each other genetically than a Caucasian and an Asian.”

“If biological is defined by susceptibility to, and natural history of, a chronic disease, then again numerous studies over past decades have documented biological differences among the races.”

“With this as background, it is not surprising that numerous human population genetic studies have come to the identical conclusion - that genetic differentiation is greatest when defined on a continental basis.”

“More recently, a survey of 3,899 SNPs in 313 genes based on US populations (Caucasians, African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics) once again provided distinct and non-overlapping clustering of the Caucasian, African-American and Asian samples [12]: “The results confirmed the integrity of the self-described ancestry of these individuals”.