Foo - Dangerous Ideas

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/469317,CST-CONT-danger15.article

I found this link in a popular economics blog.
What are your takes on this?

this is a portion of the article (the examples of dangerous ideas)-


Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men?

Were the events in the Bible fictitious -- not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires?

Has the state of the environment improved in the last 50 years?

Do most victims of sexual abuse suffer no lifelong damage?

Did Native Americans engage in genocide and despoil the landscape?

Do men have an innate tendency to ****?

Did the crime rate go down in the 1990s because two decades earlier poor women aborted children who would have been prone to violence?

Are suicide terrorists well-educated, mentally healthy and morally driven?

Would the incidence of **** go down if prostitution were legalized?

Do African-American men have higher levels of testosterone, on average, than white men?

Is morality just a product of the evolution of our brains, with no inherent reality?

Would society be better off if heroin and cocaine were legalized?

Is homosexuality the symptom of an infectious disease?

Would it be consistent with our moral principles to give parents the option of euthanizing newborns with birth defects that would consign them to a life of pain and disability?

Do parents have any effect on the character or intelligence of their children?

Have religions killed a greater proportion of people than Nazism?

Would damage from terrorism be reduced if the police could torture suspects in special circumstances?

Would Africa have a better chance of rising out of poverty if it hosted more polluting industries or accepted Europe's nuclear waste?

Is the average intelligence of Western nations declining because duller people are having more children than smarter people?

Would unwanted children be better off if there were a market in adoption rights, with babies going to the highest bidder?

Would lives be saved if we instituted a free market in organs for transplantation?

Should people have the right to clone themselves, or enhance the genetic traits of their children?

Edit: Please dont get this sent to P&R.

My take? These are all subjects that cause some people to have major meltdowns on internet forums.

I agree with Donna.

They are all topics discussed in PnR, Therefore this thread should be moved (notwithstanding the request not to send it to P&R).

My answers:

Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men? Yes

Were the events in the Bible fictitious -- not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires? Some were. Some were factual.

Has the state of the environment improved in the last 50 years? In some ways, yes. In most ways, no.

Do most victims of sexual abuse suffer no lifelong damage? Some shake it off. Many will be traumatized for life.

Did Native Americans engage in genocide and despoil the landscape? Yes

Do men have an innate tendency to ****? No

Did the crime rate go down in the 1990s because two decades earlier poor women aborted children who would have been prone to violence? It's a contributing factor.

Are suicide terrorists well-educated, mentally healthy and morally driven? Some are.

Would the incidence of **** go down if prostitution were legalized? No

Do African-American men have higher levels of testosterone, on average, than white men? I don't know, but I'd be curious to find out. At least this question, unlike many of the others here, can be answered with objective data.

Is morality just a product of the evolution of our brains, with no inherent reality? No. Some things are inherently good and some things are inherently bad.

Would society be better off if heroin and cocaine were legalized? Probably not.

Is homosexuality the symptom of an infectious disease? No.

Would it be consistent with our moral principles to give parents the option of euthanizing newborns with birth defects that would consign them to a life of pain and disability? Who is the "our" in the sentence?

Do parents have any effect on the character or intelligence of their children? Yes.

Have religions killed a greater proportion of people than Nazism? Yes. Genocide in the name of religion has been occuring for thousands of years.

Would damage from terrorism be reduced if the police could torture suspects in special circumstances? Probably.

Would Africa have a better chance of rising out of poverty if it hosted more polluting industries or accepted Europe's nuclear waste? Yes.

Is the average intelligence of Western nations declining because duller people are having more children than smarter people? No. It's because children don't work as hard as they used to.

Would unwanted children be better off if there were a market in adoption rights, with babies going to the highest bidder? No

Would lives be saved if we instituted a free market in organs for transplantation? Yes

Should people have the right to clone themselves, or enhance the genetic traits of their children? Yes

And so Sprocket Man goes where angels fear to tread... ;)

I think Sprocket Man had a homologous blood transfusion right before making that post.:D

I think Sprocket Man had a homologous blood transfusion right before making that post.:DI'm INSULTED!! I'll have you know that all my blood is 100% heterologous!!;)

Should people have the right to clone themselves, or enhance the genetic traits of their children? Yes

That should be No, cause if it was yes, then beastiality would have to be legal too...

That should be No, cause if it was yes, then beastiality would have to be legal too... I'm confused as to how beastiality is related to humans being allowed to clone themselves or enhance genetic traits of their children.

I'm confused as to how beastiality is related to humans being allowed to clone themselves or enhance genetic traits of their children.

+1 Please illuminate

Should people have the right to clone themselves, or enhance the genetic traits of their children? Yes

That should be No, cause if it was yes, then beastiality would have to be legal too...
That's got to be the most interesting reason against cloning that I have ever heard.

The questions arent actually supposed to be answered. The point is can you suppress your ego long enough to think about them. Some of them are expressly put in there to inflame one's sense of decency.

Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men?
I believe so.
Were the events in the Bible fictitious -- not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires?
Some.
Has the state of the environment improved in the last 50 years?
Yes.
Do most victims of sexual abuse suffer no lifelong damage?
It depends on the individual.
Did Native Americans engage in genocide and despoil the landscape?
Yes.
Do men have an innate tendency to ****?
Some men do.
Did the crime rate go down in the 1990s because two decades earlier poor women aborted children who would have been prone to violence?
Partially.
Are suicide terrorists well-educated, mentally healthy and morally driven?
Probably only a minor portion.
Would the incidence of **** go down if prostitution were legalized?
No, **** isn't about sex, it's about power and domination.
Do African-American men have higher levels of testosterone, on average, than white men?
This is something that could be studied.
Is morality just a product of the evolution of our brains, with no inherent reality?
Not an evolution of our brains, but of societal evolution.
Would society be better off if heroin and cocaine were legalized?
I believe so.
Is homosexuality the symptom of an infectious disease?
No. That's ridiculous.
Would it be consistent with our moral principles to give parents the option of euthanizing newborns with birth defects that would consign them to a life of pain and disability?
Depends upon where you are. In some places they do that if the child is born the wrong sex.
Do parents have any effect on the character or intelligence of their children?
Yes.
Have religions killed a greater proportion of people than Nazism?
Absolutely.
Would damage from terrorism be reduced if the police could torture suspects in special circumstances?
Yes.
Would Africa have a better chance of rising out of poverty if it hosted more polluting industries or accepted Europe's nuclear waste?
No.
Is the average intelligence of Western nations declining because duller people are having more children than smarter people?
Only partially. Unfortunately mediocrity seems to be the new standard. People are inherently lazy, looking to be provided for with no effort of their own. Pride in doing one's job well is almost non-existent.
Would unwanted children be better off if there were a market in adoption rights, with babies going to the highest bidder?
Having money does not make one a good parent.
Would lives be saved if we instituted a free market in organs for transplantation?
Yes.
Should people have the right to clone themselves, or enhance the genetic traits of their children?
Yes.

omfg, you arent supposed to answer them. The answers dont matter. They are fake questions.

You are supposed to find the ones that you disagree with, and ponder (calmly) why you disagree with them.

The only real dangerous ideas involve the supression of other people's dissenting thoughts.

The only real dangerous ideas involve the supression of other people's dissenting thoughts.

Yes. You completely understood the article. Thank you.

omfg, you arent supposed to answer them. The answers dont matter. They are fake questions.

You are supposed to find the ones that you disagree with, and ponder (calmly) why you disagree with them.You can't disagree with questions, you can only disagree with answers. And you can't disagree with answers until you see other people's answers. Wouldn't you agree?

You can't disagree with questions, you can only disagree with answers. And you can't disagree with answers until you see other people's answers. Wouldn't you agree?

Picture a question that is asked that your knee jerk response to is "That is ridiculous! How could they even think that?!" IE-

Is homosexuality the symptom of an infectious disease?
No. That's ridiculous.

That is an example of disagreeing with a question. The questions I quoted from the article are examples of questions that would provoke this type of response. I posted it here because the majority of the posters on Foo are desensitized to questions that challenge their perceptions due to the large amount of time they spend on the internet.

It was probably a mistake to only post the examples from the article and not the discussion. My bad.

"I BELIEVE THAT the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole inferior to that of men. By "on the whole," I do not mean just "on the average"; though I do mean that much. My belief is, if you take any degree of intellectual capacity which is above average for the human race, as a whole, then a possessor of that degree of intellectual capacity is a good deal more likely to be man than a woman. [...]

"The evidence for the inferior intellectual capacity of women is so obvious and overwhelming, that anyone who can lightly set it aside must be defective in their attitude to evidence; and our contemporary equality-theorists are in fact (as I have hinted several times), religious rather than rational in their attitude to evidence. As providing some further indication of this, the following thought-experiment may be of use. Suppose that the historical evidence had been the exact reverse of what it has usually been: that is, suppose that the intellectual performance of men had been uniformly inferior, under the widest variety of circumstances, to that of women. Rational people would in that case be as confident of the superior intellectual capacity of women as they now are of the reverse. But would those people who are at present equality-theorists be as confident then as they are now of the equal intellectual capacity of the two sexes? To ask this question is to answer it. The fact is, our egalitarians treat evidence on a basis of heads-I-win-tails-you-Iose; indeed, to say so is "putting it mild," at that."

http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/women.html (http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/women.html)

omfg, you arent supposed to answer them. T

Maybe that's why I did.:p

"I BELIEVE THAT the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole inferior to that of men. By "on the whole," I do not mean just "on the average"; though I do mean that much. My belief is, if you take any degree of intellectual capacity which is above average for the human race, as a whole, then a possessor of that degree of intellectual capacity is a good deal more likely to be man than a woman. [...]

"The evidence for the inferior intellectual capacity of women is so obvious and overwhelming, that anyone who can lightly set it aside must be defective in their attitude to evidence; and our contemporary equality-theorists are in fact (as I have hinted several times), religious rather than rational in their attitude to evidence. As providing some further indication of this, the following thought-experiment may be of use. Suppose that the historical evidence had been the exact reverse of what it has usually been: that is, suppose that the intellectual performance of men had been uniformly inferior, under the widest variety of circumstances, to that of women. Rational people would in that case be as confident of the superior intellectual capacity of women as they now are of the reverse. But would those people who are at present equality-theorists be as confident then as they are now of the equal intellectual capacity of the two sexes? To ask this question is to answer it. The fact is, our egalitarians treat evidence on a basis of heads-I-win-tails-you-Iose; indeed, to say so is "putting it mild," at that."

http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/women.html (http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/women.html)

I believe this guy is mistaking "intellectual capacity" with fulfillment of intellectual potential.
Or he is just really sexist and bad at dealing with data.