September 16, 2013

"Emotional intelligence" as IQ Envy

Social scientists notoriously suffer from "physics envy." This feeling is quite reasonable: physicists can predict many phenomenon (and they built the atomic bomb, which probably helps even more in garnering respect).

A stranger phenomenon, however, is "IQ envy," since the study of intelligence is routinely denounced as a pseudoscience. And, yet, if you keep your eyes open, you'll notice that intelligence is one of the most glamorous attributes in the world of marketing. From the NYT:
Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught? 
... Wade’s approach — used schoolwide at Garfield Elementary, in Oakland, Calif. — is part of a strategy known as social-emotional learning, which is based on the idea that emotional skills are crucial to academic performance. 
“Something we now know, from doing dozens of studies, is that emotions can either enhance or hinder your ability to learn,” Marc Brackett, a senior research scientist in psychology at Yale University, told a crowd of educators at a conference last June. “They affect our attention and our memory. If you’re very anxious about something, or agitated, how well can you focus on what’s being taught?” 
Once a small corner of education theory, S.E.L. has gained traction in recent years, driven in part by concerns over school violence, bullying and teen suicide. But while prevention programs tend to focus on a single problem, the goal of social-emotional learning is grander: to instill a deep psychological intelligence that will help children regulate their emotions. 

As far as I can tell, education, from Aesop on down, has always been concerned with instilling character, self control, and wisdom, only now these ancient goals have been rebranded as "emotional intelligence:"
... For a child to master empathy, Jones notes, she first needs to understand her own emotions: to develop a sense of what sadness, anger or disappointment feels like — its intensity and duration, its causes. That awareness is what lays the groundwork for the next step: the ability to intuit how another person might be feeling about a situation based on how you would feel in a similar circumstance.

I'm sure the peddlers of emotional intelligence workbooks have made major breakthroughs, but children tend to be interested in stories, songs, poems, novels, and movies that help them get inside other people's heads.

74 comments:

Anonymous said...

Emotional intelligence is supposed to be a real alternative to cognitive intelligence, the need spurred by the comparative IQ short-comings of some racial groups. Problem is, low IQ groups do not fare so well in self-control and general behavior either.

Anonymous said...

Executive functions is a better non-IQ predictor of success, though don't see it much in discussions.

dearieme said...

It's simple.

I'm for trade, invention, liberty, sound money and small government.

I'm against shite.

Social Science is mostly shite.

alexis said...

Wade’s approach — used schoolwide at Garfield Elementary, in Oakland, Calif. ....

Didn't need to read further.

Darth Plastic said...

ever since the education system decided to become "pseudo" parents to our children,we have witnessed a social transformation,that IMHO,has irreparably damaged our ascension as a society, as a people and as individual beings...three generations of socialist "tripe" fed to our young has produced....well,just read the headlines...we are doomed.

Anonymous said...

I imagine the appeal of improving "emotional intelligence" to the high-IQ STEM crowd can be summarized as follows: it will help them pick up chicks. Although not explicitly stated, improving "emotional intelligence" is basically the goal of the online PUA crowd. What is "game" if not that?

Anonymous said...

children... help them get inside other people's heads...

Say what?!?

Did Zombie Sigmund Freud hack your account?

That's possibly the single worst thing you've written since back when you were carrying Mrs Reggie Love's fig leaf in the battle to destroy poor Jack Cashill.

Chicago said...

All part of the Oprah-ization of society. Please pass the hankies; or perhaps it should be the barf-bags.

Scharlach said...

Steve, we shouldn't trust things like stories and poems, which have arisen organically in human societies over the past ten thousand years, to actually accomplish anything meaningful in the emotional development of children.

Anonymous said...

social-emotional learning

Is that: "feel the fear and don't do it anyway"?

Matthew Walker said...

Progs love to "...intuit how another person might be feeling about a situation based on..." ...the assumption that the other person is an idealized progressive white person just like them, and shares all of their interests and values[1] (but maybe not quite as bright, if the other person is a NAM). This explains how progs always get exactly the results they expect when they interact with the domestic underclass or the Muslim Brotherhood. 

[1] ...unless it's somebody who belongs to a group they hate, in which case they assume the other person is a brutally violent half-subhuman maniac. 

David said...

>Emotional intelligence is supposed to be a real alternative to cognitive intelligence, the need spurred by the comparative IQ short-comings of some racial groups.<

Bingo. Didn't the term first appear in the wake of The Bell Curve's publication?

It's horrifying to realize that was almost 20 years ago (1994): meaning, there are people who don't remember the specific anti-IQ brouhaha of the time (or weren't yet old enough to understand it in context). For those of us who were around back then, "emotional IQ" is an obvious BS term. The horror is that fewer and fewer people are going to remember that context. The future is going to be, "Class, turn to page 35. We will now learn about Emotional IQ, Kwanzaa, and how black people won World War 2."

Anonymous said...

Rap music, slut pride, self-esteem narcissism, and hedonistic culture promoted by libs sure aint helping in emotional development.

Anonymous said...

Emotional character, like IQ, differs among individuals and across groups.

Blacks are naturally more aggressive, psychopathic, self-centered, and nasty.

need noname said...

I got fired from a job where the boss who couldn't really type well, didn't like me because he thought "I was better than everybody else" and he hated people who thought that way. Didn't know the guy was a mind reader.

But there is a real hatred against intelligent people if you are working in a majority low intelligent field. This is some of the background to America's founding; hatred of the educated.

Anonymous said...

OT, Yesterday a new miss america was chosen, a non-white indian girl. The article below is very telling of media sending a message and attacking people who do not expouse the message of diversity on social media.

http://www.today.com/style/new-miss-americas-heritage-evokes-racist-comments-twitter-8C11167234

As Steve has mentioned in the past, social media is being used not in a "democratic" way, whatever that is supposed to mean, but it is used to shame people and maintain the narrative/group think if someone "gets out of line".

It is disgusting a major "news" corporation attacks and identifies people in this manner. There is no free speech, only approved speech.



Anonymous said...

There are a lot of strange scores from IQ tests. There are people with severe Dyslexia that score retarded on the verbal part but do high on the Performance part. There are people that have Williams or Prader-Willi that have normal or higher verbal scores but retarded to low average performance. In fact IQ isn't all that easy. Many folks with IQ's around 95 that have good verbal IQ but low for higher math have made it in Journalism and so forth.

El Kabong said...

Emotional intelligence is another word for social skills. Believe me, people with normal IQs but great social skills can do better than people with genius IQs who cannot carry a conversation.

I have an overabundance of IQ points, but I would easily trade a few to balance out my horrible social skills.

JayMan said...

I figured you might have fun with this one.

@Anonymous 9/16/13, 3:40 AM:

"Executive functions" isn't non-IQ. It's just IQ X -ADHD traits.

Anonymous said...

No, no, you've got this wrong. The whole "emotional intelligence" thing is about moving the goal posts.

See this interview with Heckman:

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=3278

Heckman admits that IQ is fully formed by age 8 (without admitting that it is mostly formed at birth) and that there is not a damned thing we can do about it. So why are we pouring endless money down the rat hole of "educating" the ineducable? You see, emotional intelligence can still be raised (because, unlike IQ, there are no academic studies, no proof that it can't) so spending all that money is justified.

The Left knows that it has lost the battle on IQ - it is blindingly obvious that the gaps are real and persistent and that spending more $ on social programs does nothing to erase them. So they concede that and change the subject - forget about real IQ (because the numbers are so depressing), lets talk about "emotional intelligence" instead.

Now to be honest, if "emotional intelligence" involves doing things like not having children until you are married and have a stable income, it's a great thing to teach. But I'm not so sure that it's all that "emotional intelligence" can really be easily raised any more than the other kind of IQ (and that real world incentives like welfare checks are much more powerful than classroom lectures). So we will spend billions of $ and in a couple of decades there will be studies that show that all the money was wasted and these efforts accomplished nothing.

Asher said...

Here's a great response to the question "Have you heard of emotional intelligence?":

The Bible has been around for 2000 years.

FredR said...

On the subject of emotional intelligence vs. iq, I was watching The Blind Side on tv the other day, and for some reason they say that Big Mike scored in the 98th percentile in 'protective instincts.' Is that a thing that they measure? And if so, how?

Asher said...

Re: executive function. Razib Kahn once posted research strongly suggesting that executive function variation is 100 percent genetic. Yeah, don't think that's gonna fly with the left.

Anonymous said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1177123/The-European-Created-fragments-fossil-face-forbears-35-000-years-ago.html

How did Morrocons, Libyans, Egyptians, Tunisians, and Algerians turn caucasian without leaving Africa?

Anonymous said...

OT:

I'm SHOCKED SHOCKED SHOCKED SHOCKED SHOCKED SHOCKED

that the killing of St. Mathew Shepard turns out to be about closeted meth dealers, not "hate":

From the gay Advocate. It's easy to be fair and magnanimous when you are the winner...

http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2013/09/13/have-we-got-matthew-shepard-all-wrong?page=full

"Or did our need to make a symbol of Shepard blind us to a messy, complex story that is darker and more troubling than the established narrative?"

Ya think?

Anonymous said...

Every losing group will come up with an excuse, even going against their own prior argument.

The excuse will be that results were fudged (your IQ score isn't as high as you say), appeals to other, unrelated things with a claim that they matter more (my character and personality are superior to yours), conspiracy theory (you control education and the media, so you spread these lies), citation of outlier studies as definitive while ignoring the majority of the evidence.

All of these pop up when white nationalists talk about the Jewish IQ. They will confirm IQ tests as being beyond reproach when talking about blacks, then use Sharpton arguments against the Jews.

They argue that the Ashkenazi IQ isn't really 115, citing occasional studies that show it below this number (and these studies get posted on every WN site), while ignoring the body of evidence showing that it is at least 115. They argue that Jewish personalities and character are flawed, even as Jews are consistently at 40% of all Americans in super high-IQ occupations (not more than 35-45% and not less, almost regardless of the super high-IQ occupation). They argue that all of this is due to a Jewish conspiracy.

They jump on outlier IQ tests. Only one Israeli IQ test was below 100 and naturally that one was used as Israel's average IQ by Richard Lynn, woke ignoring all the high IQ test results.

Everyone here will read Steve's post as an indictment of black civil rights activists, but it is just as true for White Nationalists.

Anonymous said...

I'd like them to let me know just how much success they have over the long haul teaching an impetuous child driven by short-term gratification some patience.

I've a feeling I'll be waiting a very long time for some good news.

Gottlieb said...

The emotional intelligence it seems also relates to their ability to socialize. However, many of psychology, rashly concluded that therefore the extroverts tend to have a higher emotional intelligence than introverts. Conclusion I categorically disagree.
I think the g factor, the key emotional intelligence is not the ability of social interaction, but the person's ability to use your emotions to bring out your intelligence.
When I see people who love chatter that cognitive science is a pseudo-science, I notice that many of them seem extroverted. Through everyday observations, including my relatives, I have concluded that extroverts have a greater tendency to agree with the views publicly accepted and therefore they have low ability to social dissent.
Extroverts are not able to imagine people using abstract categories, so many of them, often make foolish statements like'' I know a black person who is very intelligent and it breaks your theory on racial differences in intelligence ''. They can not do that, because they are always interacting in first person while introverts can see, on average, with greater clarity, these abstractions because they interact more in the third person, so a prism much more neutral and therefore scientific.
It is a matter of perspective. It's as if while extroverts are in the midst of the social fabric, introverts are on the mountain and get to see the whole picture.

Unknown said...

Hey Steve, the plural of "phenomenon" is "phenomena". You're welcome.

But seriously, I'm confused by the concept of emotional IQ. It seems to be subject to so many variables as to be intrinsically unquantifiable. You're essentially trying to measure someone's ability to read and react to someone else's emotional state, which is itself a variable nearly impossible to objectively establish. Apart from that, emotional IQ seems to be just what used to be called good character, as you observed.

Anonymous said...

Steve Jobs's wife Laurene Powell Jobs seems to be a sucker for throwing her money and attention at "diverse" men. From Cory Booker and Adrian Fenty to some guy with a media startup:

"Former MSNBC Anchor Launches Ozy, A Fresh News Site With Money From Laurene Powell Jobs"

http://www.businessinsider.com/carlos-watson-ozy-media-2013-9

"The Florida-native was an impoverished teen who worked his way into Harvard. He traveled to California in the early 90s to attend graduate school at Stanford University. Watson then worked for McKinsey & Company, after which he founded Achieva College Prep Service. One of the education startup's first two investors was Laurene Powell Jobs, the philanthropic widow of Steve Jobs."

"Ozy Media is 15-people strong, fueled by a large seed round from angel investors like Powell Jobs, Larry Sonsini, Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig and SV Angels' Ron Conway. It has spent half a year in stealth mode working with beta testers. This morning, Ozy Media finally launched."

Unknown said...

I can't believe American children have devolved to such an extent that they actually need to be taught how to be human...
Instead of "emotional IQ" test, these tests should be called the "Voigt-Kampff Replicant Test".

Maximo Macaroni said...

"...emotions can either enhance or hinder your ability to learn...”

Isn't that like saying that slouching or standing up straight can affect your height? In a way, but emotions don't affect your intellectual capacity any more than slouching makes you actually shorter. A depressed genius is still a genius.

Luke Lea said...

We know that higher IQ is an advantage for success in all kinds of competitive endeavors. But is there a correlation between IQ and happiness, which is what most people want ?

Anonymous said...

Interestingly enough these fools will eventually study emotional intelligence, empathy, intuiting how others feel... and come up with - ta da - religion.

Mark Plus said...

I find it ironic that liberal IQ deniers nonetheless basically admit that they find most blacks intellectually and emotionally inadequate. We see this in popular culture with all the competent and pro-social fictional black authority figures like judges, cops, generals, physicians and so forth, as if white liberals crank out these media as propaganda and wishful thinking to give poor blacks better things to aspire to.

So how many poor black boys who grew up watching the character Geordi LaForge in Star Trek: The Next Generation 20-25 years ago decided to stay out of trouble, study hard, get into college and become capable and respected engineers? Or did they instead mock the LaForge character as a chump for "acting white"?

Anonymous said...

There's something contradictory in trying to teach "the ability to intuit."

Do they really think that anti-social behavior happens because anti-social types have never been informed that other people have feelings too?

the seventeen solutions said...

Probably self-reflection, the ability to step back from the moment will /strengthen/ executive function. Awareness of yourself (that you /are/ an individual) will no doubt put your locus of control that tiny bit back inside yourself. A good thing, for Oakland CA and for everyone.

By the way, anyone have a cite for blacks being weaker in self-control? I don't doubt it (look at the evidence) but, any actual studies?

Harry Baldwin said...

And, yet, if you keep your eyes open, you'll notice that intelligence is one of the most glamorous attributes in the world of marketing.

I've noticed that people who read the NY Times always make a point of mentioning it to you as it's regarded as a marker for intelligence among their peer group.

A few years ago NPR was running a promotional campaign in which people testified that listening to NPR made them smart. One of the testimonials mentioned smartness about four times.

There's money to be made catering to people who are insecure about their intelligence.

Anonymous said...

There has to be an explanation of people with extremely high IQ's who wind up living alone in a trailer home in the high desert. There's more than a few of them.

fish said...

There has to be an explanation of people with extremely high IQ's who wind up living alone in a trailer home in the high desert. There's more than a few of them.

Yeah....it's better to be alone with your thoughts in spartan surroundings than hanging out in crowd of Kardashian wannabees and aspiring hip hop artist morons!

NY Observer said...

O/T: witnesses said the the suspect in the most recent shooting was a white man.

https://twitter.com/vplus/status/379702583717535744/photo/1

blogger said...

How about Honesty Quotient?

It's a tricky thing. If you're too dishonest and make a habit of lying and cheating, you won't get anywhere as no one will trust you. People who wanna hire you and work with you or work for you have to trust you on some level. If you're a known liar and cheat, people are gonna stay away.

And yet, if you're too honest, you won't get anywhere either. Every social order has its truisms and taboos, and even if you know the real truth, if it goes against the truism or violates the taboo, you will be punished... like Jason Richwine.

Also, if you're a politician, you have to be honest to one side and dishonest to the other side. Usually, it means you have to be honest to rich backers and dishonest to sucker voters. Take Obama. He told the sucker voters that he will save American jobs, end government spying on American people, be hard on Wall Street, and etc. But if he really meant all those things, rich Jews would not have given him support. Without Jewish elite support, he wasn't going anywhere. So, Obama had to be honest with powerful Jews and keep his promises(made behind closed doors), but in order to win the votes of the masses, he had to tell them lies(with the full support of the Jewish controlled MSM).

So, you gotta know when to lie, when not to lie. You gotta know what you must be honest about, what you gotta be dishonest about.
You gotta know whom you can lie to, whom you better be honest with.

HQ is a tricky thing.

blogger said...

Emotional intelligence is a funny thing.

If you wanna be moderately successful, having emotional intelligence is a plus.

But if you wanna rise very high, it's advantageous to be emotionally infantile but have enough emotional self-control to rein in the excesses of infantilism.

Wanting to be #1 and top-of-the-world is a kind of infantile fantasy. It's like the childish desire to have all the toys, win all the prizes and praises, be liked by all the kids and all the teachers and etc. It's about me, me, me.
But such infantile types tend to be more hungry for power, more ambitious, more competitive, and etc.
Look at Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Mao, Hitler, Napoleon, Elvis, Lennon, Obama, Oprah, and etc.
They are all infantile in their piggishness, I-want-it-all-ness, and etc. And they don't just wanna hog all the money or power but all the morality. It's like Charles Foster Kane wanting to be a tycoon, the president, patron of the arts, and 'loved by the people as the man of the people too'. He's a 'great man' but also something of a big baby.

People who fully grow out of big-baby-ness lose their egotism, narcissism, and me-me-me-ism.
But without such emotional force, they are less likely to be driven toward success and power.

On the other hand, unless one learns to control one's big-babyishness, it will lead to silly tantrums and antics so reckless and stupid like the one that brought Anthony Wiener down. Wiener could now be mayor of NY had he controlled his big-babyishness better. And indeed, Clinton himself almost derailed his career early on with his piggishness. But he managed to control it--of course, MSM helped out--, and he made it to presidency, but his piggishness resurfaced with the Lewinsky scandal.
The advantage of big-babyishness is it makes one hungry and never satiated. Such hunger feeds ambition. It's like Orson Welles' hunger for food and women couldn't be separated from his artistic ambition and egotism. But the very energy that made Welles a great artist/showman also devoured him as he wasted so much time and money on useless things instead of focusing on work.

Spielberg is full of big-babyishness but he has learned to control his excesses and discipline himself, thus sparing himself the problems of Coppola and Welles and others. Hitchcock too was a big baby who had his piggishness under control, at least in public. So, he had a long illustrious career. Maybe it helped that he grew up in a Britain that instilled discipline in kids. Had he grown up in America in the 60s, he might have given himself over to drugs and excess. He might have ended up like Brian Wilson.

Clinton and Nixon were made by their big-babyish energy, but in the end, they just couldn't control it, and it ruined them.

So, paradoxically, the most successful people tend to be emotionally immature and piggish but smart and disciplined enough to control and constructively channel their big baby energies toward constructive goals.

But if you can't control your big baby energies, you just end up like some lowly Negro or 'white trash' with ass tattoos. Or you might suddenly rise high but then come crashing down like Boy George or Mickey Rourke.

Similarly, to be a great artist, it helps to be both crazy and have sufficient discipline/control over that craziness. Van Gogh for example. He was nuts alright but still had enough discipline to make himself work on all them paintings.
Without the control, one ends up like Jim Morrison in his final yrs when, instead of baring his soul, he was reduced to baring his body parts(or acting like it).

Anonymous said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/12/james-woods-obama-hes-gift-hell/#.Ujd2IZ7yulE.facebook

Anonymous said...

They argue that the Ashkenazi IQ isn't really 115, citing occasional studies that show it below this number (and these studies get posted on every WN site), while ignoring the body of evidence showing that it is at least 115.


There is no "body of evidence" which shows Ashkenazi IQ to be "at least 115". This is a myth.

Lynn studied the question and came to the conclusion that the "verbal IQ" of Ashkenazi Jews, as shown in things like word teats, was 107.5 (Setting the white mean to 100).

Anonymous said...

It sometimes seems that "HBD" is s merely a fancy term for IQ fetishism. There is much, much, much more to "human bio-diversity" than just IQ. It would be nice if people here could remember that from time to time.

Anonymous said...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mexico-really-mad-at-canada-for-imposing-travel-visas-1.1855280

But we shouldn't be angry with Mexico for promoting illegal emigration up north.

Anonymous said...

OT: Another one of Obama's sons went on a rampage. Lest anyone draw any conclusions, there is a black or at least mulatto or quadroonish police guy in nearly every photo.

Anonymous said...

I find it ironic that liberal IQ deniers nonetheless basically admit that they find most blacks intellectually and emotionally inadequate. We see this in popular culture with all the competent and pro-social fictional black authority figures like judges, cops, generals, physicians and so forth, as if white liberals crank out these media as propaganda and wishful thinking to give poor blacks better things to aspire to.

So how many poor black boys who grew up watching the character Geordi LaForge in Star Trek: The Next Generation 20-25 years ago decided to stay out of trouble, study hard, get into college and become capable and respected engineers? Or did they instead mock the LaForge character as a chump for "acting
Well, I find it interesting that conservatives complain about blacks but want to live in the South. I rather live in Salt Lake City than Houston but I see rave reviews for Houston because these people live in the burbs will less Mexicans and Blacks. Personality, blacks like Mexicans so better in states where they are less of them. They tend to be more successful in Wyoming than in Georgia.

carol said...

gubbler nailed it. I saw it just from my years in the music business. The divas were insanely piggish and driven. My sympathies to all the sane sidemen who back them up.

It's almost like, if you're not that way, then you don't deserve to succeed.

P.S. Don't blame political parties for the quality of their candidates. These people are self-selected. It takes too much balls to run for office and you can't talk someone into it who isn't keenly interested already.

Just Another Guy With a 1911 said...

Arguing by analogy:

Gary Gygax nailed it long ago. All off us, Dwarf, Elven, Gnome, and Human, possess certain attributes that pertain to our ability to understand the rules of world objectively (from the outside in) and, intuitively (from the inside out), i.e., INT vs. WIS.

Roll the dice, and see what you get. Of course, in D&D attributes are modified by Race, but humans get no modifiers. I suppose, even in the 70's that was a bridge to far. In contrast, earlier D&D rules allowed males to roll up to STR 18/00, whilst the weaker sex was limited to the highest roll of STR of 18. Of course, in real life, if you were a female human that rolled STR 18 you would be Serena Williams, or maybe just a really, really scary lesbian.

(Aside: I bet if you Google it there is some forum somewhere populated by pasty faced, Dorito munching, beta males denouncing the original D&D rules for allowing men to be stronger than woman).

Now, I have known a handful of really smart people, who somehow managed to roll an INT 19, but, man, their WIS, i.e., the ability to interact with the rest of the human race, was severely lacking. For instance, one guy I knew really, really thought he was Dr. Who. In fairness, he had the STEM skill, maybe, to make a Tardis work. But the reality is this: if you don't get a half way decent WIS roll, you're gonna be a social retard. And you may have your Comic Books and Dr. Who to protect you, but life, generally, ain't gonna be easy.

Now, if you roll a high INT and low WIS (you can get people with high rolls in both and, I agree, they are not completely mutually exclusive - there is some sort of connection), but through some combination planning or luck develop valuable skills in an profession, e.g., STEM, where you do not have to interact with your fellow humans or where, perhaps, all your fellow humans are like you, it probably will not hurt you very much, professionally at least. The up side? You won't end up in the trailer in the middle of nowhere, drinking cheap vodka and reading Oswald Spengler.

Of course, even if you can bring home the bacon: your personal life will be a different story. But then, hey, you can develop all sorts of theories about the bitches while hanging out at the "Gas n' Sip" on Saturday night drinking whiskey infused Slush Puppies.

However, if you, as a high IQ type, were never able to stumble into the right environment in a work place filled with the C students of the world who, say, rolled an INT 10, and still adhere religiously to monkey rules that dominate a social reality that you with INT 19 and WIS 6 never will, at least intuitively, understand -- well then, watch out, pal, batten down the hatches and prepare for a storm of non violent work place beat downs on a daily basis. Until, one day, you find yourself treading water amongst the flotsam and jetsam, gazing at the sinking ship that is your life and wondering what, in God's name,you did wrong.

Then, of course, you swim to shore, crawl up onto the beach, realize that you are still breathing, and, so, proceed to trod up up the beach, past the gaggle of football throwing teenagers, as your ears are assaulted by the monotonous aggression of rap music emanating from a boom box that is way, way too powerful, finally making your way across the the boardwalk to a picnic area where a family of Hispanics huddled in together in numbers too far great in number to ignore have gathered for the day, and then, finally, placing your unshod feet on the scorching black tarmacadam of a parking lot strewn with McDonald's wrappers, discarded diapers, and crushed Milwaukee's best cans. Welcome back to America version 2.0.

So, you keep on walking, and walking - 'til you find that aforementioned and elusive trailer in the middle of nowhere. And, in that moment, amidst the silence, the desert stars, and the blooming cactus flowers outside the trailer door, you realize that here, for once, you are happy. The idiots are gone.

Anonymous said...

Similarly, to be a great artist, it helps to be both crazy and have sufficient discipline/control over that craziness. Van Gogh for example.


Great artists, and great people in all walks of life, tend to be crazy in certain specific ways. They tend to suffer from a certain amount of obsessive-compulsive disorder which forces them to work on the thing they are fixated on. I've seen a large number of writers claim that they can't not write - the stuff is inside of them and has to come out.

But this is more of the common problem around here of looking at outliers and assuming they say something about everyone. I have less than zero desire to live in a world populated by high-IQ obsessive-compulsives. In fact such a world sounds like hell on Earth.

Discard said...

Anon at 9:50 AM: I've never read anybody, anti-Semite or not, deny that the Ashkenazi's average IQ is 115. Your argument is a man of the purest straw.

As for Jewish dominance of high IQ occupations: There are about 4 million Jews with IQs above 115, and about 30 million Whites. Now, I got a D in statistics, but it seems to me that there's a real disproportionate number of Jews at the highest reaches of society, even given their high average IQ. The sociology of market dominant minorities might be a good way to look at this anomaly. Is it really plausible that only Jews are fit to be Chair of the Federal Reserve? Yeah, maybe they cheat.

Ann said...

SEL is not really "IQ envy." It's a set of social, intrapersonal, and interpersonal skills that are useful to everyone, regardless of your traditional "g."

Media write-ups like the NYT piece don't usually go into the nitty-gritty of how SEL is standardized in the curriculum, so it can sound more vague and nebulous than it really is. SEL programs usually focus on a specific set of competency clusters that can be taught and measured.

The curriculum standards are usually written by specialists in education, educational psychology, and mental health. They're not adapted from a random mass-market "EI" paperback. SEL is also often confused with EI and Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. They overlap in some areas but not others.

If one takes a close look at those competencies, anyone with half a brain can see that these are skills that everyone should have by the time they reach adulthood. Problem is, the kids who need them most are the ones who don't learn those skills at home. Parents often don't know how to define or articulate emotions and appropriate actions.

But yes, storytelling is integrated into the content areas in a wide variety of ways depending on the grade level, particularly in English and literature classes.

NY Observer said...

I wonder if Aaron Alexis singled out white people.

Anthony said...

Anonymous@ 9:51 AM:

I'd like them to let me know just how much success they have over the long haul teaching an impetuous child driven by short-term gratification some patience.

I've a feeling I'll be waiting a very long time for some good news.


You're more likely to discover how much success they have in sticking to one program to try to teach patience to impetuous children long enough to develop meaningful results.

Anonymous said...

Only one Israeli IQ test was below 100 and naturally that one was used as Israel's average IQ by Richard Lynn


Rindermann also fond a low IQ for Israel on average, and that their "brightest" were less bright than the brightest in a lot of other countries. So multiple studies have conformed this finding.

Link to Rindermann study.

Anonymous said...

I've never read anybody, anti-Semite or not, deny that the Ashkenazi's average IQ is 115.


The best available evidence indicates that the average Ashkenazi IQ is less than 115, and that it is probably around 105 - 107.

Anonymous said...

They can't teach them the 3 R's so they will now fail at civilizing them. If it doesn't come from the parents, it is not going to happen.

alexis said...

There's money to be made catering to people who are insecure about their intelligence.

The hip, urbane, +1 STDV crowd indeed needs a lot of pampering.

countenance said...

"Social Emotional Learning...Oakland, California"

Sounds to me like they're trying to give a new paint job to black kids.

ricpic said...

"Living alone in a trailer home in the high desert" doesn't sound so bad to me. Though an upgrade to an adobe home or straw-built home would up the comfort factor.

David said...

>There's money to be made catering to people who are insecure about their intelligence.<

Love this "King of the Hill" episode.

"Peggy takes an online I.Q. test sponsored by the 'Intelligence Institute of Texas,' and is declared a genius. When the head of the Institute, Dr. Vayzosa, offers her a chance to get a PhD for only $900, she uses the family savings to pay for it. When Luanne takes the online I.Q. test and also scores as a genius, Peggy realizes that she has been conned, and she comes up with an elaborate sting to get the money back."

Sam said...

Let's see if I get this right. Billions and billions of education studies and now we finally have the answer. "Aesop's Fable's", "Lays of Ancient Rome" and "The Gods of the Copybook Headings". Got it!

Gottlieb said...

I think when people talk about ''emotional intelligence'', they should be talking about it

http://talentdevelop.com/articles/TOPDAAM1.html

Anonymous said...

http://nyr.kr/184klbJ

women + biz school

Jonathan Silber said...

If kids from an "urban environment" and "low-income schools" can
get the hang of these skills in Emotional Intelligence, they'll have
a leg up later in life, at getting along with the other inmates, and with the guards and the warden.

Anonymous said...

Its very similar to the idea that if someone is ugly they must automatically have a nice personality.

Anonymous said...

"I've never read anybody, anti-Semite or not, deny that the Ashkenazi's average IQ is 115. Your argument is a man of the purest straw."

Actually, you often hear in the white nationalist community--especially at Occidental Observer--that Jewish IQ is overrated and that most of Jewish success owes to tribal networking.

Even more hilarious is the white nationalist contention that blacks do better in sports because of racial discrimination against whites. White nats are don't have the guts to face the truth.

Anonymous said...

Emotional intelligence is NOT EQUAL to "character, wisdom and empathy".

Emotional intelligence is what a con man, great pastors, and politicians have. Character determines whether emotional intelligence is a good thing, and wisdom determines whether or not it is deployed effectively.

Bottledwater said...

I don't like the term " Emotional Intelligence" because of it's imprecise inconsistent definitions. A better term is "Theory of Mind", the ability autistics lack. Social cognition seems no different from any other mental aptitude...a combination of both g and more specific talents

Svigor said...

All of these pop up when white nationalists talk about the Jewish IQ. They will confirm IQ tests as being beyond reproach when talking about blacks, then use Sharpton arguments against the Jews.

Sure, let's draw some parallels. You found one. Here are some more:

Both blacks and Jews are zealots for the ideology of victimhood, particularly their own.
Both go crazy if you suggest that whites have the right to live apart from them.
Both are quite comfortable having the right to live apart from whites, however.
Both vote Democrat/liberal at high rates.
Both are enamored of big gov't.
Both are hostile to libertarianism/freedom.
Both follow YT around like the golden goose.
Both show a very "utilitarian," or "flexible" approach to the truth; rationalization first and last.
Both seem to like living around white folks more than their own kind.
Both are very, very different from whites in fundamental ways.
Et cetera (one can go on at length like this, but it gets old quickly, noticing how Jews and blacks are politically identical, save for IQ and other behavioral genetic "scores," like impulsiveness.

They argue that Jewish personalities and character are flawed, even as Jews are consistently at 40% of all Americans in super high-IQ occupations (not more than 35-45% and not less, almost regardless of the super high-IQ occupation). They argue that all of this is due to a Jewish conspiracy.

This is your defensive spin. I don't argue that Jewish personalities and character are "flawed," I argue they're different. And they are. By the way, "even as Jews are consistently at," etc., is a non-sequitur. You've presented a logical fallacy by way of implication; it's perfectly feasible that Jews are both 40%+/-5% of "super high-IQ occupations"*, and flawed in terms of personality and character. It's perfectly reasonable to speculate that personality and character flaws may have something to do with Jewry's long history of conflict with, well, everyone.

*(lol, what percentage of the population is engaged in a "super high-IQ occupation"? 1/2% 1/4?).

Everyone here will read Steve's post as an indictment of black civil rights activists, but it is just as true for White Nationalists.

Nope. Blacks don't advocate separatism or tolerate its advocacy. Jews don't advocate separatism or tolerate its advocacy (in white "gentile" countries). WNs advocate separatism and tolerate its advocacy. They're not the ones practicing the "separatism in my homeland for me, forced integration in your homeland for thee" hypocrisy; that'd be blacks and Jews.

And Jews have always done all the heavy intellectual lifting for black "civil rights" advocacy, anyway, so, who are the hypocrites again?

And as others have pointed out, your IQ data for Jews seems inflated (P.S., how come you guys talk about "Ashkenazis" when it comes time to talk brass tacks about IQ, but "Jews" the rest of the time?).

Anonymous said...

Just Another Guy With a 1911 Said:


"So, you keep on walking, and walking - 'til you find that aforementioned and elusive trailer in the middle of nowhere. And, in that moment, amidst the silence, the desert stars, and the blooming cactus flowers outside the trailer door, you realize that here, for once, you are happy. The idiots are gone."

My favorite post on this entire thread. Bravo.

David said...

Factoring in Sephardics turns no one's crank.

Better to pick Ashkenazi cherries.