Quote from: Grognard GM on December 11, 2023, 07:14:23 PM
Like there aren't entire sub-fields of Science that you won't ignore or decry at the drop of a garish hat.

"Follow the Science!*"

*Unless it finds something contrary to my ideology.

Such as?

Quote from: pawsplay on December 11, 2023, 08:01:32 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 11, 2023, 07:14:23 PM
Like there aren't entire sub-fields of Science that you won't ignore or decry at the drop of a garish hat.

"Follow the Science!*"

*Unless it finds something contrary to my ideology.

Such as?

There are numerous examples of Leftists ignoring science to promote their "we're all one race, human" bullshit.  Take IQ, for example.  Leftists were agonized that no matter how they were jiggered to account for "cultural differences," they always came out the same.  Ashkenazi Jews scored highest, then Asians, whites around the middle, with blacks trailing far in the rear.  So they just dropped IQ tests and dismiss them as useless since they can't engineer one that fits their preconceived narrative.

Or your personal assertion that differences between the races don't exist.  Ever studied the effects of Vitamin D on pale skin vs. dark skin?  It's still a problem today, but was far worse in the past.  It's one of the reasons African slavery died out in the Northern U.S. but not the Southern U.S.  -- every winter, the New Englanders' African slaves died in droves from respiratory illness, while in the South it was the white bonded European servants who died from mosquito-borne ailments and heatstroke.  Africans did a lot better in the South and Europeans did a lot better in the North.  Hired white labor would have been a lot cheaper for Southern plantation owners, but at least the Africans had the virtue of staying alive from one year to the next, and it was hard for Yankees to make money using slaves in their rum factories when they had to buy whole new herds of them every Spring.

Also, Black Africans alone of all of humanity have no Neanderthal DNA.  On a  fundamental genetic level, they are different from the rest of us.  This fact outraged liberals worldwide when it became known.  They were like, "WHOA, stop science!  We're OFFENDED!"  Never mind that their being offended at a scientific fact is as silly as, say, me being offended by gravity because I can't jump sixty feet in the air.

Kennewick man is a perfect example of Leftists ignoring science.  A Caucasoid skeleton was found in the Pacific Northwest dating from a time when it was thought that only Paleo-Indians were in North America, and this offended many American Indians and offended their liberal white sycophants a lot more.  Never mind that it made perfect sense and would have been surprising if NO such skeletons were ever found in N. America, but libtards didn't like it so there was a controversy akin to the Nineteenth Century one where everyone "knew" that Africans couldn't have built Great Zimbabwe so they either ignored it or  claimed that a lost tribe of Israel built it.

And the latest, greatest example has been the libtarded Covid response, on which I could write a book.  You can research that for yourself, if you can stand being challenged with science instead of your own phony narrative.

Now... I expect to get a warning from Pundit about veering way off topic, and it would be deserved.  I would suggest that those who wish to carry this topic further, do so in a separate thread created for that purpose.

Quote from: I on December 11, 2023, 11:00:21 PM
There are numerous examples of Leftists ignoring science to promote their "we're all one race, human" bullshit.  Take IQ, for example.  Leftists were agonized that no matter how they were jiggered to account for "cultural differences," they always came out the same.  Ashkenazi Jews scored highest, then Asians, whites around the middle, with blacks trailing far in the rear.  So they just dropped IQ tests and dismiss them as useless since they can't engineer one that fits their preconceived narrative.

I've actually been trained to administrate IQ tests. Generally speaking, on a modern test, you're going to adjust for race. And here's the reason. If you use raw test scores, African-Americans tend to score the lowest of the big demographic groups. One thing IQ correlates with fairly well is college grades. Well, if you compare African-American performance on IQ tests to college grades, you discover they outperform for a given score. But if you make an adjustment, to make the raw score median look like everyone else's median score, guess what happens? Suddenly they have the same relationship between IQ and college grades. So the conclusion to be drawn here is that IQ tests are inaccurate on African-Americans, if you are talking about raw numbers. Essentially, for various inobvious reasons, IQ tests are demonstrably racist. But we can remove that racist factor and then they work fine, statistically. Not that you would ever base an evaluation purely on one type of test, but within its limitations as a tool, that's how it works.

I don't really know what point you are trying to prove, but I thought I would go ahead and refute your first point, using science. I think it's you whose ideology is in the way of understanding modern science. I could go on, like how most African-Americans in the USA have about 25% European DNA and this does not blunt the results in any way. Or how raw IQ scores have been rising steadily every decade across all groups, and the African-American gap has been mostly narrowing. There are just so many ways you are incorrect. But I don't know if facts are important to you at all; if so, it's unlikely you would still be clinging to early 20th century pseudo-science.

Many early IQ proponents were racists, and set out to prove racial disparities in intelligence. Over time, they have repeatedly, abjectly failed to produce results supporting such theories. That view is in the history museum of science.

So I can see why RPG companies might, at times, not find sales reach in certain pockets of the gaming universe, places where people mindlessly repeat half-remembered pseudo-science from a century ago, which was consciously and deliberately crafted to support a racist narrative, and expect surprise I don't un-critically accept premises that can be spoken in the same breadth as phrenology, orgones, and the chiropractic cure for cancer. I don't know how many publishers, writers, and other professionals want a dollar badly enough to pander to such stubbornly retrograde beliefs. I think most people would rather sell corn dogs in the mall than try to write to that level.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 12, 2023, 12:51:10 AM

Quote from: I on December 11, 2023, 11:00:21 PM
There are numerous examples of Leftists ignoring science to promote their "we're all one race, human" bullshit.  Take IQ, for example.  Leftists were agonized that no matter how they were jiggered to account for "cultural differences," they always came out the same.  Ashkenazi Jews scored highest, then Asians, whites around the middle, with blacks trailing far in the rear.  So they just dropped IQ tests and dismiss them as useless since they can't engineer one that fits their preconceived narrative.

I've actually been trained to administrate IQ tests. Generally speaking, on a modern test, you're going to adjust for race. And here's the reason. If you use raw test scores, African-Americans tend to score the lowest of the big demographic groups. One thing IQ correlates with fairly well is college grades. Well, if you compare African-American performance on IQ tests to college grades, you discover they outperform for a given score. But if you make an adjustment, to make the raw score median look like everyone else's median score, guess what happens? Suddenly they have the same relationship between IQ and college grades. So the conclusion to be drawn here is that IQ tests are inaccurate on African-Americans, if you are talking about raw numbers. Essentially, for various inobvious reasons, IQ tests are demonstrably racist. But we can remove that racist factor and then they work fine, statistically. Not that you would ever base an evaluation purely on one type of test, but within its limitations as a tool, that's how it works.

I don't really know what point you are trying to prove, but I thought I would go ahead and refute your first point, using science. I think it's you whose ideology is in the way of understanding modern science. I could go on, like how most African-Americans in the USA have about 25% European DNA and this does not blunt the results in any way. Or how raw IQ scores have been rising steadily every decade across all groups, and the African-American gap has been mostly narrowing. There are just so many ways you are incorrect. But I don't know if facts are important to you at all; if so, it's unlikely you would still be clinging to early 20th century pseudo-science.

Many early IQ proponents were racists, and set out to prove racial disparities in intelligence. Over time, they have repeatedly, abjectly failed to produce results supporting such theories. That view is in the history museum of science.

So I can see why RPG companies might, at times, not find sales reach in certain pockets of the gaming universe, places where people mindlessly repeat half-remembered pseudo-science from a century ago, which was consciously and deliberately crafted to support a racist narrative, and expect surprise I don't un-critically accept premises that can be spoken in the same breadth as phrenology, orgones, and the chiropractic cure for cancer. I don't know how many publishers, writers, and other professionals want a dollar badly enough to pander to such stubbornly retrograde beliefs. I think most people would rather sell corn dogs in the mall than try to write to that level.

I don't really have a strong opinion on "race and IQ" but I find this very odd, it's like talking from within a bubble so deep that you don't see how this could easily be used to show the opposite of what you're trying to say. So IQ tests are inaccurate for African Americans "for various inobvious reasons"? And this is going to convince how exactly? 

I remember reading somewhere that ADHD can vary significantly from population to population. I imagine this could easily affect IQ scoring on tests, and maybe it should. How it maps to American racial groups I'm not sure, and now I suspect we'll never know. People are so willing to tie themselves into hoops to explain things away.

I think the main point was with respect to educational attainment and that test-taking ability can be trained much in the same way IQ can be trained and learned. Kind of like yes, there can be differences between demographic categories, but it's probably not because of skin color. Just socioeconomic and educational factors. Not sure, though.

Also, I've started a thread now waiting for approval for scientific and academic biases and censorship more generally, in the hopes that we can get back to brass tacks here in a bit.

Quote from: KindaMeh on December 12, 2023, 12:07:23 PM
I think the main point was with respect to educational attainment and that test-taking ability can be trained much in the same way IQ can be trained and learned. Kind of like yes, there can be differences between demographic categories, but it's probably not because of skin color. Just socioeconomic and educational factors. Not sure, though.

Also, I've started a thread now waiting for approval for scientific and academic biases and censorship more generally, in the hopes that we can get back to brass tacks here in a bit.

Socioeconomic and educational factors, but also test-administrator bias, and "stereotype threat" (the psychological effects of when a stereotype is employed against you). Even such things as the physical concentration of libraries, or museums, or nature parks, which provide culturally-specific vocabulary and experiences the tests implicitly test for. Thus, the tests do not function as a truly neutral test of ability.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 12, 2023, 04:36:55 PM

Quote from: KindaMeh on December 12, 2023, 12:07:23 PM
I think the main point was with respect to educational attainment and that test-taking ability can be trained much in the same way IQ can be trained and learned. Kind of like yes, there can be differences between demographic categories, but it's probably not because of skin color. Just socioeconomic and educational factors. Not sure, though.

Also, I've started a thread now waiting for approval for scientific and academic biases and censorship more generally, in the hopes that we can get back to brass tacks here in a bit.

Socioeconomic and educational factors, but also test-administrator bias, and "stereotype threat" (the psychological effects of when a stereotype is employed against you). Even such things as the physical concentration of libraries, or museums, or nature parks, which provide culturally-specific vocabulary and experiences the tests implicitly test for. Thus, the tests do not function as a truly neutral test of ability.

If people like you are massaging these tests, it explains a lot about how society is going.

I also noticed that you say minority I.Q. tests don't align with college results, your immediate go to was 'so the tests must be racist,' and never once did the possibility that colleges fudge numbers upwards for ideological reasons, enter your mind.

I'm not even saying they do, but when things don't align, you consider both ends of the equation. That you don't speaks volumes about your ideology (on top of all the buzzwords you sprinkle around.)

Pundit: If you hand out warnings for continuing this off-topic, I stepped away but the thread keeps going and going without moderation, so... (shrug)

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 12, 2023, 04:51:39 PM

If people like you are massaging these tests, it explains a lot about how society is going.

I administrated the tests as I was trained, and was trained in giving adjusted and unadjusted results. These tests in various forms have been around forever, and most of their early developers were racist, classist nerds who fully expected the tests to confirm their views of white, elite superiority. Unfortunately for them, over a century of research has punishingly demonstrated the falseness of that theory.

Quote
I also noticed that you say minority I.Q. tests don't align with college results, your immediate go to was 'so the tests must be racist,' and never once did the possibility that colleges fudge numbers upwards for ideological reasons, enter your mind.

This wasn't some off the cuff notion I had. This is the research I was taught. It is simply a fact that the discrepancy in college grades closely matches the discrepancy in raw test scores; therefore the simplest conclusion is that a relatively strong third variable is mediating both results. It's useful, if reductive, to call this variable "racism" but as I noted above, you can break it down into various constituent parts.

Quote
I'm not even saying they do, but when things don't align, you consider both ends of the equation. That you don't speaks volumes about your ideology (on top of all the buzzwords you sprinkle around.)

Your unwillingness to accept decades of statistical science and sociological research shows your ideological bias. I am not being "political" in any sense this forum has ever cared about. The Pundit has made it abundantly clear that someone's political preferences have no bearing on the discussion of things that simply are. I have a degree in psychology. I am expressing the educated, overwhelmingly accepted generalities on the subject, you are trying to pick apart reality, reason, and, my goodness, math, by shooting from the hip. I think your agenda is obvious: you are unwilling to accept, for your own ideological reasons, that the very tools used by racists to justify their racism, have been extensively demonstrated to do no such thing. IQ tests were used by "scientific" racists from the 1930s to 1970s to try to prove their "theories," and the repeatedly damning result has been that IQ tests don't demonstrate any real world difference between "races;" indeed, inherent, "pure" intelligence is only one thing measured by such tests, not the only thing; real world populations, indeed, the human race as a whole, has shown repeated, steady increases in ability, despite being largely the same genetically we were a century ago. This isn't ideology, this is the product of multiple scientific fields, many of them dominated by white men with conservative political views.

So cry to the Pundit all you want, but refusing to acknowledge flat-Earth science isn't ideological, and you are just an ignoramus with an axe to grind.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 12, 2023, 06:04:54 PM
Your unwillingness to accept decades of statistical science and sociological research shows your ideological bias. I am not being "political" in any sense this forum has ever cared about. The Pundit has made it abundantly clear that someone's political preferences have no bearing on the discussion of things that simply are. I have a degree in psychology. I am expressing the educated, overwhelmingly accepted generalities on the subject, you are trying to pick apart reality, reason, and, my goodness, math, by shooting from the hip. I think your agenda is obvious: you are unwilling to accept, for your own ideological reasons, that the very tools used by racists to justify their racism, have been extensively demonstrated to do no such thing. IQ tests were used by "scientific" racists from the 1930s to 1970s to try to prove their "theories," and the repeatedly damning result has been that IQ tests don't demonstrate any real world difference between "races;" indeed, inherent, "pure" intelligence is only one thing measured by such tests, not the only thing; real world populations, indeed, the human race as a whole, has shown repeated, steady increases in ability, despite being largely the same genetically we were a century ago. This isn't ideology, this is the product of multiple scientific fields, many of them dominated by white men with conservative political views.

It's easy to see when you get triggered, and go on an emotional screed. Giant paragraphs, can't express yourself with fewer than 10,000 words, appeals to authority.

This is where you say "Nu uh, you!"

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 12, 2023, 06:19:33 PM
It's easy to see when you get triggered, and go on an emotional screed. Giant paragraphs, can't express yourself with fewer than 10,000 words, appeals to authority.

This is where you say "Nu uh, you!"

Okay, well, I can't say it now. You already did it better than I can.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 12, 2023, 06:22:26 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 12, 2023, 06:19:33 PM
It's easy to see when you get triggered, and go on an emotional screed. Giant paragraphs, can't express yourself with fewer than 10,000 words, appeals to authority.

This is where you say "Nu uh, you!"

Okay, well, I can't say it now. You already did it better than I can.

There's nothing that can't be improved by a 1,000 word paragraph.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 12, 2023, 06:04:54 PMYour unwillingness to accept decades of statistical science and sociological research shows your ideological bias.

Anyone with an inkling of intelligence should know to be immediately suspect of anyone saying shit like this, because it is obvious that there is a whole ton of data fuckery, biased presentation of results, and straight-up suppression of studies against the mainstream narrative going on, and has been for decades.

I'm (among other things) a statistician. Fight me.

Quote from: GnomeWorks on December 12, 2023, 07:37:36 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on December 12, 2023, 06:04:54 PMYour unwillingness to accept decades of statistical science and sociological research shows your ideological bias.

Anyone with an inkling of intelligence should know to be immediately suspect of anyone saying shit like this, because it is obvious that there is a whole ton of data fuckery, biased presentation of results, and straight-up suppression of studies against the mainstream narrative going on, and has been for decades.

I'm (among other things) a statistician. Fight me.

You don't understand. In the past, corrupt, racist old white men made tests that excluded ethnic groups, and conspired to fudge results to suit their ideology.

Fortunately, they were replaced by unimpeachable bastions of truth, that changed everything so that now it removes biases. They do this by weighing results on their justice scales, then adding or removing weights until they get the correct balance to produce the results that everyone agrees are correct.

You know, Science stuff.

I think my thread is up in the political subforum if folks would be interested in posting on that kind of thing or any counterarguments  there. 

I guess to try to drag things back on track locally, do we think the marketing and sales data is being actively distorted in potentially unethical ways that are aligned with woke values? I feel like if so, that might be proof that the companies are both woke and acting in negative/bad faith fashion.

Quote from: KindaMeh on December 12, 2023, 08:11:44 PM
I think my thread is up in the political subforum if folks would be interested in posting on that kind of thing or any counterarguments  there. 

I guess to try to drag things back on track locally, do we think the marketing and sales data is being actively distorted in potentially unethical ways that are aligned with woke values? I feel like if so, that might be proof that the companies are both woke and acting in negative/bad faith fashion.

I know with the comics industry they've done all kinds of legerdemain to puff figures/hide bad sales.

Some include:

Over-shipping issues to stores (sometimes by a factor of 10) for 'free' (they're charged for extra shipping, yes they get away with that)

Counting issues printed or shipped, rather than actual sales.

Creating variant covers, and making retailors take several (unsellable) regular covers for every variant they're 'allowed' (again up to a 10-1 ratio)

Activists that are librarians/teachers, using public funds to purchase the most awful trash for their library/school.

When terrible sales are somehow discovered, saying they did GREAT in digital sales...that they won't reveal.


I'd be amazed if RPG's are doing variants of this, and their own unique tricks. One interesting difference seems to be that some Woke hobbyists will buy Woke games, just for their shelf, whereas the folks pushing agendas in comics only clap on Twitter.