I.Q. And The Flynn Effect

James Flynn found that when I.Q. tests are averaged out across decades, there have been huge increases in I.Q. among Americans since WWII. But, it seems strange to say this is due to increased education since better I.Q. tests abstract from that. It also seems unlikely that we're just much smarter. The huge as yet unexplained increase is called the Flynn Effect. Tyler Cowen points us to a paper which offers a possible solution to the puzzle:

 "We propose that recent-born individuals have adopted an approach to analogy that enables them to infer higher-level relations requiring roles that are not intrinsic to the objects that constitute initial representations of items. This proposal is translated into item-specific predictions about differences between cohorts in pass rates and item-response patterns on the Raven’s Matrices, a seemingly culture-free test that registers the largest Flynn effect. Consistent with predictions, archival data reveal that individuals born around 1940 are less able to map objects at higher levels of relational abstraction than individuals born around 1990."

Four Points About The Romney Video

Remember this. There are lots and lots of problems for Romney that others have addressed well. I'll make four points here.

1. The worst thing about it is that he claims that he won't be president for half the country. That is awful, regardless of your politics. He could have said his policies would help these people, that he had a better solution to problems caused by poverty, unemployment, etc. But he didn't. He said there's nothing he can do because they'll never take personal responsibility. He's not claiming he's looking out for their interests; he's writing them off as lost causes. Despicable.

2. People who say that his claims are inconvenient truths are delusional. SOME of the things he says are true, but it simply isn't true that the 47% of people who don't pay income tax are all and only the people who vote for Obama, obviously. OBVIOUSLY.

They also don't want everything to be entitlements; it's not true that they all of them don't take personal responsibility, etc. People who think all of this is true are using the W. Bush definition - it "feels true" to them, regardless of whatever the actual facts are.

3. One overlooked problem I think is that Romney is conceding the Republican party is the party of the rich. He's basically conceding the stereotype - "if you make a lot of money, I need you to give it to me to fend off all the poor people who will vote for Obama." But that's a problem for the GOP now and will continue to be a problem in the future. You can't run as an elitist, exclusive party and expect to win many elections. (Romney might still win this one, though!)

4. If the problem is that people don't pay income tax, an obvious solution for a candidate running for president is to promise to raise income taxes on those who do not pay. Obviously, that is something Romney isn't doing, nor would he in any near possible world. It actually wouldn't be a terrible idea to do that to a reasonable extent. But it won't happen. Because the real agenda is not to have everybody pay their "fair share" in taxes, it's to kick poor people. People who complain about others not paying income tax, but who do not think the problem can be solved by raising their taxes or ending their tax credits (to reasonable degrees) are just looking for an excuse to bash the poor, pure and simple.

This One's For A Friend

It's not about politics. AND it should make him feel less inadequate at the gym.

"For example, imagine going to the gym. When you look around, does it seem that just about everybody there is in better shape than you are? Well, you’re probably right. But that’s inevitable and nothing to feel ashamed of. If you’re an average gym member, that’s exactly what you should expect to see, because the people sweating and grunting around you are not average. They’re the types who spend time at the gym, which is why you’re seeing them there in the first place. The couch potatoes are snoozing at home where you can’t count them. In other words, your sample of the gym’s membership is not representative. It’s biased toward gym rats."

See? He's A Fuck Up

No one else to blame.

Interesting Thoughts About Global Warming And Technology

Is a carbon tax a thing of the past?

"Here is the good news. US carbon emissions are decreasing rapidly. We're down over 10% from our emissions peak in 2007. Furthermore, the drop isn't just a function of the Great Recession. Since 2010 our economy has been growing, but emissions have kept on falling. The reason? Natural gas. With the advent of "fracking" technology, the price of gas has plummeted far below that of coal, and as a result, essentially no new coal plants are being built. Although gas does release carbon, it only releases about half as much as coal for the same amount of electricity. This is why -- despite our failure to join the Kyoto Protocol or impose legal restrictions on CO2 -- the United States is now outpacing the rest of the developed world in reducing our contribution to global warming. 

Now for the better news. A technology is in the pipeline that has the potential to eliminate CO2 emissions entirely. Solar power, long believed to be unworkably expensive, has actually been falling in cost at a steady exponential rate of 7 percent per year for the last three decades straight. Because of this "Moore's Law for solar", electricity from solar panels now costs less than twice as much as electricity from coal, and only about three times as much as electricity from gas. Furthermore, technologies now in the pipeline seem to ensure that the cost drop will continue."

Take It Away, Rick!

No comment.

"WASHINGTON, DC — Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum attacked the media and “smart people” for not being on the side of conservatives in a speech to the Values Voter Summit on Saturday. 

"We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country,” Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, told the audience at the Omni Shoreham hotel. “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.'"

Kenyan Anti-Colonialist Socialist Atheist Muslim Communist

Can't be repeated enough: Obama's just sort of center-left.

Conservative Fault Lines

Reihan Salam has a nice post about the different axes conservatives fall upon in reaction to the recession and recent events with foreign policy.