I think that people evolve differently even on the same continent. James Watson's remarks are an example of arrested evolution.

I second liberata's comment & I would like to express myself with a nuclear anger at Watson's racism, but I won't at this moment. I hope someone comes back at his ideas with solid refutations that wipe the ugliness out of his heart.

love, Heath

I would have titled this blog '"Scientific" Racism??'

great comment, Janet -- your suggested title is better than mine.

whew! reads good, Mallika! thx!!

love, h

The idea of intelligence is the biggest misconception. Intelligence is relative to the perspective that it is coming from. Everyone on this earth is created equal and it is circumstances that create differences in recognition and compensation of perceived intelligence.

That is why engineers generally can't pick up woman at a bar, math majors generally have trouble surviving in the back country of the boreal forest, and Chileans have trouble beating me at my local schoolyard hockey rink.

There are exceptions to every rule, but our personal geography and passion dictate our intelligence and no one is passionate about everything and lives everywhere.

No matter how smart someone is, no matter how much education they have, how many problems they have solved, or how big of a renaissance person they may be... NO ONE CAN KNOW IT ALL. True intelligence is being at peace with one's ignorance, embracing curiosity, and always searching to grow.

All this can be summed up in the statement...

"You only really begin to know something about a subject, topic, or discipline when you realize how little you know. Then you have embraced your ignorance, and will live in perpetual growth and curiosity."

His book is entitled "Avoid Boring People..." & I won't buy his book, in keeping with his title's suggestion.

this Watson dude is a disgrace...

1...even if studies show a kind of disparity in school marks between African and European nations....for example...that proves nothing...Africa, on an economic basis, is less privileged that Europe...has been so for hundreds of years…that might be a factor to consider..

2...given the same circumstances and opportunities from birth to adolescence to adulthood to old age...i think most races will fare the same...on a level playing field...no?

3...therefore…it's a matter of privilege and opportunity, not genetics...there…my 2 cents! damn!

Why even bother about doing research on intelligence based on skin colour?
Even if the whole of Africa were low intelligent sex freaks, would it matter? Wouldn´t it be better to bother more about finding the great value in everything as it is? I really wonder why Mr Watson presume that someone with low intelligence is less worth and boring.
I´m really looking forward to that day when we are able to cure stupidity. Maybe Mr Watson himself should try that cure.

Why even bother about doing research on intelligence based on skin colour?
Even if the whole of Africa were low intelligent sex freaks, would it matter? Wouldn´t it be better to bother more about finding the great value in everything as it is? I really wonder why Mr Watson presume that someone with low intelligence is less worth and boring.
I´m really looking forward to that day when we are able to cure stupidity. Maybe Mr Watson himself should try that cure.

Mallika talks back. Yeah!

Even before I get started, I know that my time is too short.

Nobel Prize: Last week you shined. What happened?

Do highly intelligent people make mistakes? Wanna take it back, now?

I see(Amazon Books? where's that?) my distant
cousin has written a few books, and chimed in on a couple of others.

Maybe Avtar is right...devo...hitting the bottom rung in a flash!
Maybe James had a near-death experience and 'saw the light'.
Maybe he went back to Africa and had a near-life experience.

Perhaps he was alluding to the evolution of the so-called
Psycho-Social System, in which some team always displays an advantage.

Genius is born, not made. Same goes for record-breaking athletes.

Intelligence building depends on cultural circumstances and education.

So...it's really not the fault of the subject,
nor is it the fault of one's genetic structures
if one ends up stupid, slow, or dim-witted.

Do I have that right? Isn't that what's been said?

Racists are made, not born. Can't you see the difference?

True or not? Racism is blood-inherited. Bigots run in one's family.

Try as you may, racism cannot be eradicated through education.(?)
Sure, there are always exceptions to the rules.

Do we have any blacks here at intentBlog? Please speak up.
Why would that it make a difference to me, one way or the other?

James is not here to defend himself. I gotta go now.
Think of me what you will, if any of yours is free to do so.

Determined ahead of my time, Keith W.

Hello Mallika and Everyone,

Watson writes,""all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really".

soooo...the testing....let me guess....done in South Africa....during the apartheid years by members of the police force....or ..maybe. done in the height of the colonial era when the almighty white man taught the Africans the meaning of a few english words...like "take this and put it there, for me" or "do it this way, like I told you" or "I told you to do it now, stupid!"

or maybe James Watson is taking a lesson in how to get attention and sell a book the Amercian Way by Ann Coulter.

I agree that the best way to avoid boring people is not to buy their books.

hmmmm, have an interesting day not buying or reading James Watson, ruth

I think the world at large runs on the premise that the more educated one is the more intelligent they are. I think education is always mistaken for intelligence, but as you see in the case of James Watson, who has proven to be intelligent in one area of his science as well as other areas, I imagine, since, I am not really familiar with his work or study, can be completely ignorant and lacking in intelligence in other subject areas.

I vaguely remember this guy making the same kind of remarks a few years ago and there was a big uproar then too.

Doesn't appear that his IQ, nor his understanding/wisdom, has expanded much in the intervening years. He reminds me of the line in Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as Stupid does."

Bonnie

Yes, Mr Watson has a Celtic trait. We swedes, (vegetables!) down South of Britain have suffered the experience, but I decided I like the bumptious individual who is Scotland the Brave. I take it as permission to fire back. They then call it craic. They do have psychic gifts, too, and the bagpipes, so don't ever take them for granted!

Love 'em
Swed

Swed

Craicy, did dear Watson fall off the turnip truck and lose his way. Now he thinks he is a potato head.

Bonnie

Mallika,

All this guy James Watson proves is that anyone is allowed to write a book regardless of how idiotic their ideas. Also I guess that even jerks can win prizes. Beyond those two points, I see no validity to anything this self-proclaimed intellectual has to say. Perhaps a good question to ask is "what is the definition of an intellectual"? Should an intellectuals thoughts make sense? Perhaps when he writes "one day stupidity can be cured" he is pointing one finger outward while 3 fingers are pointing right back at him. His ideas are garbage.
Olivia

Along Mr. Watson's own lines of thought, I would also add that perhaps certain people should be banned from thinking, and Mr. Watson would certainly be first on the list.

What impressed me most was your last paragraph, Mallika :) It's hard to not just jump at this issue with one's own beliefs, but stay open for a discussion.

Mallika:

Personally, I have found that attitudes in a community tend to cloud the perceptions of people on the actual worth/capabilities. For example, if I say that I find attitudes amongst the African Americans - as a general phenomenon - conducive to education or higher performance, then I would be lying! But to say that Black race as a whole is so is equally ridiculous!

In my experience, the Africans - Nigerians, Kenyans etc - are some of the most hard working and intelligent people in the Immigrant mix in the US. So, race is definitely NOT a factor.

Having said that, societal upbringing and self-perceptions certainly is. Bill Cosby is ostensibly fighting just that - with mixed results and reviews!

I personally believe that any society or group can change - with hard work and focus within one generation! And so do perceptions.

I still remember when I first arrived in the US in 1997, someone asking me if we had any modern transport in my city (clear example of high ignorance). And then reading how much John Kerry wanted to make Boston like Bangalore (little realizing what he was wishing for though!).

One generation - or half - is all it took.

Also, if someone holds a certain perception - negative or positive - about you... You are as much to blame for it as he is. This is my view. For you have not worked enough to power over that perception.

Cheers,
Desh
Drishtikone.com

Hello Mallika and Everyone,

Mallika you ask,"And, how is intelligence defined to claim that one race is more intelligent than another?"

Is there anyone besides Mr. Watson claiming that one race is less intelligent than another In this day and age? Really, I have never heard any such claims. I have heard personal opinions and of course looking at our own racial history in America the white man believed that the black man was less intelligent and I think the white man believed the American Indian was less intelligent than the white race. Let's face it the White man thinks his poop is golden....no? Really, when you have a race such as the White race that has conquered the globe because they had the ability to, the educational know-how to lord it over any other race they could it is quite difficult to give up that perspective, that power, that self-image and acknowledge it's own prejudice, in fact, right up to the sixties there were many in this Nation that said NO to the equality of the Black Man. There were many who believed exactly what Mr. Watson states and I believe Mr. Watson is a product of his race and his culture and his history when he declares his belief, rather then any kind of scientific theory.

ponderings...ruth

On Watson: Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.
He is trying to present himself as a critical thinker and intellectual with superior knowledge. There is nothing, and I repeat NOTHING however, insightful, about his ideas. The same kind of drivel could have come out of the mouth of a person with no IQ. It is sad to say but his ideas are from a time when slavery existed in America and people saw the blacks as inferior. There was a reason why the whites viewed the blacks as inferior--the whites were a little too convinced of their own supriority.

There's a certain irony about this thread, but now for Harb's advice.......

If James Watson was polite and had implicitly potrayed an inferior description of the Africans, it would have caused an uproar - triple in magnitude. In the name of racism we often suspend the expression of individuals, and it is hypocritic. Indians are the most racist if you go by 'comments' per se.

As for the distinguishing intellect in terms of race, we ought to realize whey Jews are what they are. Why are Indians found in every nook and corner of this world? Why is drug abuse so high amongst African Americans? Why do Indians rush to free food before anyone else? What is wrong in being able to define the structure of DNA and also paste few comments on races?

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Press Release
October 18, 2007

"Earlier this evening, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Board of Trustees decided to suspend the administrative responsibilities of Chancellor James D. Watson, Ph.D., pending further deliberation by the Board. "

http://www.cshl.edu/public/releases/07_statement2.html

I entirely agree with what James Watson is supposed to have said.

Right from individuals to families to communities to races to species all have different physical strengths, emotional strengths or quotients, intellectual quotients (reasoning powers) and finally intelligence quotients (intuitive powers).

One can see this around oneself itself. One individual is physically strong, an other one emotionally so, a third one in terms of reasoning or intellectual power and a fourth one in terms of intuition or intuitive powers.

This is because the manifestation of the whole evolutionary phenomenon right from the universe as a whole down to a 'grain of sand' is 1. in cycles or cycles-within-cycles-within-cycles, and 2. divided into four basic phases/traits/characteristics/strengths/quotients thanks to its being further the manifestation at all cycle levels of four basic forces or interactions each has to go through throughout their life-cycle.

In our individual life those four phases are childhood, youth, middle age and old age, according to the basic forces or interactions of gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak which we respectively pass through as we grow or evolve. And accordingly four basic phases or traits are that we are physically at our best in our childhood (0-20), emotionlly in our youth (20-40), intellectually in our middle age(40-60) and so on.

Accordingly races grew on the humans species level, the first being physically strong (Africans, black?), the second being emotionally so(like Mongols, black-white?), the third being in terms of intellect or intellectual powers(white, like Europeans and Americans?)and fourth in terms of intuitive powers(white-black, like Indians, Chinese). All because they belong to different phases of the evolution of human species.

That does not mean that we will not see any intellectual in the first phase or physicially strong in the third, because, because of cycles within cycles, some individual may be on the third phase of the first phase while some may be on the first pase of the third.

The rest is details of cycles-within-cycles.

PS: A student of world-races can divide the four races more correctly. Mine is only a tentative guess as I am not really in much knowledge of races. To my mind the four major races could be Africans, Mongols, Jews and Hindus.

Hi Edmunds!

PS: A student of world-races can divide the four races more correctly. Mine is only a tentative guess as I am not really in much knowledge of races. To my mind the four major races could be Africans, Mongols, Jews and Hindus.

Hi Edmunds!

We are pawns in the hands of our genetic make-ups.

Our genetic make-ups are further the pawns in the hands of four basic forces or interactions which have become our lot in this life and from which we are to get unwound to due extent. (We got wound up into a certain amount/configuration of four basic forces at the beginning of our long 'evolutionary' life in the far past spanning many individual lives of the like of the present and are subsequently getting unwound from them to due extent in each life. When this getting unwound is completed we will simply dissolve, rather than die which we do after each life when only a part of the four forces have been got unwound from.)

Only when my four basic forces based theory of 'evolution' is fully understood (probably within the next ten to fifteen years)the working of the human genome will be fully understood. Till then even knowing the working of all individual genes in a human genetic make-ups will not make the picture clear.

Going beyond races, we can divide the whole human race's development into four phases according to four basic forces or interactions.

Thus cave man belonged to the first phase - and obviously was mostly concerned with his physical survival. Nomadic man belonged to the second, emotional phase which is why it mostly kept itself busy in loves and wars. Settled man, the creature of the third phase, of strong interactions or intellectual phase developed all intellectual capabilities. Now as per my book we are going beyond it to enter the fourth, of what I call Free Man's phase. Here intelligence rather than intellect, secular spiritulity rather than hard science will hold sway.

Janet, conversion of Buddhist Tibetans to peace-loving people only means that now they have progressed to the fourth phase of their second main phase.

From space you club every variation together into one earth. It depends upon from how afar or from how adeep one sees the picture.

Just as after having the actual experience of love at first sight or of actual sex you dont need anybody's approval to know what it is, similarly, after having 'seen' the things from where I have seen I do not need anybody's approval of what I say. I know only rare persons can understand what I am saying. Seeing things by going 'outside' the phenomenal universe is not easy. Moreover, most are afraid of letting go of the status quo thinking.

oh yeah...and there are four sexes; man, woman, gay and lesbian.

I wonder what Ricky Ponting has changed his name to...lol.

Hi Mallika--found this great site!! A Presidential Dialogue--where we can ask the visiting politician(Obama=Oct.9th)

IF you would like to get LIVE InterActive dialogue with ALL the candidates; peep my myspace, and in my top friends, I've just added:
"Presidential Dialogues" click their avatar to go to their site. I would have added the sites link instead; but, they didn't have it on thier page??

Anyway.. one on one with Obama, anyone? )ct. 29th; so go check it out, talk to the candidates!!

Brilliant site--lotsa information to satiate any thirsty mind...

Luv,
North

I damn care what the established knowledge in any discipline says, because I am here to put all that on its head with my four forces theory.

Much worse was said when Darwin or Galileo or others proposed their paradigm-shifting theories.
AJ, Ravi, you are not at fault. It is not easy to let go of one's established belief. It just shakes one off their foundations. But yet, only this is the way of quantum jump, of a paradigm shift. You have to be shaken off your foundations.

I talked of taking whiskey just to shake off the goody goody image impression usually asociated with spiritualists which is really thanks to half-baked spiritualists. As if spiritualists cannot take whiskey. Otherwise there is nothing in the world, and I repeat nothing, which now has any power over me. I MAY or I may not take anything.

Just OBSERVE around you and find the EVIDENCE that no two individuals/families/communities are equal, one is strong in physique, an other is more emotional, a third one has more intellectual capability then why the same cannot be said of races?

To really make this truth palatable one must know that they all serve ONE universal evolutionary scheme of things, just as bone, blood, muscle and nerve cells having different capabilities serve my body by their division of labour. And it is in this respect they all races yet must be treated with due respect.

I can see from which deeper point of observation Watson is saying things and I am sure after having read only some of them that they all must be true. Science can come to that point later.

No doubt Darwin and Galileo were abused by religious bi-gots/ignorant people but Watson is now being abused by most people out of fear of being dubbed as racists.

Such narrow minded thinking can boil the blood. However, what this conversation brings up in me is that all human beings have angelic/spiritual/loving guardians even if they are not aware of them and their unifying power. Rather then get in a heated debate that separates even further I prefer to see threads of light wrapping around this man. I prefer to connect angel to angel. Science may not agree with my approach but I have tested it and it does work.

Trish ~~

Interesting, Trish, you posted at 10:01. There's a symmetry for you, the duality of Watson held in the middle.
May I be with one of the ones?

No reply necessary.

:)

#56

This saying only means that when a person has reached the top of evolution of a cycle his next generation will going into hibernation. After which it will come up with far advanced powers beginning with the next cycles.

At global cultural level a (BC)cycle came to an end with Grek philosophy of atomists at the height of intellectual knowldge. Then began the hibernation period after which next cycle with AD era began and reached far deeper into the atom than merely saying that everything is made up of atoms as did the greeks. It is the same with individuals who have reached the height of their intellectual knowledge. A few of their generations will go down (really into hibernation) but then they will take the culture or intellectual knowledge to even greater heights.

Einstein's son was really a schizophrenic, so is Watson's and in fact so is mine. But that schizophrenic to me only means that they have gone so much deeper into things (into sort of beginning of hibernation)that they can now no longer keep the reality of the obvious or tangible world into their reckoning while deciding things as could do their parents. They become cut off socially. But after due time their genes will come to manifestation and will take the relevant generation to far greater intelelctual and other capacities of course when they will reach identical levels of the next cycles. Nothing in nature goes waste and so nor the genetic heights achieved by Einsteins.

Dearest Harb,

You are right. My heart goes out to you. In our family we also have to co-op with borderline disease which is not so heavy as schizophrenic but is related to it.

Children of this New Era :) Let's give them all the love we have!!

Mieke

Harb,
After reading your comments perhaps I should turn my attention to intelligent, attractive females.
Rather than Consciousness.
(LOL)(LOL)!
I'm feeling the biological clock ticking.
I'm pretty crazy though.
Would that make my kids (supercrazy)!
Sorry Everybody.
Sometimes a laugh is good.
Todd

If you have gone beyond all concepts, beyond even self as per an other post what your kids will have to do/go further?? Go for the women but may be like lao tze spare the kids lol.

Well. How does Watson define intelligence in the first place?. Is it the ability to absorb, cogitate and utilise information? I'm amazed that a Nobel Prize winning scientist could use such crude explanations to validate his own personal theories, which are not substantiated by any scientific proof.

He's not exactly coming across as intelligent himself -is he?

As a molecular biologist myself-I find his link between skin colour and intelligence in a genetic sense to be ridiculous.