Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Zen-master/Evidence

In regard to archiving

What some people may not understand is that nothing goes away permanently. As far as I know, the entire body of discussions relevant to the Race and Intelligence article is present via the "history" records. So let's not be too eager to suspect conspiracy and ill intent when something gets archived.

There is no point of not archiving stale discussions. When a page gets longer than 32 K, then not all people may be able to edit the page and contribute to it. And those of us who have slow phone connections may be inconvenienced if it takes several minutes for a whole discussion to load. I think most of us already understand that point.

As I recall, when the discussion was archived people were invited to re-copy stuff into the current page if they wanted to make immediate reference to it. P0M 01:48, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

In regard to arbitration

Whether it's on people or the "product", I'm not sure. Anyway, I'm on vacation so I'll keep this brief.

Race and intelligence is one of those fields which has been fraught with controversy since academia began to try addressing it. Very little is really known about the relationship if any between race and "intelligence" other than the obvious fact that American Blacks score 15 points lower on so-called "IQ tests" than whites and Asians.

The problems this causes are:

1. many (if not most) people assume this confirms what they had thought all along: that blacks are stupid
2. no one likes being called "stupid", so there is a natural reaction to deny the accuracy, relevance, etc. of the IQ test scores:
   • the tests are culturally biased
   • nobody can define "intelligence" anyway
   • it's impossible to distinguish biological factors from up-bringing (see nature-nurture controversy

Then there's the whole social policy issue: if test prove that blacks are inferior, do we:

• shoot the messenger?
• use this as an excuse to keep blacks down?
• redouble or triple our efforts to bring blacks up?
• ignore intelligence and hire / promote / admit / graduate on a quota system?

This article makes abortion seem quiet and peaceful.

Sorry, I have no "evidence". I didn't come here to get anybody in trouble. Sure, ZM threw around the n-word a few times, until I used admin power to make him avoid personal remarks, but the issue is bigger than this.

We need to define what our goals are for the article, and the cute little "to-do list" on the talk page isn't helping.

I think the article should examine the relationship between race and intelligence. Specifically, it should summarize research that suggests (or denies) that being born into a certain race has a significant effect on one's intelligence. This will require an acceptable definition of intelligence - "IQ tests" are okay to get us going, but we will need more to get to the finish line.

The article should also examine how race and intelligence relate to life in general, including one's career prospects (in academia, industry, etc.), social adjustment, and so on. Uncle Ed 19:06, July 30, 2005 (UTC)