
Electric brain stimulation decreases IQ scores and racial prejudice - Expeditus419
http://www.kurzweilai.net/electric-brain-stimulation-decreases-iq-scores-and-racial-prejudice
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copsarebastards
This makes perfect sense based on how tDCS is hypothesized to work.

tDCS is believed to enhance _learning_ by providing more force behind the
encoding of memories: it's like pressing harder when writing with a pencil,
making it harder to erase. Normally it takes many iterations of practice to
encode a complex skill properly, but with more electricity behind the "write"
operation it takes fewer iterations.

However, with perceptual reasoning, encoding memories quickly would be
counterproductive, because it would cause your first ideas to be firmly
encoded, leading you to consider fewer ideas. This would prevent the broader
considerations necessary in problem-solving.

I'm not a neuroscientist, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I've
just read a lot about tDCS, and have no formal training.

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golemotron
I feel a Harrison Bergeron moment coming on.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron)

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jqm
If the electrical current were turned up high enough all racial prejudice
would disappear and IQ would approach 0.

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madaxe_again
Wonderful. You just know that some wag will jump on this and twist this into
"It is intelligent to be racist!".

Personally, I find the idea of wiring my brain, my _self_ , up to something
which zaps it with little to no understanding of the underlying science or
function scares the bejesus out of me, and strikes me as a strange at best and
stupid at worst thing to do.

Ah, let me just pop a leech on this, it'll get my phlegmatic humour
rebalanced.

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zxcvcxz
> You just know that some wag will jump on this and twist this into "It is
> intelligent to be racist!".

Not before some wag jumps on it and makes sure anyone who tries to discuss the
topic rationally and thoughtfully is already seen as racist and stupid.

I dream of a community where everything is up for discussion, even if I
disagree with it.

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madaxe_again
Actually, the first response was from a hellbanned account espousing exactly
that point of view.

I'm also not sure where you got that I'm trying to censor discussion - you
commented, did you not?

"michas 3 hours ago [dead]

It has nothing to do with intelligence, it is just all about being realist.
Existence of different races comes from the fact that there are genetic
differences between people. It would be stupid to assume that those genetic
differences have no other effect than skin color."

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omginternets
I don't see anything wrong with the quote you posted. It doesn't imply that
people of different races are stupid or inferior. It just implies that you
expect genetic differences to correlate with all manner of other measures.

Respectfully, I think you're reading into it too much.

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s_q_b
While there's technically nothing racist about a small variation in
intelligence. But this comment leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as we know
that.

1\. Individual variation in intelligence dwarfs any population level measure
with regard to race. 2\. The evidence with regard to IQ differences by race is
suspect at best, especially because it is unclear that one can accurately
control for socioeconomic factors. 3\. It would be ignorant to assume that
transporting an entire people from one continent to another, forcing them to
serve as slaves for much of our history, systemically suppressing their
political representation even after granting freedom, and an extremely
efficient police-prison-industrial complex that disproportionately targets
that minority would leave no lasting ill effects.

It suggests to me the motive is a writer's true belief is in racial
superiority, which given the hellbanned account, seems the more likely option
than an honest attempt to further a scholarly discussion.

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s0x
1\. I don't see how this point has any relevance. Of course the variance
between outliers in a population is going to differ greater than the variance
between population means. What does that have to do with anything? 2\. The IQ
disparity among the races is well studied, well researched, and well
documented. It sounds like you need to do more reading on the subject. 3\. So
now it's clear that while he was making a general comment about the need to
accept the reality of differences among the races, you're making it out to be
a comment against black people. Ok. But I'll respond to your tangent: It would
be ignorant to assume that the only IQ studies done were on slave-descended,
or, as you would call them, "systemically oppressed" African Americans. IQ
studies have been conducted world-wide, and regardless of where or when
they've been performed, Ashkenazi Jews consistently score the highest, East
Asians second highest, Caucasians next, then Hispanics and Latinos, then
Blacks.

You seem like someone with an axe to grind.

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blueflow
>... Participants (n=60) were randomly...

Beside from that, the title suggests something like a causal connection when
they just found it correlating on a sample of 60 persons? Seriously?

This study is utter bullshit.

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matt4077
It's getting really annoying how many self-annoited gods of statistics keep
creeping up online.

60 is plenty if the effect is large enough. Hey, even n=4 can make for a good
study. Give two of them cyanide and two of them a placebo, let all the trial-
size-too-small-correlation-isnt-causation-people watch and then ask them to
back up their criticism with a nice helping of the tested substance.

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blueflow
Exactly,

"... if the effect is large enough"

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omginternets
Are you saying the effect isn't large enough? If so, why?

