Comments on: Smart people accept evolution

By: Julian M

Julian M — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:17:44 +0000

How did a genius like Jim B overlook selection bias in his claim to be smarter than 99% of the readership here? Sometimes the brighter you are the duller you seem.

By: Katharine

Katharine — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:31:46 +0000

Jim B, matter is an issue of physics. It has zero to do with evolution. And the claim that an animate, sentient entity created matter is ludicrous. You’re the idiot here. I’m skeptical about your claims of having an IQ higher than 99.68% of Razib’s readers.

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 05:57:28 +0000

Superior performance on the WORDSUM test (with it being a vocabulary test) and acceptance of evolution are indicators of educational attainment rather than innate intelligence, in my opinion.

1) you can actually control for education (which i did)

2) you can actually look in the GSS as opposed to offering your opinion. if you did so you’d find some correlation with wordsum controlling for education. though it’s noisy.

By: Phillip Lemky

Phillip Lemky — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:00:32 +0000

Superior performance on the WORDSUM test (with it being a vocabulary test) and acceptance of evolution are indicators of educational attainment rather than innate intelligence, in my opinion.

By: Baramos

Baramos — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 20:12:26 +0000

I guess cause animals are made up of matter? I dunno. Evolutionary theory doesn’t bother to explain the origins of matter or the universe, it attempts to explain the origins of life and the development of multi-celled organisms and species.

By: roger-u

roger-u — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 12:01:45 +0000

what has the formation of “matter” got to do with the theory of evolution ???

By: Emil

Emil — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 08:19:11 +0000

^ troll or just stupid.

By: zovenix

zovenix — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 08:00:13 +0000

“Smart people generally accepted the flat earth theory 600 years ago”

No. Wrong example. Smart people accepted the spherical earth theory 600 years ago.

By: Jim B

Jim B — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 05:43:21 +0000

Smart people accept evolution? Smart people generally accepted the flat earth theory 600 years ago. By the way, my IQ is higher than 99.68% of your readers. I do not accept the theory of evolution because it cannot answer the simple question of where "matter" was formed. When "smart people" start being "smart" again, maybe science will regain a foothold. It is the "elitist" attitude of science in articles like this that turn those of us who are TRULY smart away from the scientific community toward those who do not judge them based on something that can never be proven. [here's the facebook profile of this genius -razib]

By: Mike the Mad Biologist

Mike the Mad Biologist — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 21:59:44 +0000

If we look at each wordsum category separately, which ones are significantly different? I ask because the trend seems to reflect the liberal-conservative split (low and high lean left; middle leans conservative). It also seems to mirror educational attainment–moderately educated people (some/completed college) are more likely to be conservative.

Hard to suss out causal factors here.

By: Joe H.

Joe H. — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 20:34:36 +0000

Now if only you could lay the WORDSUM/IQ relationship over the figure above, and we’d know how it really fit to the bell curve of intelligence.