Althouse: At the Koi Kaffe...

July 3, 2019

At the Koi Kaffe...

... keep in the swim.

67 comments:

rcocean said...: Toss us some Trump and we'll bite.; 7/3/19, 7:10 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: A whole box of Trump.; 7/3/19, 7:10 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Seanan McGuire's Toby Daye series starts with Toby being turned into a koi by one of her enemies. She spends seven years as a fish, and the reprecussions run down through the series. (Most obviously, her human husband and daughter assume she has abandoned them).; 7/3/19, 7:13 PM
Tommy Duncan said...: I'm much calmer after seeing that picture.

When I was young a farmer up the road kept goldfish in a horse trough. The trough was fed by an artesian well and thus did not freeze in the winter. The fish were fascinating.; 7/3/19, 7:34 PM
traditionalguy said...: Cat treats. Swim koi, swim.; 7/3/19, 7:34 PM
wildswan said...: Fernandistein said..
"Over the last 50 years in developed countries, evidence has accumulated that only about 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers while the remaining 90% is due to characteristics associated with students. Teachers account for from 1% to 7% of total variance at every level of education. For students, intelligence accounts for much of the 90% of variance associated with learning gains."

Consider the case of Oberlin. The school is very selective about who it takes. The acceptance rate at Oberlin is 33.7%. In other words, of 100 students who apply, 33.7 are admitted. According to College Prep, "strong academic scores are critical to improving your chances of admission. If you're able to score a 1450 SAT or above, you'll have a very strong chance at getting in. But if you get a 1280 SAT or below, it'll be a steep uphill battle for you to get admitted. The average GPA at Oberlin is 3.57." In other words Oberlin is admitting students whose median level is in the 75% percentile. But after they arrive as we know from the news their teachers drive their intelligence down to Antifa levels. Right?

And Flynn, an eminent thought leader in the IQ field, has shown that IQ is declining in many developed countries among the native sons after rising for the whole 20C. So heritability - no. Effort - yes. And teachers can show us how and where to put our effort. And why.

IQ Scores Are Falling in "Worrying" Reversal of 20th Century Intelligence Boom. https://www.sciencealert.com/iq-scores-falling-in-worrying-reversal-20th-century-intelligence-boom-flynn-effect-intelligence; 7/3/19, 7:35 PM
reader said...: I enjoyed the October Day series through Once Broken Faith but haven’t read the last two (few?).; 7/3/19, 7:39 PM
wildswan said...: "students whose median level is in the 75% percentile"

Sorry, students whose lowest level of performance is in the 75%.; 7/3/19, 7:39 PM
rcocean said...: Free association. From fish to cats:

"From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold."; 7/3/19, 7:40 PM
Narr said...: Carp swimming with blooms.
Ripples bulge with water light.
One pink flower floats.

Narr
Just now; 7/3/19, 7:49 PM
mockturtle said...: Now that is a splendid photo!; 7/3/19, 7:50 PM
Big Mike said...: The lily might be “Red Flare,” a night-blooming tropical. Back in our younger days I dug my wife a lily pond in he back yard, but most lilies close up around 5:00 or so, so they were always closed when I got home. Night-blooming topicals open after the regular ones close, but we never could get them to winter over.; 7/3/19, 8:07 PM
YoungHegelian said...: I saw this today at the Babylon Bee and laughed.

Imperial AT-ATs Begin Arriving In Capital For Military Parade.; 7/3/19, 8:21 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: they're looking for bicycles,
...and making a pretense of shyness or modesty that is intended to be alluring.; 7/3/19, 8:23 PM
Lyle Sanford, RMT said...: What a lovely, lovely pic - colors, textures, shapes, and the blending of dimensions (in the water/out of the water/on the water).; 7/3/19, 8:43 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: Congratulations Narr on your splendid haiku, about one of my favorite flowers, Nymphaea.

They grow wild in the ponds here in Jersey, mostly white, but sometimes pale pink. I'm guessing this one is a special cultivar of some kind.

Miracles are everywhere.; 7/3/19, 8:45 PM
Fernandinande said...: Paper - "The average IQ score from these tests rose from"
099.5 for the 1962 birth cohort to
102.3 for the 1975 cohort,
099.4 for the 1989 cohort
099.7 for the 1991 cohort;
(IOW, the " "Worrying" Reversal" is a blip for 1975.)

Yes, the decline is genetic
(excerpts from a long article)

In Norway, siblings are less and less genetically similar; they are increasingly half-siblings.

To produce a pair of brothers, a woman has to have three children on average. Among Norwegian women with three children, 36.2% have had them by two or more men.

Multi-partner fatherhood is most common among men with the lowest level of education.

Multi-partner fertility has increased over time among these men, while childlessness has remained constant. Their overall reproductive success has thus gone up.

++; 7/3/19, 8:48 PM
reader said...: Our neighbor built a koi pond in his backyard in suburban LA. It was his baby and he maintained it for fifteen years. He fought a constant battle with the neighborhood cats. On special occasions (daughter’s wedding) he would roast a pig in a pit in his backyard. Best food ever. It was very lower middle class suburban. Mr. D you are always in our thoughts and prayers.; 7/3/19, 8:59 PM
Narr said...: My pleasure, Phidippus, thanks for noticing my tribute to the beauty of the image.

Narr
Have a great Fourth y'all; 7/3/19, 9:03 PM
Big Mike said...: @YoungHegelian, I especially liked this line:

“Antifa resistance attempted to milkshake the walkers but were crushed.”; 7/3/19, 9:08 PM
Michael K said...: Watch out for raccoons at the koi pond. Far more enterprising than cats,; 7/3/19, 10:16 PM
Big Mike said...: I see that 45,000 barrels of Jim Beam whiskey went up in flames in a warehouse fire. I call on President Trump to declare a national day of mourning!; 7/3/19, 11:07 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: "OK, now I'm Worried"

https://comicbook.com/dc/2019/07/04/mad-magazine-to-cease-publication/

...that's not funny.; 7/3/19, 11:14 PM
narciso said...: They cant keep up with reality, it's the phillip Roth problem.; 7/3/19, 11:18 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Well dang!

Of course I admit I already mostly wrote them off when I saw Ted Rall was a regular some years back.; 7/3/19, 11:23 PM
wildswan said...: Fernandistein said...
Paper - "The average IQ score from these tests rose"

The article referenced is titled:
"Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused". As one might expect from the title the article cited says there is an IQ decline: " Using administrative register data with information on family relationships and cognitive ability for three decades of Norwegian male birth cohorts, we show that the increase, turning point, and decline of the Flynn effect"; and the article denies a hereditarian explanation: "there is at most a minor role for explanations involving genes (e.g., immigration and dysgenic fertility)". The article argues that there are several possible environmental causes for the IQ decline and these include a decline a educational quality:
"our results remain consistent with a number of proposed hypotheses of IQ decline: changes in educational exposure or quality, changing media exposure, worsening nutrition or health, and social spillovers from increased immigration."

I call the theory that an educational decline is leading a detectable IQ drop across society the Oberlin argument. Super-intelligent students are selected by the Oberlin admissions process and then rendered stupid the Oberlin education process, as we have all seen recently. And I think that similar situations, such as accepting AOC as a thought leader, repeated many times in many ways, have created the reverse Flynn effect.; 7/3/19, 11:30 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: Rall was a dick.

"I do not like penis"; 7/3/19, 11:59 PM
narciso said...: This is the sad fellow:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-gardner-46b2041

You think he just was so hapless or he knew what was going on; 7/4/19, 12:00 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Trump will ask tomorrow why his Death Star didn't make it to the parade, or so Chuck will report from The Bulshitwark; 7/4/19, 12:09 AM
readering said...: So the Alabama woman charged with manslaughter for miscarriage has had charges dropped.; 7/4/19, 12:12 AM
Quaestor said...: Watch out for raccoons at the koi pond.

My friend lost some of his prize koi to a great blue heron.; 7/4/19, 12:29 AM
Gahrie said...: So the Alabama woman charged with manslaughter for miscarriage has had charges dropped.

I hear the local democratic Party is putting her up for mother of the year.; 7/4/19, 1:01 AM
Drago said...: Just so everyone is fully caught up from the earlier threads involving new LLR Chuck admissions:

In summary: our racist poster Chuck has openly admitted the following:

He is ONLY here to
1) knowingly and purposely smear and lie about Trump
2) drive a wedge between Althouse and her readership (note: one of the few blogsites that is not skewed to the far left)

That is precisely the sort of assignment a far left Moby operative would be assigned.
Precisely.; 7/4/19, 2:01 AM
Ken B said...: Wildswan
Oberlin is small. Its students are mostly self selected. If you start a college and call it “AOC Woke Training Academy” you will get enough applications to be selective, and the students will all arrive crazy. But they will be a self selected slice of the most crazy, not a representative sample of the top 25%.; 7/4/19, 2:18 AM
Crazy World said...: Gorgeous photo.
My Dad carved out some tiki statues and built a triple waterfall in our backyard all while building our boat “snorkel” while my brother was making surfboards, Blessed Independence Day to all. Keep America Great.; 7/4/19, 2:57 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: “And Flynn, an eminent thought leader in the IQ field, has shown that IQ is declining in many developed countries among the native sons after rising for the whole 20C. So heritability - no. Effort - yes. And teachers can show us how and where to put our effort. And why. ”

In this country, at least, there seems to be an inverse relationship between education level and family size, which translates between family size and IQ. And if IQ is inheritable, then it is going to decrease over tie as the lower IQ outbreeding the higher IQ contingents. But I do think that there is also an environmental factor, and that would likely be drawn down a bit by: frequently not having a father in the household; too much TV and electronics; and declining public school quality.; 7/4/19, 3:04 AM
Narayanan said...: Browse
Education
¶
The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life—by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past—and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.

Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution “The Comprachicos,”
Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 88

¶
The academia-jet set coalition is attempting to tame the American character by the deliberate breeding of helplessness and resignation—in those incubators of lethargy known as “Progressive” schools, which are dedicated to the task of crippling a child’s mind by arresting his cognitive development. (See “The Comprachicos” in my book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution.) It appears, however, that the “progressive” rich will be the first victims of their own social theories: it is the children of the well-to-do who emerge from expensive nursery schools and colleges as hippies, and destroy the remnants of their paralyzed brains by means of drugs.

The middle class has created an antidote which is perhaps the most hopeful movement of recent years: the spontaneous, unorganized, grass-roots revival of the Montessori system of education—a system aimed at the development of a child’s cognitive, i.e., rational, faculty.

Philosophy: Who Needs It “Don’t Let It Go,”
Philosophy: Who Needs It, 214

See also: Concepts; Integration (Mental); Learning; Understanding.; 7/4/19, 5:50 AM
alanc709 said...: Wonder how a 1450 SAT score now compares to a 1450 back in 1974. That's when I took the test. I didn't bother studying or preparing for it.... thought you should take it cold to make the score more valid. Scored a 1390 as a result. Served its purpose at the time, got me several scholarships. Too bad I didn't make better use of my education, but I was too easily distracted.; 7/4/19, 6:13 AM
Kevin said...: Koi polloi.; 7/4/19, 6:19 AM
Robert Cook said...: Happy 4th of Julie!; 7/4/19, 6:27 AM
Robert Cook said...: “'And Flynn, an eminent thought leader in the IQ field, has shown that IQ is declining in many developed countries among the native sons after rising for the whole 20C. So heritability - no. Effort - yes. And teachers can show us how and where to put our effort. And why.'"

Perhaps it's the effect of ever greater amounts of toxins in our air, water, food, commercial products, and bodies.; 7/4/19, 6:32 AM
rhhardin said...: I'd assumed the US had an average IQ of 98 rather than 100 because of the influence of blacks and hispanics as a growing percentage of the population.

IQ is supposed to be independent of education. That's its point. If it's not, it's a flaw in the test.

I don't know what methods they use - it's easy to imagine ways. Say questions on the test that the educated do better at. You use them to decrease the scores of the educated. (So if you get them right, your IQ is marked down.) At some point, there's a right amount of markdown so that the educated and the uneducated come out the same, provided that they're equally smart. That's not a hard problem to solve, provided you have some way to know people are equally smart in designing the test. Say large populations of people known to be the same except for education.; 7/4/19, 6:52 AM
rhhardin said...: Geneticists want education-independent IQ because they want to study genetics, not confounding effects from social life.; 7/4/19, 6:54 AM
rhhardin said...: Peterson's story of why IQ is really good as a measure is that highly motivated organizations want to predict who they can train for certain jobs and who they can't train for those jobs. Chiefly the military.; 7/4/19, 6:55 AM
Narayanan said...: Blogger rhhardin said...
Geneticists want education-independent IQ because they want to study genetics, not confounding effects from social life.

So, these geneticists - are they educated? What is their *iq* and what is yours!? If you think you are making sense.; 7/4/19, 7:05 AM
rhhardin said...: Citizenship questions that aren't citizenship questions

1. Would you swear that you're a U.S. citizen if we asked you?

2. If you'd like a free book of U.S. postage stamps for non-citizens check this box.; 7/4/19, 7:05 AM
rhhardin said...: So, these geneticists - are they educated? What is their *iq* and what is yours!? If you think you are making sense.

Geneticists probably run 120 and over. They have to be smart enough so that the problem interests them. It's a little abstract.; 7/4/19, 7:09 AM
rhhardin said...: Imus said long ago that he's 60 years old but reads at a 62 year old level. That would give him an IQ of 103.; 7/4/19, 7:13 AM
rhhardin said...: If you don't think IQ exists you probably wouldn't have discovered entropy either. Entropy is what is maximized when two systems are put in thermal contact. A something.

IQ is what stays the same as you age describing how smart you are. Now design a test that does that.; 7/4/19, 7:18 AM
Rick.T. said...: Surprised no mention yet of the fake news story of President Trump dumping the koi fish food into the water when Abe spooned his out.; 7/4/19, 7:46 AM
Big Mike said...: My friend lost some of his prize koi to a great blue heron.

A serious risk. Legally you have to keep your koi pond no deeper than 18” or it become a swimming pool in the eyes of the law (at least in Maryland), with all sorts of permits and fences required. Damn lawyers!; 7/4/19, 7:54 AM
Narayanan said...: rhhardin said ...
Geneticists probably run 120 and over.

Sir - you are still chasing your tail ( circular argument ).

Is that 120 with or without education?

To me that Means learned ability to process information inputs.

Even auto-didact train / learn themselves.; 7/4/19, 8:22 AM
Paco Wové said...: "IQ is what stays the same as you age describing how smart you are"

Why would you expect it to stay the same? Your brain undergoes many changes as you age, why wouldn't IQ do so as well?; 7/4/19, 8:24 AM
Narayanan said...: Maybe "Sir" was #presumptive#; 7/4/19, 8:27 AM
Narayanan said...: Discussion about *IQ* should always be conducted while Judgement At Nuremberg is playing on loop - scene select = kill that Imbecile; 7/4/19, 8:32 AM
Narayanan said...: Is there a good history of ?Duke v ??; 7/4/19, 8:35 AM
Fernandinande said...: The article referenced is titled:
"Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused". As one might expect from the title the article cited says there is an IQ decline: "

That's the title, but they made clear that they documented an overall IQ change of 99.5 to 99.7 from 1962 (birth year) to 1991, namely a very slight increase.

You often claim that IQ doesn't measure intelligence. Now what's different? Something about Oberlin...huh?; 7/4/19, 8:35 AM
Narayanan said...: Don't *Geneticist IQ > 120* know - biology?

As Paco Wové said

Your brain undergoes many changes as you age, why wouldn't IQ do so as well?; 7/4/19, 8:40 AM
Narayanan said...: But learning biology means education -- ta da.; 7/4/19, 8:41 AM
Narayanan said...: The Naked Ape aka hairless biped becomes human with bare minimal grasp of Non-Contradiction =>> Either : Or =>> A is A

FYI : Ayn Rand choice for title to 3 parts of Atlas Shrugged.

And her way of honor to Aristoteles.

Who is Also father of Biology. De Anima; 7/4/19, 8:56 AM
rhhardin said...: IQ is what does not change with age. It's a question then of test design. The score shouldn't change as you age. That's an input as they track people, and then the design the test so it doesn't change, as one of the constraints. That's not even hard, mathematically.

It may turn out that no test predicts worth shit, in which case there isn't an IQ. But they do predict, so there is.; 7/4/19, 9:07 AM
Francisco D said...: "IQ is what stays the same as you age describing how smart you are"

No. To derive IQ we take their WAIS raw scores and look at their age bracket. IQ scores remain stable, but performance declines with age.; 7/4/19, 9:08 AM
rhhardin said...: If I say of a kid, he's smart, he has an IQ of 130, that means after the mechanics have been done. You know what to expect from a 7yo with an IQ of 130.

The claim is though that it will still be 130 when he's 20. If not, the test design has failed.; 7/4/19, 10:09 AM
Narr said...: To flog IQ/Test Scores some more:

I learned through back channels (thanks Bobby!) that in the 7th ('66) grade my IQ was given as 131 on my Permanent Record. I know my SATs and ACTs were way high but can't recall numbers.

I took a GRE in 1977 and got a 770/610; maybe eight years later another one, 760/590. One MAT in about 1990, getting 97% (I know people who got in the program with 39%!).

OTOH, I completely tanked a letter carrier's exam, and never got past early Algebra II in math itself. How predictive or correlative of that were those tests?

Narr
Geography Labs and Symbolic Logic to the rescue; 7/4/19, 1:19 PM
Fen said...: There is intersting study that proposes human intelligence peaked during the Renaissance. Wish I could find it.

Short version is that science and medicine has put up guard rails that now prevent Teh Stupid from leaving the gene pool.

Darwin Awards used to be handed out daily instead of monthly. So human evolution is now more dependent on fertility than intelligence.; 7/4/19, 2:03 PM
Marc in Eugene said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/4/19, 4:07 PM
Marc in Eugene said...: "Some light Antifa resistance attempted to milkshake the walkers but were crushed." I do not really want Antifa people literally crushed by war machines (it seems necessary to point these things out these days) but that from YoungHegelian's Babylon Bee link was amusing. That even I succumb to the fashion and write disclaimers is a sign of how pronounced, widespread the rot is; in my defence, I've just been over at Facebook.; 7/4/19, 4:10 PM