I Used To Be A Fan But I Am Now Shocked, Disgusted And Appalled With Sam Harris

[paulpablo]

It seems contradictory to say something is too complex to be measured accurately but it's also easy to use common sense to tell that there's not much difference between measurements.

That's just you being obtuse again.

The fact that it can't be measured accurately in a technical way is why we have to resort to common sense. It's the best we've got because it's difficult.

If it's too complex to be measured with accuracy what method are you using for measurement to come to an accurate conclusion?

That's the whole point... it's not measurable. It's merely definable.

And that goes back to my question of how can you conclude using common sense that there are equal measurements of a value that isn't measurable.

I simply use common sense to tell quite easily that if there is any difference it's too negligible to even be worth discussing.

It's not "easily" observable. You've got your null hypothesis backwards. Common sense is pretty much useless.

So you used useless common sense to easily observe something that isn't easily observable.
And you've judged yourself to be intelligent and me to be unintelligent on the basis that you know you're intelligent enough to tell you are intelligent and I'm not intelligent.

If you're putting forth a claim of equality of intelligence among races it's your burden of proof.  So far all you've provided is "Beh I can just tell, common sense innit."

All those things I mentioned are skills, talents and fields of expertise, all of which utilize the minds capacity for learning and applying knowledge, understanding, creativity, expressiveness, problem solving and dealing with abstract concepts.

There are certain groups who are exceptional in these fields.

I think the way intelligence is defined, at least from every definition I can find from the dictionary, wikipedia and how the word is used in common parlance it involves understanding, knowledge, creativity, expressiveness, problem solving and so on.

---

I think any phenomenon so complex as intelligence has both genetic and environmental factors.

I don't think this can be argued against.  To give an obvious example, there are lots of ways childhood neglect or abuse could reduce a person's mental capacity.  Whether from lack of nutrients, dehydration, concussion.

And there could be economic freedom or lack of which decides how free someone is to express their creativity to an extent, possibly.