If you're seeing this topic then another mass shooting hap…

On January 21 2014 12:13 Zaqwe wrote:

Well now we are just retreading old territory. I welcome any evidence you have which supports your beliefs. All the evidence I have seen shows that even though environment plays some role, genetics play a far larger one.

"[T]his graph is taken from a study of more than 11,000 people. You can see that, while increasing SES lowers the risk of incarceration only a little bit, increasing IQ lowers the risk sharply."



http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886911000912

On January 21 2014 13:10 sam!zdat wrote:
so you found one scholar (in a field which is, at best, "quasi-scientific") who is beating your hobby horse and now you understand the world?

On January 21 2014 13:14 _-NoMaN-_ wrote:


The fact is SES can and does affect IQ, directly. Studies have shown that being chronically stressed about finances can exert a cognitive load worth up to 15-20 IQ points.

On January 21 2014 13:16 Zaqwe wrote:

I'd love to see that study. I'd also love an explanation of how SES and IQ show such very different correlations to incarceration, if it were true that IQ is caused by SES.

"General cognitive ability (intelligence, often indexed by IQ scores) is one of the most highly heritable behavioral dimensions."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8024528

On January 21 2014 13:14 _-NoMaN-_ wrote:


The fact is SES can and does affect IQ, directly. Studies have shown that being chronically stressed about finances can exert a cognitive load worth up to 15-20 IQ points.

On January 21 2014 13:24 _-NoMaN-_ wrote:


http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976

It appears i overstated the actual number. It is 13.

honestly that took all of 2 seconds to find. you could have easily found it yourself, but you seem more interested in studies that support your prejudices.

On January 21 2014 13:35 Zaqwe wrote:

It seemed too bizarre to be true. Turns out it was.

"Mani et al. (Research Articles, 30 August, p. 976) presented laboratory experiments that aimed to show that poverty-related worries impede cognitive functioning. A reanalysis without dichotomization of income fails to corroborate their findings and highlights spurious interactions between income and experimental manipulation due to ceiling effects caused by short and easy tests. This suggests that effects of financial worries are not limited to the poor. "

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6163/1169.4.abstract

On January 21 2014 13:43 _-NoMaN-_ wrote:


Of course stress, and financial stress specifically, is not exclusive to any SES bracket. The point is, lower income people are more likely to experience this type of stress chronically.

On January 21 2014 13:49 Zaqwe wrote:

There's no evidence of that. You also haven't explained why SES and IQ have very different correlations with incarceration.

The heritability of intelligence is very high, and the paper you cite apparently didn't use a test with any significant g loading.

"The heritability of intelligence is now well established from numerous adoption, twin, and family studies. Particularly noteworthy are the genetic contributions of around 80% found in adult twins reared apart. And most transracial adoption studies provide evidence for the heritability of racial differences in IQ. For instance, Korean and Vietnamese children adopted into white American and white Belgian homes were examined in studies by E.A. Clark and J. Hanisee, by M. Frydman and R. Lynn, and by M. Winick et al. Many had been hospitalized for malnutrition. But they went on to develop IQs ten or more points higher than their adoptive national norms. By contrast, the famous Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study marked black/white differences emerged by age 17 even though the black children had been reared in white middle-class families (Weinberg, Scarr & Waldman, 1992)."

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1022157211445

On April 03 2014 20:54 spacemonkeyy wrote:
How many more mass shootings it going to take until they revise selling firearms to people with mental illness?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/02/fort-hood-shooting-army-base-texas

Sad stuff

On April 03 2014 21:17 OuchyDathurts wrote:


Doing so is far easier said than done. While I don't think crazy people should have guns it's just not as simple as that.

First off you have the healthcare system which is pretty awful and the mental health side is even worse. Unless someone happens to go to a shrink and gets identified as a whackjob they wouldn't be in the system. Even assuming someone is found to be mentally ill treatment here is non-existent for the most part, there's not enough mental hospitals period.

So assuming we find out a guy is crazy and shouldn't have a gun what do we do? Well there isn't a comprehensive registry and people can guy guns legally off the books at a gun show or from their next door neighbor, then there's also the black market. So, we'd need to force every single gun transaction to go through a database that doesn't exist to check if someone has the mental faculties to own a firearm.

Lets say we get said registry up and every legal transaction is checked against your psychological screening. Well crazy guy just came in to buy a gun and it turns out he's flagged as crazy, no sale today pal! Except he might already have 10 guns at home. Now we have to go knock down his door and probably get into a shootout to take his guns away, unless of course you did it while he was locked up in the mental hospital that doesn't have room for him or millions and millions of others. So, that's not exactly a rosy situation reclaiming firearms.

Then you have the normal totally sane guy off the street. To actually check if people are sane enough to own a gun you'd pretty much have to force everyone interested in buying one to take a psych test to be on record as nuts or cool otherwise like previously stated most crazy people will get through because they're never diagnosed. Alright, so now you're essentially forcing law abiding people to prove they're not insane. That's basically treating them as a criminal and they have to prove they aren't which is pretty fucked up.

You also have the thought process that some gun nuts have that if there is a list then the government has the list of all the people that own guns so they'll go send SEAL team 82 after them, kill or disarm them all and take over the country. Which, for my money is absolute insanity but its an argument that's made fairly often.

Crazy people shouldn't have firearms flat our period, I agree with you there. But actually pulling that off would be a god damn nightmare unfortunately.

On April 03 2014 21:17 OuchyDathurts wrote:


Doing so is far easier said than done. While I don't think crazy people should have guns it's just not as simple as that.

First off you have the healthcare system which is pretty awful and the mental health side is even worse. Unless someone happens to go to a shrink and gets identified as a whackjob they wouldn't be in the system. Even assuming someone is found to be mentally ill treatment here is non-existent for the most part, there's not enough mental hospitals period.

So assuming we find out a guy is crazy and shouldn't have a gun what do we do? Well there isn't a comprehensive registry and people can guy guns legally off the books at a gun show or from their next door neighbor, then there's also the black market. So, we'd need to force every single gun transaction to go through a database that doesn't exist to check if someone has the mental faculties to own a firearm.

Lets say we get said registry up and every legal transaction is checked against your psychological screening. Well crazy guy just came in to buy a gun and it turns out he's flagged as crazy, no sale today pal! Except he might already have 10 guns at home. Now we have to go knock down his door and probably get into a shootout to take his guns away, unless of course you did it while he was locked up in the mental hospital that doesn't have room for him or millions and millions of others. So, that's not exactly a rosy situation reclaiming firearms.

Then you have the normal totally sane guy off the street. To actually check if people are sane enough to own a gun you'd pretty much have to force everyone interested in buying one to take a psych test to be on record as nuts or cool otherwise like previously stated most crazy people will get through because they're never diagnosed. Alright, so now you're essentially forcing law abiding people to prove they're not insane. That's basically treating them as a criminal and they have to prove they aren't which is pretty fucked up.

You also have the thought process that some gun nuts have that if there is a list then the government has the list of all the people that own guns so they'll go send SEAL team 82 after them, kill or disarm them all and take over the country. Which, for my money is absolute insanity but its an argument that's made fairly often.

Crazy people shouldn't have firearms flat our period, I agree with you there. But actually pulling that off would be a god damn nightmare unfortunately.