Orton's Arm

If I see someone doing something stupid, I try to get a good look at the driver. And the drivers I've been looking at haven't been blue-haired snowbirds.

I've noticed that places with a lot of recent immigrants (think much of Florida) have worse drivers than places where people have been here a while.

Heritability: another big word you don't know beans about.

Here's the part of your little quote which you evidently "forgot" to include: Notice the words "on average," you dolt. Do you happen to know how averages are calculated? Here's a hint: you take the values of individuals and average them together. The quote is merely pointing out that some people will be above this average, while others will be below it. That is, you can't assume that an exact 40% of your own shyness level is explained by genetic factors. But if you were to randomly select 100 people, you could be pretty sure that about 40% of the difference in shyness from one person to the next could be explained by genetic differences.

Are you really as incapable of understanding my ideas as your above post indicates? Let me go through your little idiot list point by point: 1. I never claimed it was possible to roll a 3.5 on a die. That particular misrepresentation of my posts is one of the stupidest I've seen you make. 2. I made the observation that, if one were to attempt to use a single die roll to measure the average value of a die, rolling a 6 would result in a greater error than rolling a 4. It's an obscure point I'll admit, so I can see how you'd be too stupid to understand it. 3. Nothing I've written could possibly justify your idiotic accusation that I don't understand variance in a distribution. 4. Nor could anything I've written possibly justify your moronic, drool-laden accusation that I can't tell the difference between error, luck, and variance. 5. For you of all people to claim that I don't understand the concept of heritability is an absolute joke. That's like O.J. Simpson accusing Stephen Hawking of not understanding math. 6. You presented me with one textbook quote, not the "numerous" quotes you claim. And while the quote evidently confused your pea-sized brain, its meaning was clear. If the heritability for shyness is 40%, then on average, 40% of shyness differences have been determined by genetics. Some individuals will find that more than 40% of their shyness level is driven by genes, while others will find that less than 40% has been determined by genetics. 7. I wrote that observed differences in adult-level intelligence are driven mostly by genetics. They are. The 20% that isn't explained by genetics is, in fact, due to radical environmental factors--such as severe head injuries--or to measurement error. 8. Let's say you have two parents that are 1 SD above the mean. What's the expected value of their children? If it's 0 SDs above the mean, then narrow-sense heritability is 0%. If it's 1 SD above the mean, then narrow-sense heritability is 100%. So yes, narrow-sense heritability is the same as the correlation between parent characteristics and those of their children. But why I'm bothering to explain a complex concept like this to someone with your evident lack of brains is simply beyond me. 9. I never claimed that correlation = causation, but I'm not surprised that your stupidity managed to put those words into my mouth. Does your constant drool damage your keyboard, or do you use a vinyl protector?

You hypocrite! Over on the slavery thread, you demand that people acknowledge the distinctions you're trying to make. (I.e., that slavery is always wrong, and yet the South's slaves were treated decently.) But though you demand that other people be understanding toward your own posts, you're unwilling to extend that same understanding to others. Here, for example. I implied that recent immigrants are lowering the average quality of driving (which they are). You seem unable to distinguish between that statement and the statement that, "All Americans are good drivers, so any traffic accident at all must be because of immigration."

That's terrible. It seems that a lot of recent immigrants bring their home countries' driving styles with them when they come here. The result is stories like this.

Let me count the ways your ignorance has been exposed: - You recently revealed a lack of understanding of the relatively simple test/retest phenomenon - You ridiculed the fact that the heritability of I.Q. increases as children get older. In this way, you displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of heritability. I won't even mention your evident ignorance of basic psychometric research. - You expressed the opinion that group averages for heritability weren't calculated by averaging out the heritability for each member of the group. - You tried to refute me by quoting Stephen Jay Gould. That's sort of like refuting an economics argument by quoting Karl Marx. In fact, it's almost exactly like quoting Karl Marx, given that a) Stephen Jay Gould was a Marxist, and b) Stephen Jay Gould was even less qualified to talk about intelligence measurement than Karl Marx was to talk about economics. As for Tom, he's expressed the opinion that regression toward the mean would doom any eugenics program to certain failure. Given that assumption on his part, he's failed to explain how Darwinism consistently produces results, despite the fact that regression toward the mean is applicable to just about every characteristic. During the entire course of this discussion, neither you nor he has once turned over a king or an ace or any other high card. Everything the two of you have said has been bluff, ignorance, mistaken interpretations, or irrelevance.

The Minutemen have a point.

A good post. But the scope of the article was to identify teams which lost more than they gained in free agency. And the article has a point. The Bills have lost the following players: - Nate Clements, Willis McGahee, London Fletcher, Mike Gandy. The Bills have added the following players: - Dockery, Langston Walker, 3rd round pick Mike Gandy > Langston Walker Dockery + 3rd round pick < Clements + McGahee + Fletcher In the short run, the Bills' offseason moves represent a step backwards. But the only loss that will create long-term pain is Clements. And on the plus side of the ledger, we've added Dockery and those picks for McGahee. In the long run, these offseason moves should make us a (somewhat) better team. And even going into 2007, the Bills could easily be a better team due to our upcoming draft picks, and to younger guys from last year's team playing better this year.

Agreed. But there are a few posters on these boards who have a very deep understanding of football. If those cream-of-the-crop posters couldn't come up with any new, profound insights since the offseason began, there might not be any new, profound insights to be had. But Matthews still has to write something.

True, but a lot of the other stuff has already been said by other writers, and doesn't need to be repeated by Matthews. And if you have to come up with a high volume of material, and if it's the offseason, there are only so many topics you can write about. You have your raw information--McGahee trades, Dockerey signings, etc. Then you have the analysis that builds on that raw information. If it was easy to build an intelligent analysis on top of that kind of raw information, there should be a lot of people doing it, right? Well, since the offseason started, how many posts have you seen on these boards that delivered the intelligent, well thought-out, relevant assessment you're asking for? I'm talking about posts which give you a truly deeper insight into the Bills and their chances than you would have had otherwise. Posts that pop open the hood, if you will, and show you step by step how each moving part interacts with all the others. Off the top of my head, I can't remember having seen any recent posts that live up to that billing. Maybe I've just missed them. But if we on these boards haven't been able to come up with any new, deep insights about the Bills since the offseason started, we shouldn't be too harsh on Matthews for failing to do the same.

What's he supposed to do? He makes his living writing about sports. If his article consisted of "I have no opinion now, let's wait 'till the regular season," nobody would bother reading it. There wouldn't be links to the article, and there wouldn't be heated threads like this one arguing about his conclusions.

Wrong from start to finish. Again.

Tom, Ramius, our work here is done. Let's move onto the next thread.

That was pretty good.

You'd make an excellent poker player. Here you are, a guy who obviously knows nothing about either genetics or psychometrics, and yet you're doing a pretty good job of bluffing about both subjects. You've got nothing in your own hand, yet you're able to say with a straight face that the cards everyone else has been dealt are utter garbage. Even though you can't see those cards.

I agree the Bills absolutely had to improve the offensive line. And the Dockerey for Gandy improvement should be huge. I'm also looking forward to some of last year's rookies playing better this year. But beyond those two things, I'm not sure how much better the line will be in 2007. Nobody that I saw over on the Oakland boards had anything nice to say about Langston Walker's play. I really hope we use an early pick or two on offensive linemen, because right now we need help at C, RG, and RT. But even if the offensive line significantly improves from where it was in the last part of the 2006 season, that doesn't necessarily mean the Bills will have a better record. It's possible the offensive line improvement could be offset by a decline in defensive play. I'm not saying this will happen, only that it could.

A good post. If you're going to use a first day pick on a RB, you may as well get a fresh rookie with some potential, instead of a high mileage reject from some other team. That's why I'd rather take Irons in the second than trade away a 3rd for a Band-Aid solution like Jones.

I never claimed to be an expert in the field of telomeres--I simply indicated I'd heard of them. If you think a more detailed study of telomeres is relevant to the practicality of a eugenics program, I'd be happy to develop a deeper knowledge of them. I agree analytical rigor isn't as pervasive in psychology as it is in the hard sciences. But not all psychologists are cut from the same cloth, and a number of them do good, analytically rigorous work. Psychometrics is one area where bright, rigorous men and women have made solid contributions. Not only have psychometric researchers used factor analysis to discover the concept of g, they've found strong correlations between g and specific life outcomes. Also between g and specific biological factors. Work like that is a lot harder to dismiss than Freud's writings about the Oedipal and Electra complexes or dream interpretations. And it's a shame that work of such disparate quality got lumped together in the same field. I'm also interested in what geneticists have to say about intelligence. So far, I haven't heard them say much, beyond, "We don't yet know which genes are associated with intelligence." If you're aware of geneticists who are making a greater contribution to the subject of intelligence than that, please refer me to their writings. To the best of my knowledge, those who have--thus far--contributed the most to human knowledge about intelligence have studied psychometrics, not genetics.

You wish.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about the quality of job Ramius has been doing. Given that the shortening of telomeres isn't material to any of the statements I've made, I'm not sure why you're asking me about it. I am sure that no matter what explanation I give, Bungee Jumper and Ramius will be a) quick to call it stupid, and b) slow to commit themselves to pointing out actual errors. But despite the annoyance the two of them pose, I will answer your question. For whatever reason, DNA replication mechanisms are incapable of completely replicating a cell's DNA strand each time it divides. The ends of the strand--the telomeres--get shortened whenever there's a cell division. Another factor in why telomeres get shorter is that TERT expression is inhibited in many types of human cells. But notably, it's not inhibited in stem cells. Telomere shortening appears to be relating to aging, though it's not yet fully clear whether telomere shortening is a cause or effect of aging.

You're claiming to have done actual math in response to the quote Ramius provided! That's a hoot--almost like the so-called "math" you refused to reveal that would somehow disprove the quotes from Stanford, Duke, et al.

I wish things were that simple. On the one hand, I love the Dockery signing. I absolutely love it. But based what he's done in Oakland, Langston Walker is a poor man's Mike Williams, except without the run blocking. Other than upgrading the LG spot, this year's line is no better off than last year's. I'll be the first to admit that could change if Butler or Pennington significantly improves his rookie performance, or if the Bills address the position in the draft. Then there's the DL, which could be better due to improved play by McCargo and even Kyle Williams. Could the Bills suffer a decline elsewhere? It's quite possible, especially with the loss of Nate Clements. If McGee doesn't bounce back, if Youboty isn't the answer, and if we don't find anything in the draft, this team's CBs will really hurt us this coming season. Downgrades at CB, RB, and possibly MLB could easily offset the improvement at LG. Hey, maybe the team will improve. Maybe an Ellison/Crowell/Spikes LB corps could play just as well or better in 2007 as the LBs played in 2006. Maybe we'll get above-average play from McGee and Youboty, instead of very good play from Clements and disappointing play from McGee. Maybe the draft will help fill in a few of this team's weak points, while helping us develop a few sources of (presently unexpected) strength. My point is that it's still very early, and it's a mistake to be too sure that things will go well or that they'll go badly.

And maybe it's time you started following your own advice!