Race, gender and the future of intelligence

Came across this article by Malcolm Gladwell that was published 10 years ago in The New Yorker. Funnily enough this relates to a subject that has troubled me somewhat for many years, namely what is the origin of some of the seemingly strong ethnic or gender differences that we see around us. Unfortunately this indeed is a subject that most people find to be taboo. I have not run a search on Gladwell's sources (he doesn't reference them in great detail...) but indeed his argument is interesting, compelling and at least he gets some of this stuff into the open. Of course some heated subjects were not covered there and are somewhat not not in line with his argument, namely - what account for the big discrepancy in scholastic achievement between ethnic groups. Personally I subscribe to the theory that these differences probably stem mostly form the socioeconomic setting of our current time where white people have on the average better resources and an easier path to learning than some other minorities like African - Americans or Latin Americans. The same goes for women. Probably the strongest hint in that direction (at least in my mind) is the fact that if we look back in history many of the past scholastic achievements were made by non whites (mostly in the far and middle east).
This of course does not rule out the option that there is some ethnic or gender based difference. maybe there is some serious research in this subject matter - not sure.
I have recently read some material on William Shockley (Nobel laureate physicist - father of the transistor). It turns out he was an advocate of Eugenics and even donated sperm to a high IQ sperm bank. This issue is of course highly debatable (I am personally not even sure what my own thoughts on the matter are!!!) and has given rise to many new areas of thought in Bioethics (some of which centered around the great effort of the Human Genome Project to research moral issues surrounding their work).
And if all this is'nt complicated enough - I have been bouncing some thoughts in my head (more in another post) relating to human brain augmentation and surrounding subjects. I wonder how the clash of the Transhumanist movement (that advocates human augmentation towards a better future) with the Singularitans and proponents of superintelligent A.I. will pan out. Are man and machine the same?
I wish I was intelligent enough and had some more time to research all this.

MC

Book report - 10 years late

Ok - i am ashamed... I have only just recently read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I came across it at a conference i went to in NYC (VW2007 ) It really is a great book. I am not a hard core SF reader but this one was indeed a good read: fast paced and full of mindful action that pushes the reader into thought about how technology and human culture interact. The amazing part is that it was written between 88-94 or so before the big internet boom - yet its' depiction of future events is quite insightful still.
one interesting aspect was his talk about the possibility of a hard coded "machine language" in humans (i wont spoil further) at any rate researching the matter further i cam across some interesting concepts: Bicameralism seems to be the original theory that uses this line of reasoning to try and explain the origins of Consciousness. Although there are quite a few missing parts in this theory and many opposers i still think it is quite mind provoking. I wonder how it might tie in with Hoffshtader's ( the seminal work GEB and others) into the mathematical origins of consciousness and other similar works. There seems to be some obvious connection between complexity (be it societal or internally within our brain) and self awareness. This also resonates with a book i read quite a while ago (meaning i forgot most of...) Schrödinger's What is Life?. Am trying to look into this subject more deeply. Will report if i find anythng of interest.

MC

3D for the masses?

Came across this new interesting startup Fotowoosh. Basically these are guys from CMU that I have come across before (look here ) who use something they call "geometrical contexting" to create 3D images from (supposedly) any single image. Indeed it's quite cool - but I wonder what the real value of such technology is since, from consumer level perspective it only works well on well defined shapes and lacks the fine structure. More notably it seems to distort humans - which probabaly make the most part of private familial photo collections (notice that in their demo there is one shot of a street with a man on the sidewalk...) so I am unclear as to their lasting merit.
Here is the TechCrunch link.

MC

Launch

After years of silence - I venture into the Blogosphere...probabaly not a memorable occasion for most.
MC