How To Improve Your Mind (eBook)

James R. Flynn is Professor Emeritus at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate and its Gold Medal for Distinguished Career Research. He has been profiled in Scientific American and named "Distinguished Contributor" by the International Society for Intelligence Research. He is the author of What is Intelligence? (2007).

List of Figures and Boxes ix

Acknowledgments x

1 Introduction: The Knowledge Trap 1

Part 1 Arguing about Right and Wrong 15

2 Logic and Moral Debate - Attacks on Blacks 17

3 Getting Rid of Tautologies - No Private Clubs 24

4 The Naturalistic Fallacy and Its Consequences - be
Judgmental 32

5 But that is Unnatural - Words Best Never Said 41

Part 2 The Truth about People 49

6 Random Sample - Quality Not Size 51

7 Intelligence Quotient - Hanging the Intellectually
Disabled 56

8 Intelligence Quotient - and the Black/White IQ Gap
62

9 Control Group - How Studying People Changes Them 69

10 The Sociologist ' s Fallacy - Ignoring the Real
World 75

Part 3 The Market and Its Church 85

11 Creating a Market - Not a Frankenstein 87

12 Market Forces - How they Take their Revenge 96

13 Market Worship - No Ritual Sacrifices 108

14 The Economic Collapse of 2008 117

15 What is to be Done? 130

Part 4 Enemies of Science 139

16 Reality - What Scientists Really Say About Science
141

17 History, Science, and Evolution - Only One Kind of Each
152

Part 5 Nations and their Goals 163

18 Understanding Nations - Understanding Anyone 165

19 Four Cases - Making Sense Out of Nonsense 173

20 Conclusion: Gene Debs University 183

Index 189

"Professor James Flynn sets a clever trap in his latest book, How to Improve Your Mind. Promising that all readers will "be far more able to defend their position after reading it than before", Flynn instead provides the critical tools necessary instead for reassessing the irrational beliefs each of us hold and, in so confronting, end them. For your own good, you should let yourself be trapped." Weekend Press, Christchurch