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[lprkn]

Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, has a piece on him in the Times. Among other things, he states that Afrcans are less intelligent than Europeans. Apparently when you're 79 and already have a Nobel Prize, you don't give two shits about controversy.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, has a piece on him in the Times. Among other things, he states that Afrcans are less intelligent than Europeans. Apparently when you're 79 and already have a Nobel Prize, you don't give two shits about controversy.

Its not a new idea.The Bell Curve pretty much spelled this out with hundreds of pages of data. The debate is more towards nature/nurture now in terms of social pressures and development. My personal opinion is that it is impossible to deny that groups of humans separated for thousands of years are inherently (genetically) different from each other and its ludicrous to suggest were all "the same under the skin".  However, I think the effects of one's development can conquer almost any normal variation in genetic disposition.

[littlefallsmets]

My personal opinion is that it is impossible to deny that groups of humans separated for thousands of years are inherently (genetically) different from each other and its ludicrous to suggest were all "the same under the skin".

Perhaps if we were talking about hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years, I'd agree with you.

But as I understand evolutionary biology, in the time since "African" and "Caucasian" humans split and developed parallel before re-meeting... there wasn't really time for any kind of real divergence that wasn't purely cosmetic.

The essential neurological wiring is functionally identical. We're all homo sapiens, we're all born pretty much the same blank slates excepting natural variance within the gene pool from individual to individual

[theinevitable]

yeah. the idea of innate racial variance in intelligence is completely disregarded by the scientific community at this point. it just isn't... true.

also basically debunked: the concept of a "race."

[Arachno-capitalist]

yeah. the idea of innate racial variance in intelligence is completely disregarded by the scientific community at this point. it just isn't... true.

also basically debunked: the concept of a "race."

What exactly are you basing that on other than your own personal opinion? Because in reality, where science exists, you couldn't be more wrong. Neither race nor intelligence variance of race has been debunked by the scientific community. Take a cruise around the 100+ scholarly references to the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence and you'll quickly realize that you're mistaken. The debate is very much alive.

[theinevitable]

what I am basing this on is my human evolution textbook. The concept of race is generally not considered scientific, as it isn't really based on any scientific criteria. There is a big ol' chart in my book of human variation in skin tone-- basically the entire spectrum of light reflectivity (least reflectivity among the Chopi people of Mozambique (about 5%), most among, for example, people from the Netherlands (about 73%?))
Scientists have never agreed on how many "races" there are. Scientists have never agreed on how to differentiate between them. It's basically completely arbitrary. Race is a social concept.

[Arachno-capitalist]

what I am basing this on is my human evolution textbook. The concept of race is generally not considered scientific, as it isn't really based on any scientific criteria. There is a big ol' chart in my book of human variation in skin tone-- basically the entire spectrum of light reflectivity (least reflectivity among the Chopi people of Mozambique (about 5%), most among, for example, people from the Netherlands (about 73%?))
Scientists have never agreed on how many "races" there are. Scientists have never agreed on how to differentiate between them. It's basically completely arbitrary. Race is a social concept.

Youre just arguing semantics. Then by what word do you differentiate the pale skinned people of Europe from the darker skinned people of Africa? Would it make you feel better if we said there is a link between ethnicity or Genetic-historical-origin and intelligence?

[littlefallsmets]

The point is, arachnocapitalist, if we're genetically compatable enough to have fertile children, we're probably dealing from the same wide pool of possibilities.

Evolution just doesn't select out significant functioning differences that quickly. Aesthetic differences, sure, you can start to select those out relatively quickly.

But when you're talking about uniform hard-wired difference in cognitive ability, you're talking about something that just couldn't have happened between Africa and Europe. Just not enough time.

The gene pool of a distinct species doesn't work like that.

Evolution doesn't work like that, certainly not that quickly.

Now, there are CERTAINLY cultural issues... resource issues... we'll say "nurture" issues that we could debate about until the cows come home. Totally with you there.

But Einstein was Einstein because of the development of the culture he was born into, not his ethnicity. If he was a specially gifted genius, lightning hit the same as it could theoretically hit in any ethnicity and that COMBINED with the opportunies put in front of him as a middle-class European of the time and place...

THEN the dude realized energy is mass times the speed of light squared.

Had an African culture "won" the colonial wars, maybe that lightning would'a struck in Cairo or whatever. Who knows.

But we're all working off the same available set of genes, certain subcombinations within that set create the illusion of race. The fact that I could get down with one of the Williams sisters and make a baby whose skin colour would be basically somewhere between hers and mine bears that out.

If race were "real" and distinct, the baby would either come out black OR white... or the tennis player and I might not be genetically compatable at all.

Race isn't real, at least scientifically or biologically.

It's just sets of traits potentially in all of us that have been given temporal cultural significance.

[theinevitable]

well, no, you can fuck the Williams sisters and have mad viable offspring because they are the same species as you.
and einstein is a bad example for a couple of reasons.

but, you're generally saying what I am thinking.

What I am saying, Chris, is that race is not a valid scientific concept. It is still a concept in English.

there is a statistic, and I can't remember the exact numbers... but it is something to the effect that if you killed everyone on earth except for a hundred australian aborigines, 99.9 out to many 9s percent of human genetic variation would be maintained.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Thats all well and good. But the data come out clearly every time. The mean measured intelligence shows a difference among "races". Not by a whole lot, but a statistically significant amount.

[theinevitable]

also relevant: IQ tests are pretty dodgy. Culturally biased, &c.

also:

The IQ scores vary greatly among different nations for the same group. Blacks in Africa score much lower than Blacks in the US. However contrary to indications from the IQ and the Wealth of Nations study, the majority of blacks enrolled in Ivy League Universities in the US are either from Africa or the Caribbean. The chairperson of the sociology department at Harvard University stated:[citation needed]

    "Since they come from majority-black countries, they are less psychologically handicapped by the stigma of race."

[Arachno-capitalist]

also relevant: IQ tests are pretty dodgy. Culturally biased, &c.

Then how do you want to measure intelligence? There is no single test or aggregate of tests that does not show this difference.

[theinevitable]

badly.

I mean, any scale where the White IQ average is 100... because that's how they designed the test... oof.

[Arachno-capitalist]

badly.

I mean, any scale where the White IQ average is 100... because that's how they designed the test... oof.

Like i said, show me a test or composite of tests that do not show a difference across racial groups. And if the great white conspiracy was to make them look good, then why do those of jewish and eastern asian heritage score the highest?

The point is that  my position is based on FACTS and DATA while your positions are based on emotions and pre-conceived ideas of Equality No Matter What.

[littlefallsmets]

Absolutely.

An intelligence test will ALWAYS be biased toward the point-of-view, educational-base, cultural-base, etc of the people who wrote the test.

I will also do much better on a test of reading a map of Los Angeles than most people, even many people who are much better map readers than I am. This is because I have lived in Los Angeles for four years and worked a job where some of the job was driving-based.

You're talking about cultural factors, arachnocapitalist, that were unfairly assigned to genetic/racial factors.

Not actual genetic/racial/biological factors at all.

Or at least, we shall say, we have no way of proving that the factors are actually biological.

A is hardly ever A, even if we see two letter As right next to each other.

Typed, handwritten, uppercase, lowercase, cursive. Written in pen, written in crayon, written in goldleaf. Long a, short a or when sounding like neighbor or way. Comic sans, Time New Roman.

There's only one place where A can ever be completely A. And that's in theory.

There is no way to parse out the factors to actual assign the differences in intelligence "scores" to anything actually biological.

It's all nurture, every last drop, I've never seen a study "proving" difference that didn't come down to the researchers blatantly ignoring the cultural factors involved.