At 8/26/13 10:18 PM, naronic wrote:At 8/26/13 08:17 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:good thing I'm not arguing that there is no genetic variation at all between races, just not the variation you want.At 8/20/13 11:44 PM, naronic wrote:What’s important is that showing overlap exists is not the same as arguing [let alone proving] that sub-populations have no genetic differences between them.
Are you *aware* of which kinds of genetic variation are required to produce variations in g? My understanding is the science isn't yet in on which genes cause those differences between individuals. [let alone groups]
At 8/20/13 11:44 PM, naronic wrote:
And I will again tell you why it still isn't valid.
A while back you'll recall I quoted that with enough genetic markers you can divide by race depending on how you look at it, this however doesn't mean that you can propose some sort of genetic divide between races or how you categorize them in regards to IQ or personality traits.
First, you’re not categorizing the races on the basis of a trait. You have two prior-defined populations, observing a difference between them, and figuring out whether [and if so] to what degree the differences are due to differences in genetics [without necessarily needing to know which genes are behind the trait itself]
Second, from the linked article
“The number of loci analyzed is the most critical variable: with 100 polymorphisms, accurate classification is possible, but ω remains sizable, even when using populations as distinct as sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans. Phenotypes controlled by a dozen or fewer loci can therefore be expected to show substantial overlap between human populations”
As the number of Loci increases the error rate [or tendency to misclassify] will drop to zero. Which also means the likelihood that someone of race X would be misclassified on account of having a greater degree of genetic similarity to the averages of race Y across the entire genome is practically nil.
A better explanation of why this works can be found on page 149-152
http://menghusblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/race-a-social-destruction-of-a-biological-concept.pdf
Your use of the word “Genetic Divide” also concerns me. If you’re talking about the existence of nice and clean boundaries between sub-populations, you’re obviously not going to find that.
Moreover, going beyond issues of IQ, very often the genetic influences for a given trait are not well understood, including those which few people dispute are indeed genetically influenced.
“Even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population”
Depending on the Loci Used, you can still have a high error rate, yes, and this work both ways. But almost always is it the case that adding more loci reduces the error rate. Below is linked the graph from the article you linked.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/
What’s important is that showing overlap exists is not the same as arguing [let alone proving] that sub-populations have no genetic differences between them.
But skin color isn't even static and neither is cranial size either,
Heritability and Immutability are not interchangeable terms. East Asian brain sizes and east Asian IQs were several decades prior lower than that of Europeans.
To use a hypothetical, suppose two people raise in an identical, western style environment, would differ in height by 1 inch. By definition, that height difference is 100% heritable between those two people, i.e. the entirety of the height difference between them is due to differences in genetics. [By virtue of the fact that there is no other source of the differences]
Let’s say in the previous example the person who was 1 inch taller was instead raised in rural Cambodia [from childbirth on]. Now that person who used to be taller, when compared to the other fellow, is 2 inches *shorter*. In this case we have a very strong environmental impact despite the prior 100% heritability.
Let’s pretend that the IQ gap between whites and Asians in the range of environments in the United States, is .6 heritable [which is to say 60% of the observed differences between the two groups at the current time in history in a particular range of environments are due to differences in genetics]. Showing people that in the past, Asian average IQs were lower than that of European average IQs, and that this difference was likely due to nutrition or disease, is not evidence that the current gap has heritability is zero.
The range of environments between Asians and whites living in the US is narrower than that of Asians and Europeans in past decades, and now Asians outperform whites. Therefore, there is still good reason to suppose that if equalizing environments were at all possible, Asians would still outperform whites [Crania and all]
In fact the hereditarianism position doesn’t even demand that the gaps in IQs between populations be unbridgeable. But it does say that identical environments won’t produce identical outcomes. You can use differences in environment to *reduce* gaps as much as you can use differences in environment to *increase* them. Bionics and genetic engineering may in time render the entire race IQ debate moot as anyone can reprogram the ‘processing power’ of their brain.
Also that article you link seems to rely extensively on Gould’s claims about Morton, although that has nothing to do with the issue of being able to change the brain size of a person or average brain size of a group through changes in nutrition, Gould’s claims about Morton were mostly fictitious.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?_r=0
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19226639
“Craniometric variation is geographically structured, allowing high levels of classification accuracy when comparing crania from different parts of the world. Nonetheless, the boundaries in global variation are not abrupt and do not fit a strict view of the race concept; the number of races and the cutoffs used to define them are arbitrary”
Once again with this [and other] articles you get this recurring straw man of “Abrupt” or “discrete”
If discrete boundaries were needed for categorizations in biology, few if any categorizations in biology would be possible. The article makes a valid point in as proof against a straw man. Anticonceptualism is applied only to the race debate.
No concept or category actually exists outside the rubric of the categorizer, particularly in biology.
It's even more problematic when you take into account that it's now accepted that traits such as IQ in general are heavily polygenetic.
Actually the polygenic nature of intelligence makes the hereditarianism case stronger, rather than weaker. Vast number of genes working in various combinations to produce small but cumulative effects in IQ scores melds well with the fact that the differences between races do not manifest much at all on the individual gene level but do manifest very strongly on the aggregate.
But I’m also wondering if you’re comfortable saying back a few posts ago that IQ is highly malleable and then saying that traits such as IQ are highly polygenic.
Looking at the paper alone you can see what they say about skin color,
" (ii) Templer & Arikawa (2006) argued that the relationship between skin darkness and IQ is not causal; and (iii) Templer & Arikawa (2006) did not sufficiently explain why the association between intelligence and skin darkness exists."
Again many of these studies have to come to grips with the flynn effect as well as the rise in g, basically the evolutionary theory has a lot of holes.
And I talked above about the problems with invoking the Flynn effect previously, at least with regards to the black white IQ gap in the United States. The Authors assume the validity of the Flynn effect and this is partially why.
I’ve read Templer and Arikawa, or at least the relevant parts of it. You can find it here.
At 8/22/13 10:35 AM, naronic wrote: Alright Smilez you're going to have to start responding more rapidly, schools starting for me soon and I don't have all that much time.
I noticed you're response about an hour and a half ago. I'm working on a reply but it will take time. First semester has already started for me.
Just remember that neither of us are obligated to respond, since this isn't a contest and nobody every actually *wins* anything.
At 8/20/13 09:48 AM, AxTekk wrote: Seeing as this thread's already been bumped, I just thought I'd leave a few questions here.
1 - If Sub Saharan African genetics are responsible for the BW difference, why is it that slave- descendant African Americans (the vast majority originally from West Africa, where there are many ethnicities far more closely related to Sumerian ethnic groups than to those further south) seem to score the same as other black Americans?
I'm not sure what is meant here. Heritability estimates for IQ differences between races [or any two populations] depend on the populations being measured, because both the genetic component and the environmental component will end up varying.
To my knowledge, AA's do not score the same as Saharan's, [The data I've seen has them score higher] but I may be misreading your question.
Also, bear in mind that the fact that two particular populations with presumably different genetics score the same on a particular metric, does not mean that any two populations must have the same scores when put in identical environments. The causes for the difference between two populations are not necessarily the same as the causes for the difference between any other two populations.
2 - Can anyone who buys into Rushton's race data point out any studies that show
I fail to see the significance to the original topic.
3 - Can anyone who provides anthropological arguments on race/ IQ explain why Mexican Latinos (a mixture of Europeans and a number of races capable of highly sophisticated pottery, art, architecture and mathematics) score so badly on IQ tests?
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1994WSJmainstream.pdf
"2. Intelligence, so defined, can be measured,and intelligence tests measure it well.They are among the most accurate (in technicalterms, reliable and valid) of all psychologicaltests and assessments. They do notmeasure creativity, character, personality, orother important differences among individuals,nor are they intended to."
I'm also not entirely sure how one even quantifies the sophistication of art and poetry. You always "say" that one group has or does not have sophisticated art and perhaps get away with it, but actually ranking one civilization against another is entirely holistic and subjective.
By any measurable metric, where the metric relates to cognitive abilities that IQ is related to, you'll *probably* observe a hierarchy similar to that observed with the averages of the various self-defined races. So for example, if measuring Science PHDs awarded by members of the various races, controlling for population differences, you would probably find ashkenazi jews at the top, followed by east asians, then europeans, and so on.
Having an IQ lower than the european mean of 100 does not preclude you from having your own cultural heroes, though you may have fewer of them depending on the subject matter.
Moreover, the cognitive traits measured by IQ, are not the sole factor in determining the sophistication of civilization, *particularly* with regards to early civilizational formation. Let's suppose that Sub-Saharan Africans of 3000BC, if raised in an environment identical to Europeans, had an average IQ of 120. In all likelihood you still would not observe a civilization form by virtue of an absence of beasts of burden or highly fertile river valleys, or other means by which large scale agriculture could be initiated. [You can have farming in Africa today by virtue of technical knowledge about agriculture that did not exist in 3000bc]
Government policy can also tip the balance. Compare places like China and Vietnam during their days under Communist Rule to, say Rhodesia [Pre-Mugabe Zimbabwe]
4 - If the grade difference observed between races is due to genetic differences (and thus should be universal) why do black working class British children outperform their white counterparts?
Can you show me the data?
One quick answer, assuming what you say is true, is that most IQ gaps go away when you control for SES. Likewise, SES gaps between the races go away when you control for intelligence. But there's far more evidence that IQ is the causal variable than there is it being the response variable, as was once believed.
Also it is worth pointing out that much of the African Immigration to the UK consists in exchange students, meaning they are not a representative sample of the population.
At 8/16/13 05:28 AM, brainface wrote:
I believe measuring intelligence to be less of a linear spectrum and more of a 3D realm. This may confuse you guys/intellects since you know there isn’t a clear winner or loser. “But who wears the crown?” I know it’s fucking weird.
1. "You Believe" --- And what is the basis for this belief? And what about this belief allows you to be so cavalier in your dismissal.
2. You seem to be accusing pox of intellectual snobbishness, and then dismiss his claim on [essentially] the notion that "The science is too complex"
Sorry Pox but its hard to
There are Africans-descended peoples that score higher than whites, as is the nature of overlapping bellcurves. There is a 1STD gap in the averages.
The only reason you would straw man the position in this way is because you are responding at a pathological level, which makes you similar to most other people.
I will admit hate crimes seem like a pretty dumb invention but I’ve never lived with loving Americans to really know how many citizens are the like the Westboro Baptist church peeps.
“Phantom Unfairness in the System.”
How can you say this? Slavery wasn`t that many generations ago. Racism is constantly implied in popular media (biographically, politically) ...I can never know for sure cause I am not black but I have this feeling that if I was, I would appear more suspect to the everyday cop walking down the street. Why you ask? Explicit and implicit racism that has been part of western culture since its inception. If blacks originally owned the ships I would give that point more of a time of day.
On this issue I happen to disagree with Pox, though the matter of whether the idea of a multicultural society is tenable is, at best, tangentially related to the issue of IQ differences.
Multi-ethnic societies have been tummultuous throughout history. States like Finnland and Sweden that have allowed immigration from the third world had to deal with the problems the immigrant population posses, despite the fact that none of these Nordic states had any history of oppressing Africans / Middle easterners, and despite the fact that all of these countries have laws effectively making "Racism" a criminal offense.
Moreover, African descended peoples commit a disproportionate number of crimes in the countries they either chose or were forced to reside in, irrespective of that countries history towards them. It's very well possible that the crimes they commit against each other and against whites are higher on average than they were historically when governments had enforcement policies which explicitly discriminated *against* African peoples. The success of stop-and-frisk in New York City seems to point in that direction.
You presumably blame these problems on Racism, whereas he blames them on anti-racism. It's the public school narrative versus the conservative rhetoric narrative.
The black panthers are rolling in their graves right now.
This is simply a very crude formulation of the idea that the BW IQ gap has some environmental cause, i.e. But you're not even trying to present it at such. You just assert.
As I hinted towards above, African Americans are in many respects no *less* dysfunctional now than they were when the US Government and society had active and tangible measures [legal and otherwise] directed against them. On several measures they may very well be doing worse. [E.G. Illegitimacy and divorce rates]
You laugh at the idea of "Phantom unfairness" and then respond by regurgitating the line that they are "disadvantaged", unless you care to elaborate, this "disadvantage" is indeed phantasmal. Rather, the burden of proof should be on you to point to something concrete and show how and why it causes the kinds of problems we observe.
Just look at how easily and calmly you adopt the many racist idioms in this thread like they were already in your head.
To someone as far down the rabbit hole as pox and myself, Racism is just a code word for a formulation of a racial nature that makes certain people like you uncomfortable, nay, rage-filled.
My point is that none of this IQ nonsense should matter.
If Genetic differences in IQ are of no significance why is so much energy invested into denouncing them? I can wager a guess. The present legal and cultural regime we live under operates on the assumption that equalizing environments would equalize outcomes, and the absence of equal outcomes is prima-facia evidence for some structural injustice.
Rejecting that assumption entails rejecting the dream of an egalitarian and post-racial world, which for many people is too uncomfortable to fathom.
Also “perform as well”
It's interesting because one's sense of rhythm is one of the few things that doesn't correlate with "G"
If you don't at least know what the justification for the significance of IQ tests is, then no one can perceive you as arguing with anyone in good faith.
I'll point you in the right direction for a starter.
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstream.pdf
To be clear I am not refuting any of these claims
You already have, or at least attempted, to refute the claim. Albeit with not very well thought-out arguments. There's also a term for the practice of impugning the character of someone who makes a claim, one i assume [hope?] you are familiar with.
But suppose you really *not* refuting the claims, does that mean you accept them?
Whoa. Your White Supremacy is really showing here.
Unfortunately, there are few examples of countries going from direct European to direct african rule and *NOT* descending into Chaos and depravity, and certainly more examples of the reverse being true. [I point you to Rhodesia and South Africa] But perhaps these transfers of power instead involve a change from direct to indirect white rule. Most 3rd world governments are partly financed by Washington.
At any rate I oppose Pox's presumed sentiment, Europeans as a race have no moral responsibility to improve the welfare of Africans, and visa versa.
:“all men have equal potential to affect t
The idea of all life in the galaxy being connected through the power of the force is also inspiring and enlightening. But that's still a moot point. Plus that's not even true. Depending on your natural talents and where you're born, your potential to change the world is vastly greater than someone of less unique abilities living in a depraved area of the world.
The rhetoric and theory of egalitarianism is EMPIRICALLY suspect, and, possibly due to it's conflict with reality, has produced many tangible "negatives" for mankind, [both of fairer and darker skin] particularly *to the extent* that it's claim of "equality" is taken with full seriousness.
We are reaally in need of the next enlightenment.
Or to re-evaluate our cherished assumptions.
You should try chewing on this for awhile.
http://matthewgleslie.com/post/31114643460/the-dark-enlightenment-the-complete-series-by-nick
The various European powers of the early modern and postmodern era were able to keep a much more politically unified and [relatively speaking] technologically / militarily advanced Islam out of most of Europe. And they succeeded because keeping Islam out of Europe and the west generally was their intention.
I would add that the destruction of a people's culture is a fate worse than death, and it is precisely that tactic which has been used against westerners, at least since the Holocaust, to extinguish western and European self-assertiveness that is a necessary prerequisite for any resistance to an external foe.
First, Islamic terrorism isn't a threat so much as the Islamification of Europe. And the Islamification of Europe is occurring as a conscious policy by European elites. Asking a western power to deal with the Islamification of Europe is rather silly in this regard.
The terrorist attacks that have been attempted, successful or not, had one thing in common; all of them were low-tech, unsophisticated, and for those reasons could have been prevented through fairly simple *police level* tactics.
And now I'll end with a classic and relevant quote from a dead ancient Greek.
"I am more afraid of our own mistakes than of our enemies' designs" - Pericles.
At 8/10/13 02:58 AM, naronic wrote:
the study says,
And again, presumably this is also true of *individuals*. The study did *not* say that genetic differences between individuals showed an effect on the expressed transcripts but did not show an effect on the expressed transcripts between groups.
I infer this much from "Genetic variation in the genome as a whole showed no effect on variation in the transcriptome as a whole, despite how genetically distant individuals might be. Hence, human cortexes have a consistent molecular architecture, despite our diversity."
Bold for Emphasis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/
I don't understand why we have to return to the idea of "more variation within than between". Not to sound rude, but what were your objections to what I had said previously with respect to this particular idea? I'll repeat my position on that particular line of reasoning if you request it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3270016/
"The Genetic effect on intelligence is similar in low and high SES"
"Individual differences in cognitive ability among children raised in socioeconomically advantaged homes are primarily due to Genes"
You're not at all uncomfortable quoting those two things side by side?
I don't know which scientific consensus you are trying to claim exists. That there is zero Heritability of intelligence at low SES or zero heritability of intelligence at low and high SES.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2753423/ <--- This study concerns heritability and age, not SES.
and looking further into your link it doesn't argue against it so much as it argues for it so I'm not really sure where you're trying to go with that.
cont.
The relevance being that there is an evolutionary explanation, as well as a short term explanation.
The only thing that has a stronger negative correlation with intelligence than the prevalence of infectious disease is darkness of skin color. A "Makintosh" referred to in the linked article proposed the link between more effective responses to infectious diseases and the effect that biological counters to infectious disease have on IQ score performance / cognitive ability.
At 8/10/13 02:59 AM, naronic wrote: As I've stated before "racial achievement gaps" are all over the place and go both ways.
And Gaussian distributed traits with different averages between two groups will never the less overlap between the groups. I'm not exactly sure what sort of position you are trying to refute by saying that people of lower socioeconomic status have achievement issues of their own.
When you control for SES, IQ gaps go away. When you control for IQ, "SES gaps" go away [or income gaps, rather]. But in the case of individuals, the position among psychometrists that IQ is effecting SES [primarilly] and not the other way around is more common.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_immigration_to_the_Uni ted_States
Again the point you're trying to make eludes me. Legal immigrants are not representative samples. A subpopulation of Africans or even a subpopulation within the subpopulation of Africans will have members with above and below average scholastic aptitudes relative to European Americans.
Using this as evidence for the mere existence of an IQ disparity is basically as silly as pointing to Lynn's measurements of Sub-sharan Africans. Both rely on non-representative samples.
Looking at the Flynn effect we can find more examples
http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/wicherts2010.
The Term Flynn effect was itself coined by Hernstein and Murray, and I am aware of it's existence, the conclusions some people draw from it's existence, as well as the counterarguments against those inferences [by Murray and others] . If you want to change my mind I recommend your attack from that point.
"Average IQ of Africans is approximately 80 when compared to US norms. Raven's scores among African adults have shown secular increases over the years"
Making the notion of "racial IQ/achievement/whatever gaps" a meaningless soundbyte in it's own right
You see part of what makes people suspicious of those who argue for pure enviromentality is the dismissive attitude towards mere empirical observations.
The Racial IQ Gap is observed phenomenon, the arguments between serious scholars is not whether or "not it exists", because it clearly does. Even when you cite sources saying that Lynn's measurement of Sub-saharan African's is too low, which i agree with, if the highest estimate one can get is 80, that is still 1.3 SD below normalized mean.
The Job of the good scientist or scientist is not to say [or imply] "Stop talking about this" -- but to address specific points made and the presumed errors behind those points.
Sorry to hear this discussion is taking out of your vacation time. I'm not one of those people who thinks other people are obligated to respond to each other. Nor do I think that someone "wins" when the other person doesn't respond. You read what the other person says and try to learn from it. Unfortunately on most threads in this forum there is very little to learn.
My apologies for triple posting, but to follow up on what was said in the above post...
http://www.imaginggenetics.org/PDFs/Thompson_Nature_Neuro200 1_genetics.pdf
This is sort of an example of what I mean by individual genetic differences and morphology differences in the brain.
I'm not saying the study you linked must be wrong, I just don't believe the findings necessitate a blank-slate view of the human brain.
At 8/6/13 02:13 AM, naronic wrote:
I don't think you understand what the study says
It also seems to imply that the crosscut individual boundaries, as if they don't exist.
"Genetic variation in the genome as a whole showed no effect onvariation in the transcriptome as a whole, despite how genetically distant individuals might be. Hence, human cortexes have a consistent molecular architecture, despite our diversity."
Bold for emphasis. I highly doubt that the thesis of the study is that human variation in the brain does not exist, "in general" ".
For what you are trying to conclude from this article to make any sense, it would need to imply that variation existed between individuals but not between groups: Because nobody contests that there is no [prior] variation between individuals.
Sorry for the delay.
At 8/4/13 11:23 PM, naronic wrote:
:: 1995; Weyl, 1969). Flynn (1991) analyzed data from the Coleman Report for the high school graduating class of 1966. That large representative sample included a substantial number of Asian Americans. The Asian Americans
The only response I was able to find to this was it having been mentioned in “Race, IQ, and the APA Report on The Bell Curve”
“For example, Asian Americans were assigned an average IQ of about 98 on the basis of a review by Flynn (1991). But Lynn (1993) showed that Flynn had “overcorrected” downward an original review by Vernon (1982), not cited by the APA task force, which found that Asian American IQ averaged 106. Omitted, too, was The Bell Curve's own National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data showing an Asian American IQ of 106 ( Herrnstein & Murray, 1994, p. 273). This particular lapse is especially curious given that it was the debate over The Bell Curve that led APA to set up its task force in the first place!
Additional studies of racial differences within the United States have confirmed the Asian–European–African gradient. Lynn (1996) examined the most recent standardization data of the Differential Ability Scale based on a representative sample of the population stratified by age, sex, race, geographical location, urban–rural areas, parental socioeconomic status, and preschool enrollment. The main sample consisted of 2,260 children aged 6–17 years. The Asian children's IQ averaged 107, the White children's IQ averaged 103, and the Black children's IQ averaged 89.
Although the report ( Neisser et al., 1996) admitted that Asian Americans did better than European Americans on a range of aptitude tests… which are known to measure reasoning ability and to correlate highly with IQ, these were described as “content-oriented achievement tests” (p. 92) and linked to the high grades Asian Americans gain in school. Higher Asian IQ scores found in Asia were also disparaged but, again, with an acceptance of their superior school achievement.”
I’m not terribly satisfied with either answer, since it is one person’s word against another. I’m still more inclined to think, though, that the score of 98 was a statistical error rather than anything else. Standardized achievement scores correlate strongly with IQ scores, and to my knowledge. And the 106 assignment for east Asians conforms with the majority of the tests done on east Asians provided they are not excessively malnourished.
But I would still consider it a valid reason to doubt the hereditarian hypothesis.
The achievement difference between Jews and non-Jews is far less extreme than differences between groups in many other comparisons that cannot be explained on purely genetic grounds
Which is fine given that no one is trying to explain things on purely genetic grounds. There are those who think genetics plays a partial role, and those who think these gaps are “purely” environmental. There’s a difference between saying that one group can excel beyond what IQ scores predict through non-genetic means on the one hand, and saying if environments were equalized, IQ scores would be equalized as well.
This also fails as an answer to any of my other links
On the issue of Turkheimer [and similar hypotheses]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#Heritability _and_socioeconomic_status
PP6 and below. I don’t trust Wikipedia as a source when the page is covered with “Citation Needed”, but that’s clearly not a problem on this page. So some studies find no such relationship, and others find a relationship similar to but smaller than what Turkheimer suggests [i.e. Total enviromentality for low SES] Rushton and Jensen’s critique of Turkheimer is also there but the inconsistency of the studies is more important in my view.
On infectious diseases:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06 /29/rspb.2010.0973.full
“We also propose a complementary hypothesis that may explain some of the effects of infectious disease on intelligence. As we mentioned, it is possible that a conditional developmental pathway exists that invests more energy into the immune system at the expense of brain development”
“Mackintosh (2001) presented comprehensive evidence that skin darkness and the associated cellular components (e.g. melanocytes) have an important role in defending against infectious disease. Moreover, Manning et al. (2003) found that, in sub-Saharan Africa, rates of HIV infection were negatively associated with skin darkness. Manning et al. (2003) attributed this relationship in part to lower infection rates of other parasites, especially bacteria and fungi, that lead to tissue damage in the genital tract and hence increased opportunity for contracting HIV. Templer & Arikawa (2006) concluded that, despite the strong negative correlation between skin colour and average national IQ, there must be an unknown mediating factor accounting for both because there is no obvious reason for skin darkness to reduce IQ. Given the previous research linking skin colour to infectious disease (Mackintosh 2001; Manning et al. 2003), the unknown factor linking skin colour and IQ may be infectious disease.”
I suspect both the evolutionary and temporary explanation of the link between infectious diseases have weight to them. Only time will tell though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)#Spearm an.27s_law_of_diminishing_returns
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make about SLDR.
At 8/4/13 11:18 PM, naronic wrote: What I'm saying is that race is in fact useless
Once again I’m unnerved by your use of the word ‘determine’ – You’ll need to find the people who are saying that race “determines” this or that. Different groups, however defined, have different averages on a score which is known to have significant for predicting various socio-economic outcomes, for that reason, these gaps in averages would be of interest even if one accepts the 100% environmentalist as put forward by the likes of Nisbett.
You're equating a possibility with a reality, a possibility touted by the people in love with it that only becomes less plausible as more and more research gets pumped into the subject matter.
for instance
http://www.nih.gov/news/health/oct2011/nimh-26.htm
Molecular architecture of the brain is not the same thing as gross morphology of the brain, and the implications of this study are not that human beings do not differ from one another in the brain. If that were the case then you would have the same problem as I stated before; you would be unable to explain why between *individuals* the heritability of IQ is estimated to be between one half and eighty percent. In fact, you would be unable to attribute genetic causes to *any* differences in neurologically based behaviors between individuals.
You would be stuck back at the social science model which at the present time is no longer the reigning scientific orthodoxy; for whatever that is worth to you.
So for example, it is believed that gross morphology differences in the brains of men and women can explain why the sexes perform better/worse than the others on certain sub-tests.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050121100142.ht m
Note that none of what I’m saying *proves* hereditarianism, science doesn’t work by proving things. It simply dispels the potential of what you’ve sighted to *disprove* the hereditarian case.
okay...
I at least hope you understand what is meant when they talk about heritability between individuals.
The problem comes when people
You claimed, if I read you correctly, that there was little [to no] variation in our brains. I am simply stating that this position cannot be reconciled with the generally accepted view that there is a heritability to the various behavioral differences [IQ included] between individuals in a society. There is apparently “enough” differences between the brains of individuals to produce these marked differences.
This is once again not a “proof”. It’s simply a disproof of a disproof.
You are more than free to also contest the heritability of behavioral differences between individuals, but that would put you outside the mainstream.
I’ll get to the specific empirical evidence on the malleability of IQ below.
1. On the claim of B/W IQ's Narrowing over time...Neither of those really address the PDF or any other link I posted for that matter so much as pick at Flynn and Nisbett's findings, not refuting them, just nitpicking like saying that the gaps have closed 3 points rather than 5 etc.
2. On the claim that there are enviromental factors which can explain the gap away entirely...
#1 was an excerpt of a larger set of paragraphs, which I regret quoting and I probably should have just summarized so that you wouldn’t reply in this fashion. R/J’s counterclaim is that Nisbett was being selective in the studies of IQ he used and also relied on extrapolation to generate the figure of 5.4 points.
Perhaps you can make a case that his selection towards studies which showed a narrowing as opposed to those which showed no narrowing or a widening was appropriate, and perhaps the use of extrapolation was also appropriate, but I don’t quite see how. Or perhaps Rushton and Jensen are lying completely! But none of those possibilities are the same as merely calling it “nitpicking”.
There are other reasons to suspect that statistical observations of narrowing, as they are conducted, do not imply what people like you [and myself included, I don’t *want* to believe that the IQ gap is has a significant heritability] would like it to mean.
http://menghusblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/the-black-white-
iq-gap-is-narrowing-no-black-gains-gss/
The two main claims [and this time I won’t be quoting] Are that black gains are focused at the younger ages, and those gains have been observed to disappear into later years. [Which conforms with what is generally accepted about IQ, that environmental effects become less pronounced over time], also that these gains are concentrated at the left end of the curve.
Other reasons are provided. An actual reading of the article is obviously encouraged.
I usually take anything with
I think Lynn might have been sloppy when dealing with sub-Saharan Africa. But one would expect higher degrees of environmental variation between sub-Saharan Africans and the ‘Average American’ to produce much greater IQ gaps then in
Also in Lynn’s study of IQ and the Wealth of nations, his main project was to show precisely that relationship. While Lynn is a hereditarian, I’m not sure [because I haven’t read it] if the book actually makes an estimate for the heritability of IQ in Nigeria and elsewhere.
As for the Wiki on Jensen, I read lots of name calling and very little substance.
My instinct is generally to trust someone *more* when the first thing people think of to dismiss them is to call them names, especially “racist”.
Remember that Rushton and Jensen were both respected psychologists before attracting public ire for their heretical views, and despite the extreme controversy surrounding their thesis they both managed to hold onto their professional positions. Considering what was done to James Watson who merely put forward the hereditarianism view in casual conversation, or what was done to Jason Richwine by a *conservative* think-tank, no-less.
No, in all likelihood, they would take far more flak for making real and noticeable errors in their work than if they were taking the position held by Nisbett. By virtue of the fact that it is a disliked and controversial theory.
"Dickens and Flynn (2006a)
Murray (2006) did that analysis and found
Fagan and Holland’s word knowledge test was largely a test of memorization. Jensen and Rushton wrote many years back that African Americans perform roughly the same as whites on tests of memory, particularly short term memory. To quote:
“On some sub-tests the Black-White difference is smaller and on other sub-tests the Black-White difference is larger. Black-White differences are markedly smaller on tests of rote learning and short term memory than on tests of reasoning and those requiring transformation of the input. For example, on the Forward Digit Span Test, in which people are asked to recall a series of digits in the same order as that in which they were presented, Black-White differences are quite small, but on the Backward Digit Span Test in which people recall a series of digits in the reverse order to that in which they were presented, they are quite large.”
It’s late and so I’ll respond to the rest of your post tomorrow. Also, not to be condescending, but i'm not comfortable with discussing/debating things with people when someone else is also debating them [i.e. me and pox power versus you] – Unless the discussions are inherently pithy, it’s generally not fair to you.
I should also add that Hereditarians do not dispute that IQ scores had a history of narrowing from the time they were first measured to the 1960s, but they stopped thereafter.
At 7/30/13 03:38 PM, Quodfohgler wrote: Why do we care so much about these objects that are created for killing people so much?
If you step outside the cloud chamber of "What ought to be" and enter the dark and scary world of "realpolitik" you'll realize that unless your central government feels in some way, existentially threatened by it's own citizens, all so-called rights are gifts which the government has decided not to revoke.
All so-rights, both positive and negative are claims of action on the part of some individual. The right to own your own property, or the right to universal healthcare, are similar in the sense that both of them require other individuals in society be made to respect your claim, be it a claim to that which you already possess or a claim to that which you covet of others. [In the case of most all positive rights]
If you are of the opinion that only the state should possess certain "military" type firearms, then any claim you make to possessing rights *of any kind* is nothing less than pleading a superior power for mercy. Since you as an unarmed citizen have no true leverage over your government. The government protects you and your so-called rights because it chooses to.
If That's the position you take, please don't be shocked when the government decides it is disinclined to respect your "rights"
________
I would also contend the claim that guns are made for killing. This is true only in a very technical sense. But the goal of a superior show of force, which is typically best achieved through the possession of superior weaponry [i.e. firearms in the case of infantry] is to convince potential threats that they should not "attempt" anything.
This view of firearms as a deterrent to force is itself implicit in the logic of gun confiscation. Most people who support the idea of the government seizing or limiting the ability of law abiding citizens to possess all or certain kinds of firearms, presuppose that such a change would take place without any serious bloodshed. [At least I hope this is what they would assume] -- And why exactly would an armed citizen surrender his firearms to armed police or armed military? Presumably because the latter has a superiority of firepower which renders the recalcitrant citizen's chances of injury or death very high. This is to say, the fact that the show of force guarantees death or injury deters the conflict from escalating to violence. If both sides are confident that they can get away with violence relatively unharmed, the odds of conflict are escalated. When one or both parties fear more for their safety than value what they could gain through violence, violence is deterred.
This is essentially the same logic that justifies citizens armed against criminals. A few criminals might be killed as a result of crossing upon a frightened or angered citizen, but the assumption is, true or false, fewer people will attempt to engage in violent or criminal behavior when they perceive greater danger associated with doing so.
At 8/4/13 10:56 PM, AlienDude30 wrote:At 8/4/13 09:02 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: What I've said above is also likely true of African descended populations now living in Europe, i.e. that they commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes and that this cannot be entirely explained by factors commonly put forward.People like OJ Simpson prove socioeconomic status doesn't effect crime. People like Lil Wayne prove socioeconomic status doesn't effect personality.
You don't prove or disprove the existence of confounding variables with isolated examples. You have to institute actual statistical controls [which is the closest thing in the social sciences to performing "controlled experiments"] and observe changes brought about by implementing those controls.
I don't believe that African American criminality is solely a function of culture or socioeconomic status, but my disbelief isn't founded on particular counter-factual examples, and yours shouldn't be either.
At 7/17/13 11:08 AM, Earfetish wrote:At 7/17/13 11:05 AM, Camarohusky wrote: Depends. Do UK police officers NEED to be armed?I have yet to be convinced that they have to, as have the UK public and the police force itself. So I would say the answer is conclusively 'no'. But some BBS posters seem to be suggesting that they do 'need' to be armed, because one guy was killed in Woolwich, and it took 20 minutes for armed police to respond, and if the police were routinely armed, then.... one guy would've been killed in Woolwich and it would've taken 20 minutes for the police to respond.
Less state control is a good thing, right Americans?
One would hope that a tradition of unarmed police is more a reflection of a less violent society than an actual method to deterring crime. Though it could also be a reflection of the fact that native Britons have more respect for police officers than Americans.
If the Police are actually being used as an enforcement mechanism of the UK Government, and the people of the UK don't have the general respect for figures of authority which I imagine, then having unarmed police might be a 'check' on Government power, but in any other situation you might as well arm the cops, and I suspect it is the case that whether or not cops are armed or not has nothing to do with the actual limitations on government power. Developed countries do not rely on force for compliance to government edicts. Remember that people *pay their own taxes*, a thing that people in past times would have thought crazy.
More seriously, the question of whether or not to arm the police depends on how the UK Government, and by extension, the police that obey said government, weighs the value of it's citizens with that of criminals. UK Politicians seem extremely frightened to condemn any kind of violent or criminal behavior that is of a certain "ethnic" character. If the Government of the UK takes the issue of rising violent crime seriously, then by all means arm the police.
But if they are more interested in preserving an illusion of tolerance and peace in a multicultural Britain, they are more likely to use those guns to subdue bitter natives than use them to subdue actual criminal behavior.
Teachers are generally revered by those on the left and generally distrusted and resented on the right. For a few obvious reasons.
The first reason is one of class. Professional educators from the earliest years to post-secondary education are predominantly left leaning and overwhelmingly loyal to the democratic party. Conservatives resent the fact that this class is put in charge of educating their children, much as they resent the fact that those who enter the journalist profession are predominantly left-leaning and predominantly big D Democratic.
The general left believes strongly that behavioral traits are a result of differences in environment, and in particular in education. Only far right wingers like myself dare question this view. The reverence for the positive effects of education naturally flows into the reverence professional educators.
Once you get past the idea that differences in academic ability are a function of school quality rather than student quality, you will be both more forgiving and less reverent of professional educators. Bad teachers and Teachers Unions are very likely not, as conservatives believe, responsible for poor student performance on standardize tests [which are essentially soft IQ tests] They also deserve far less praise than they receive for the academic achievement of the gifted.
An exceptional teacher may be able to motivate an under-achieving student to perform to his potential, but that's about it.
As for doctors, in any society they will command more prestige as should they. The work they do, even ignoring the questionable levels of certificationism, requires a high level of intelligence and years of experience. Since their work is less intrinsically political, they don't attract the same kind of controversy associated with professional educators.
At 8/2/13 02:06 PM, Warforger wrote:At 8/2/13 05:04 AM, supergandhi64 wrote: forget ethnicity poverty & socioeconomic background. the real reason why there's crime & conflict is because too few people have accepted jesus into their hearts. if we were all christians nobody'd lift a finger against each other . . . it'd be a peaceful & harmonic coexistenceHmmmm. Considering many of the biggest wars in history have been between countries which were predominately Christian this is far from true. Napoleonic wars, WWI, Mexican American war etc.
--supergandhi64
I can't say whether Christianity [if we average the various sects] is the least violent of world religions, I suspect it isn't. I also suspect that by general historical standards, it is probably less violent than average. But again this pacification in large part confounded by the fact that Christian dominated countries achieved a level of technological sophistication that was not matched. I'm fairly confident that Christianity was less violent than many of the pagan religions it displaced. During the later years of the roman empire, for example, it was observed that Christian peoples had a far more negative view towards the Gladiatorial games than the pagans.
If you have an especially savage and violent culture, in all likelihood, your civilization will never advance far enough such that you can engage in mass mechanized genocides or world war style conflicts. Also a lack of technological development means your population / population density was never high enough that you could.
Mass murder and mass warfare requires a level of internal peace and coordination within the parties engaged in the slaughter. So if you have an especially violent or savage culture, you'll likely see violence committed at a local level. I.e. Tribal warfare, rape, murder, enslavement of one group by another, etc. Violence of this kind ensures that these fighting groups could never cooperate or coordinate to commit more sophisticatedly' methods of destruction. It also ensures that they will never become large enough, population wise, to have the same kinds of death tolls associated with war.
It's a paradox of sorts. The more peaceful a people, the greater their potential for destruction.
Of course we have some idea of the differences between cultures in terms of violence when western agriculture or aid in the form of food combined with western weaponry is introduced into an undeveloped area of the world. You essentially observe primitive forms of violence that become inflated by a growing population and modern weaponry, but you don't generally observe European style warfare; with it's "Rules of War", "Geneva Convention" , Talk of "Human rights violations", etc. etc.
Existence*
At 8/2/13 12:36 AM, Revo357912 wrote: increased criminal activity and racism. I mean, if the whole world mixed for example, and were more similar in features, then stereotypes and such would be less, therefore racism, and crime itself would decrease.
For example, the "blacks commit more crime" thing couldn't exist because blacks themselves wouldn't exist (everyone would be a tan like colour). If being black does have an effect on your chances of committing a crime (if it does), then cultural reasons or those rooted to the past would automatically be eliminated. It would be harder to profile as well.
What you have here are the *MAKINGS* of a hypothesis test.
If your null hypothesis is that 100 percent of the difference in criminal behavior between blacks and non blacks is due to "Racism"
The fortunate aspect [or unfortunate, depending on your point of view] of this hypothesis is that it is relatively testable.
If we observe in areas which are either entirely African or predominantly African that the crime rate of Africans is lower than in areas where Blacks are a minority among other group, then this is evidence in favor of our hypothesis. If we observe no such relationship [or even the opposite relationship] -- then that is evidence AGAINST the hypothesis.
I would point at evidence against this, Detroit, which in the 50s and 60s was Majority White with a black minority. Racial discrimination against blacks was in all likelihood greater back then than it is now. Detroit is now an "African city" insofar as it has a predominant black majority and a predominant black municipal government.
I predict you're going to attribute this difference to poverty.
It's also worth pointing out that certain forms of "discrimination" might actually tend to reduce rather than increase incidences of crime.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/whites_subjected_to_too_m any_stop_QM64S34uJ37zoJ36auG0HM
Note that NY is one of the few cities where the crime level is far below what would be predicted if you looked at the percentage of African Americans.
Here is my understanding of the Black-Crime issue. To my knowledge, no serious thinker has ever disputed the following:
1. African Americans commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes relative to their numbers [i.e. relative to their proportion of the population]. Violent crimes including but not limited to assault, robbery, homicide, etc. The percentage of an urban area that is populated by African Americans also correlates strongly with measures of violent crime such as homicides per capita.
2. Controlling for poverty reduces this 'Crime gap' but does not eliminate it entirely. So if you take an Afro-American and European-American of equal SES [socio-economic status] and compare their crime rates relative to their numbers, the Afro-American crime rate is still significantly greater.
What these two things mean is that
A. You cannot dismiss the issue of "Black crime" by pointing to white crime. The issue of black crime is not that it exists, but that it exists to a far greater extent than one would predict simply by looking at proportions.
B. Poverty cannot explain the entirety of this gap.
___________
I'll add that while drug related offenses might explain a proportion of African incarceration, much of the incarceration for drug related offenses is secondary to police officers catching an individual whilst in the process of another crime. Ending the drug war may reduce the gap in black incarceration, and I fully support legalizing all drugs [though American parents are going to have to pick up the slack]. However, it is very unlikely that this has any bearing on
Conservatives sometimes like to talk about African Americans being far less savage towards whites and also towards one another, criminally speaking, in the 50s and 60s. I have no way of verifying or falsifying this, as I do not have knowledge of crime data that goes back that far.
What I've said above is also likely true of African descended populations now living in Europe, i.e. that they commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes and that this cannot be entirely explained by factors commonly put forward.
Sorry for the delayed response. I failed the 1/P exam and spent the last few days figuring out what I had lost.
The farthest I've seen the debate taken [Specifically with respect to Nisbett's points] By the Hereditarian case was in a journal article reply by Rushton and Jensen. I'll link the full PDF at the bottom of this post.
Note that as a layman I have as much power to verify the *empirical* claims made by Rushton/Jensen, as I do Nisbett. [Which is to say, none at all]. Assuming you are also a layman, you are probably also in the same position as me. I can only evaluate their claims to the degree they 1. are logical 2. appear feasible.
I also add that if you choose to dismiss what Rushton/Jensen say on grounds of their being racist [as opposed to being factually or logically incorrect] then that's fine. But you may as well dismiss any hereditarian case for the B/W IQ gap.
I'll excerpt the significant bits...
1. On the claim of B/W IQ's Narrowing over time...
Flynn excluded several tests and then “projected” forwardby multiplying a small gain from their highly selectgroup of tests by more years than were available for most ofthe data. Dickens and Flynn excluded the Wonderlic Personnel Test, which showed a gain of only 2.4 points... the Kaufman Assessment Batteryfor Children... loss of 1 IQ point, the Woodcock-Johnson test, which showed a zero gain for Blacks; and the DifferentialAbility Scale, which showed a gain of only 1.83 points for Blacks between 1972 and 1986. Moreover, even the test data they did present did not directly support their conclusion.Simple arithmetic, rather than a multiplied projection, yielded a mean gain for Blacks of 3.4 points (23%), not the 5.5 points claimed (37%). Including the aforementioned tests reduced the gain from 3.4 to 2.1 points (14%). Nisbett does not explain how he arrived at an overall Black gain of 4.5 IQ points (30%)
2. On the claim that there are enviromental factors which can explain the gap away entirely...
Nisbett’s critical variables were dubbed “X factors” by Jensen... to dramatize their plausible but mysterious character. One way to test whether... X factors are operating to lower IQ scores for Blacks on standardized tests is to compare the similarity of the correlations between background variables (such as the home environment or the peergroup) and outcome measures...A series of studies on large samples by David Rowe found no evidence of X factors acting to lower the IQ scores of Blacks... Rowe et al. [68] examined test scores for 8,528 Whites, 3,392 Blacks, 1,766 Hispanics, and 906 Asians and found the exact same relation between background variables (e.g., home environment, peer characteristics) and developmental outcomes (e.g., achievement, delinquency). Not only were the Black and White matrices nearly identical, they were as alike as the matrices computed from random halves within groups. There were no distortions in the correlations between the background variables and the outcome measures that suggested any minority-specific developmental factor.
There's much more to the article, and obviously more "meat" behind the claims but if you're really interested you can read it for yourself.
Link:
http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2010%20Review%2 0of%20Nisbett.pdf
If it defines itself as a religion, and follows the pattern of classic religions (both major and non-major) as well as current modern religion, it will be considered a religion
Before you try to wrap your mind around that question, ask yourself the following.First off, I'd like you to tell me a religion where such a thing is true; I don't care about what-ifs if they don't matter.
If the bible explicitly demanded that all good and true followers of god must support taxpayer funded universities, would it therefore be against the rules of your society to have universities / tuitions funded by the state?
Secondly, it is the government funding it with tax money - whether you agree with it or not you still have to pay taxes (just like in the US and property taxes for example); and the government is as removed from religion as possible.
It's a hypothetical designed to get you to think about the difference [or lackthereof] between secular and religious morality.
If you want a more realistic example, the Bible also contains injunctions against murder and theft. Would your scientific state reject laws against murder and theft on account of them being mentioned in the bible? There is obviously more to it than simply being associated with religion.
My point is that you have people who are secularists, but have normative views which they consider "Moral". Since these views come from nothing more than their own sentiments, they are as scientifically grounded as religious moral views.
To be more precise, the moral proposition that "stealing is wrong" is as objectively valid [that is, it has no objective validity] as the moral proposition that one should not have sex before marriage.
Certain moral prescriptions can have consequentiality justifications that others lack [i.e. the consequences of allowing stealing are worse than the consequences of permitting sex out of wedlock] [google search consequentialism if necessary] -- However an appeal to consequences itself cannot be scientifically justified.
At 7/25/13 02:54 PM, naronic wrote:
Lewontin's Fallacy has already been argued for and against for the longest time, the end game as I've mentioned is the fact that race is only there if and how you look for it.
Yes, race does or does not exist depending upon one's operating definition of it.
The differences in traits between the circumscribed populations, however, exist regardless of whether or not they are classified as races.
The thesis that race is nonexistent is not apart of my argument. It's that how we define it is trivial and is like differentiating trees by a priori size without considering any other factors.
Then I imagine the thesis that races existed was part of Pox's or...? I guess that's what I get for entering this issues en medias res
In this view, races are social constructs with a biological reality (largely an artifact of the category's construction)
I agree 100% with this statement. Likewise, Cars and Trucks are social constructs with a mechanical reality, which is largely an artifact of the category's construction.
What I am familiar with, though, is people using the "more variation within than between" to somehow *disprove* narrow sense heritability.
Plus the link you provided me was named (http://www.jonentine.com/) and had almost no links to credible sources to confirm such claims as "The kicker: these variations are the result of infinitesimal genetic differences-about 0.4 percent of their DNA studied.", often linking to scientists such as Vincent Sarich who's been brought up for racist and homophobic hate speech and dodgy data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Sarich.
1. Racist is simply a term one person gives another when they dislike them sufficiently.
2. The specific quote you mention is by Jared Diamond, from "The Third Chimpanzee", it does not come from Sarich. To my knowledge, Jared Diamond is not considered an academic Pariah; if that's worth anything to you.
3. Even assuming Sarich is a Hack, which one is not simply on account of being called Racist and Homophobic by students and faculty at a university, the veracity of what he was sourced for is not controversial as far as I know. [Concerning dogs, wolves, etc.] -- You might think the conclusions one draws from such a claim are different, but that argument is was not forthcoming.
4. The *Wikipedia* page mentioning Sarich's Racism and Homophobia itself lacks a citation. Would you really call *that* credible?
5. The lack of a footnotes for this article is a valid criticism, at least for purposes of convenience. I chose Etine not as an empirical source but because his argumentative prose would prove better than mine, and the claims he makes in the specific excerpt I pointed you towards are verifiable.
If I'm trying to prove a point on an Empirical matter I'll generally aim for what people consider to be a "Good" source. If I'm trying to make a logical or argumentative point, any source is fair game. If hitler says 2+2 = 4, it's not true or false on account of it being said from one person's mouth or another.
I'm not denying that certain genes can have a greater effect than others, just that you can't automatically link that those differences automatically confirms your intuitions about race, especially since the same or even more variance in genes can be found in groups and intelligence has been shown to be effected by multiple genes.
I don't think the state of knowledge in this topic is such that one could point to genetic differences between Africans and Europeans and infer those differences are partly the cause of intelligence differences, this is partly because intelligence itself is a highly polygenic trait and also because any scientist who even thought of proposing researching the genetic causes of race differences would be academically excommunicated.
Also, science isn't about confirming one's intuitions, but putting forward hypotheses that can be falsified. Nothing in science is "verified" -- simply that the theories scientists universally regard as true are the ones that have never been disprove.
I regard a modest heritability of IQ between the continental populations as a very reasonable default position, and I regard the complete environmental determinism of IQ between the continential populations as *very* radical and *very* unlikely. That doesn't mean it has been falsified.
However the issue will not be settled until 1. The technology for sequencing human DNA becomes cheap enough that scientists can get very detailed information on very large numbers of test subjects. 2. The public is made open to the idea that there may very well be genetically caused population differences in intelligence.
There's also a growing pool of data in neurology that there's even less diversity in our brains than the rest of ourselves.
http://www.nih.gov/news/health/oct2011/nimh-26.htm
On an individual level, where it is generally accepted by Scientists that IQ has a heritability of no lower than .5, [In the United States at least] There is enough genetic variation in the Human population to result in IQ scores ranging from 70 to 130 and even beyond.
In the current debate, we are trying to explain a proportion of the 15 point black-white difference in the US.
Which is something I should have brought up before. The heritability of IQ within the human species has not been a fringe position for quite some time.
Name me one time in this thread where I argued Pox was going for genetic determinism.
I assumed as much when you wrote "2) it presents a big problem for the racialist hypothesis that inter-racial IQ gaps can't be closed and are genetically determined"
No, what Pox and people like Jensen hold to be truth is that once again are that most of the variation (in this case IQ) are due to genetic differences and that's what causes black social and economic inequity.
The stuff you linked to below is what I would call a substantive argument [The claims made in the PDF at least]
It will warrant a separate response tommorow [It's very late right now] -- Because the only case of researchers being able to permanently raise the IQ scores of adopted children was the Abedecarian and perry preschool projects, each with their own set of methodological flaws.
So you can take that to mean "You've got me" -- Until I can get the time to respond.
I have an important test on the 27th so an immediate response may not be forthcoming. I apologize in advance.
At 7/25/13 12:54 PM, naronic wrote:
1: people like Pox are running off a constructed definition of race already,
Pretty much everyone will construct their own definition of race, and depending on that definition, will then show that race does or does not exist. Physical anthropologists, for example, have somehow found a working definition of race that allows them to look at a person's skeleton and determine what self identified race they would have gone as with exceptional accuracy.
A researcher looking at bone marrow might conclude that race is useless at typifying people, which may very well be true from their perspective of what they are looking for in humanity.
2: Showing that current populations of self identified races don't meet that definition beyond genetic drift, as well as with the fact that there is more diversity in groups than between them is enough to claim that that group distinction doesn't possess any more of a reality or a variance than toe size or eye color and you can indeed cut across racial lines just as validly within the established rule-set
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/
1. If what is often termed Lewontin's Fallacy was indeed not a fallacy and instead could invalidate the use of a category, it would invalidate far more categories [ones generally accepted as useful -- And this is an essential point, categories don't exist in the real world, they are all products of the human brain trying to model and interpret reality, they are therefore not "Right" or "Wrong", rather, they are "useful" or "useless"]
If you took 17 genetic markers [as Lewontin did] and compared, for example, Dogs and Wolves [Or human males and human females], you would probably find more variation within these two groups than between. Would we therefore conclude that there is no utility in classifying them as different groups? [In a specific set of contexts, that is]
A better explanation for why this kind of thinking is provided here:
http://www.jonentine.com/reviews/straw_man_of_race.htm <-- from "2. The genetic variation among European, African and Asian populations is minuscule compared to differences between individuals within those populations."
3: If there are differences between the performance of certain groups that can be brought down to environmental factors
Genetic determinism is the position that 100% of the observed variation between the groups is due to differences in genetics.
You will not find anyone that takes the position of genetic determinism. By arguing against it you are creating a straw man.
What you do observe is that IQ differences between the populations classified as Europeans and Africans were narrowing at one point in history, and have stopped narrowing since then.
If you have a heritability that is strictly greater than than 0 and strictly less than 1, then by equalizing environmental differences between two populations in a given environment, you will narrow the difference in a trait, up to the point where environments have been equalized. Obviously the more equalized the environments become, the harder it will be to influence the remainder of the trait difference. In a given country where environments are already highly equalized, your heritability estimates will, by definition, be higher, since less of the remaining variation is due to variation in environment.
and 4: Poxpower is setting his mind to ignoring 2 and 3 concluding a geneticist viewpoint that races are genetically distinct and that IQ tests are one of the things that show that, I don't think so.
Whether or not the scientist in question believes in or rejects the validity of race as a biological category depends a great deal on 1. The country they are studying in 2. Their age 3. The particular scientific discipline.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/does-race-exist.html <-- read from "Seeing both sides"
The only people who ever really feel guilty about consciously helping "their own" are whites, by and large.
This idea that all forms of altruism must be Universalized for *all* of humanity is both something particular to the western mind and also quite ahistorical.
It's was also well established, however hesitantly, by Professor Putnam that social capital is largest in homogeneous societies smallest in more heterogeneous societies. People's willingness to trust and aid one another are strongest when they imagine themselves amongst the company of those "like them".
I suspect this is part of the reason that support for a large welfare state is strongest in the mostly ethnically homogeneous Scandinavian countries.
I don't even really see a reason why whites should embrace this universalistic conception of welfare. By and large, members of the other racial groups don't perceive it as genuine intra-racial altruism. Blacks especially seem to treat white platitudes about treating people equally as codewords for white supremacy.
There's nothing explicitly wrong with helping other groups, but nor is there anything wrong with helping one's own in-group. Let the Latinos aid the Latinos, and let's not kid ourselves in thinking that the well being of all humanity is somehow at the top of everyone's welfare list.
At 7/25/13 11:12 AM, naronic wrote:At 7/23/13 09:04 PM, poxpower wrote:At 7/23/13 08:46 PM, AxTekk wrote:You 've got it in one mate. And then he'll start a new thread. Exactly like what happened here, because racists hide behing "intellectual honesty" the same way fascists hide behind "freedom of speech" and abandon it whenever it becomes inconvenient .
1. Heritable and Immalleable are two different things.
Human Height is generally accepted to have a very heritable component. Yet throughout history average human height has been altered by various environmental factors. To say that something *can* or *could* be changed by means X is not the same as saying that 100% of the observed differences in height between people in the current state of affairs is due to differences in environment.
This also means that secular increases in IQ are not proofs against the inter-group heritability of IQ.
So for example the fact that the average height of men and women has been increasing over time, is not proof that if put in identical enviroments, women would have an average height equal to that of men.
2. The matter of whether or not race exists is a red herring. The question is merely thus: "We observe in a given environment that there exist differences in a measured trait between two groups / populations. [Groups which happen to correspond to self identified races] What proportion of the differences in this trait are due to differences in genetics, and what proportion of the differences in this trait are due to differences in-environment"
I hope you can understand why it's silly to 1. Construct a definition of race 2. Show that current populations self identified races do not meet that definition 3. Explicitly conclude the races do not exist.
Africans and Europeans do not need to be defined as separate races for there to be a heritable component of IQ.
The Equalitarian position is that 100% of all observed differences in IQ between the populations is due to differences in environment. That is to say, if you raised a European, an Asian, A Mestizo, and an African in an identical environment, they would all have identical IQ scores [on average]
Deconstructing race or pointing to the malleability of IQ are both attempts to divert attention to the central issue.
At 7/24/13 09:16 PM, Revo357912 wrote:At 7/24/13 07:20 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:Okay, to oversimplify things and make the government able to evolve to changing times and research;a lot of valid points and stuff
-The goal of the nation is advancement of hard sciences first and foremost.
-Religion and related things cannot openly intervene in government in any way or form.
Related things?
What is a religion anyway? Is it a moral doctrine? A set of beliefs concerning the metaphysical? Or a moral doctrine justified by appeals to the metaphysical?
Before you try to wrap your mind around that question, ask yourself the following.
If the bible explicitly demanded that all good and true followers of god must support taxpayer funded universities, would it therefore be against the rules of your society to have universities / tuitions funded by the state?
I've ignored the rest of your post since you don't seem to be addressing my points concerning the nature of science.
At 7/22/13 08:42 PM, Revo357912 wrote:
That said, while there is a strong genetic link to race and intelligence, I'd also like to point out that it can be indeed overcome with changes in culture, food, habits, etc.
If we're talking about narrow sense heritability, a between-group heritability of IQ that is lower than 1
There's a difference between saying that African American IQs can be raised through X environmental means and saying that through environmental means the IQ Gaps between the populations can be eliminated entirely.
Also keep in mind that in heritability estimates, epigenetic effects are counted as enviromental rather than genetic.
At 7/23/13 11:21 PM, Revo357912 wrote: Okay, I guess I should clarify then.
Main goal of country: Scientific advancements in all areas possible (such as robotics, physics, math, psychology, medicine, food, weaponry, education for example)
Ethic and Moral restraints would be to use innocent humans for experiments (war prisoners would be okay), and limits on mind control science and highly illegal to use sciences that directly invade privacy unwillingly against nations own members.
Also, no limits on animal testing.
Viral and Bacterial Weaponry would be allowed only for medical purposes.
I'm not saying people won't break these laws though.
Laws such as drinking age, age of consent, age to drive etc would be based on current scientific studies and statistics that can be reproduced and determined by an elected board of scientists who have a PHd in that respective field.
You either didn't read my post or you didn't understand. Science can at best tell you what the average effect of a given quantity of alcohol has on a person's body.
More often then not these issues are grounded on differences of opinion.
You also don't appreciate how often social science theories fail to explain reality time and time again and yet are treated as equally valid to the hard sciences.
Moreover, you won't have any problem finding technical literature providing justifications to this or that policy grounded on statistics or mathematical models. These things already exist. The reason you don't notice them is because the overwhelming majority of people lack the mental capacity to process the information and 1. determine whether the conclusions of the publishers are valid 2. integrate said publishers findings into their own ideas.
Blatant misleading
Any single institution granted the power of determining what is "True" or "false" is going to abuse that power for their own benefit. If, for example, the prestige press or some institution similar had been granted the kind of power you describe in todays world, people would still very likely believe that Trayvon Martin was a 12 year old and George Zimmerman was a Caucasian Klansmen.
It's bad enough that often times scientific inquiry is circumscribed by the fact that the people funding the research are putting informal pressure on scientists to arrive at conclusions favorable to their interests. [Google search the lipid hypothesis for an example]
You also don't seem to appreciate how often a scientific consensus is broken by a small minority of researchers [sometimes even by a single person] -- And said small body is often met with the greatest level of hostility. Plate Tectonics is an example of this. Galileo is probably more famous.
Also, whereas one may stand a chance at objectively identifying something which is downright anti-factual, most forms of deception are grounded in things which are true, but which are represented in a selective and therefore dishonest way. Determining whether someone misrepresents something is a matter of personal discretion and therefore open to one's subjective whims.
The only thing that has a chance of keeping *everyone* honest is the assumption that all knowledge sources are in competition with one another, and no one is assumed apriori to be a "correct" source.
All Politicians have to have a college degree, not just the top ones; governors, mayors, etc for example.
In debates, they cannot use things such as emotional persuasion not founded in science or religion (such as some conservatives currently do in America for example).
All political beliefs are grounded on emotions, in one form or another. Emotional appeals are indeed a form of psychological manipulation, but ultimately all beliefs about the way the world.
One's desire for peace, war, security, inclusion, exclusion, social welfare, etc. etc. are all non-scientific. Progressives who demonize those who advocate changes to public expenditure as being heartless are communicating based on a common emotional language. Calling someone a racist has meaning because and only because racism is seen as something which is bad.
Science does not and cannot provide you with any input as to whether a thing is racist [or, for that matter, whether said "racism" is good or bad] nor can it tell you whether or not one "ought" to spend more or less on the destitute. The most it can do is tell you what the consequences of following one line of action or another will be, and very often it is incapable of doing even that. [For reasons prior explained]
But I've already stated this in my previous post. You never denied it or even acknowledge it, you simply repeated what you stated in your OP.
I frequently become aware of progressives who love to talk about science and yet cannot recognize the emotional / subjective basis for many of their core beliefs.
Also, potentially harmful things cannot be sold in products until they are rigorously cleared (example; triclosan, Sodium Benzate in America) by a specialized department.
I'm not objecting to or lauding the notion of inspection, I merely pointed out that you provide no reason for why this has anything to do with science.
I bring this up because I suspect you're just LINKING these things to science, because, like science, you view product inspection as something wholesome.
It doesn't really matter what the Qu'ran does or does not say. What matters is what a potential Muslim Majority in the UK [or more realistically, within zones of the UK] would vote for. And whether or not certain habits of life seen as anathema to western sensibilities are actually called for in one religious book or another has little bearing if we are trying to determine what mass immigration sans assimilation will have on a country.
The matter of whether the North Africans in the UK are genetically predisposed to greater levels of violence is also worthy of examination.
At 7/16/13 11:23 PM, Camarohusky wrote: What has been done to filter out nongenetic reasons for the disparities such as nutrition, education, money, and so on?
Well the problem of controlling for socio-economic status is that IQ better predicts one's future earnings than the earnings of one's parents predict one's IQ, and the mainstream opinion is that one's IQ strongly influences the sorts of careers that are open to you. As a result, trying to determine IQ gaps by controlling for socio-economic status will often involve trying to find IQ gaps after controlling for IQ differences, which isn't terribly helpful.
One hint we have that IQ differences are [largely] not a result of different environments is a thing known as sub-test heritability. IQ tests generally have different components [similar to how the SAT has reading and math], such as visual-spacial reasoning, verbal reasoning, etc. For individuals, these components do not all have equal Heritabilities. That is to say, some of them are more heavily influenced by differences in environment while others are not.
If the gaps were caused by differences in environment, we would expect those subtests with the lower heritabilities to have wider gaps and the subtests with higher heritabilities to have narrower gaps. However this is not observed.
But all of that is somewhat besides the point, because the "environmental" side of the debate may very well be able to list possible ancillary causes for the IQ Gap, but they seldom provide any estimates [or justifications for those estimates] showing how much of the variation in the scores can be attributed to variations in X or Y enviromental factor.
It's one thing to say that nutrition could cause differences in IQ, it's another to actually show whether and to what extent those differences manifest themselves in the real world.
At 7/23/13 12:52 PM, NordicThunder88 wrote:At 7/23/13 11:13 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote: The problem is that Britain / England does not have *racial* nationalists that are both intellectually disrespectable but personally respectable.If not for multiculturalism, the EDL would have never been necessary.
Yes in the sense that if no one believes in multiculturalism, essentially everyone thinks like the EDL, rendering the issue trivial.
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