The post to which you link has this introductory comment:
"Right now, there’s no evidence even that intelligence has a genetic component, to the best of my knowledge. No gene has been identified that marks for any influence on intelligence, with the exception of serious mental illnesses or disabilities, and we’re not discussing those to this point in the thread. "
This is really one of the stupidest and most ignorant comments I’ve seen. The scientific literature has long accepted that intelligence has a very high hereditary component. (Genes). I’ve already posted here in this lame thread a cite for one of the genes governing gray matter thickness, linked to intelligence. A single C for T substitution in HMGA2 has been linked to a 2% difference in intelligence. I posted in this thread a nice Princeton review by Gray and Thompson on some of the genes related to brain function.
But in general, even a casual lay reading of the literature shows it is rife with papers demonstrating the importance of genes in every area of biology. The idea–even without specific examples–that brain function would somehow be exempted from functions such as muscle power, bone density, 0xygen exchange, toxin handling and so on is just pollyannish wishful thinking that mother nature has wired us all the same.
It takes more than the three synapses iiandyiiii has to process the concepts, and given his recent foray into confusing what a cockroach is, I’m not that interested in patiently explaining to him yet again what the basic problem is. But it’s actually quite simple.
- Almost any large human population grouping–including self identified races–has any number of observed outcome differences that follow a very consistent pattern across all systems
- Any number of studies show genes clustering by populations, including self-identified race groups
- Every anthropologist in the world accepts a basic tenet of migratory patterns that isolates human populations to a substantial enough extent that genetic clustering for descendant populations is not only likely, but inevitable
- Physiologic differences, appearance differences and disease differences from abnormal genes all support the idea that gene frequencies differ at the level of self-identified race groupings
- Many studies, including the one by Wang that I cited earlier, suggest genes that cluster have undergone Darwinian selection–that is, they were positively selected for, and this is strong support for the idea that genes differ in substantial ways and not just trivial ways.
- As additional examples, MCPH1 variants and CDK5RAP2 variants have been shown to be linked with brain size and structure, and the haplogroup D variant of MCPH1 is so penetrated in non-african populations that anything but positive selection seems highly unlikely.
- Given the introgression of Neandertal genes into post-african migratory groups, it isn’t even accurate to pretend we all got our genes from 200,000 years ago; that evidence pushes non-sub-saharan group gene pools back another few hundred thousand years, in contrast with modern sub-saharans.
All this and much much more makes it a non-credible hypothesis that “races” share the same genes, or that the disparate genes among those races have not evolved in the tens of thousands of years since an L0-L1 post-africa split…
Every study that comes out about genes and intelligence and brain function simply adds one more nail to the egalitarian idea that all groups are the same. There’s not a parallel anywhere in nature that says they should be, and the idea that humans somehow are exempted from the laws of nature is a backward Creationist hope which is dying in the face of modern gene study.
And of course, at a practical level, the inequalities in outcome persist stubbornly, always showing the same pattern across every system…
Were it not for the flinging around of “racist” and “eugenics” and the drivel from those of iiandyiiii’s ilk, we would have long since moved beyond pretending that races are biologically equal, on average, even for brain function.
