Chief Pedant I think you make some really excellent points here.
I’m agnostic about whether the African/European gap in intelligence is genetic in origin- while on the surface there are some appealing things about that hypothesis, it has some serious flaws, which we can talk about more over PM if you want. I think it’s equally plausible that some kind of epigenetic and/or prenatal effects are causing the gap. I do think you make a very good, and much deeper, point here. Intelligence shouldn’t be viewed as a morally loaded trait (unlike, say, hard work, or conscientiousness, or trustworthiness, or agreeableness). It’s an arbitrary, largely genetic, accident of birth. I have quite a high IQ, but that doesn’t make me a better person than someone who doesn’t, nor should my work as a biologist entitle me to a higher salary or more social respect than, say, a truck driver or a blueberry farmer. Because, again, intelligence is an arbitrary genetic trait as much as height, a good figure, a pretty face, etc., are, and we shouldn’t consider intelligence a marker of superior moral worth.
Right- on a similar note, Judaism isn’t strictly speaking a genetic trait (you can convert to, or out of, Judaism), and Christianity isn’t at all, but the gene pools comprising Ashkenazic Jews differ somewhat from the gene pool comprising European Christians, and knowing whether a person of European descent is Jewish or Christian actually does give you (probabilistic) information about their genetics.
What data? None of the data you’ve provided points to a genetic explanation over other explanations.
Says you, without any supporting data.
No it’s not. It’s a snapshot in history.
What a joke. “Every social history”? There’s no possible way you could know this for any more than a miniscule fraction of human history, which just so happens to follow centuries of some of the most brutal oppression and discrimination in human history.
Actually, plenty of science says otherwise. Degree of African admixture among African Americans does not correlate to lower test scores – those with more African ancestry do not score lower. 1st generation immigrants (white and black) score the same on test scores – the disparity only shows up with later generations.
You’ve ignored all the data that contradicts the genetic explanation. Not only is there no genetic evidence, it doesn’t even fit the facts. Bad, bad science. And racist claims.
Like it or not, intelligence is viewed by most as one of the most intrinsically “human” characteristics. When one claims that the test-score disparity is best explained by the assertion that black people have inferior genes for intelligence, on average (a claim that I’ll note again has absolutely no supporting genetic evidence), one is making a claim (an evidence-free claim) about the intrinsic humanity of black people. One is making a racist claim.
There’s no purer example of a racist claim, in fact, than the claim that one race is inherently lesser, on average, in some intrinsically human characteristic like intelligence.
I think you completely miss the boat here. It’s not variations in intelligence that’s the issue. No-one’s said intelligence doesn’t vary, or shouldn’t be studied.
It’s grouping people along racial lines, and using those arbitrary made-up categories for scientific purposes, or saying anything correlative about them.
That’s laughable, the way you just assert the very thing that hasn’t been proved.
Science begins with a proposition–often a null hypothesis regarding an observed pattern–and then seeks to analyze and test why it may or may not be correct.
Hypothesis: Measured outcome differences among race-based populations are due solely to nurturing and not genes.
Science:
Define “race-based”
Define and understand “populations”
Examine evidence around how differences are measured
Examine evidence for and against nurturing variables as an explanation
Examine evidence for and against genetic explanations as contributing factors
It’s not science to think a genetic determinant “must exist.” But there’s nothing about the general topic that a priori takes it out of the realm of science. The study of genetic drivers for average skillset differences among populations (such as various aspects of neurobiology or sports-related performance ability) is well within the realm of science.
What is non-scientific here is the idea that a label such as “racist” carries any weight at all for a scientific conclusion. Should mother nature turn out to be as indiscriminate for human gene evolution as she is for all other species, she is incredibly “racist.” Were that not so, we would all be clones and the current construct of “race” would not even exist.
While I’m cleaning up old posts before going on leave…
Were you hoping your cite here suggests there is no biological correlation between “race” as a category and genetic clustering by race? It doesn’t. The idea that a genetically driven average difference for skillsets among self-identified race populations is dependent upon a need to biologically identify a discrete race is a strawman advanced to make arguing against a genetic proposition easier to defeat.
You will notice your position article carefully avoids explicitly stating there are no average biological differences among self-identified race groups.
The actual argument for why a genetic explanation is reasonable is quite simple:
All genes are subject to the process of evolution
Only descendant populations have access to genes that evolved after any given splitting point
Migratory patterns of humans have created a number of splitting points
If groupings are used that roughly separate descendants at a given splitting point, it’s highly unlikely descendants tens of thousands of years down the road will have identical genes because of evolution and/or introgression of outside genes into only one group.
At point “X” down the road, descendant populations from a given splitting point will have evolved different average gene pools
While the choice of which migration-driven splitting point to use for self-identified race is somewhat arbitrary (a splitter might define a thousand races, and a lumper might define two…) once you’ve selected an anchor point with enough time for descendants to have evolved (or introgressed) genes, you have two different average gene pools with differing frequencies for all the new genes driven by evolution.
*“Many population-genetics tests, indeed, cannot distinguish selection from bottlenecks/admixture. This lack of discrimination is because of both a lack of acknowledgment of LD structure in these tests (as discussed above) and the usual examination of small (≪1 Mb) genomic regions (16). Supporting Text describes permutations/simulations of admixture and bottleneck models, using actual Perlegen or HapMap data sets. These simulations were conducted because prior population genetics simulations and coalescence models of population structure cannot be compared directly with the highly biased Perlegen and HapMap SNP data set, consisting largely of high-heterozygosity SNPs. These simulations indicate that the LDD test, at the megabase scale used, appears to effectively distinguish between effects due to selection vs. demographic history. We conclude that inferred Darwinian selection is the most likely explanation for these unusual genomic architectures….”
*
It doesn’t matter if it’s reasonable, you thick-headed guy who makes racist claims without evidence. Many claims are ‘reasonable’, even without evidence. It’s ‘reasonable’ to explain your insistence on clinging to evidence-free racist claims from a deep-seated desire to dominate black people, even if there is no evidence for it.
None of this provides any support whatsoever for any claims regarding the genes for intelligence among black people. It’s just more sideshow so you can claim you’ve won something. You’ve got nothing. You use a snapshot of history so that you can claim outcomes now are special, and outcomes now just happen to perfectly reflect some racial heirarchy, despite your complete lack of data on the genes for intelligence among black people. And then you totally ignore the contrary evidence, like the fact that degree of African admixture has zero correlation with lower test scores, and the fact that 1st generation immigrants do not show this disparity.
Your explanation about the genes for intelligence among black people has no supporting genetic evidence whatsoever, and further, it doesn’t even fit the facts.
I entirely agree with you, but eliminating the ‘nurturing’ explanation still doesn’t negate the possibility that the Black/White gap could be due to, say, prenatal/maternal effects. Even adoption studies couldn’t and wouldn’t correct for that.
I’m going to need a cite that ‘degree of African admixture does not correlate with lower test scores’.
Your point about immigrants is totally irrelevant. Immigrants are often not a representative sample of the countries they come from, if they’re in any way self selected. Indian immigrants to the United States are very high on the education/IQ scale, but Indians in India have really low IQ, lower than African-Americans. It would be insane to look at Indians in America and think ‘gee, they must be smart’.
Nonsense – even if this is true, this would apply to all immigrants, of all categories. And since it applies to all immigrants, then the fact that the test score disparity doesn’t exist between 1st generation immigrants, but does exist in 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants, certainly implies that the explanation for this test-score disparity is absolutely not genetic, but rather something about the culture that 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants of various categories are experiencing.
How could genetics cause the test-score disparity in 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants, but not 1st generation immigrants?
Oh, you linked to an uncited blog post by a historian? Great.
Having said that, his findings seem to match up with what I’ve seen elsewhere (though he doesn’t provide citations). But they don’t provide ‘strong evidence’ against a genetic explanation, they don’t provide any evidence at all.
Comparing African immigrants to Europeans is useless, if the immigrants are self-selected, because they won’t be a representative sample of their home country. Like I said above, Indians have quite a low IQ (though as with Africa, much of that is no doubt due to malnutrition, cultural backwardness, disease, etc.) even though you wouldn’t know it by looking at Indians in America. The same goes for that famous study of children of Black and White American servicemen in Germany: the military screens for IQ, and did back in WWII, so the samples weren’t representative.
He concedes himself that Black children raised in white houeholds show no test-score gap until adolescence. But that’s in no way incompatible with a genetic explanation. Most heritable traits show greater heritability in adults than in children. In young children, family environment and nurture counts for a fair amount, but as they get older, they revert or rise to their genetic potential. Religiosity, for example (I just know about this cause I looked it up a while back) is hardly heritable at all in children or young teens, but is highly heritable in adults.
The fact that biracial children with White mothers show higher IQ has been challenged on the grounds of small sample size, but let that pass- I believe it. It in no way rules out a genetic explanation, it just indicates that the gap is not entirely genetic, and that prenatal environment matters quite a bit.
The one good argument that he has is the one about African admixture not correlating with test scores, but I need to see a cite for that, and he hasn’t provided one. If true, it would be pretty good evidence against the genetic explanation, at least in the case of Africans.
Are you seriously not aware that heritability for prettying most cognitive, behavioral, etc. traits is higher in adults than in children? The lack of effects in childhood, and then a strong effect in adolescence and adulthood, is exactly what we would expect of a genetically influenced trait. I’ll see if I can find a good cite for you when I’m off my phone.
African and Indian immigrants to this country represent a small slice of their population, self selected for high educational attainment. It’s possible the same is true to a lesser extent in white Americans, but in fact, white Americans don’t differ much from European countries in terms of IQ. Irish Americans used to have higher IQ than Irish Irish, but that gap has actually disappeared in the last generation or two.
In any case, while I don’t know what the causes of the IQ racial gap are, immigrants from Africa, India or wherever else should not be viewed as representative of their population.
Oooh, oooh I know! I know!
When immigrants leave the old country, there is a whole bunch of miscegenation going on. Since the white intelligence gene is dominant to the black stupid gene, the black immigrants are now outliers as they have been injected with the white smartness while the white people have fought off the black stupidness and have remained unchanged.