Because of bigoted people like you, who try to justify racism with genetic explanations. People like you poison the well; you convince most people that claims of genetic influences on human behavior are always an attempt to justify racism.
There are I’m sure all sorts of strong genetic influences on behavior, intelligence and so on; but I don’t believe for a moment they have anything to do with your racist pseudoscientific fantasies. I don’t believe for a moment that genetically determined behavioral and intellectual differences are going to conveniently just happen to fall in patterns that justify racial stereotypes.
I’m too lazy to look back at some of those threads but many of the cites on genetics weren’t from experts. I distinctly recall one being an opinion by an economist. Not very good credentials to have an opinion on genetics, evolution or intelligence capacity.
I choose not to engage in the Pitting or the discussion of the use of words like “retard,” but I am suprised, based on my reading of this thread and a quick search, no one has mentioned Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. To my knowledge it is a prize-winning, well-regarded book-for-the-non-scientist that specifically addresses this question. It concludes that yes, Western Euros and Fertile Crescent peoples ended up dominating much of the world through their Guns, Germs and Steel - but that they ended up being the peoples equipped with said advantages far more due to Nurture advantages vs. Nature advantages…
If I remember past threads on that book, some who believe strongly in genetic links to racial outcomes dislike that book because in the intro he makes an argument that if humans were truly genetically varied to the degree some racialists in the past have claimed, it would be primitive hunter gatherers who would have better spatial reasoning and memory skills due to the fact that their lives are dependent on their ability to navigate without maps and remember which plants are good and when. While in more settled groups the ability to fight of disease is a much more important survival trait.
The Socialist Review article about one fraudster in the UK who used bogus numbers for a general gene/IQ study (not a race/IQ study) is duly noted and reflected in the record. Thank you. Anything else?
Just wanted to observe that its probably way too easy to make an argument that trait X should convey some sort of selective advantage in a certain situation but that DOES NOT mean that in a complex world that it is actually the case.
Like many things, it is easy to come up with something that sounds right. Doesnt mean it is.
When it comes to evolution, I think the best we can usually do is AFTER the fact wankery where we find some strange trait something has and THEN do a bunch of handwaving as to why it is an advantage. And even that may be a bunch of BS.
I quite agree with you, although some things are more obvious than others. In the book, Diamond actually argues that there is not enough genetic difference observed to say that one group is smarter than the other. His point was that the selective forces acting on the two groups were different. In medieval Europe intelligence would not have been all that important a reproductive trait. This does not rule greater intelligence being linked genetically to some trait that would be selected for during that time, but it makes the genetic advantage argument seem less likely.
The reason this point seemed to be such a sticking point for those who believe in genetic differences is they miss the point that he was making (genetics does not seem to account for the dominance of Europe) and assume he is arguing the opposite of what they believe. They read an argument that there is no apparent genetic advantage and interrupt it to mean that South Pacific islanders are genetically superior to Europeans. They seem to believe that someone has to be naturally superior and some inferior. Kind of like how some devout religious people believe that everything science says must be based on faith because that is how they order their own world.
Populations are genetically distinct and have gene prevalences which vary by population.
Populations perform disparately, even when given the same opportunity, and the disparate performances are mirrored across every cultural and political situation. There are no countries where whites disproportionately outperform blacks at sprinting, or blacks disproportionately outperform asians at quantitative sciences, even given the same opportunity.
The “religious believers” are the ones who believe God somehow created all human beings equal. Nature has no such rules, and no such parallels in non-human populations. That human populations, varying in their genetic libraries, would somehow end up being approximately equal, is an article of faith and contrary to what is observed everywhere else in nature.
It’s really quite simple. In absence of actual data, the only reason to espouse an offensive opinion is to try to be offensive. Chief Pedant knows his opinion annoys people, and thus continues to espouse it as a method of getting under people’s skin.
I’d have a different opinion if he didn’t quite plainly assume people with allergies have psychological problems, when actual alergy tests that you don’t know what your being pricked for still show allergies are a real phenomenon. And he’s a flipping doctor.
So quite clearly he’s just out of touch with reality.
So, we’ve gone a couple of days and still only have one article about one fraudster (who apparentky didn’t even do race/IQ studies). Anyone care to contribute anything further?
The word Racist like the word Nazi is a word that is over used and often used in the wrong context, but that doesn’t mean they are always used in the wrong context
Nazi
Wrong: Obama is a Nazi for promoting universal health care
Right: That man over there with the swastika arm band proclaiming the glories of Hitler is a Nazi
Racist
Wrong: Those people who voted for McCaine over Obama are racists
Right: Those people who say whites are genetically superior to blacks are racists.
Are there any situations where blacks and whites have the same opportunity in any larger sense of the word - for example - same cultural background, same education, same nutrition, same economic background, same racial stereotypes as they grow up.
The experiment is flawed due to lack of a good control, and the null hypothesis is not rejected.
Look, Chief Pedant continues to post references to the fatally-flawed, Nazi/Fascist/Eugenicist-funded IQ & The Wealth of Nations. I’m past being charitable - the guy’s a racist troll who definitely knows what he’s doing. And apparently he’s a shitty doctor, too, which comes as no surprise.