The title of this Board is “The Straight Dope.” I assume it seeks the truth, however uncomfortable.
I fully admit to being on a personal crusade to get rid of this bullshit idea that human populations are equal in genetic potential for any number of skillsets. No they aren’t. I have given up fighting the “racist” label. Apparently the notion is ingrained into many that if someone is a “racist” they must be wrong, and all that is required to argue against their position is to apply the term “racist” as if that, somehow, were sufficient refutation.
I am eager to examine the “patterns” I am apparently ignoring in deference to my pet theory. Please suggest one for me to look at.
Some people look at the world and describe it as it is, warts and inequities and all.
Some people look at the world through rose-colored glasses, describe a fairy-tale world, and condemn as “jerks” anyone who disrupts their fairy tale with uncomfortable observations.
The idea that IQ tests are somehow meaningless is nonsense. But if you don’t like them, you can use alternate measures, such as how well an individual is able to perform when they are exposed to better opportunity.
I don’t get this. To me, a racist is someone who thinks that people of another race than them are inherently and irredeemably inferior in some grand cosmic sense. Therefore, a racist doesn’t care what studies say about anything to do with people of different races–the study won’t change their mind.
Also, you seem to be ignoring that the Bell Curve etc. shows that asian folks on average have higher IQs than white people.
I don’t know that they’re meaningless. Just that they seem arbitrary because we still don’t know how to categorize intelligence. Yes, someone can seem intelligent and whatnot when you talk to them, but how do you translate that into a test that actually means something? Even sven sensed the intelligence of the people she met in Cameroon, and I’m sure if she wanted to make baseline intelligence all the things that they exemplified, she could come up with a test. Many Americans would probably do abysmally at it. But what makes one test better than another?
Yeah. he does. I was just a little too drunk to provide it at the time and and the question itself throws up a whole shitload of red flags to me.
But here ya go: Rand Rover, “I.Q.” is a notoriously bullshit measurement. I should know because when I was in college I tested very, very high and I’m an idiot - just ask anybody. I don’t believe I.Q. data tell anybody anything beyond possibly how fast some motherfucker will solve the soduku puzzle.
Besides, the tests themselves can be culturally biased. I remember one SAT question that went ""runner is to be marathon as oarsman is to: … and the answer was “regatta”. Now, how many kids from traditionally black neighborhoods are going to have ever seen a rowing team? You couple this with the fact that race itself is impossible to measure and it makes your question utterly meaningless.
Those of you who say that IQ is bullshit and the concept of “race” as used in these studies is bullshit: what do you think about (i) the existence of a scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic global warming and (ii) those who are skeptical of studies of anthropogenic global warming?
If you sit in a quiet room and really ponder your feelings about the IQ/race studies and AGW, I think you might learn something. Maybe throw evolution in there also–what do you think about people who don’t believe evolution occurred (and is occurring)? And how do your feelings about those people compare to your feelings about people on different sides of the other two issues?
They aren’t the same thing. AGW and evolution are factual questions. In the case of evolution it has been answered beyond any possible doubt. In the case of AGW, it is by far accepted.
IQ is a measurement system that is quirky and full of holes. We don’t truly know what it measures, and we don’t know how to culturally control for it.
As for race, there is no black “race”, there are huge numbers of different population groups that have dark skin. What are you talking about when you say “Black”?
It is utter nonsense to claim that the factors I mention are trivial. There’s plenty of evidence that this kind of stuff has major impact on human brain development (such as FAS, feral children, etc., etc.). Provide a cite for this, or I’ll just assume you made it up.
Speaking of canards, I never claimed that there were Biafran-like conditions in the US, so I don’t know why you decided to make that up. My point, which you seem to have ignored completely, is that you cannot extrapolate from the studies you keep citing to anything genetic. Those studies simply don’t indicate that. The fact that you keep trying to do so (and have to MSU in the process) makes me think that you basically want to push an anti-science agenda for other purposes.
They aren’t looking for facts to change their own minds, they’re looking for facts to change yours. They want you to agree with them that black people are inferior, so they go looking for things they feel bolster their already firmly held beliefs.
The most persuasive piece of evidence suggesting there are immutable differences among populations–including race–is the persistence of outcome differences among these populations despite all efforts to change those outcomes.
Many populations–Indian asians, say–who are given broader opportunity become equal peers in performance despite the same racist attitudes and the same sort of obstacles facing them when they immigrate to other countries. For quantitative sciences in particular, this sort of success has not been mirrored in the population of descendants from sub-saharan cohorts.
To date those differences have remained immutable, whether for immigrants or native populations; across all political systems; across every country; despite every effort to eradicate them (including programs specifically targeted at black populations).
I find this persistent and pervasive pattern to be very persuasive, and I find efforts to explain it away to built on little more than hope that nature would not choose to endow broad populations with varying gene prevalences.
This is exactly the kind of bullshit non-science I am talking about. The vast majority of Indians in the US came over on H1 visas, and so are a highly selected subset of the general Indian population. Trying to make comparisons using artificially selected subsets (and for which the the selection is based completely on social factors, rather than genetic factors) as some sort of argument for innate genetic characteristics isn’t science. It’s racist bullshit you’re trying to dress up as science.
What makes the use of Indians here in your argument so funny is that there is a rigid quota system in India for Indians of lower caste or from tribal areas. And people in India who don’t like the quota system make exactly the same bullshit arguments about other Indians (that these other Indians are somehow genetically different as a group) without ever bothering to back up these statements with actual science.
When you decide to actually start making scientific claims, rather than pointing to sociological studies, people might begin to take you seriously. Right now, all you are doing is peddling racist bullshit. Why don’t you just own it instead of trying to hide behind science? Because you’re doing a pretty piss-poor job with your “scientific” claims.
No, I know enough about all of those things to believe - without convincing proof otherwise - that a person’s genes have less effect on a person’s mental capacity, than its environment does. Now where am I going wrong? Where is the evidence that genetics actually affects the brain processes of particular groups?
If you disinclined to think genes are more significant than environment in establishing cognition, perhaps you would like to tackle teaching my pet rabbit how to play chess and see how it goes.
Genes establish a maximum potential; environment fills it up.
You might also tackle explaining why, within a given family of say, 5 children, one of the children may end up brilliant while one ends up unable to do his schoolwork.
No, we are the sum of how our genes express themselves, which is determined by a number of different factors. You’ve already clearly shown that your knowledge of human brain development is virtually non-existent. Now we can add that your knowledge of genetics seems to be virtually non-existent as well.
But let’s go with the simplified statement–that we are our genes. The fact that we may be our genes doesn’t indicate in any way whether or not there are innate genetic differences in intelligence that break down along racial lines. Perhaps you can skip your next Klan meeting and pick up a few good books on genetics and human development so that the rest of us don’t have to read this drivel all the time from you.
What would be your suggestion to explain why a subset of Indian asians–in India and everywhere else in the world–are highly successful in any number of quantitative fields including Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, while sub-saharan africans are woefully underrepresented in those areas?
What would be your suggestion to explain the remarkable extent of high-cognition pursuits such as rocketry, nuclear science, architecture, modern weaponry, and computer technology in India itself–despite its horrible caste history, history of colonization and difficult politics–while the entire sub-saharan continent lags in any innovation?
What would be your explanation for the marked success of Indian emigrants to Africa, including Uganda and South Africa, where they were neither white nor native Africans, but became so successful in Uganda (for example) that Idi Amin made an effort to expel them?
What would be your explanation for the marked successes of Indians everywhere, including those in the US on IT-field-related H1 visas? Why aren’t sub-saharan Africans also pouring into the US to take high-tech jobs on H1 visas?
You can use blanket name-calling such as “bullshit racist” but that’s pretty much the only ammo you have. What you haven’t got is a single proof case anywhere in the world that a population you consider–a priori–to be equal in potential in every way can actual perform equally. All you have is an eagerness to throw out hostile reactions based on your gut reaction.
