(by CP, in the Pit thread iiandyiiii links to): “I’m pretty sure we humans are smarter than cockroaches, but I’m not sure we know which genes are responsible for that, either. So I guess there’s “zero evidence” humans are smarter than cockroaches?”
I’m pretty sure we humans are smarter than cockroaches, even if we don’t know which genes are responsible for that.
I’m also pretty sure only someone entirely out of any facts to present would pretend that sentence compares the intelligence of black people to cockroaches.
I guess I’ll let you dust off your 50 year old Scarr study on a couple of meaningless poverty stricken cohorts already in the lowest intelligence tiers and trot it out when you need to trumpet egalitarianism.
But nature still diverges, and since she does, it’s more likely than not that for any two cohorts which can be shown to be separated enough to drive different gene prevalences, we’ll observe different outcomes driven by genes.
You cannot pretend you are not an egalitarian and simultaneously admit to the series in post 173 above. They are mutually exclusive.
I’m afraid you will be disappointed for a long long time when you try to erase genetically driven differences by finding excuses for traits you have arbitrarily decided have enough value to be off limits to nature.
Bringing up the intelligence of cockroaches at all, and how we can know it is inferior, in this discussion, is comparing them to black people, whether you like it or not. I know you didn’t intend to, but that you would use cockroaches as an example in this discussion about the intelligence of black people is very revealing, it seems to me.
It doesn’t trumpet egalitarianism, cockroach man. It just refutes the assertion that the genetic explanation is the best explanation for the test score gap.
Feel free to repeat it with modern methods. No idea why you’re not for this. Can you explain it?
This makes no sense whatsoever. You wrote those assertions, I assume you admit to them… Does that mean you are an egalitarian? My position is completely compatible with the possibility that some groups might have differing genes on average, for a variety of human characteristics including intelligence. I’m just not going to accept this as definitely true without genetic evidence, when society is still so profoundly unequal.
As long as you make the straw man egalitarian accusation, I’m going to point out that you inadvertently revealed you think the intelligence of black people is comparable to cockroaches.
CP: “We don’t have to know which genes make humans faster than slugs to know that genese are at play.”
iiandyiii: CP thinks asians are comparable to slugs.
Surely you can rise above that sort of drivel. But perhaps not.
Anyway, if you accept the series of assertions above, it becomes far more likely than not that genetic differences drive average outcome differences between the groups we call races.
A proposition of egalitarianism–that the default assumption should be the genes drive functions and traits equally, and that observed differences are cultural–is so unlikely that it is untenable. And, of course, the consistent patterns we see in everyday life support the proposition that genes drive an average difference which cannot be bridged with nurturing.
We can define races however we like. When we define them in a way that mirrors historic migration and evolution patterns, we are going to get average gene prevalence differences for the aggregate pools. And since evolution diverges by selecting for genes advantageous for reproduction, those pools are going to diverge.
That’s why an argument that gene differences are unlikely to be at the root of observed differences is a an argument for nature being egalitarian.
When we overlay pejoratives like “racism” we stray from a fundamental analysis into rhetorical soundbites, and give ourselves away that we simply prefer an egalitarianism where we all have about equal opportunity at birth to draw from our parents fully equivalent genes.
We don’t all draw from the same pool because we can’t select our parents. If we create cohorts by “race,” the pools from which we draw reflect an aggregate prevalence of gene variants within that race cohort.
And because those prevalences differ between race cohorts, it is overwhelmingly likely that gene-driven differences in outcomes will arise. This is in fact what we observe every day across every society and every political structure in a surprisingly similar pattern. To date, normalizing nurturing and opportunity have only extended on the idea that race groups differ. Normalizing opportunity for blacks (as an aggregate “race” pool) only extended evidence that there was a greater prevalence for sprinting genes. On the other hand, creating a subset of blacks with wealthy backgrounds and educated parents did not produce equivalent outcomes on the trait for quantitative STEM scores in academia.
Whether one trait or the other is valuable is a function of society and culture. Nature does not care. What we value today may tomorrow become meaningless in the never-ending quest for reproductive success.
I would be inclined to coach you toward considering all traits accidents of nature, and to stop being so attached to some over others that you are unable to understand how simple and obvious a proposition it is that nature diverges. To accept that is not a statement of an individual’s worth, and we need not pretend egalitarianism is a worthy goal any more than we need to pretend creationism is a worthy goal.
Perhaps we should decide to stop tracking race-based outcomes. Perhaps we should decide to track them and step in where nature diverges.
Those are the kinds of debates that are worthwhile in constructing a better society.
Flinging around inanities such as a pretense that I inadvertently compare cockroaches with blacks is just silly, and perhaps better suited to the Pit if you just need to vent your frustration.
CP, why are you so afraid of the Scarr study? Why don’t you advocate that it be repeated? Why is this so scary that you can’t even address it?
You still may not realize that, but that’s an inadvertent comparison. But there’s a difference – speed and intelligence are not the same. Races of people haven’t been referred to as being “slugs” for being slow, while races of people have historically been referred to as “cockroaches” quite frequently, in relation to intelligence and supposed undesirability and unsuitability for civilized society.
There’s no reason to bring up the intelligence of cockroaches unless you think it’s actually relevant. Unless you think that we can use the same reasoning for black people as for cockroaches, such an assertion has no place in the conversation.
I understand that you didn’t mean to compare the two. But you did. And I think the fact that you compared the two might be indicative of some sub-surface beliefs you have – that you may not even know that you have. I think most people would never consider comparing black people to cockroaches – they would never bring them up in such a conversation… but you did. And since you seem to be unwilling to stop with the “egalitarian” straw man crap that has nothing to do with me, I’m going to feel free to continue to bring up the cockroach thing.
Not when society is still as profoundly unequal as it is today.
So feel free to bring this up anytime someone argues this point, cockroach man, since I’m not.
Genes may well be part of the explanation. I’m totally open to it. But there’s no reason to accept this – not when the test score data is so paltry, and so brief – just a tiny, minute fraction of human history. A few decades is nothing whatsoever. Absolutely nothing, for such a monumental assertion, especially when society was massively, incredibly unequal for millenia, and still is extremely unequal in so many ways.
Feel free to bring this up anytime someone makes this point, cockroach man, 'cause I’m certainly not.
There has been no “normalizing nurturing and opportunity”, so this argument fails. Call me when opportunity and ‘nurture’ are actually normalized – they haven’t been yet; not even close.
We’ve found the source of the disagreement, and you continue to bring up straw-men and irrelevancies. You think that nurture and opportunity have been “normalized”, and I don’t. I don’t think we’ve come close to doing so – we’re still incredibly far from actually normalizing them today, unfortunately. When opportunity is so disparate for these groups, the differing test scores of these groups are entirely irrelevant for any argument about genetics.
We already know that groups with identical genes but different societal and cultural characteristics can differ wildly – just compare the Irish today to the Irish 100 years ago… the test score differences are huge. We know this difference isn’t due to genetics. We know it’s due to society and culture. When one believes, as I do, that opportunity and nurturing between black people and white people, as a group (and even taking things like income into account), may be as far from each other overall as it was for the Irish from 100 years ago until now, then it’s entirely reasonable to demand genetic data (information about all the genes for intelligence) for any assertion that the cause is genetics.
So if you want to convince me, you know what’s required – either real genetic data on intelligence, a repeat of something like the Scarr study that you seem so terrified of, or an actual (and probably entirely unethical) experiment that completely normalizes nurture and opportunity. Anything else is irrelevant to this discussion.
More interesting than the strawman of the “egalitarianism” made whole cloth - since there is no serious assertion of equality of genetics or lack of influence desptie the gross distortioin from a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority, is the recent reportingon the more complicated history of the genetics flows between the populations, render more and more nonsensical the just so stories of genetic isolation or use pretense there is an analytical validity in biological sciences to averaging divergent populations.
This is a particularly weird and incoherent claim from the “black people are inherently inferior in intelligence, on average, due to genetics” crowd… so we’re supposed to accept that certain African ethnic groups are so inherently genetically different, on average, that an individual from one couldn’t hope to compete in certain sports… but African people in general are so similar that they can all be lumped together for such incredibly complicated and fundamentally human characteristics as intelligence (and there’s probably no human characteristic that is more complicated)??
Makes no sense, unless perhaps one is determine to believe that black people are inherently inferior no matter what.
Yes this is what I refer to in the misuse (either from the lack of the competency or deliberate to support a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority) of the statistical concepts. the assumptions necessary change according to the circumstance of the argument.
particularly as it extends to the american populations that have such large other genetic inputs of very recent date. but we get hand waving of averages, ignoring the necessary examination of the coherence of the statistical population to have conclusions from it.
LOL. Are you able to comprehend what you are reading? :rolleyes:
Let me help parse it out for you.
This author is saying that 7% of the genomes of the Yoruba people of Nigeria are of eurasian origin.
Lessee…that would leave um…93% that isn’t eurasian, right? That difference is precisely because of a separation that existed, creating two gene variant pools, with backflow of eurasian genes into africa. If you’ve read my other posts, I’ve explained all that ad nauseum, via both Saharan-Sahel routes and east africa…(according to current thinking).
So uh, without meaning to embarrass you, what ya got right there are two completely different prevalences for the “eurasian geneset” they are tracking.
Let’s suppose that the eurasian geneset drives trait X; the Yoruba geneset trait Y.
A Eurasian, according to your article, has about 13 times the odds of having trait X as the Yoruban; vice versa for trait Y and eurasians.
If you are looking at cohorts where the Yoruba self-identify into one cohort, and the eurasians another, you’d see the outcome driven by trait X appear 13 times as often, and you would see a substantial difference in the average outcome of the group when measuring for trait X.
I’m not sure if “the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority” results in a forbidden noun or not, but it’s a stupid belief that completely confuses what is correct and misstates the conclusion.
What is correct is that, if we self-identify into race groups (as commonly categorized), we align ourselves into groups that have different average gene variant prevalences.
Where those gene variants drive disparate outcomes and are widely penetrated enough into the race grouping cohort, we will see an average difference at the aggregate population level.
This is exactly the opposite of saying “race is the primary determinant” of differences. Gene prevalence is the primary determinant of aggregate average differences when nurturing is equivalent. Race is a social construct and doesn’t drive a thing. President Obama can self-identify as black; his gene pool is well over 50% eurasian, given a european mother and a father relatively close to east african pools. His “race” doesn’t drive his outcomes. His genes do, and they reflect the average european pool much more closely than the average sub-saharan pool.
Mr Obama’s geneset is not very close to the average geneset of “black” self-identifiers. Beyond that, for any given individual, self-identification with a particular race is a very lame and useless way to try and predict an outcome for that individual.
as happens also with the social clubs. it is not very useful however to learn from.
Yes I know you like to misuse the statistical populations to distract from the lack of the coherence, as having the term “average” as a red cape.
So I can only understand from this strange post that you are capable of knowing better about the coherence of the assertions of the conclusions of causation of a factor that can be drawn from the population set that is heterogeneous but have a preconclusion to get to, no matter the internal contradictions in the jumping and the skipping forward.
**Originally Posted by Belowjob2.0 ** From the NYT article you linked:
“The most astonishing thing is there’s quite a lot of backflow in all modern African populations,” Dr. Pinhasi said. He and his colleagues estimate that 7 percent of the genomes of the Yoruba people of Nigeria are of Eurasian origin. In the genomes of Mbuti pygmies who live in the rain forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 6 percent of the DNA comes from Eurasians…" CP’s been staking his argument on a separation that never existed.
You have grown confused about which argument you were making.
You made a statement to the effect that the (race geneset) separation never existed.
Then you quoted the NYT article above.
That article says precisely the opposite of what you apparently thought it said.
It does not say separation does not exist.
It accepts (as do all scientists in this area) that these historic geneset separations DO exist. It then goes on to mention a backflow of 7% of the separated geneset.
Now you want to pretend the discussion was about whether or not those separated genes make a difference in “simple proportional ratios.”
<CP laughing here>
Who gives a rat’s ass if the genesets make a difference in “simple proportional ratios”? Is that something you made up as a test? 'Cuz no one I know holds to a position that idiotic.
At hand is gene prevalence differences within these pools. For gene variants that ARE significant, a seven-fold difference in the chance you get that significant gene variant drives a difference for that outcome.
Focus on learning one thing at a time so you don’t get so confused.
Start with understanding that what the article calls “eurasian” genes and “african” genes are different sets BECAUSE THEY ARE SEPARATED pools. The pools were separated by historic migration patterns, evolutionary drivers for gene variants, and introgression of archaic hominem lines such as Neanderthal genesets into the eurasian group.
And the groups remain substantially different in the aggregate, because (having been separated) only about 7% of the Yoruban geneset is eurasian (versus close to 100% of the eurasian geneset being eurasian).
CP is still afraid of the Scarr study, apparently, and still unwilling to share why he doesn’t advocate that the study be repeated with modern methods. What’s so scary about that, that it can’t even be mentioned or discussed?
It is a pitifully lame study that offers nothing of substance. Although it isn’t relevant to the discussion here, my comments about it are elsewhere on the board.
If you want to start a thread on it, I’ll try to weigh in on why it is of no value.
Modern genetic analysis would allow much more accurate approaches to the general idea of seeing whether or not admixed race groups have outcomes that reflect source population proportion.
However such studies where the primary goal is to prove gene-based racial disparities for sensitive areas such as academic performance are unlikely to get funding or support, and unlikely to find publication. We are pretty determined as a society to accept that race should only be a social construct.
Undertaking studies the outcome of which could suggest that source population genesets drive disparate academic ability would get your research blacklisted as fast as the research by Bruce Lahn on the MCPH1 Haplogroup D variant.
No one in their right mind (at least, no one interested in retaining an academic career) wants to pursue research geared toward proving a link between gene variants and race-based aggregate outcomes. And I am not aware of anyone interested in funding it.
If scientists were confident the outcome of the research would be an egalitarian Nature, the research would get readily funded. But gene research is not headed in that direction, and no one I know of in the field thinks the result of such research would be anything but what it is for every other animal group studied:
Evolution diverges. Separated populations have disparate outcomes because their average genesets have diverged. Because african and non-african populations have disparate aggregate pool averages, it is highly unlikely that average outcomes would be the same for almost anything studied, be it disease genes, creatine levels, bone density, fast-twitch muscle fiber gene homozygosity, or neurophysiology.
There’s nothing wrong with the study except that you don’t like the outcome.
I don’t buy this conspiracy theorizing. It makes it to easy for you to excuse the lack of evidence and research. It’s just as likely (and probably far more so) that the study hasn’t been repeated because the matter is considered pretty much settled by most of the scientific community, considering past good research like the Scarr study, and further confirmation is not necessary. And I think it’s likely that your side hasn’t repeated it (and it would be a pretty easy and cheap experiment nowadays) because most who advocate for the inherent intellectual inferiority of black people aren’t actually interested in good science.
I find the last point particularly weird. Do you really believe that all populations differ in every single genetic characteristic? You really believe that there is some hierarchy for every characteristic by race? There’s a funniest and least funny race, perhaps? A most coordinated and clumsiest race? Every race can be ranked by scrotum wrinkliness? By fingernail thickness? By musical ability? You really don’t believe that there is a single human generic characteristic that doesn’t vary by race? That seems so bizarre to me.
yes, and if we align ourselves in ad hoc social groups we also have a group with different average gene variants…
Excellent, we have now a new heterogeneous genetic population.
your assertions that there is the clear linkage by jumping from one thing to the other, this is simply either a poor understanding of the proper practices of the statistical analytics one has to approach for heterogenous population or a decided misuse.
it is tiresome however to see the simple and constant abuse of the term average to attempt to assert a meaning.
We could align ourselves into tall and short, for example, using self-identification.
If we did, odds are there would be a difference in average height.
And odds are that an average difference in the prevalence of gene variants driving height would be the reason that outcome differs.
So you are on the right track to understanding the idea that aggregate pool average outcome differences being driven by aggregate pool average prevalence for gene variants driving the outcome.
Self-identified groups, yes. Heterogeneous, yes. Genes accounting for the average outcome difference, yes.
Pretty simple, really.
It’s not an “abuse” of average. It’s what “average” means.
