Will you please just link to the post where this occurred, and settle this? Thank you.
(returns to lurking)
[QUOTE=Chief Pendant]
Nature is not egalitarian. She has no idea which genes we value.
[/QUOTE]
But this is really at the heart of your position. Serious question: do you consider nature to be “racist”? If not, how can merely describing what exists in nature be racist? I know you’ve said that a statement like, “Blacks have skin that contains more melanin” is not racist. So IF—and I admit that we don’t have this information—but if an intelligence gene was identified and we knew with complete scientific certainty that the gene existed in one race with greater prevalence/strength than another race, would simply relaying that fact be racist? Would the data itself be racist?
Never mind the request. I Googled it. It’s a Pit thread, here is the post. Here is the response to it.
That settles that.
(I hope OK to link to the posts, in the Pit)
Here’s the exchange (Posts 472 and 473):
[QUOTE=iiandyiiii]
[QUOTE=Chief Pendant]
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?
[/QUOTE]
Hint: if you’re trying to convince us that it’s not racist to state that black people are less intelligent than white people, it’s probably not wise to compare black people to cockroaches.
Chief Pedant – he’s not racist… he just thinks black people are inherently genetically less intelligent than white people – not because of any genetic data, but for the same reasons we know that cockroaches are less intelligent than white people.
Good luck with that one.
[/QUOTE]
Oops, you beat me to it.
Sometimes I get impatient. Now I see if I waited a few minutes, I could have saved the 12 seconds it took to find it.
No, the heart of my position is that “nurture” and “opportunity” factors have not come close to being normalized, and therefore are still very likely to play some role (and possibly the entire role) in any remaining test-score gaps.
No, nature is not racist. “Racist” can apply to people and it can apply to statements, and that’s it. Saying “gene x is more common in race y than race z” would not be racist. Saying “black people are inherently inferior in intellect due to genes” would still be racist (by the current definition and usage, as I understand it). In such a sci-fi scenario, the term “racist” would probably start to change in usage, just like various terminology would probably change if we found with absolute certainty a gene for sadism and desire-for-torture that was much more common in white people, or a gene with absolute certainty for greed that was much more common in Jews.
But without that gene, I have no problem with calling these assertions about such characteristics as intelligence, aggression, and greed (along with other characteristics whose denigration has been used as justification for brutality and oppression) racist assertions.
This is junior modding?
On the question of whether nurture is reasonably normalized for US blacks with highly privileged backgrounds when they are competing on a standardized academic exam with extremely underprivileged whites and asians, here’s my suggestion:
Get your reasons why this does not normalize opportunity out in front of U Texas and several of the Ivy Leagues, who are struggling with this right now.
In particular U Texas is on the hotseat for using “black” as a standalone criterion to add weight for black applicants from the middle and upper classes. As I mentioned above, U Texas wants these higher quality black students but U Texas needs to pass strict scrutiny that there are defensible reasons for this. U Texas is failing strict scrutiny in their arguments that these kids are so underprivileged they should be bumped ahead of all others.
On the egalitarian front, only you can decide if you are an egalitarian or not. But I argue that your default position is egalitarian. Your default position is that there is “zero evidence” genes are responsible for race-based aggregate average differences in the skillset for academic test-taking.
The only acceptable resolution for you on that issue (as described above in your post) is twin biospheres with robotic parents.
You do not seem to be persuaded that, because nature diverges gene pools and because average race-based gene pools can be shown to be different, it is more likely than not that average outcomes for skillsets like sprinting and academic tests are different because gene pools are different.
By placing a trait related to what you call “intelligence” in a biosphere (versus, say a trait related to skin color), you create two groups for gene variant prevalences. If they affect a trait you don’t value, they go into one bucket. If they affect a trait you value, you want a biosphere double blind study.
I think your position is defensible, because traits we value have implications for how we manage society. But it is not an egalitarian position, and it does not treat all gene variants with equal dispassion the way nature does. As a consequence, I do not personally think you are able to approach the topic of neurophysiologic differences without a strong personal bias, and a double standard for “proof.”
Perhaps you would answer this question:
Is it more likely than not that genes for neurophysiology have diverged race-based neurophysiologic outcomes for the same reason that genes for appearance have diverged race-based superficial phenotypic outcomes? (i.e. that nature, being a complete egalitarian for messing with any given gene in her random fiddling, has not exempted genes for neurophysiology)
I’ve sent the emails out. I doubt they will be particularly useful to them, though, both because I’m not certain they are correct, and there doesn’t seem to be a short-term solution for them. In particular, my “black people in America, regardless of income, are subject to a combination of factors and treatment due to society and culture that can serve as obstacles to high achievement” hypothesis can’t be measured (that I know of) and has no immediate solution.
If you’re trying to imply that I’m certain of the cause, then I’m not – I’m very far from certain. I just see no reason to believe that the genetic explanation is more likely than non-genetic explanations, and I see a lot of reasons to believe that non-genetic explanations are more likely than the genetic explanation.
That’s very different than “egalitarian” as you’ve been using it, which seems to be a term you think describes people who believe nature has somehow exempted intelligence from evolution or population differences in terms of genetics.
Or something like the Scarr study, which I find a very significant piece of evidence. I’d be very interested in a recreation of that study with modern methods.
Right – because of many reasons. For example, history – at various times, so many different groups had “good” and “bad” outcomes, whether in terms of education stats, financial stats, criminal stats, or whatever – and so often, these groups advance out of it. It seems far too coincidental to me to believe that the two groups (with no close relationship to each other in terms of genetics) who have been treated most abominably in American history – Native Americans and African Americans – just happen to be at the bottom in terms of all these statistical outcomes due to some reason unrelated to their treatment through the centuries. Other reasons – the Flynn effect and similar things. We know of disparities in test scores as large or larger than the white-black disparity that were not caused by genes – for example, white Americans in 1930 and white Americans now. The gene pool for both groups is about the same, and yet the test scores are hugely different (for some tests, anyway). The cause was almost certainly related to society and culture. And we can point to tons of other disparities that are similarly proven (or close as can be to proven) to be cause by some element of society and culture. We can’t point to a single disparity in these sorts of statistics that are proven to be caused by genetics, so I think society and culture are much more likely as “default assumptions”. When we add in evidence like the Scarr study, then it seems even more likely that the explanation is not genetic.
Not really – I think I’d be just as unlikely to accept a genetic explanation with the same sorts of evidence for and against for some other trait… I just wouldn’t be likely to call claims about melanin or anemia “racist” or worry about their serious damage on society and culture, because such claims don’t have the same awful history as claims about the intelligence (or aggression, or a few other traits) of black people. So I’m just not as concerned about those other traits without that history, even if I’m no more likely to accept them.
I think you still don’t fully understand my position. See above.
The “i.e.” is different than the question, in my view. For the first question, I’d say “no” based on all the evidence and data I mentioned above (as well as other things) – based on all this data, like the Scarr study and much more, I think it’s a lot less likely. It’s possible, and might be a reasonable hypothesis, and I have no problem with the idea of studying it. For the “i.e.” question, my answer is “no”.
If SCOTUS leaves intact race-based AA defacto preferences as they are, I think we will be both be content. That does not currently seem likely, but who knows?
The (social) answer to the OP would be OMB’s five self-identified race categories, used for data collection.
Should SCOTUS rule against U Texas, or should States continue to chip away at race-based AA under the assumption that only nurturing opportunity separates performance outcomes of those race categories, we’ll see a progressive decline in proportionate representation of blacks in the upper echelons of American life.
A pro-Fisher ruling by SCOTUS in particular would hurt black admissions at selective universities by essentially making California’s prop 209 and Michigan’s Prop 2 applicable across all 50 States. It will open up highly selective universities currently gaming the application process toward blacks to many more lawsuits since it will be easy to show that Universities preferentially admit black students over asians and whites when both are equally disadvantaged socioeconomically. It will make it vastly more difficult for middle and upper class blacks to matriculate at better schools because all 50 States will see the same pressures California and Michigan schools have seen to stop pro-black admissions strategies.
To the extent that biological differences are driving the disparate outcomes, we will see a sad decline without de jure support for race-based AA.
So at least we can both hope you, and not I, have guessed correctly about Nature’s influence on these separated gene pools.