What makes your point of view racist is that you hypothesize genes as the explanation, but ignore how extraordinarily unsuccessful behavior genetic studies have been in finding genes that make anything more than the tiniest contribution to some measures of intelligence.
You stick to this genetic hypothesis despite the fact that none of these genes, as extremely small as their individual effects are, are shown to vary with populations you propose as ‘races’.
You promote studies that have yet to be replicated (in the race section of the link is a fairly famous study that was unable to be replicated) and I can tell you from experience, when dealing with human behavioral genetics especially, wait until the finding is replicated more than a few times.
What this means is that the evidence for your point of view is extremely weak (as in does not exist), yet you your view can be found in every thread where race and intelligence are even tangentially the topic.
On the other hand, you have the vastly disparate treatment of black people in America versus white people (or East Asians) that is in the published literature and on our news every day. This differential treatment that leaks into almost every aspect of our lives…you ignore or hand wave away.
What makes your behavior a facet of racism is how strongly you’ve bought into this pet hypothesis without evidence, while discounting the hypothesis that has far stronger evidence. It seems as though as you approach the evidence with your conclusion determined.
This leaves people like me assured with the idea that you’re a racist and this isn’t about science and finding justice for a taboo hypothesis, this is about your politics. You could disguise that more if in the future you show more doubt about your hypothesis and pretend to respect the huge number of studies showing disparities in the environments within which white and black people grow.
Yes, I do. Good science with good methodology at the time. For some reason, your side refuses to recreate it with modern methods, even though it wouldn’t be that difficult or expensive.
Quite a long straw man post. After all this time, I’m not surprised any more that you consistently and continually choose to totally misunderstand and misrepresent my position.
In other words, none of this conflicts with anything I’ve ever said. You’re arguing with fantasy people, not me, and not any other posters that I see.
I’ll repeat my position again – until we actually have an equal society, in which people are treated the same regardless of race/ethnicity/etc. by government, culture, media, and all other aspects of society, then group test scores (including IQ test scores) can never tell us a single thing about the genetics for intelligence. They provide no information whatsoever about differences between groups in genes for intelligence, when society is not equal.
It’s too simple. Or rather, it’s too simplistic. It makes no sense to say that we can get “no information” until society is equal. Science rarely works under perfect conditions, and exterior variables often have to be taken into account. Your position would freeze much of science to the point of being virtually useless.
It’s very specific – I hold that various test scores tell us nothing about any possible genetic causes for group outcome differences, and cannot tell us anything about this specific thing, until society is actually equal.
This is just for this specific thing, not for science in general.
And I’m not saying that we can’t find out and discover new things relating to genetics for intelligence, or group differences in genetics, or group differences in various outcomes – just that the test scores themselves (between groups, not between individuals) don’t and can’t provide any information on group genetics when society is still profoundly unequal. Other things, particularly research into genetics, might actually provide information. The aforementioned Scarr study provided information on this topic, and similar experiments could do so as well.
He is by definition a racist. His arguments are racist. There is no insult in identifying a person for what they are. That’s like getting a warning for calling you a moderator.
It is simple **inbred **in the discourse of race and the inherent genetic inferiority, it is not objectionable to assert this, but you must only say it is clear that there is “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority” but you should not use the noun of this.
this is of course maintains the objectivity so that there is the polite space to assert the inherent genetic inferiority of some skin colors, this is not of course long form denigration, and it must not be name called, this definition.
And, of course, it’s perfectly acceptable for you reassure yourself about anything that makes you feel better.
I would appreciate it if you don’t attribute links to me that I did not use…
I’m not sure this is the right GD thread to talk about whether or not gene variants drive intelligence. As I have said elsewhere, it is pretty obvious to me that they do. Within a given family, intelligence differences can be quite remarkable, and it becomes a bit of a stretch to always only push nurturing. Across species, intelligence differences are remarkable, probably due to genes and not nurturing. Within species, where we can reasonably control for gene pools (dog breeds, e.g.), intelligence differences are remarkable. And within our own species, we can control for typically-advanced nurturing such as opportunity, income, parental education and so on, and show remarkable outcome differences that persist.
But if you want to think gene variants only drive a tiny amount, have at it. You are right that it is a complex area to actually link SNP variations and any given outcome for an individual. We do have one study that shows so small a variation as a C-T substitution within a single base pair can make a 1% difference. Interesting, but hardly the kind of proof you are looking for.
But to the discussion at hand, I do think it’s kind of obvious that nature diverges, and that human migration patterns have a long history of diverging. And I notice that we are OK discussing that divergence for things like physical appearance or disease gene variants, but not for intelligence. Sports outcomes and physiology are somewhere in between on the acceptable discussion scale.
So for me, at least, the “politics” accusations are more fairly directed toward those who hold some outcomes off limits for frank discussions, and who cry “racist” if the discussion is prevalence for neurophysiology gene variants, but not for red cell morphology gene variants.
I have said elsewhere many times that I am unconcerned about the label of “racist.” I am concerned with what is correct and what is wrong; what is scientific and what is hope.
If I am a racist because I believe that gene variant prevalence differences between self-identified black and white cohorts results in group average differences for academic quantified tests or sprinting or whatever, then we should also label as “racist” the individual who believes the difference for frequency of Hb SS sickle cell disease for the same cohorts is due to gene prevalence differences.
It is the identical premise: migration patterns and evolution drive gene variation prevalence differences which affect average outcomes for the aggregate cohorts.
Nature and evolution do not discriminate which genes we consider functionally valuable. That you put a premium on the neurophysiologic skillset for an academic test over the musculoskeletal skillset for the 100 meter dash over the resistance to an endemic infection is of no consequence to Nature.
She just randomly swaps out nucleobases and lets the chips fall where they may. When they are advantageous for reproduction, descendant lines have higher penetrations, and so over time nature diverges.
It’s an article of faith she diverges only for functions we do not place on our Special Shelf for Egalitarianism.
This is where we disagree (on opportunity, and “so on”), and disagree hugely. Do you at least acknowledge the massive disagreement on this assumption, and how this affects our conclusions?
An “article of faith” that no one that I’ve seen in these threads actually seems to hold, other than the fantasy people in your own mind.
For the purpose of this thread, I would be perfectly content to have you agree that:
The US OMB establishes self-identified race groups, and there is a great deal of data collected using those race groups.
When gene variants are studied using aggregate pools created by those self-identified groups, average prevalence for any number of gene variants are markedly different (Using “black/white” for example: R577X homozygosity, MCPH1 Haplogroup D, gene variants introgressed from Neanderthal lines, and thousands of gene variants studied for physiology and medicine).
Average observed outcomes are consistently and quantifiably different between race groups.
There is good evidence that gene variant penetration among these race groups has been driven by ongoing Darwinian selection and not simply founder effects.
In general, evolution diverges separated populations.
“Race” should not be considered a biologically-definable cohort.
Self-identification into socially-constructed race groups creates biologically different pools because it drives the chance that any given individual associates into a pool where average gene variant prevalence differs from the other pools.
Nature does not pursue egalitarianism for the distribution of gene variants among race pools.
All of these fall into two categories for me: things I’ve never denied, and things that are irrelevant to the question of whether black people are inherently genetically inferior in intelligence on average.
So you never need to bring them up again in our disagreements on this issue. All irrelevancies, or things that I’ve never disagreed with.
I still think you’re creating a rule for this one, tiny area of scientific inquiry for a a reason that does not square with how we treat other, very similar areas of scientific inquiry. I can’t think of an area where we simply refuse to try and work around the limitations in data collection rather than try and figure out some way to work around the limitations or draw some information, however limited, from the data we ARE able to collect.
I don’t think I’m doing this – we can certainly try and work around any limitations, and try and figure things out… but until society is actually equal, I don’t see how, logically, we can gain any good scientific information about any possible intrinsic differences in group average intelligence, genetically speaking, without actual genetic information.
I’m not making a rule – I’m saying what I think is the legitimate, scientific, and logical way to look at the data. When society is significantly unequal in so many ways, and these inequalities might have enormous impacts on the mental and psychological development of children and young people, then the test scores can’t and don’t tell us anything about how these groups differ genetically. Further, I’m saying that actual studies have been done which looked at the genetic ancestry (such as the Scarr study, which compared test scores to actual African ancestry among poor black kids), and the findings were contrary to any association between African ancestry and lower test scores.
It’s like this – if there were intelligence and academic testing in 1830s Georgia for every child and adolescent, would any average differences between white and black children tell us anything at all about any genetic differences on average between the groups? I think it’s pretty clear that the answer is “no”. I’m saying that it’s still “no”, because there are still very significant (if smaller) disparities in how black and white people are treated, on average, by society, culture, the law, etc.
I’ll add one caveat or “out” to my point here – there is, actually, a way that we could possibly get good data on possible genetic differences for intelligence between groups without specific genetic data: create 2 identical biospheres, run by robots- and provide the 2 biospheres with black and white genetic material… raise the babies from scratch, with identical robot parenting and robot teaching, no media representations that portrayed black and white people any differently at all, and test the the children with an agreed upon intelligence test. Then maybe you’ve actually managed to have a totally unbiased test, with no influence from media and culture (so “nurture”, as in “nature vs nurture”, would actually be normalized – and nurture has never otherwise been actually normalized). Then you’d have test scores from two groups whose only difference could possibly be genetic source material, and any differences in the averages (assuming large enough groups) could be assumed to be genetic.
If this kind of approach is your only reasonable way to get “good data,” then I think you can rest comfy that your egalitarian world ideal will never be sullied.
It seems a bit silly to me, of course, and the rest of science doesn’t work that way.
On the race difference front, what has happened is that when entry barriers are removed for some cohorts, we see a marked difference in outcomes–even to the point of completely reversing past disparate representation. So that becomes pretty good evidence that we found the nurturing variable responsible for disparate representation and allowed the (average) gene difference to be expressed.
For example, sprinting or basketball. There’s no doubt it was opportunity disparity and not average gene pool difference which kept the early Olympic sprinters, the NBA and the Hebrew league white. When the barrier was lifted, it turned out the group which contained the highest prevalence for the best gene variants for those skillsets was the black “race.”
No biosphere needed. No one thinks nurturing variables are not still at play (in sports or elsewhere). But it’s not THAT hard to create reasonable cohorts where nurturing variables are reasonably normalized.
With respect to some human traits that we value, though, it may be easier to live in a fantasy world that is never satisified with anything but an unachievable double blind experiment. Beats reality, I guess.
Meantime evolution will still diverge, making it far more likely than not that as a group average races will never perform equally for average outcomes. Whites will never get off their lazy asses in large enough numbers to dominate power sprinting again, and asians will continue to ignore ancestral maltreatment and stay dominant in the STEMs.
For now you’ll have to content yourself with finding additional excuses for why wealthy and privileged black students from families with high parental education underscore poverty stricken whites and asians with uneducated parents. I suspect any data that supports THAT will be embraced by you even if it doesn’t use two biospheres and a couple of robots.
It’s not the only way to get “good data” – you can get actual genetic data, or do experiments with actual genetic ancestry, like the Scarr study (feel free to repeat it with modern methods if you don’t like it). But without genetic data, and without such controls as I describe,
I agree – that’s not how science works. Feel free to repeat the Scarr study or discover all the genes responsible for high and low intelligence in humans.
No it wasn’t, even going without genetic evidence – if we look at the record holders, it seems to be Jamaicans. What’s special about Jamaica? Are there special unique Jamaican genes, or is it possible that the Jamaican cultural near-obsession with sprinting has something to do with it?
Not that sprinting and intelligence are particularly comparable – sprinting can be hard-measured with no ambiguity. Intelligence can’t. And that’s just one difference. Further, sprinting hasn’t been culturally considered a core human characteristic, and one of the things that most separates humans from other creatures; and poor sprinting ability hasn’t been a long-term cultural slander against a group that has been treated terribly by society.
Yes it is. So far it hasn’t been done. You disagree – I understand that. But this is a disagreement in opinion – you can’t quantify “nurturing”, since so many aspects of human nurturing can’t be quantified. You think it can be reasonably normalized right now, and I don’t (short of this nutty, unethical experiment).
There are many things that could satisfy it (or at least provide good data towards satisfying it) – find the genes for intelligence, or the much easier route of repeating the Scarr study (or something similar) with modern methods. Why don’t you advocate for that? Repeating that study would be easy and cheap… why don’t you want to see it done? Why do you ignore that so much?
So now, even as interracial children are becoming so much more common, you’re predicting the future on this? I’ll assume you’re joking.
I’ve offered several explanations, chiefly the broad one that regardless of parental income black people in American society (and probably elsewhere) faces societal and cultural obstacles that other people don’t, making it more difficult for a black person to succeed, regardless of income. You just ignore my explanations, and assume inferiority.
Of course because of a noun forbidden to describe the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority, and we can get another post that creatively misuses the statistical concepts of the average and the causation to badly cover such assertions.
