It’s fun.
And of course you must have recognized your question as fallacious even as you were typing it.
Strawman. Obviously human populations don’t all have “the exact same distribution of traits”.
But that doesn’t mean that there must be significant differences among human populations in every characteristic. Since intelligence is universally adaptive—that is, there’s no human population in which it’s evolutionarily advantageous to be less intelligent—there’s no a priori reason to suppose that intelligence levels in different populations will be significantly different.
Yeah, that’s nothing to do with what we’re talking about. Yes different populations may have a different distribution of traits.
But SlackerInc’s claim was much more specific than that (and indeed you’ll note that I put to him that the idea that blacks happen to have fewer “smart genes” as the simpler alternative to his hypothesis (for people who wish to engage in such bigotry)).
His hypothesis is that the subpopulation that left africa had some smart genes in common, and then whites and asians* inherited those genes.
But notice how much empirical data this hypothesis requires us to handwave. Lots of populations outside of africa score poorly on IQ tests and (by the logic of people who wish to believe in such things) are as, or more, stupid than average blacks. Meanwhile within africa, SlackerInc has conceded there may be intelligent populations there.
So the “just so” story tells us nothing and makes no claim; it’s just an excuse to feel superior.
- The whole “asians are smart” thing is fascinating to me. Because for a lot of european history, asians too were considered inferior and still many asian populations are looked down in that way. But because enough Chinese and Japanese kids, often from wealthy families, and from cultures that massively emphasize academic success do well in US schools, well…we have to call them smart now.
Maybe this whole thing could be solved by letting in more African immigrants…first and second generation african immigrants already do disproportionately well in school.
Or just a couple wealthy countries to spring up in Africa (and many of the world’s fastest-growing economies are on that continent now) and maybe this horseshit will finally be put to bed (that’s what you do with horseshit, right)?
Slight hijack but this reminds me of a book I ran across a few years back. It was written by an anthropologist in the 1920s or 30s studying rural Korea. In it, he claimed the Korean villagers he encountered demonstrated intelligence above Chinese peasants but lower than Japanese. Of course, the overall assumption was that Asians weren’t especially intelligent compared to Europeans.
The belief that Asians were not inherently more intelligent existed within the lifetime of people who are currently alive.
But of course, that would be nurture, not nature, right? Unlike Africans, because we can obviously rule it out on a continent by continent basis just-so, right?
I agree with your post and I have to add one likely reason why “scientific” racists use Asians as a fig leaf that fails in the end to protect the racists from being accused of being so.
Of course, it was in the end just a ruse, the fascists were just opportunistic just as many of today’s fascists are.
And then we have the naive ones that are oblivious about how they are being played by the old fashion fascists and neo fascists of today.
Eh, saying “but East Asians are smart too!” - and really, that’s a fucking huge population to be generalising about - is just a fig leaf so Slinky and his ilk can say darkies are too dumb to be worth schooling and still claim not to be racists.
It’s one thing to oppose my position, or even to throw insults (this being the Pit and all). But here you go beyond making a straw man and just flat out lie, unless you are really so stupid as to be unable to comprehend the plainest language.
I have said repeatedly that not only do black kids already generally get more money spent on their schooling than white kids in the same district (a radical shift from “separate but (un)equal” days), but that I am in favor of this and would support MORE such funding, as long as it was not applied in a punitive way or one that calls attention to black kids’ lower aptitude. So you are even more full of shit than most of your allies to say something like this.
ETA: East Asians are a huge population, but not a very diverse one genetically. They all descend from a founder population that migrated north and east from Africa approximately 60,000 years ago. So the number of individuals is irrelevant, except to note how successful they have been in a “Selfish Gene” sense.
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If this was all you were saying then I would broadly agree.
It’s interesting: you accuse Penfeather of using a straw man and then you use a (defensive) straw man yourself: “All I’m saying is <some innocuous statement>”
It depends what you’re including in East Asian. Are Filipinos east asian? Mongolians? Are we just going to draw a line around countries doing well right now?
What about Indians? They have a strong cultural drive for academic performance, so Indian immigrants do disproportionately well in many countries…is there a way we can group them with the “right” kind of asians?
No in saying that groups can’t be genetically different in many ways. Maybe they are.
We’re disputing the assertion that specific groups (white people/Jews/Asians) are inherently genetically smarter, and specific groups are inherently genetically dumber (black people), because the evidence for this assertion is so weak, and the evidence against it much stronger.
That should be “no one is saying” at the start of my last post.
GIGO, I’m sorry but your posts just are too much of a headache to try to parse. I stand by my statement that you are doing pretty well as an ESL (I would probably feel pretty good if I can do as well in French), but I think you aim too high and bite off more than you can chew. I suggest you tamp down the complexity of your sentences when writing in English, shorten your posts, and spend the time making sure you are communicating clearly.
Yes. No. Yes.
But “panicked” is a bit of an exaggeration. “Anxious” would be more fitting.
And while I didn’t remember specifics (“I don’t remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I’ve eaten, but both have made me what I am”), this blog post reminds me of the vibe I got:
Link?
Still not seeing a question. Maybe try starting with a “W” word and ending with a question mark? 
Oy. Seriously? Is this what the rest of you believe as well? It would explain a lot.
Okay, where to begin? How about with a question: if this reasoning is correct, why aren’t chimpanzees capable of scoring highly on IQ tests? Even when they are adopted by humans and carefully taught sign language, they are cleverer than most animals but cannot demonstrate levels of scholastic aptitude that wouldn’t be blown out of water by your average ten year old. So why didn’t they continue to match IQ with their hominid cousins after the lines branched off?
So that’s the empirical point. The theoretical/systemic one requires that you understand that there are in fact tradeoffs involved in evolving toward greater intelligence. It’s not a win-win characteristic.
Let’s start with birth weight:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199710233371706
If anyone is wondering what the heck this has to do with IQ, the answer is quite a bit:
Hopefully it’s not necessary to explain that gestating and then feeding a higher-birthweight baby requires more from the mother. And higher nutritional requirements in the ancestral environment can be very costly in evolutionary terms.
Another factor is difficulty in giving birth. Homo sapiens sapiens is the only species that has such difficulty getting its young’s cranium through the pelvis, and this has only increased as our species’ intelligence has risen. It also results in our infants being helpless for a longer period of time, which is risky in dealing with predators.
It’s difficult to find a lot of detailed information on this because of the obvious stigma associated with this kind of research (and I’m deliberately not citing Rushton, who did look very specifically at this stuff). But this article indicates that black babies do have skulls different from white babies:
And this one does find significantly greater incidence of microcephaly (extremely small head circumference) among nonwhite babies:
Yes, that was just flat out, ethnocentric racism. I feel fairly certain that most of the people who trumpet “racialist” or “race realist” perspectives are not especially thrilled that Asians come out on top of the heap. I think they’d be much more comfortable with a hierarchy where Asians were at most even with whites or preferably a little below, and then blacks a ways down from there. But the evidence is just not there. I mean, virtually no one denies that this is what the IQ data say. So there are really only two positions you can take: that the data is basically valid, or that it is not valid because racism. That doesn’t leave the racialist crowd any way to avoid acknowledging Asian superiority unless they want to join the PC crowd in claiming it’s all bullshit.
I don’t get what you are trying to say in this paragraph.
Ehh, no. Read it again: I did not say “All I’m saying”. I simply pointed out that it was a lie to say I’m advocating not wasting resources educating black kids, because I have advocated just the opposite. Nowhere did I say that was ALL I was saying. I think it’s okay (and not a “defensive straw man”) to point out why someone’s claim about my position is a falsehood!
BTW, those of you who don’t make such egregiously false claims ought to call out those who do. It would make you look a lot more intellectually honest, rather than just circling your wagons with your allies. And as a bonus, it would be the right thing to do!
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Oh, it’s always a winning argument when the chimp comparisons start…
What do you mean still?
I asked a question, beginning with the word “What”, and ending with a question mark, and you said it stunk to high heaven. So in my next post I explained why I asked you that question. That’s what you’re now complaining is “still not a question”.
Anxious? How so?
Looks like the blogger is very narrowly focused on Diamond’s passing remarks about intelligence, when Diamond’s main thesis is that European cultures dominated because of, well… guns, germs and steel.
The fun thing about his kind of “scientific” racist is that it doesn’t even matter the people they are talking about: if they’re in the wrong group and at the wrong end of the economic and social ladder, they get exactly the same characteristics attributed to them. Here in New Zealand you’ll hear just the same “innate” behaviours as Slinky attaches to African Americans attributed to Maori and Pacific Islanders:
*Lovely people, for the most part, but just not that academic, shall we say? Great at sport - as long as it’s not too intellectually taxing; I mean, you don’t see many Maori cricketers, do you? - and such great natural musicians, and such a smiling, happy-go-lucky lot too, as long as they don’t get into the grog and turn violent. Pretty feckless, too, no real sense of responsibility, and happy not to do a day’s work but live off the benefit and produce hundreds of kids. No point sending them to school, really, not that they want to go: they’re happy enough working in the factories or mending the roads, although they want watching pretty carefully to make sure they don’t steal or slack off. *
And of course the New Zealand Slinky has his “scientific” reasons, too:
Well, they all came down from the islands, and life was easy there, the sun was shining all the time so they didn’t have to build real houses, and if they were hungry they just had to stretch out a hand for a coconut or a fish from the lagoon. It bred them slow and lazy, no real ambition. Not like the Chinese or the Indians. Not like us.
It’s honestly amazing how many disparate brown populations the world over have exactly the same innate, hereditary characteristics ascribed to them: not for any environmental or social reasons, of course, they’re born that way. It’s just science.
And it always just so happens that these groups are the ones treated, by far, the most abominably. It’s just coincidence that the two groups treated by far the worst in American history – black people and native Americans – score the lowest on various tests as well as being at the bottom of so many statistical indicators, right? It couldn’t be that that treatment (still ongoing in many ways) has ramifications today, could it? No, those two groups must be just inherently inferior, genetically sharing the same inferior intellect, even though they’re farther away from each other in ancestry than nearly any two groups on Earth could be.
I see Penfeather is still trying to impute to me an argument for putting fewer, rather than more, resources toward educating black children—even though I’ve consistently said precisely the opposite. I know it’s easier to argue against your straw man racists than the actual person before you, but that’s not how it works.
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Chimpanzees aren’t human; they’re an entirely different though related species. We would not expect chimpanzees to be good at human stuff like taking IQ tests any more than we’d expect humans to be good at chimpanzee stuff like clinging on to tree limbs with our feet.
What? That’s like asking why whales didn’t continue to grow shaggy hides like cows after their “lines branched off”.
Humans and chimps diverged from common ancestry millions of years ago, long before humans began to develop our exceptional brain size. Humans are all members of one species whose comparatively tiny intraspecies differences have developed in the blink of an eye relative to our divergence from the line of chimpanzees.
There is absolutely no reason to expect that intelligence would necessarily evolve convergently in humans and chimpanzees. Chimpanzees as a species have done fine up to very recently without developing exceptional intelligence.
It’s a profoundly idiotic and ill-informed point.
I do understand that, Professor Goofus, but what you’re neglecting to take into account is that the human species made that tradeoff long, long after we separated from chimps.
If different humans had remained in geographically isolated populations for millions of years we might well have developed significant differences in intelligence, depending on our circumstances. But as I said, AFAICT there’s no reason to assume that high intelligence hasn’t been equally adaptive for all humans in the timescales actually involved.
You don’t seem to understand that this is all on a continuum. Separate populations in different environments don’t magically “know” they are still part of the same species, and adjust their evolution accordingly. Humans and chimps were subpopulations of one species when they started to diverge, and there is no precise moment when they became different species. They are still 99% the same in DNA.
And you say the rise of our special intelligence occurred after the divergence from chimps. I call bullshit. Do you really think our common ancestor was not the smartest species ever to walk the earth at that time?
We probably cannot branch off any more, because of modern global connectivity. But you can be sure that if human populations had remained as separated as they were before the development of seafaring ships and so on, they would have become separate species, and not identically intelligent ones. That process started 60,000 years ago and has only recently been disrupted.
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