Let’s nip this in the bud. The problem that you and SG have is that your “proof”, your “information” is the words of racists and psuedo-sciencists which have been disproven for sometime now. A peer reviewed piece, is not a racist vouching for another racist, using the same sloppy science or lack of science to prove their point.
A book, a website, an article that only uses the words of other racists as evidence, is worthless and will be torn to shreds with real science. What you’re witnessing here, is what will always happen when you and your ilk turn up; your cause will be proven false.
Easily so. I almost feel sorry for you. Almost.
Unless you are prepared to provide real evidence, evidence not sponsered by a bunch of guys skeeting on each other about how ** they** are ones who are intelligent enough to have the right to breed…you’re wasting your time, but hey it’s your dime.
Well, let’s have a look at what the peers say in this peer journal.
Alright, that’s enough. You have one guy who holds up some statistics and makes some theories, then you have a dozen guys who say that his research is sloppy, correlations and causality poor, questioned the research methods of his cites, outright called it psuedo-science, etc etc. On the other hand, I’m just a dumb, sub-par poor Hispanic, so maybe I don’t understand the obvious genius of statistical methods.
Knock yourself out.
So does diet and environmental factors. The fact that your high IQ people “happen” to live in more post-industrialized nations with larger exposure to arts, nutrition, etc correlates with a variety of other positive factors, as well.
In any case, I though that the East Asians were the uber-smart people? How come they’re so short, socially dysfunctional, have the highest rate of suicide, etc? Or is this a case of Science Girl’s “environment is only important when it meets my needs” logic?
I don’t think that anyone is arguing that genetics have no effect on intelligence, including IQ. In fact, most people agree that it does. The questions being thrown around involve the concept of race, evolution, and environment. There is nothing from the studies I’ve seen that points to racial bias against IQ.
One advantage of getting people’s names correct is that it makes it easier for you to check whether they actually said what you wish they had. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza in fact believes that any attempt to define races in humans will be arbitrary. For instance:
(Genes, Peoples and Languages, 2000; Penguin, 2001, p26.) Or:
(p28-9).
If anybody ought to be reading Cavalli-Sforza, it should be Science Girl.
I have a question: how do you explain the fact that black northerners scored higher on IQ tests than white southerners when soldiers were recruited and tested during WWII? (Bergen Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), ch. 14, “The Skin Game.”)
Were Southern Whites genetically inferior to Northern Blacks? Are there genetic differences between Northern Whites and Southern Whites? Are Northern Whites and Southern Whites a different race?
Should Southern Whites not be discouraged to reproduce, while Northern Blacks encouraged?
Was the difference in I.Q. between Southern Whites and Northern Blacks based on genetics? history of i.q
Meh. Eugenics strikes me as an unworkably inefficient way of improving a population. Even if you paired up breeders in an attempt to maximize the chances of offspring with a desired characteristic, you’d have to wait thirty years, minimum, to see if you were successful. Animal husbandry at least involves creatures with quicker reproductive cycles, so one farmer might see a definite result of his experiments within his own lifetime.
Besides, if intelligence is the desired characteristic for eugenics in humans, how is it measured? Simple mathematical ability? Big fucking deal. Thirty years ago, a person smart at math probably had a handle on logarithms and how to use slide rules; skills that have now been made largely obsolete by modern calculators and computers. A good handle on calculus, I’ll admit, remains useful for a wide variety of engineering jobs, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand calculus. Given a good textbook and a good teacher, likely any motivated student (even one of average intelligence) could get a handle on Calc 101.
I daresay our best bet is identifying environmental and genetic causes that make some of us dumber, rather than chase the dream of giving evolution a helping hand, tainted as that dream is by two centuries of pseudoscience and brutality in the name of purity.
i have no issues with any arguments you eugenicists provide. i only wonder why do you care about this bs in the first place ?
you’re not going to be there to reap the fruits of your labor, you will be dead by that time.
i also think that effort in other areas of science such as Artificial Intelligence and various areas of Biotech is going to have a MUCH bigger payoff.
i mean selective breeding is so oldskool. yes it makes sense, yes it works, but there are more exciting things we can do today.
despite your claimed drop in IQ, productivity in US keeps rising at a record rate, this proves that average IQ of the masses is not the key to a better standard of living, technology is.
For a “scientist” you sure don’t understand causal relationships. Just because there is a correlation between two variables doesn’t mean the relationship is causal. It is more likely that there is a lurking variable, nutrition perhaps, that is affecting height, IQ, and health.
To start things off, let me make it clear that while ScienceGirl might labor under the mistaken impression that science can prove things, I don’t. What we presented is information, not proof. But more importantly, this information we provided, and the hypotheses which it supports, hasn’t been disproven - not by you, at least! There is more to arguing against an idea than pointing out that it conflicts with the current politically correct ideology then saying that someone else, at some other time, showed in some way, that it was wrong. Certainly I have no idea why you believe that all ethnic groups have the same innate abilities - I remind you that just assuming that all ethnic groups have the same intelligence, strength, longevity, and so forth isn’t acceptable.
Again, I’m not witnessing that yet. You haven’t provided any evidence whatsoever for your own belief that races display equal abilities.
Look, if we want to test the hypothesis that ethnic groups have the same levels of intelligence (since it’s pretty clear that this is what you believe), we can consider several sources of evidence:
Standardized tests
History
Social indicators
Brain size
Well, East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews score very well on IQ and achievement tests, whites somewhere in the middle, then blacks and Latinos. This is inconsistent with the hypothesis that ethnic groups have the same levels of innate intelligence.
History shows the progress of civilization and science occurring throughout Eurasia, with Africa lagging. This is also inconsistent with the hypothesis that ethnic groups have the same levels of innate intelligence.
Social indicators show a strong trend for East Asian societies to have high levels of wealth and low levels of crime, with African societies having low levels of development and a variety of backward beliefs and cultural norms. This, too, is inconsistent with the hypothesis that ethnic groups have the same levels of innate intelligence.
And of course brain size studies find that (even when controlling for body size) blacks have smaller brains than East Asians. This, too, is inconsistent with the hypothesis that ethnic groups have the same levels of innate intelligence.
While a variety of explanations for these phenomena exist, only one can account for all of them. Poor socioeconomic environment (the “standard” theory) and Discrimination (Ogbu’s theory) can apply to 1 & 3; Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond’s argument) can apply to 2; but I am not aware of any theory which can adequately explain all four points other than the default hypothesis (Jensen’s theory) which says that different racial groups differ from one to another for much the same reason that individuals differ from one to another - because of a combination of genetic and environmental factors and the way in which they interact. Occam’s razor favors the simple explanation over a collection of entertaining ad-hocs.
Indeed! In this case cross-assortive mating seems to be the lurking variable - wealthier, more-intelligent men choose women with longer legs, and the result is that taller genes and IQ-boosting genes end up clustering together. One does not (to the best of my knowledge) cause the other. However, how these two traits came to be associated is not important regarding the initial objection, which was, “What if by selecting for intelligence, we select against physical prowess and artistic inclinations?” The fact is that these traits do seem to cluster, and this means that selection pressures favoring one trait will not end up selecting in favor of the other; the converse seems to be the case. So no, there really is no reason to think that eugenics would end up making us smarter at the expense of physical prowess or artistic inclinations.
Of course others objected; do you imagine that all the people who agreed with Jensen would have felt obligated to chime into the discussion saying “rah rah rah, sis boom bah?” However, to the extent that there is a consensus among the academic community, you can see it in the results of the Snyderman & Rothman poll, which found that those who agreed with Jensen - i.e. those who stated their belief that the black/white IQ gap was partially genetic - outnumbered those who thought it was totally environmental by a ratio of 1.5 to 1. So while scientific truth is not determined by scientific democracy, it is a mischaracterization of the issue to present Jensen’s voice as a lone one; he is seconded by many, many others.
Actually you might want to read up on Cavalli-Sforza yourself.
*This is Cavalli-Sforza’s description of the map that is the capstone of his half century of labor in human genetics:
“The color map of the world shows very distinctly the differences that we know exist among the continents: Africans (yellow), Caucasoids (green), Mongoloids … (purple), and Australian Aborigines (red). The map does not show well the strong Caucasoid component in northern Africa, but it does show the unity of the other Caucasoids from Europe, and in West, South, and much of Central Asia.”
Basically, all his number-crunching has produced a map that looks about like what you’d get if you gave an unreconstructed Strom Thurmond a paper napkin and a box of crayons and had him draw a racial map of the world.*
Obviously you do have some issue, or you wouldn’t characterize eugenics as “bs.” However I can answer your question very simply: Altruism. I care about human genetic quality the same way others care about the homeless, education, worldwide poverty, and other issues - in fact I care about those things as well, and am interested in eugenics because it represents a solution to all of these problems. If you care nothing for the welfare of others, I of course will not argue with that, but I hope you can understand that many people are concerned with issues outside of themselves.
I have no idea who Hydrocortisone is, but I will note that it is unfortunate that those who question the dogma of political correctness are so frequently censored.
–Mark
The fact is that these traits do seem to cluster, and this means that selection pressures favoring one trait will not end up selecting against the other; the converse seems to be the case. So no, there really is no reason to think that eugenics would end up making us smarter at the expense of physical prowess or artistic inclinations.
(I apologize for my sloppiness; I’m accustomed to boards which allow for editing.)
–Mark
Really only since the 1950’s. Guyana and South Korea had about the same GDP per capita before the war. Their success had more to do with investments in capital and human capital. How do you explain that Laos has low levels of weath and backward beleifs and cultural norms while Barbados for the most part doesn’t.
Using brain size to equate intellegence went out of style some time in the last century. It has never been proven.
Choosing one theory over another simply because it is simpler is neither scientific nor logical.
Then if asian are smarter than whites why aren’t they taller? Also why are Asian in the US taller than they are in the Asia? Nutrition? Explain to me then why people who are better fed tend to be smarter and taller. Coincidence?
Again, I’ll point to the standardize tests done by the USA Army.
Northern Blacks did better than Southern Whites. What is your reason for this? If you truly believe that there is an innate difference in the IQ in races based on I.Q tests, then you have no choice but to conclude that Southern Whites are inferior to Northern Blacks.
So using your requirements… I can assume that Northern Blacks musthave a bigger brains, than Southern Whites. right? Since they did better on the standardized tests…If not, then the “bigger brain” theory falls apart; there’s that causation problem again.
The link you provided doesn’t disprove a relationship between human brain size and intelligence.
In order to discredit Rushton, one would have to cite a study where a researcher measured human brain sizes among human races and concluded Rushton to be wrong, based on the statistical information that they accumulated from their study.
The link states that some animals have larger brain than humans, which has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
