More importantly, there’s zero evidence for your genetic explanation.
To fully flesh out this comparison to the “race and intelligence” argument is to imagine that, before any genes for egg-laying are found, Biologist A begins to teach that “the Green parrots are more successful because of genetics- they have a better genetic tendency to lay more eggs”- and to support this, he pulls out all the data about the expanded population and territory of the Green birds (but no genetic data). He would be roundly, and properly, mocked for this- because he’s only made a hypothesis. He has no evidence to support his hypothesis.
It appears that we’re largely in agreement. But I don’t see how you can claim that if one’s hypothesis is that blacks are not as inherently intelligent as whites or Asians, that test scores, particularly IQ type test are not someplace to look for evidence. It seems the most logical place to look. Now, one might look there and find parity, which would equate to there be zero evidence there in support of the hypothesis, or one might find marked disparity, which I agree, wouldn’t qualify as evidence yet. But if steps were taken to try to eliminate cultural factors that might explain away the disparity, and the disparity continued, that, indeed, would be one piece of evidence. It might be fairly weak, it might fall by the wayside in future studies. But to claim it is zero evidence—as in the scenario where test scores showed parity—seems flatly wrong.
Is there any reason to not believe it? 
But let me ask you a couple of questions, leaving the concept of “race” out of it completely.
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Do you agree that different populations differ genetically, and that things like hair texture, eye shape, etc., can be attributed to the difference in genes? ( I assume you do.)
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Given the different genetic variations that manifest themselves, with consistency, in physical characteristics like the ones mention above, what do you think is the likelihood that differing genetic variations might result in inheritable cognitive abilities? Why?
Mind if I ask you a question? Why do you think different populations vary in the frequencies of various alleles for eye color, hair texture, skin color, etc.? What process do you think leads to these differences?
Because the problem (or question or whatever) doesn’t get to also be evidence for an explanation of itself. The hypothesis is trying to explain why the test scores are different. But the existence of different test scores, by themselves, says nothing about why they’re different. And the same goes for different crime stats, or different economic stats.
And that doesn’t even get into whether IQ tests are a valid way to evaluate intelligence (which I won’t comment on- that deserves another thread).
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I agree that different populations can differ in their overall tendency towards different genes (and different characteristics from those genes).
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For individuals, it’s very likely (and probably accepted by most scientists of human genetics). For populations, I think it’s unlikely. I’ve gone into the why I think so in the threads in Great Debates.
Because what you might call non-cultural explanations have caused so much harm in American and world history; and because all forms of such presented or believed hitherto have proven to be laughably pseudoscientific as well as tendentious, agenda-driven and intellectually dishonest, up to and including The Bell Curve. Maybe there’s something to it after all, but, at this point, we are long past the point where any assertion of scientific racism must be held to the standard of “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”
In LOTR where you had distinct races, the elves were the fairest, the dwarves the most skillful, the men stongest, but the hobbits had the best lifestyle and were hardly, if ever ravaged by war.
And it seemed no race had a monopoly of high IQ. There definitely were a lot of dumb elves.
Does this men that before genes were discovered that it was incorrect to assume that any traits were heritable rather than environmental?
It looks like you are baiting Magellan01 so you can make him look foolish. Can you just cut to the chase and answer the question yourself? What is it about hair color or type of ear wax that allows it to vary among populations while something such as aptitude to succeed on standardized tests can not? Is it just that they are less complex than something like “intelligence” or is there more to it?
I think I understand what people what are getting at now. The last set of people in this thread are much more reasonable than I have ever seen in a discussion like this before in any context. No one has said that it is impossible for there to be a genetic basis for the hypothesis of genetic differences among population groups that ultimately leads to different intellectual performance outcomes. It is just that the burden of proof is really high on people that promote those type of genetic hypotheses when there is still some room for other explanations. It simply can’t be done right now because the science isn’t there yet but it might be in the future.
I also understand the population geneticist argument. The goal in that field will ultimately be to map behavioral traits at individual level based on genes and biology. That is different than some of the approaches that other scientific fields take. I was trained in behavioral science which is a branch of psychology. That field combines understanding individual traits with population statistics. It is a very different approach and neither one is completely right or wrong.
Ideally, we would live in a world where everything is based on the individual rather than populations but there are conflicting scientific goals especially in the realm of overall social policy where that simply isn’t the case and individual statistics will always be aggregated to use as evidence to advocate for some group policy.
I think that most of us that hypothesize there could be population differences understand those don’t always apply at the individual level. That irritates people with different priorities including the scientists that only want to map genes to behavior at the most detailed level possible. It also irritates some social activists who still don’t want to believe it could be possible at all.
None of this means it is an irrelevant or disproved hypothesis. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence for it but it will take time to know whether it is true or not and, even then, any findings will only apply to certain populations and social groups rather than individuals.
Please. Just because something may make you or others uncomfortable doesn’t mean it isn’t true. :rolleyes:
You keep adding “crime stats” and “economic status” to the discussion. Why? It just muddies the waters. We’re looking at natural aptitude. I don’t think that anyone is of the mind that crime stats and economic status are, at the very least, decidedly more subject to cultural influences. As far as “why” the scores differ, the more you control for cultural factors and the disparity continues, the more it suggests that non-cultural factors are at play, correct?
Given the real-world evidence that height, eye shape, cranial shape, musculature, hair texture, nose shape, lip shape, etc. have a genetic explanation (some of which manifest themselves in superior athletic performance for certain populations), why the strong assumption that cognitive ability is not subject to the same processes? That’s what Im not getting. Beyond BrainGlutton’s admission, anyway, which I find weak and unscientific in the extreme.
As I understand it, intelligence is vastly polygenetic. It comes from so very many combinations of sources – and is, also, so very dependent on the growth process of the individual – malnutrition in childhood is probably much more influential than genetics ever could be – that the idea of tying it to genetics is meaningless. There may be a single gene for eye-color, but there isn’t a single gene for height. Instead, height comes from vast combinations of genetic effects. And intelligence is probably even more multiplex.
You probably know the old canard about the Napoleonic wars resulting in the reduction of the average height of the French people, by dint of the horrible losses in battles and wars. Utterly false. It’s a simple calculation to show that, if height depended on no more than 10 genes, you’d still have needed to kill some 90% of all French males to produce even a small percentage of loss in overall height.
This is also why the “marching morons” argument – if stupid people have more children than smart people, then the average IQ worldwide must always be dropping – is not true. Even if all smart people were childless, the overall IQ wouldn’t descend measurably, because so very, very many genes are involved in intelligence.
It’s like saying that Whites are more (or less) resistant to disease than Blacks: absurd, given the titanic complexity of the human immune system. (The miracle is that it works at all!)
Also—I’m not a bioscientist. I’m talking in general terms, to the best of my understanding. If GIGObuster says I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. The most I hope for is for him to say, “Well, okay, nice try, but here’s the real skinny…” GIGO is one of my heroes here, and I know that he knows a fuck of a lot more than I ever will.
You know what? I’m starting to wonder about the posters who have a long ass serious debate with these ‘racist’ posters over and over, constantly highlighting their views with Pit threads. Starting to seem like they may secretly think there’s ‘something to it’ if you know what I mean.
When you know something is utter rubbish, you just don’t seriously debate it over and over. This isn’t like debating religion, where you are arguing with people who are arguing from an honest place, and you can maybe convince them of a different path. These are always debates where you are certain the person is not arguing fairly but is instead distorting the facts on purpose in order to push their racist views. So I have a side-eye for the posters who keep pitting them again and again.
Why didn’t you just cut to the chase and ask?
Since you’re asking: All the traits he described are more associated with climatic variation than “populations”. For several of the traits, including earwax, there is some evidence of selection acting to shape the allele frequencies at the gene loci that influence these traits.
So if the standardized test gap is due to differing allele frequencies among the populations (I use the term in their sense, not mine), then what’s the selective pressure for being extra-smart in Europe and Asia, and being less smart in the Western Hemisphere and Africa? What is so special about the European and Asian environment that led to this differentiation in intelligence? What led to the apparent loss of this intelligence in Native Americans?
I mean, the real good stories in genetics have it all: the genes, the traits, the evolution, the biochemistry. So you have people, all of them not scientists and certainly not geneticists in this thread, whether they know it or not, trying to fashion one of these good stories: they have this correlation as a trait (although that’s changing all the time), they don’t have the genetics, they don’t have the evolution, nor the biochemistry.
That is utter bullshit.
Never read the GD forum, I take it?
This is exactly like debating religion - or at least, the more philosophical religious debates like we used to have when Lib was around - in that you’re not really trying to convince the person you’re debating with, but some nebulous Other who might otherwise be convinced by their wrong-but-seemingly-logical argument.
The Powers-That-Be have chosen to take the stance that this kind of racism is just peachily A-OK with them, as long as it doesn’t break any other rules. Does that mean we are just supposed to let it slide too? Because that might give people a view of the Dope that I don’t really want to be associated with.
I don’t argue with these people to convince them of anything. I know they’re racists, and I know there is nothing I can say or do to convince them how completely wrong they are. This is because they are not scientists or hobbyist-scientists, they’re racists. I just want to call them names and try to clarify how little they know about genetics and the interpretation of genetic data.
I’m not sure I get what you are saying. I understand that people in Denmark may have lighter skin than people living nearer the equator or at higher elevation because of selection pressure for Vitamin D, but when Danish people move to different latitude they retain those genetic traits and will only very slowly lose them over thousands of years if they are subject to different selection pressure. How is “climatic variation” different than a “population”?
I know enough about genetics to know I don’t know much at all, but it is my understanding that not all genetic traits come about from natural selection. If a group of organisms is isolated into two groups they will drift apart from each other even if the environment for each group is the same. One could end up with curly hair and the other with straight hair even without there being a survival advantage for one form of hair over another.
When I visit a University and see it full of Jewish, Indian, and Chinese students it doesn’t exactly make me feel like I’m a member of the master race.
You mean they might be… latent?