Practical end to the intelligence debate

Great Debates
1

Superficially, it seems to me that all current debate about intelligence boils down to a lot of words, time, and money wasted on saying that blacks are stupid. Is there anything more to it than this? I have yet to hear any IQ enthusiast come close to intimating that there was any other purpose for studying this field. Is the entire area of psychometrics dedicated solely to proving that blacks are naturally dumb?

If so, what’s the point? Even if it’s true, what practical purpose does such a discussion or study serve that’s worth anyone’s funding? And why should anyone expect a genteel attitude towards an effort that’s inherently and pointlessly disparaging?

2

IQ tests are a useful tool to diagnose learning disabilities and mental retardation in school kids.

3

The point made by the authors of The Bell Curve, IIRC, is that social programs aimed at improving the lot of African-Americans in society are a waste of money, because they run up against the blacks’ incurable genetic limitations. That is a practical consideration. Not true, but practical.

4

If you said IQ and race, I’d agree. All of that work doesn’t seem to comprehend either statistics or genetic diversity.

However, intelligence is clearly somewhat genetically based, and finding out how this works is useful. IQ tests have at least a loose correlation with intelligence - I’d have a hard time believing that someone with an IQ of 100 and someone with an IQ of 150 will do equally well in academic pursuits.

If this is about Watson, it will be interesting to find out what he really said in context. His recantation of it wasn’t the least bit wishy-washy. He said that saying Africans were less intelligent was wrong and not backed by any science, which doesn’t sound like someone who really believes it but is trying to rephrase his statement to be more correct.

5

Okay… Is there much debate about this? Are we still unsure about how to diagnose mental retardation? Is there really much discussion about how to truly diagnose the mentally challenged among the gsters?

6

Are you saying that if it were true, we shouldn’t fund a study to prove it? That in effect, we’re better off not knowing the truth?

7

Furthermore, genetic engineering to improve our offsprings’ intelligence might someday be possible and we might decide it is desirable – but only if we can first determine (1) what intelligence is, exactly, (2) what is its genetic component, and (3) what particular genes determine that component.

8

No. I meant exactly what I said the way I said it. What you said doesn’t even make sense (starting with its obvious backwards chronology).

9

I don’t know what a gster is, but I imagine there are debates about diagnosis and other technical issues among ed psych specialists. There are technical debates in any specialist community.

10

That is not correct. What he said was that although Africans may be less intelligent overall, that does not mean that they are inferior as people (indeed, Watson has been very consistent in his belief that defects or illnesses of the mind are no more indicative of individual worth than physical deficiencies are; his son suffers from mental illness.) As the Gene Expression blog concisely put it: “here is something to repeat five times before breakfast: legal equality is not contingent upon biological equality, is does not necessarily imply ought and natural does not necessarily imply good.”

From this article, which Watson signed:

11

I’ve heard that rationale before, but the political position doesn’t really logically follow the scientific conclusion. If blacks were naturally incapable, you could also argue that that’s what makes state support necessary. In fact that’s what many opponents of state support claim that minority-based programs imply.

12

In any case, the active debate among psychologists is not over whether intelligence is a meaningless concept, or immeasurable. Nobody seriously contends either position. The controversy is over whether there is a single general intelligence factor, or whether are multiple intelligences which might operate on independent axes (the same person being exceptional on one, deficient on another). The latter theory, if true, would not make IQ tests irrelevant, it would, instead, show the need for more refined, multi-axis tests. Nor would it render irrelevant the question of correlation between intelligence and “race,” however “race” is defined.

13

And you could also argue it necessitates sterilization for eugenic purposes as a condition of state support. See how easy it is?

14

No, he’s asking why there are so many people who seem to have a need to prove that blacks are naturally dumb.

The answer to that is obvious.

Thing is, you can give an IQ test to white Americans, you can give an IQ test to Ethiopian villagers, and the white Americans will do better than the Ethiopians. Now, what does that mean?

Even if we could prove that IQ score is 100% heritable it wouldn’t prove that Ethiopians are naturally dumb, because heritability doesn’t work that way.

Simple analogy. Suppose I were to discover that height in corn plants is 100% heritable. When I analyze the varation in corn plants, I find that all variation can be accounted for by genetic factors.

So if I have one corn field with 6 foot average stalks, and another field with 3 foot average stalks, and the variation is 100% heritable, does that mean that the 3 foot corn plants are naturally short? No, because the six foot corn stalks got fertillizer and the 3 foot stalks didn’t. Different corn fields, different results, and still we have 100% heritability of height.

It’s abundantly clear that kids in Ethiopia get less school, are less exposed to the concept of standardized testing, undergo periodic famines, their lives are disrupted by war, they are more exposed to chronic diseases, and so on and so on and so on. And so it is perfectly possible for kids in Ethiopia to do much worse on IQ tests than white Americans while having no genetic differences than white Americans, even if IQ were 100% heritable. Heritability - Wikipedia

So the question is, why are we worrying that maybe blacks are just naturally dumb, when perhaps we should first worry that black kids are in crappy schools, crappy environments, exposed to crappy diseases, and so on. Even if it were true that blacks are naturally dumber than whites, what public policy follows from that? They should get less school, less health care, and so on? Or should they get more? And since we know that bad schools, bad health, bad environment and so on will make kids score worse on IQ tests, how about we fix those things first, then we can worry about genetic variation.

It seems to me that there really is variation in intelligence, and it seems like smart parents frequently have smart kids, and dumb parents frequently have dumb kids. We know that there are genetic problems that cause mental defects, so in that sense we can say that there are certain genes that make you dumb. But there haven’t been identified any genes that make you smart. Maybe being smart is just a result of having very very few of the genetic defects that make you dumb. And of course, it’s certainly not unknown for genius parents to have a developmentally disabled child, and for that disability to be caused by a single genetic defect.

On the other hand, humans are smarter than chimps, and chimps raised by humans don’t become as smart as humans, and since chimps and humans are genetically different it seems trivially true to assert that humans are smarter than chimps due to genetic reasons.

15

I’m torn.

On one hand, as a person who is all-but fascinated by the world of amino acids and ribonucleotides, I am, in part, fascinated by studies that attempt to examine human intelligence under the narrow microscope of scientific inquiry. I am, too, however, a black man, and realize that whites in the United States would not be able to handle science’s answer on the matter.

If the answer is “yes” then whites in this country will have to implement a flurry of social programs to take care of thirteen percent of its population who are burdened by the sloth of their IQ to do anything but crime, drugs, the NFL/NBA, and, on occasion, making good music for suburban parties. The idea that that the United States would cease social programs if blacks were considered intelelctually inferior is a KY-assisted wetdream thought up by some White Nationalists; indeed, if conclusive scientific proof were announced tomorrow that blacks are inferior, social programs will go up, not down. That’s not a matter 8-balling the future, it’s a matter of fact - the government will never allow the States enact policies that vaguely resemble Jim Crow. Legally speaking, how would the scientific nod to the idea that blacks are inferior trump the first three letters of our Constitution?

If the scientific answer is “no” then whites will have to acknowledge that slavery, Jim Crow, War on the Drugs, and Katrina are potent factors to explain the why blacks in the United States still, overall, are less successful than their white counterparts.

  • Honesty
16

I too can easily imagine practical applications for knowing what genes affect intelligence. I’m talking about what’s actually being studied, though. Mapping the differences of intelligence among populations is the order of the day - I’m trying to figure out why.

17

The phrase “We the People” implies community – not equality, whether in a scientific, legal, political or ethical sense.

18

Is that true though? that’s an actual question, BTW, I really don’t know. I don’t see how IQ tests could do this in any real sense. Most of what I’ve seen out there isn’t science, but pseudo-science used to further a racist agenda. If there’s any real science being done to determine if intelligence varies in different populations, I’d be interested to know about this.

Again, IQ tests are most useful as a tool to determine what help a student might need in school. I can’t see how they could be used to study populations at all, but I’m no expert.

19

In essence, I think the eternal question of “Are blacks inherently dumber than whites?” is a pernicious holdover from the days when people like Samuel Morten used “science” to justify slavery.

Now, in place of slavery, the same issue is being used to explain away present-day disparities that are in large part due to past oppression. It’s a balm for the guilty consciences who want to believe that slavery wasn’t all that bad, racism disappeared in 1968, white people collectively came about their relative wealth purely through hardwork and brilliance, and that the socioeconomic disadvantage that blacks experience is a product of their own inherent shortcomings and nothing more.

Is there a gene for intelligence? I see nothing problematic with this question. There are smart and dumb people in every “race”, and its reasonable to wonder if there is a genetic basis for this. What’s telling, however, is that this question always finds a way to become a race debate. If we were talking about any other quality (obesity, life expectancy, religiousity), I find it hard to believe that the discussion would eventually degrade into a shouting match about racial differences.

It’s apparent that the subjects of intelligence and athleticism bring out the race card more than any other traits. Folks seemingly can’t talk about the relationships between these things and genes without eventually comparing whites to blacks. But this shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. The “dumb brute black” myth was actively used to rationalize 19th century status quo, and heavily relied upon comparing whites to blacks in order to prove that black subjugation was part of the natural order. The myth is still at work today. It’s as American as apple pie.

The fact that Watson is a scientitist is all well and good, but the guy is also in his 80’s. He came from an era where white supremacy was commonly accepted without question or complaint. I’m not surprised at all that he believes what he does.

20

We t?