# Practical end to the intelligence debate **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 19, 2007, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308 "2007-10-19T16:37:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/41 "2007-10-19T19:30:27Z")
[QUOTE=athelas] I suppose so. Having people say that any investigation into the genetic basis of intelligence differences across genetic groups… [/quote] Except that’s not what people are saying at all. Race as we use it (blacks, whites, Asians, etc.) does not apply to “genetic groups”. If the intelligence debate was only about “genetic groups”, there would be little controversy. But it’s not. All too often it becomes about groups created by a labeling system that was contrived centuries ago and has little if any biological basis. I swear, there’s been a ridiculous number threads on this subject, and the ignorance still isn’t fought. That goes to show that race is up there with religion in terms of the grip that it has our collective minds. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/42 "2007-10-19T19:31:58Z")
[QUOTE=pizzabrat] a solution like that? [/QUOTE] A solution to what problem? ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/43 "2007-10-19T19:43:20Z")
Uh, no, I’m not playing “let brazil84 grind the thread to a stop with his boring rhetorical mazes”. If you have a point, make it, or be quiet. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/44 "2007-10-19T19:49:41Z")
[QUOTE=pizzabrat] Uh, no, I’m not playing “let brazil84 grind the thread to a stop with his boring rhetorical mazes”. If you have a point, make it, or be quiet. [/QUOTE] Suit yourself. I stand behind my first post. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/45 "2007-10-19T20:01:35Z")
[QUOTE=athelas] 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](http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article3075642.ece), which Watson signed: [/QUOTE] I don’t see how Watson’s statement is in any way an attempt to excuse any racial statement. Evolution works on genetic diversity, and the variance in any subpopulation is almost certainly greater than the difference in the means of the subpopulations. It’s important to understand the difference in abilities, but that’s a difference between individuals, and not groups. He said “it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers.” which does not imply, to my reading, anything about why group are great musicians or great engineers. Or are you objecting to a statement about different people (not peoples) having different abilities? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/46 "2007-10-19T20:12:47Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] In my opinion, it’s more than an academic question. Because the West can and should raise up black people if at all possible. Which we (westerners) have been trying to do for many years with mixed success. [/quote] You mean after the West had finished oppressing them for hundreds of years with very excellent success? I lived in the Congo from 1961 - 1962. Leopoldville, as it was called then, had a very nice branch of a Belgian university. Just a few years before independence they finally let natives in, and in fact many in the first graduating class became government ministers. Now, who was responsible for the lack of an educated class of people - those who were prevented from going to college, or those who prevented them? > [@](#): > > If it turns out that part of the problem is genetic, then what I would propose is this: Study people who have high intelligence from their genes. Those genes must be affecting their body chemistry in some way. Develop foods and food supplements that produce similar effects. We know that there are foods and food supplements that can help you grow taller or stronger or thinner or fatter. If science focused on it, I think there’s a good chance we could find stuff that makes you smarter. Then distribute it widely in Africa or among anyone else who wants it. Developing such an elixir might be nice, but I’d offer that racists need it more than Africans do. > [@](#): > > It seems like we (Westerners) are afraid to consider the possibility that blacks are less intelligent because of their genes, and it strikes me that this fear may interfere with a solution to the problem. You are aware that the average IQ of Causcsians is lower than that of Asians? Please draw the appropriate conclusions. Any time you take different subpops the mean of a characteristic will be different, even if the meaurement is done fairly, which is unlikely in this case. The real question is whether the difference in IQ between the “races” - a poorly defined term - is greater than the difference between people whose last name begins with A-M and N-Z. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/47 "2007-10-19T20:24:14Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager] You mean after the West had finished oppressing them for hundreds of years with very excellent success? [/quote] Yep. > [@](#): > > Now, who was responsible for the lack of an educated class of people - those who were prevented from going to college, or those who prevented them? Fix the problem not the blame. > [@](#): > > Developing such an elixir might be nice, but I’d offer that racists need it more than Africans do. Who cares? > [@](#): > > You are aware that the average IQ of Causcsians is lower than that of Asians? Yes. > [@](#): > > The real question is whether the difference in IQ between the “races” - a poorly defined term - is greater than the difference between people whose last name begins with A-M and N-Z. That’s one “real” question. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/48 "2007-10-19T20:28:52Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager] I don’t see how Watson’s statement is in any way an attempt to excuse any racial statement. Evolution works on genetic diversity, and the variance in any subpopulation is almost certainly greater than the difference in the means of the subpopulations. It’s important to understand the difference in abilities, but that’s a difference between individuals, and not groups. He said “it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers.” which does not imply, to my reading, anything about why group are great musicians or great engineers. Or are you objecting to a statement about different people (not peoples) having different abilities? [/QUOTE] No, I quite agree. My point was that he believes that differences in mean intelligence, like other variations with some genetic component, may well exist between populations. But this does not mean, to him, that certain groups are _genetically inferior_ to others, and he correctly says that that sort of normative proposition is outside the realm of science. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/49 "2007-10-19T20:33:10Z")
[QUOTE=Chief Pedant] But who will explain why blacks throughout the entire world are overall less successful than their white (and East Asian) counterparts, whether they are the majority or minority; whether they are new immigrants or original natives; whether the country is at war against drugs or not? [/QUOTE] “Throughout the entire world” is a bit misleading. That really boils down to exactly two types of locations: places where blacks were enslaved and treated as second class citizens following the cessation of slavery; places (_i.e._, Africa), where Colonial powers held on the longest and where those powers explicitly excluded the indigenous peoples from participating in the infrastructure of their own countries until they were “released” from colonialism. This differed from Asia where colonial powers simply imposed their rule over the existing societies and infrastructure and unlike the Americas where the Europeans simply killed off the indigenous population (_usually_ inadvertantly through disease), then intermarried with the survivors, allowing them full access to the same power and education, or held them on reservations where they tend to do as poorly as the African descendants. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/50 "2007-10-19T20:33:15Z")
[QUOTE=athelas] But this does not mean, to him, that certain groups are _genetically inferior_ to others, and he correctly says that that sort of normative proposition is outside the realm of science. [/QUOTE] It’s also completely disingenuous. He and everyone else knows that stupider means inferior. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/51 "2007-10-19T21:43:00Z")
Unfortunately for that assumption, Watson has long chamioned the view that mental problems shouldn’t be construed to denigrate the humanity of its sufferers, any more than we consider physical disabilities - say, nearsightedness - to do so. Indeed, his own son is mentally ill. As he stated in the article I linked upthread, > [@](#): > > But those answers may not be easy, for, as I know all too well, genetics can be cruel. My own son may be one of its victims. Warm and perceptive at the age of 37, Rufus cannot lead an independent life because of schizophrenia, lacking the ability to engage in day-to-day activities. For all too long, my wife Ruth and I hoped that what Rufus needed was an appropriate challenge on which to focus. But as he passed into adolescence, I feared the origin of his diminished life lay in his genes. It was this realisation that led me to help to bring the human genome project into existence. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/52 "2007-10-19T22:22:10Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] “Throughout the entire world” is a bit misleading. That really boils down to exactly two types of locations: places where blacks were enslaved and treated as second class citizens following the cessation of slavery; places (_i.e._, Africa), where Colonial powers held on the longest and where those powers explicitly excluded the indigenous peoples from participating in the infrastructure of their own countries until they were “released” from colonialism. This differed from Asia where colonial powers simply imposed their rule over the existing societies and infrastructure and unlike the Americas where the Europeans simply killed off the indigenous population (_usually_ inadvertantly through disease), then intermarried with the survivors, allowing them full access to the same power and education, or held them on reservations where they tend to do as poorly as the African descendants. [/QUOTE] Is it your expectation and/or observation that Scandanavian black African immigrants, then, are equally successful as Scandinavian East asian immigrants? ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2007, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/53 "2007-10-20T00:04:16Z")
[QUOTE=athelas] Unfortunately for that assumption, Watson has long chamioned the view that mental problems shouldn’t be construed to denigrate the humanity of its sufferers, [/QUOTE] Well, isn’t that special. The presumption that black people have “mental problems” speaks for itself. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2007, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/54 "2007-10-20T02:39:24Z")
[QUOTE=Chief Pedant] Is it your expectation and/or observation that Scandanavian black African immigrants, then, are equally successful as Scandinavian East asian immigrants? [/QUOTE] I would tend to expect the black immigrants to Scandinavia to carry with them a certain amount of baggage from their homelands, either as descendants of slaves or as descendants of colonized peoples. Beyond that I would not hazard a guess as to their respective situations. (“Success” can be the result of many factors: whether a group was established in the country before the economic downturns hit places like Malmo (where more established groups might have a community base already in place to support more recent immigrants); whether one group or another is subjected to overt or covert discrimination; whether any given group can still rely on financial support from the nation from which they emigrated. I’m sure other factors play a part, as well.) ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2007, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/55 "2007-10-20T11:20:33Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] “Throughout the entire world” is a bit misleading. That really boils down to exactly two types of locations: places where blacks were enslaved and treated as second class citizens following the cessation of slavery; places (_i.e._, Africa), where Colonial powers held on the longest and where those powers explicitly excluded the indigenous peoples from participating in the infrastructure of their own countries until they were “released” from colonialism. This differed from Asia where colonial powers simply imposed their rule over the existing societies and infrastructure and unlike the Americas where the Europeans simply killed off the indigenous population (_usually_ inadvertantly through disease), then intermarried with the survivors, allowing them full access to the same power and education, or held them on reservations where they tend to do as poorly as the African descendants. [/QUOTE] I don’t think it is the case that there are only those two types of locations (enslaved and colonial) where blacks are found. To follow up on this again (my apologies), would you mind commenting on the following? The point raised earlier by **Honesty** seemed to suggest that the lack of overall success by blacks in the US was related to conditions specific to the United States: \*\*(by Honesty) \*\* _“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.”_ Now blacks are distributed throughout the world. (For the sake of convenience, let me use the term to mean populations who describe themselves as black.) I travel a fair amount, and I read a good deal, and it’s my observation that the lack of success of blacks is not specific to the US; their overall success is not even worst in the US. Moreover, I can not think of any location in the entire world where the overall achievement of blacks is at par with other self-described populations. I accept the racist history of this country but I do not find it sufficient explanation for the current “lack of overall” success of blacks here, and I think it is very divisive to promote that idea. When the oppressive thumb of racism was lifted from sports, for instance, blacks flourished. This has led to yet a new argument: “Well; whites tossed us that bone but they won’t let us have any real success over in this other arena…” And so on. I am very discouraged by the promotion of arguments which allow only a single explanation: lack of black success is someone else’s fault (and the someone else is usually someone white). Were this true for the US, for example, one would see equal success rates for all groups all over the world, perhaps depending on whether the groups had primacy by population or historic control. One should also see equal success rates of competing immigrant groups. Yet I find few, if any, examples in the entire world where the overall success of blacks is equivalent to the overall success of other groups. I am reluctant, therefore, as a white man, to shoulder the burden of responsibility for this. It does not seem to matter if blacks are in the majority or minority. It does not seem to matter if they were they first or came as immigrants. It does not seem to matter if the ruling population is white or asian. It does not seem to matter if the political system is socialist or capitalist. I can think of no place in the world where blacks have achieved the same overall success. We are not going to get past petty daily racism until we stop blaming racism, because it becomes a constant reminder to not look past skin color. I don’t think we’ll get past racism until we stop defining races, period. But where there is an absolute determination to differentiate groups by race or population, those who insist on doing so must accept the consequences if the explanation for the differences is something other than institutional racism and colonialism. I could not care less if tall people or fat people or myopic people or pigeon-toed people or purple people or brown-eyed people are either smarter or stronger or anything else when averaged as a group. It’s meaningless, and needs to be meaningless. But if myopic people find themselves less successful as a group and start to blame me, I do get to see whether there are factors other than myopia holding back their success. It would be a better approach, it seems to me, to stop being so determined to categorize (via self-description or public policy) populations by refractive index and look at them as individuals. ---
**Author:** ![H3Knuckles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ba8739/32.png) [@H3Knuckles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/H3Knuckles)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2007, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/56 "2007-10-20T12:25:24Z")
[QUOTE=pizzabrat] 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. [/QUOTE] Okay, but that’s really pretty far from how you phrased things in your OP. There it comes across as a blanket accusation against the entire concept of trying to scientifically assess intelligence, define it in quantifiable means, or isolate the genetic factors that control it. You put it in blunt terms as “all current debate about intelligence,” and “the entire area of psychometrics.” If you want to turn around and assert that you meant the more specific accusation of trying to measure and compare IQ’s across different sociological groups\*, fine. But understand that a lot of people coming into this thread might not initially perceive the fine point you’re making. \*Which I wholly agree with previous posters in the thread that this particular effort is pointless because of the myriad other factors influencing performance on the test, and the inability to provide IQ testing adapted to examine things according to what any one group’s knowledge or aptitude is invested in. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2007, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/57 "2007-10-20T13:21:34Z")
[QUOTE=Chief Pedant] I could not care less if tall people or fat people or myopic people or pigeon-toed people or purple people or brown-eyed people are either smarter or stronger or anything else when averaged as a group. It’s meaningless, and needs to be meaningless. But if myopic people find themselves less successful as a group and start to blame me, I do get to see whether there are factors other than myopia holding back their success. It would be a better approach, it seems to me, to stop being so determined to categorize (via self-description or public policy) populations by refractive index and look at them as individuals. [/QUOTE] You are categorizing people, then bitching that they are categorized. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2007, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/58 "2007-10-20T14:35:33Z")
[QUOTE=Chief Pedant] But if myopic people find themselves less successful as a group and start to blame me, I do get to see whether there are factors other than myopia holding back their success. [/quote] And therein lies the answer to **pizzabrat’s** question. It’s not about the pursuit of science and truth and adding to the world’s body of knowledge and coming up with practical solutions. It’s about allaying white folks’ sense of culpability. Just as I speculated in post #19. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2007, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/59 "2007-10-20T15:08:03Z")
[QUOTE=Chief Pedant] I am very discouraged by the promotion of arguments which allow only a single explanation: lack of black success is someone else’s fault (and the someone else is usually someone white). Were this true for the US, for example, one would see equal success rates for all groups all over the world, perhaps depending on whether the groups had primacy by population or historic control. One should also see equal success rates of competing immigrant groups. Yet I find few, if any, examples in the entire world where the overall success of blacks is equivalent to the overall success of other groups. I am reluctant, therefore, as a white man, to shoulder the burden of responsibility for this. [/QUOTE] I would be curious to see where blacks are present throughout the world. (And that would really get curious if you were lumping together dark-skinned people who are not from Africa (in the last 30,000 years) where you are clearly eliminating any genetic basis for your observations.) I’m not sure what your “_equal success rates for all groups all over the world_” is supposed to mean. As I noted, colonial powers treated different people differently. The historical accident of that treatment, (because there was no concerted plan to make this happen), led to specific societal disruptions. I never think of it as being a “white” issue, because the European explosion over the world in the sixteenth century was just as much an historical accident in that there was no inherent trait in Europeans that prompted it. Africa had the good luck to share enough diseases with the Europeans and Asians that their populations were not wiped out in the way that the American populations were destroyed while having the bad luck to be slightly behind the curve on technology and large government that protected the Asians from some of the nastier effects of cultural disruption. I don’t see the point of the blame game. What has happened has happened and we should be moving on. People pointing fingers at one group or another and demanding repentance for actions taken by long dead ancestors is pointless. On the other hand, people who ignore the the results of the actions of those ancestors who then say, “Got a problem? It’s your own fault.” are perpetuating the problem. Any given problem should be examined on its own merits and solutions created based on local conditions. (And this will include encouraging people to address their own problems, but not denying an of understanding where those problems originate.) ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2007, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308/60 "2007-10-20T15:16:58Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] I would be curious to see where blacks are present throughout the world. (And that would really get curious if you were lumping together dark-skinned people who are not from Africa (in the last 30,000 years) where you are clearly eliminating any genetic basis for your observations.) [/QUOTE] Actually, a failure among all “black” people–including those with no African connection–might, indeed, demonstrate a certain level of culpability among “white” people. Whites have controlled the world outside China and Japan for the last 200 years. If every “black” population, regardless of a lack of genetic connection–is less successful than any other group, that would tend to suggest that there is external pressure on such groups and the clearest external pressure in the last few centuries has been “whte” governance along with a certain level of racist practices. If whites in power accorded more equality, education, and freedom to groups that were not “black,” that would have provided a basis on which future (current) failure might grow. As it happens, I do not yet know who you are including under the umbrella of “black” and I am not sure that I will agree that all such people are failing at this time, so I am not going to blame “whites” for all the problems in the world. However, we can follw the evidence where it leads. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practical-end-to-the-intelligence-debate/423308.md?page=4)