Race differences in average IQ are largely genetic

[PBear42]

[hijack]

If this has been mentioned, I missed it. The fundamental flaw in the OP isn’t whether it’s true. Intelligence may well be partly genetic and, at least in part, may be sorted by race (however defined). So what? Let’s assume the ability to play basketball is similarly sorted by race (however defined). Does this mean all blacks (or whatever) who try out make the team? Does it mean that no whites (or whatever) do not? In both cases, no. Rather, we give 'em the ball and see how well they play. So, too, with intelligence and any other aspect of vocational competence we care to consider. What matters isn’t what group or race to which you belong. What matters is how well you play the game.

I doubt anyone participating in the thread disagrees.

[/hijack]

[IceQube]

I agree with the above post. Individuals should be judged as individuals.

[New_Deal_Democrat]

@PBear42

[hijack]

If this has been mentioned, I missed it. The fundamental flaw in the OP isn’t whether it’s true. Intelligence may well be partly genetic and, at least in part, may be sorted by race (however defined). So what? Let’s assume the ability to play basketball is similarly sorted by race (however defined). Does this mean all blacks (or whatever) who try out make the team? Does it mean that no whites (or whatever) do not? In both cases, no. Rather, we give 'em the ball and see how well they play. So, too, with intelligence and any other aspect of vocational competence we care to consider. What matters isn’t what group or race to which you belong. What matters is how well you play the game.

I doubt anyone participating in the thread disagrees.

[/hijack]

I certainly do not disagree with you. I have never advocated that anyone be discriminated against on the basis of race alone. I do think people should be discriminated against and in favor of on the basis of what correlates with race, such as intelligence, criminal history, or in the case of your example, athletic talent.

[New_Deal_Democrat]

@Chuck11

Here’s what Watson said:

“I’m inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.”

“There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

Neither of these statements are incorrect, uninformed, or unfounded.

If anyone has the right to speak with authority on innate intelligence differences between the races is the Nobel Laureate who helped discover the structure of DNA.

It is worth mentioning that one of James Watson’s great grand parents was a Negro.

Revealed: scientist who sparked racism row has black genes

Watson is not a crackpot racist, but one whose opinions on racial matters should be viewed with respect.

[rat_avatar]

@New_Deal_Democrat

If anyone has the right to speak with authority on innate intelligence differences between the races is the Nobel Laureate who helped discover the structure of DNA.

It is worth mentioning that one of James Watson’s great grand parents was a Negro.

Revealed: scientist who sparked racism row has black genes | The Independent | The Independent

Watson is not a crackpot racist, but one whose opinions on racial matters should be viewed with respect.

Appeal to authority, he discovered the structure of DNA but that does not indicate he did any special knowledge about nor did he produce valid studies tracing the human genome and linking it to the artificial construct of race. Unless you can show he had scientific data to prove his claim he is what he is, just another bigot.

The man said he would like to start eugenics up again, and not due to any scientific claims.

Not that this will change your mind but maybe other posters will find use in it.

[New_Deal_Democrat]

@rat_avatar

Appeal to authority, he discovered the structure of DNA but that does not indicate he did any special knowledge about nor did he produce valid studies tracing the human genome and linking it to the artificial construct of race. Unless you can show he had scientific data to prove his claim he is what he is, just another bigot.

The man said he would like to start eugenics up again, and not due to any scientific claims.

Not that this will change your mind but maybe other posters will find use in it.

“Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”

• United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  Buck v. Bell - Wikipedia

[MrDibble]

@New_Deal_Democrat

If anyone has the right to speak with authority on innate intelligence differences between the races is the Nobel Laureate who helped discover the structure of DNA.

Fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam. James Watson may have been an expert on the structure of DNA - that doesn’t make him an expert on race or intelligence, just the physical structure of DNA.

It is worth mentioning that one of James Watson’s great grand parents was a Negro.

…and many Nazis had Jewish blood back in their ancestry, I’m sure. So what?

[MrDibble]

@New_Deal_Democrat

“Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”

• United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  Buck v. Bell - Wikipedia

What the fuck?

Are you advocating sterilization for people of low intelligence? Given your belief that most of SSA is moronic in IQ, I find that worrying.

[iiandyiiii]

@Chuck11

Well, yes they can. For example, the ancestors of my Negroids are primarily people who inhabited SS Africa 10 thousand years ago. The ancestors of my Mongoloids and Caucasoid are people who primarily did not. Negroids are also more genetically similar to other Negroids than not, where genetic similarity is determined by simultaneously looking at an indefinite but very large number of loci. (What you are saying is that if we look at some snips of DNA (e.g., MtDNA) some Negroids will be more similar to some Mongoloids. What I am saying is that if you do a PCA using the whole genome, no Negroids will ever be found to be more genetically similar to a non-Negroids than to a Negroid).

That’s a pretty difficult claim to make “no Negroids will ever be found to be more genetically similar to a non-Negroids than to a Negroid”- I don’t think evidence support this… though you could be deliberately stating it as a tautology (e.g. that your definition of Negroid requires this), but I can’t tell.

You’re saying that there are zero sub-Saharan African populations who have (as a population) a more recent common ancestor outside of Africa than inside Africa?

[iiandyiiii]

@New_Deal_Democrat

What matters is that whites of European descent, Ashkenazi Jews, and Orientals on the average perform and behave better than everyone else in the world. This can easily be explained by considering population pressures lasting for hundreds and thousands of years.

Only if you completely ignore the myriad of outliers to your explanation- and historical outliers- the regions that were not any more “culturally advanced” (with regards to, say, writing and mathematics") than Africa (like most of the world outside of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China).

[tomndebb]

@New_Deal_Democrat

If anyone has the right to speak with authority on innate intelligence differences between the races is the Nobel Laureate who helped discover the structure of DNA.

Why? Messing around with biochemistry at the lowest level hardly makes one an authority on how that chemistry interacts at the highest levels of biological organization. They are totally different fields, (and that is not even getting into how much Watson “borrowed” from other researchers, (with or without attribution), and any number of other activities that have placed him on the margins of the scientific community. One discovery 60 years in the past does not make one a brilliant scientist on multiple topics.

@New_Deal_Democrat

“Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”

• United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  Buck v. Bell - Wikipedia

And the people about whom he was talking were not as “stupid” as the eugenicists who were lying about them with doctored eidence claimed.

Holmes was often wrong and this is one of those times.

[Chen019]

@iiandyiiii

That’s a pretty difficult claim to make “no Negroids will ever be found to be more genetically similar to a non-Negroids than to a Negroid”- I don’t think evidence support this… though you could be deliberately stating it as a tautology (e.g. that your definition of Negroid requires this), but I can’t tell.

You’re saying that there are zero sub-Saharan African populations who have (as a population) a more recent common ancestor outside of Africa than inside Africa?

In fairness that is what Witherspoon et al (2007) found:

The power of large numbers of common polymorphisms is most apparent in the microarray data set, comparing the European, East Asian, and sub-Saharan African population groups (Figure 2C). approaches zero (median 0.12%) with 1000 polymorphisms. This implies that, when enough loci are considered, individuals from these population groups will always be genetically most similar to members of their own group. In general, CC and CT decrease more rapidly and to lower values than ..

Thus the answer to the question “How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?” depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. The answer, can be read from Figure 2. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms (Figure 2E), the answer is ≅ 0.3, or nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is ∼20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, ≅ 10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes “never” when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations.

[iiandyiiii]

@Chen019

In fairness that is what Witherspoon et al (2007) found:

But isn’t he talking about populations, not races? So it’s not that any two sub-Saharan Africans are ALWAYS closer together, it’s any two sub-Saharan Africans from a given population are closer together (therefore- any two Yoruba, for example, are always closer than any Yoruba and any non-Yoruba, rather than all sub-Saharan Africans)? Otherwise, it implies that all Somalians are closer to all Namibians than any Somalian is to a Yemeni Arab, which is a pretty extraordinary claim to make.

[Chuck11]

@Great_Antibob

No offense, but it’s pretty much the first post, and it’s completely reasonable that people are responding directly to the OP, who makes a claim for direct genetic evidence that doesn’t exist.

Could you link to the specific claims? We might be reading the comments differently.

Generally, I don’t think my statements are particularly discordant with the OPs. We both agree that we can divide global populations into geographic races (Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, etc. ). We both agree that individuals within each race are more genetically similar – when looking at a very large indefinite number of loci – to other individuals within their race than to others outside. (As such, you can assign individual to a race with near perfect accuracy – or, if they are admixed, determine to what extent.) We both agree that Negroids on average could be congenitally less intelligent. We both agree that there is a good deal of phenotypic IQ heterogeneity among Caucasoid and Mongoloid subpopulations. And that to the extent these differences reflect genotypic differences, genotypic
IQ heterogeneity. See here for example – for intra-Caucasoid IQ differences correlated with genotype. I’m merely emphasizing the expected – assuming such genetic differences exist – parallel heterogeneity in the Negroid population.

[iiandyiiii]

@Chuck11

We both agree that individuals within each race are more genetically similar – when looking at a very large indefinite number of loci – to other individuals within their race than to others outside.

The source you use (if I read it correctly) only says this is true with populations- not races.

[Chuck11]

@iiandyiiii

Because the OP is positing that there is something genetically different about “blacks” with regards to intelligence then other populations (suggesting that “blacks” perhaps either have a tendency lack certain genes for high intelligence or have a tendency towards having certain genes for lower intelligence). This doesn’t make sense to me that “blacks” as a group would have some tendency (for intelligence- skin color is a bad example because skin color is essentially the determining factor for these non-genetic “races”) that others lack- because many of the “black” populations are closer to the others (whites and Asians) than to other “black” populations. Perhaps there is a logical way to explain this, but there’s zero evidence for any such explanation.

Keep in mind that I’m just talking about the OP’s classification scheme (his “three races”).

The OP argues that one of the evolutionary forces selecting for IQ was climate (which also selected for skin color.) If so, exposure to a similar climate, irrespective of genetic relatedness (e.g., Australoids and Negroids) , would lead to trait similarity (i.e., convergent evolution). Obviously, since Black Africans share other morphological commonalities (dental patters, craniofacial patterns, hair morphology, etc.), if they are as genetically divergent as you suggest, they must have shared a good deal of common selective pressures. This then could explain the proposed genotypic IQ similarity. I think that would be the logical way to explain this.

[iiandyiiii]

@Chuck11

The OP argues that one of the evolutionary forces selecting for IQ was climate (which also selected for skin color.) If so, exposure to a similar climate, irrespective of genetic relatedness (e.g., Australoids and Negroids) , would lead to trait similarity (i.e., convergent evolution). Obviously, since Black Africans share other morphological commonalities (dental patters, craniofacial patterns, hair morphology, etc.), if they are as genetically divergent as you suggest, they must have shared a good deal of common selective pressures. This then could explain the proposed genotypic IQ similarity. I think that would be the logical way to explain this.

But there a huge variety of morphological differences among African populations- except for dark skin (and skin color ranges pretty widely in sub-Saharan Africa too), what traits are all shared?

Also, I’m not at all convinced that this “race”-wide genetic similarity exists- the link you posted earlier only says that two members of a population will be always closer to each other than to someone outside their population if you look at enough loci, it doesn’t say that any two members of a “race” will always be closer to each other than to an outsider.

[Great_Antibob]

@Chuck11

I think that would be the logical way to explain this.

That’s “a” logical way to explain it, as we’ve explained before.

But it doesn’t explain the NDDs complete lack of any actual evidence showing it, as we’ve ALSO explained before.

And for all the work done on “Blacks”, it still doesn’t explain NDDs position of “Orientals” who are more intelligent than “whites” and “blacks” in his ssytem. They are apparently the intelligent subset of “Mongoloids”, which is the less intelligent grouping of all Asians. I’m not kidding about that, check his posts. His explanation of evolutionary “pressures” in “Orientals” is the Chinese Imperial Exam system, which has been in sporadic existence for only 2000 years.

A good portion of the opposition comes from the fact that NDD just doesn’t know what genetic evidence is, doesn’t understand how to control for socioeconomic factors, doesn’t understand the difference between genetic and biological factors, and doesn’t really understand the notion of a falsifiable position.

Basically, much of the opposition comes from the fact that NDD doesn’t actually get basic science, even at a high school level.

And, of course, that completely ignores the NDDs rather bizarre claims, such as an average IQ of 58 for the San as a group, the rather bizarre claims about the Japanese, ignoring test results from within the US itself for Hawaii (East Asians, this time, rather than blacks). His position also explicitly suggests that he doesn’t understand the concept of a mean, as small groups of educated Africans (Nigerian graduate students in the US, for example) are apparently impossibilities. Oh, and there was also the related bit about how President Obama obviously got his intelligence from his mother’s (white) side of the family, despite the fact that his father also went on to do PhD work.

You can try to defend a “version” of NDDs thesis all you want. But your particular defense simply pokes more holes into NDDs existing thesis, which never made any sense to begin with.

[Chuck11]

@Belowjob2.0

So, what’s your overall position with regard to New Deal Democrat’s claims. The data doesn’t seem to support them in a global context. Do you think these claims only apply to the situation in the US?

The UK school achievement results are damning to a strong to medium global racial IQ hypothesis – they don’t rule out a medium to weak one, though. African migrants to the UK are selective. Based on Docquier and Marfouk (2005) and other sources, I calculated that on average they represent the upper third of the educational and SES distribution in Africa. Assuming a normal curve approximation, that puts them at 1.1 SD above the average. If the narrow heritability is the same in African as it is in the West (i.e., 0.6) and if the correlation between SES and general intelligence (g) is the same (i.e., 0.7), then they would be selected 0.46 SD with respect to g. So if the g difference in the UK is zero, then, in principle, Africans in African (at least from the places the migrants came) could be 0.46 congenitally less generally intelligent than the Europeans in the UK. Also, the data from the UK is somewhat inconsistent. Compare the achievement results with the IQ test scores that I collected here. So it could possibly be argued that second+ generation Black African immigrants in the UK perform maybe 0.5 SD below the mean. Maybe. If so, Black Africans in Africa could possibly be 1 SD congenitally less generally intelligent than White British. There are a lot of ifs here though. It really would help to have better data from the UK (i.e., a large recent representative sample of second+ generation adult scores on very g-loaded tests). Whatever the case, the point is that if there is a gap it must be small enough that it can be masked by immigrant selection and other factors. The good news for race realists is that they can now readily dismiss all the arguments to the effect that there are too few genetic differences between races or that there was too little time to evolve them!

It’s worth noting that 2nd generation Black Africans in the US appear to perform worse than they do in the UK. See here. So that’s another curiosity.

As for Black descendants of slaves, I would argue that at least half the difference is due the genes. And that the genetic differences are a result of some combination of dysgenic fertility (this is well documented), negative selection (their particular ancestral stock wasn’t the brightest by African standards), and global race differences circa 1750. That seems to be consistent with the UK results.

[Chuck11]

@GIGObuster

As pointed before, you do like to use medical research focused on diseases to claim that it apples to intelligence, that is not the point of the research and there is no mention or races:

Different level of population differentiation among human genes | BMC Ecology and Evolution | Full Text

And as it was also pointed before it is a straw man to claim that many of the ones discussing or me assume that all have equal powers or reason, most experts agree that the reasons you think that are causing that difference is wrong, there is no good genetic support in reality.

(1) So this is what the authors of the article I cited said:

“Here, we evaluated the level of population differentiation for human genes on autosomal chromosomes among three populations: African, European and East Asian, based on the HapMap data (Phase II) [4], using the parameter FST according to methods described previously [3,5].”

So they didn’t mention Negroids, Caucasoids, and Mongoloids. You got me there!

(2) I’m glad to hear that most experts are aware of me and my opinions.