He’s on my ignore list for dishonesty. I’m not going to engage with him by proxy.
Besides which, I’m not going to waste time chasing down cites provided by someone I know is a liar.
This is rather amusing.
Funny how that works. Apparently, you have to be intelligent to survive among Gentiles, but you don’t have to be intelligent (in fact, can have an average IQ of 58) to learn how to survive for centuries in a desert, like the San have and pass along encyclopedic amounts of knowledge about how to do so.
So, environmental pressures work for your preferred group but not for another.
Gotcha.
Contradictions make perfect sense.
Ass.
As far as I know, NDD is not making the “no such thing as race” argument. Nor is he engaged in special pleading as you seem to be.
Anyway, I take it that you are declining to answer the questions I asked you earlier?
This is funny. Transparent and dishonest, but funny.
You do illustrate how dishonest your engagements are.
Lol, you just described yourself perfectly.
Wrong. This statement speaks only to the strength of your anti-contrary-evidence filter.
To take just one example at random, it has been repeatedly explained to you that, in terms of actual genetic science, your “race” classifications are as subjective (and thus useless) as statements about “a low forehead denoting stupidity” and “the dull look of a trapped animal”.
I am quite certain it is clear where dishonesty lies. I think ordinary people will see it in the person who asks for links and then invents reasons not to respond to them. It is game playing.
Just curious: what does NDD think of black Jews?
No clue. They’ve been brought up, but NDD has pretty much ignored them to this point.
The Lemba are a particularly intriguing example of black Jews, as well as a testament to how geography and appearance are not as accurate indicators of genetics as many people think they are.
Yes, reasonable people will wonder why you didn’t just provide a link (and quote) yourself, which would have taken 5 seconds of your time.
Because the links are right there in those posts that anyone reading can follow - it was good to illustrate how dishonest you are.
But it is so great a burden on you, to merely click those links and have a paragraph to read, it could distract you from your game of rhetoric.
Wow iiandyii, welcome to the club! Sorry I’m a bit late with the congratulations, but I was skimming the thread and must have missed your election a couple of pages back.
modest cough Not to brag or anything, but I believe I was one of the first posters to make brazil84’s ignore list here on the Dope, several years ago. I’m not quite sure but I think it was in a climate change thread.
It’s a bit of a coveted distinction around these parts, as it attests to not only an extensive sequence of informative factual posts in at least one long thread refuting brazil84’s arguments, but also an accurate analysis of various logical flaws in his arguing style.
A lot of Dopers score one or the other of those in the course of brazil84 threads, but to get on The List you have to be able to do both more or less simultaneously.
Well done, and I’m sure other club members will be along shortly to offer their congratulations!
ETA: Oh, I forgot to mention that in consequence, you are now entitled to use the phrase “Ignored by brazil84” in your sig if you so choose. Personally I think it looks just a liiiiittle show-offy, but hell, you won it so why not wear it!
There was a major review article in American Psychologist (Feb-Mar 2012) on intelligence. It was a comprehensive review of IQ and g, including evidence for genetics, environment, social class and heritability, biological factors, interventions, and group differences in IQ. It considers evidence from Rushton, Lynn and discusses Ashkenazi Jews.
In terms of Black-White differences it concludes that there is no direct evidence that supports a genetic hypothesis. It noted that studies of American Asian and White cultural groups found the same mean IQ but a one-third higher standard deviation on SAT scores and a higher rate of professional attainment among the Asian American group.
It’s simply not possible at present to explain IQ differences between distinguishable groups via genetics. Social factors are far and away better explanations.
If one wants to attend to the science of things, of course. Racists’ mileage may vary.
Reasonable people know that it’s because you’ve repeatedly ignored any evidence that you dislike, including the dozens of links already provided in this thread, not to mention the dozens of other previous threads in which you’ve exhibited the same resistance to logic, reason, and data. It’s like arguing with a stump.
Linkety link to “Online First publication” version.
A stump’s arguments don’t get worse or more convoluted with time and refutations.
Nonsense. I simply point out when people advance red herrings and other irrelevant nonsense.
It’s Friday, and I ain’t got shit to do, so I’ll take a stab at this. I know very little about genetics, but I have no problem following a cogent argument, or explaining it once I understand it. So here goes…
brazil84, if you will indulge me, let’s take a look again at Great Antibob’s language analogy. It makes sense, because like “race”, “language” is a social construct that can be used to divide people into groups.
You said:
Let’s see what happens if we use language in place of race:
(1) there are groups out there which are commonly referred to as native English speakers, native Portuguese speakers, native Mandarin speakers, etc;
(2) the group known as native Portuguese speakers (NPSs) displays less intelligence than native English speakers (NESs); and
(3) the reason for this gap is in large part genetic.
Do these points make sense?
(1) there are groups out there which are commonly referred to as native English speakers, native Portuguese speakers, native Mandarin speakers, etc;
Absolutely. No one has any argument with this.
*(2) the group known as native Portuguese speakers (NPSs) displays less intelligence than native English speakers (NESs); *
That’s debatable. How do we define “intelligence”? IQ tests? Literacy rates?Average income? Regardless of how we choose to define it, though, it’s important to remember that at best, we’ve only demonstrated a correlation, not a causation. Even if we can make the case that NPSs are, on average, less intelligent than NESs, we haven’t shown that being an NPS makes you less intelligent than an NES (or vice versa). All we’ve shown is that those two facts, lower intelligence and being an NPS, tend to show up in the same groups of people. It’s *possible *that:
a) one causes the other
b) both are caused by some third thing directly (for instance, there is some gene that causes one to speak Portuguese and also limits one’s intelligence)
c) both are caused by some third thing, but at a greater remove (for instance, it might be that, due to war, famine, politics, and/or other factors, the countries where Portuguese is primarily spoken happen to have had less access to education and lower incomes, which have been shown to perpetuate each other)
d) it’s a total coincidence
e) it’s some combination of the above
But again, while a), b), c), d) and e) are all possible, showing a correlation does not prove, or even provide evidence for, any of them.
(3) the reason for this gap is in large part genetic.
It’s possible; no one says otherwise. BUT - as stated above, even if we can demonstrate (2) to be true, that is not proof of, or evidence for, (3).
And in fact, we have good reason to believe (3) is not true. For it to be true, we would have to show that the group of NPSs has some genetic correlation. We would have to find some gene or pattern of genes that is present in nearly all NPSs and absent (or far less prevalent) in all NESs. Why? If we don’t, then it makes no sense to talk about NPSs as a genetic group. And I would guess (although I can’t provide cites because this is just an analogy) that given the genetic free-for-all that is Brazil (the largest group of NPSs), it’s unlikely that there is any gene or gene pattern we can point to that correlates well with being an NPS.
For instance, let’s say we find a gene pattern that never appears in any group but NPSs. But even within the group of NPSs, it only appears within a small sub-group. Most NPSs do not have this gene pattern. Is it useful to talk about NPSs as a genetic group? No, because then we’re including a lot of people who don’t actually have the genes we’re talking about.
Or perhaps we find a gene pattern that is present in the majority of NPSs - but it’s also found in a large minority of NESs, and in all NXSs (native Xhosa speakers) without exception. Again, is it useful to talk about NPSs as a genetic group? No, because then we’re excluding a lot of people who do have the genes we’re talking about (and still including some who don’t).
It’s important to note that this does not mean that it’s impossible for any language group to correlate to a gene pattern. In fact, it’s entirely possible that if we look at native speakers of a language that’s spoken exclusively by a historically isolated population, we could find a 100% percent correlation with some genetic marker. But the fact that some native speaker groups (NSGs) might have a genetic correlation doesn’t mean that all NSGs do.
And the point of this is that “black people”, like “NPSs”, is a genetically meaningless group. We can find some gene patterns that are found almost exclusively in small sub-groups of black people, but the majority of black people do not have those gene patterns. We can also find gene patterns that are found in the vast majority of black people, but are also found in many, many other populations. So to put it as simply as possible, knowing that someone is “black” tells you zip, zilch, and zero about their genes. Is that true for every racial and/or ethnic category? Not at all. If you know someone is Han, or Kohanim, for instance, you can make an educated guess that they will have, somewhere in their vast tangle of DNA, a particular pattern of genes. But “black”, “white”, “asian”? These aren’t useful words, genetically.
Now if you’ve followed this far, let’s take a look back at the language analogy for one more point. I mentioned above that it’s entirely possible there’s an NSG that is genetically meaningful. So let’s say that there is a small population on the recently discovered island of Alonia that has been isolated from the rest of the world for tens of thousands of years. Every single native Alonian speaker (NAS) has a particular genetic marker from a mutation that occurred since their isolation, and so it can be found nowhere else in the world. It is guaranteed that if you are an NAS, you have this marker, and if you have this marker, you are an NAS. That’s a pretty strong correlation. So it must be genetic, right? That is, there must be something genetic, perhaps linked to this mutation, that makes one speak Alonian. Even if an Alonian were adopted at birth by a NES couple, they’d still grow up speaking Alonian, wouldn’t they? Or maybe it’s just a contributing factor, and they’re merely predisposed to speak Alonian. So they’d speak English, but with an Alonian accent. Right?
Obviously not. Everyone knows that which language(s) someone speaks is entirely due to environmental factors. But in that case, even if we could show that there is a very strong correlation between being black and having lower intelligence, why would we think this must be genetic? Isn’t it also possible that intelligence, like language, is entirely, or at very least largely due to environmental (that is, social), rather than genetic factors? And if we consider the fact that “black” is not a meaningful genetic group, but is indeed a highly meaningful social group (albeit one whose meaning, and definition, varies widely), then it’s far more likely that intelligence, or any trait that can be correlated to being black, is due to environmental factors, and not genetics.
Capisce?