I assumed you assumed it. Typically, when people deny genetic influences on differences in performance between groups, they are denying genetic differences between groups at large.
When I see the differential results between different populations, it suggests to me that some of the differences have their roots in innate differences in the averages. Your posts tend to spread doubt on any links to such differences.
So let’s stop dancing around, and I’ll ask you point blank. Do you think part of the differences in performance between blacks and other groups in the US is based on genetics or not?
I think part of it is, and you? I think that because I do NOT reject the possibility and great likelihood that some of the differences in aptitude between group averages is innate. That coupled to the fact that gaps persist even when controlling for income. If you control for something like iq between black and white and asian and whatever else, then I’d expect the differences would be much smaller, but I don’t have data on that.
Then there are articles like this, the Son also Rises:
I’ve seen no evidence so far that points to genetics as the explanation for the test-score disparity (or other disparities) to the exclusion of the other possible explanations, and I’ve seen specific evidence that points away from genetics as an explanation, so at this point I have no reason to believe that genetics are part of the explanation.
This doesn’t mean that I insist that genetics can’t be – just that I see no reason to believe they are part of the explanation based on the data so far.
Not. It’s based on the history of race in the U.S.
If a bunch of white northern-Europeans had been dragged in chains to Africa, enslaved, denied education, denied rights, beaten and murdered, and held as an example of bad behavior even to this day – there would be some wondering if their inferiority was based on genetics. They’d be wrong too.
Exactly. Occam’s razor, properly formulated, is that you shouldn’t multiply entities beyond necessity. In other words, you shouldn’t build your theories on any more assumptions than you need to: if you can explain a phenomenon using facts that you can prove, you shouldn’t adhere to an explanation that requires speculation.
In this case, there is a centuries-long system of attacking African culture through colonization, enslavement, theft, terror, and other forms of discrimination. African culture and its diasporic forms have been remarkably resilient, given this sustained attack–but it’s hardly surprising that members of these attacked cultures are not performing as well on standardized tests as are members of the culture that perpetrated and benefited from the violence and theft. There are ample facts on the ground to explain the discrepancy; there is no reason to speculate on an alternate cause.
Well, that’s not exactly true. Throughout that centuries-long system of thieving from Africans and their descendants, folks have speculated on alternate causes for perceived inferiority of black people, as a justification for their theft and terror. Chief Pedant and his ilk are part of a long tradition of folks who dress up their prejudices in pseudoscience; he has predecessors going back for centuries. THere is no reason to take his particular mumbo joumbo any more seriously than the phrenologists of the nineteenth century.
Poverty is more than a destructive deficit in profit. Poverty has its own culture associated with it. Many people living in poverty do not trust the education system (although, to be fair, many do). To those who do not trust the education system, they view it as racially stacked against them, which is sometimes the case, (and sometimes not). Therefore, when said povertous parents send their children to school, they do not stress academics or openly treat the concept with contempt.
Also, popular culture has a great deal to do with this phenomenon that you mention. Many people, black and white, are indoctrinated with the belief that African-Americans are supposed to be athletic, great jumpers, and practical to the point of being cunning, and not academic. This, unfortunately, has the effect of inculating hundreds of thousands of teenagers each year with the idea that they don’t have to do well in academics, or even that they shouldn’t. This number skyrockets when one factors in the effect of the Internet upon the global popular culture.
To be perfectly fair, white Europeans, *******especially ******* those descending from a country ruled by a hereditary monarchy (England, France, Russia, et cetera) would suffer similar effects of inbreed-depression to those that an Indian, African, Hispanic, or Oriental person would.
Western Europe pretty much led the world in outbreeding. How Inbred are Europeans? | JayMan's Blog The map’s an estimate, but cousin marriage, and similar close relation marriage was nowhere near as common as in the subcontinent.
Actually, there are very simple reasons to consider skin tone, eye color, and intelligence in three different evolutionary categories.
Skin tone can respond to local conditions. If you live in a hot area, you don’t want to wear a lot of clothes. You want dark skin that doesn’t burn as easily, and the loss of efficiency in producing vitamin D is all right, since you’re going to have so much skin exposed anyway. If you live in a cold area, you’re going to wear a lot of clothes, which means burning is less of an issue, but you want your skin to be more efficient at producing vitamin D. Evolutionary pressure encourages skin tone to adapt to local conditions. Also, we have evidence of that happening. Also, we have no evidence at all that historical trends have had any significant impact on skin tone (setting aside Speaker Boehner, of course).
Eye color (and, although you didn’t mention it, hair color) are not nearly so subject to evolutionary pressure. The jury is still out on why Europeans have such greater variation in hair and eye color than folks from other areas (and, conversely, so much less variation in other facial features), but there’s not clear evidence that hair and eye color face adaptive pressure from the environment. We do, however, have evidence that eye color and hair color have evolved differently among different populations. Also, apart from colored contact lenses and Revlon, there’s no evidence that historical forces have significantly impact hair or eye color.
Intelligence is good for everyone. There’s no evidence whatsoever that intelligence is unimportant in any climate, or that it’s more important in one climate than in another. On the other hand, we have mountains of evidence that historical trends have impacted achievement on intelligence tests.
Grouping these three kinds of human traits together is one step above crystal therapy. And that’s being awfully snide to crystal therapists.
Um, there are plenty of reasons why more intelligence is not, in fact, always better. The simplest is that the brain is a highly energetically expensive organ. In an environment with heavy parasite prevalence, for example, energy spent on brain development is energy that can’t be spent on fighting off parasites. Here’s Randy Thornhill:
I’ll throw this out (maybe someone can use me as evidence that black pupils aren’t so stupid after all :)).
Intelligence does not have to confer an objective advantage for it to take hold in a population. If the trait “high intelligence” is genetically linked to another trait that confers advantage, then it too will be selected for.
Then there’s also the founder effect and genetic drift.
For instance, let’s say that individuals carrying the “wandering” gene tend to be adventurous sorts who are always exploring and blazing new frontiers. People who have one wandering gene tend to be restless, but not extremely so. Maybe they are satisfied with moving just a few miles every couple of years. But people carrying two genes are always on the go. As soon as the lay of the land becomes familiar, they start getting anxious and looking out towards the horizon. People with no wandering genes are retiring, homebody types who like to live vicariously through TV characters.
We probably wouldn’t be too shocked if we find the “wandering” gene disproportionately in the peoples descended from the earliest African immigrants. They come from people who just can’t sit still.
Now let’s say the wandering gene is located in very close proximity to a gene that enhances analytical reasoning. If you possess the wandering gene, you’re 80% more likely to possess the enhanced analytical reasoning gene. So we probably wouldn’t be too shocked if we find enhanced analytical reasoning in peoples descended from the earliest African immigrants, as well as the descendents of more recent “founders” (like Native Americans).
I don’t know if there’s any evidence to support any of this. But it IS possible for a trait to exist disproportionately in a population without it being ecological/evolutionarily beneficial. Hell, a trait could exist disproportionately and also be quite disadvantageous (evidence: all the inheritable physical and mental disorders known to man).
But is intelligence correlated to brain energy expenditures? If that were the case, we wouldn’t use IQ tests, but brain metabolism tests. There wouldn’t be any dispute over what intelligence is: we’d know that it’s measurable.
“My brain absorbs more oxygen from the blood than yours does.”
This would seem to be a reversion to earlier centuries’ ideas of intelligence as correlated to brain size – phrenology – and we know better than that today.
The parasite hypothesis doesn’t say more intelligence isn’t better; it simply suggests that it has trade-offs. As others have pointed out, better intelligence might help people figure out how to fight off parasitic infections or to avoid infection. Conversely, keeping warm in cold weather is a highly energy-intensive activity, and one might hypothesize that people in cold climates would have less developed brains. Finally, their hypothesis is tested with pretty lousy data.
Well, sure, it’s a terrible study. As most of these ‘treat each country as a data point’ studies are. I included it more as a ‘here is an interesting hypothesis that a famous guy proposed’ than ‘here is some evidence’.
All the Thornhill paper argues is that there are costs to investing in brain development, and in environments with lots of disease stress it might be disadvantageous to do so.
Granted it’s an interesting hypothesis. I still think that the difference I described between skin color and intelligence–that different skin tones are adaptive for different climates, whereas intelligence is adaptive everywhere–is a strong distinction. Savor’s suggestion–if you believe one is genetically linked to certain populations, you should believe the other is–fails along these lines.
I’m new to this thread and I’ve read a few pages only packed with conjecture. Is there a post so far that provides a cite for evidence of causation, not just correlation?
People reject the obvious because it’s tied up with race. This is a more general phenomenon related to populations in general. If you believe that gene distributions are evenly distributed between all populations, then you must reject the notion of group differences based on genes. I don’t reject the idea that gene distributions vary. They do for virtually every other variable human trait, I don’t make a PC exception when it comes to genes that influence intelligence.
This is why I’d expect black people living in manhattan to be smarter on average than white people living in the suburbs, not because they are black, but because the selection of people that can afford to live in manhattan selects for higher earners and by association, higher end skills and intellect.
I expect hong kong residents to test higher than residents of mainland china on average, in that case they are all chinese, but the group that moves to and lives in Hong Kong is not a random sample of the chinese population, it has a cluster of more of the elites, that get selected out to be able to move to and afford Hong Kong.
The kids of university college professors likely test higher than the average kids in the US and elsewhere. Not because of race or creed in that scenario, but because of the difference in those populations. The deniers there will point to better environments, and that certainly plays some role and advantage being raised by professors, but I’d assume that adoptive children raised by the same professors would not do as well on average because there is SOME element of innate skill involved.
Not all populations have EQUAL distributions of the genes that influence intelligence. It is an absolutely ABSURD assumption. And assumption only justified by some perversion of the IDEALS of equality in all things that people apply to how NATURE doles out attributes.
Going back to the original question - I think the problem might lie in what is being tested. For example if their is a test for artistic, musical, or athletic ability I’d look like a complete idiot. Give me a math test I do better.
Another example - I’ve seen some people with autism that had a low IQ but give them a repetitive job, one that would drive other people nuts, and they do just fine.
Another example - computers. There was this one local business that was very old school. Employees in IT were expected to where suits and sit at desks all day doing there job. And that company wondered why they couldnt keep good tech people?
So my feeling is the tests are for the wrong things and they are also looking for the wrong outcomes.
The only way that COULD be true is if it was a society that actively encouraged the mating of its smartest people and went out of the way to sterilize those with lower IQ’s. Thank God the Nazis are gone.
