James Watson claims black people are stupider

[Rollory]

Posting this because it will make Nick Walter feel all warm and fuzzy:
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece
His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "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."
Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr Watson's remarks to be looked at in the context of racial hatred laws. A spokesman for the 1990 Trust, a black human rights group, said: "It is astonishing that a man of such distinction should make comments that seem to perpetuate racism in this way. It amounts to fuelling bigotry and we would like it to be looked at for grounds of legal complaint."

So. A question of science and measurable fact, being decided on the basis of emotion and lawsuits. Ok.

If Watson's claims are false, it should be possible to prove it experimentally (or such proof should be already available). That would be a far more effective response to such things, and a far more effective boost to anti-racism, than making a fuss about how people's feelings were hurt. Deciding a question of science on that basis leaves the door wide open for Bad People to claim that "it's true but nobody wants to face the fact". Showing that his claim is blatantly contrary to fact will allow people to most effectively shut up anyone who tries to repeat the claim.

If Watson's claims are true - oh, wait, I'm not allowed to say that. But if I were, I'd say that if intelligence is a trait that *is* controlled by genetics to the same extent as height or hair color, we would need to start figuring out to what extent intelligence is important to civilization and society and what it means to have measurable and predetermined differences, and to what extent we need to recognize that or to what extent we can afford to pretend a counterfactual.

[Mox]

Intelligence isn't as clearly defined as skin colour. You can measure skin colour by analysing absorption spectra. There's no equally unambiguous test for intelligence.

[Njal]

I doubt anyone can come up with an unbiased test for intelligence. What is relevent to one person/group/culture will be more or less relevent to another.

[Nick Walter]

Posting this because it will make Nick Walter feel all warm and fuzzy:
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece


Sad and disappointed is actually the feeling :(


So. A question of science and measurable fact, being decided on the basis of emotion and lawsuits. Ok.


It's not a question of emotion supressing science. This isn't a study being submitted to a journal, this guy wrote a book for the public. This guy is playing up the racism angle quite cynically for publicity reasons.


If Watson's claims are false, it should be possible to prove it experimentally (or such proof should be already available). That would be a far more effective response to such things, and a far more effective boost to anti-racism, than making a fuss about how people's feelings were hurt. Deciding a question of science on that basis leaves the door wide open for Bad People to claim that "it's true but nobody wants to face the fact". Showing that his claim is blatantly contrary to fact will allow people to most effectively shut up anyone who tries to repeat the claim.


The correctness of incorrectness of his hypothesis is irrelevant to anyone except other geneticists. No matter how much it grates on people who consider facts far more important than peace or civilized behavior, it's simply impossible to base any policy or diplomacy on a theory of inequality. It won't work for either party because it's almost impossible to have harmonious relations when one side is assuming a stance of inherent superiority.

The core fact that a lot of people seem to miss is that we, as people, lie to ourselves a lot. We have to, it's how we keep our behavior in civilized bounds. Most of the lies people tell themselves are quite useful things, and one of those very useful lies is that they should assume everyone else is just as able and good as themselves. If they don't tell themselves that lie then some very ugly behaviors start to creep up. Things like Auschwitz come to mind immediately.

[Lizard_King]

If Watson's claims are false, it should be possible to prove it experimentally (or such proof should be already available). That would be a far more effective response to such things, and a far more effective boost to anti-racism, than making a fuss about how people's feelings were hurt. Deciding a question of science on that basis leaves the door wide open for Bad People to claim that "it's true but nobody wants to face the fact". Showing that his claim is blatantly contrary to fact will allow people to most effectively shut up anyone who tries to repeat the claim.
Why? We haven't been able to convincingly disprove the existence of God, and that's about as straightforward a question as IQ. Or EQ. Or whatever fruity substitute they have landed on until the next person who isn't good at that test complains loudly enough. The only relevant part of those exams is being able to design tests to measure the sorts of smarts people need for certain things, which I'm not convinced exists either apart from general knowledge tests (no, kids, knowing math is not a cultural preference).

If Watson's claims are true - oh, wait, I'm not allowed to say that. But if I were, I'd say that if intelligence is a trait that *is* controlled by genetics to the same extent as height or hair color, we would need to start figuring out to what extent intelligence is important to civilization and society and what it means to have measurable and predetermined differences, and to what extent we need to recognize that or to what extent we can afford to pretend a counterfactual.
Why? We don't make that big a deal about hair color or height, apart from maybe choosing a mate with those in mind. Same goes for intelligence.

By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by how intelligence is linked to genes. That would seem a pretty obvious direct relationship, unless you are trying to extrapolate beyond intelligence potential. Which is the sort of thing people like Watson seem to like to do. I'm not that interested in playing that game.

[Mordrak]

Most of the lies people tell themselves are quite useful things, and one of those useful lies is that they should assume everyone else is just as able and good as themselves. If they don't tell themselves that lie then some very ugly behaviors start to creep up.
Really? How many people do you know? The lie most of the people I know tell themselves is that they themselves are better than everyone else. The second most common lie I find people tell themselves is that they are always good at what they do (at least when it comes to things they have a vested interest in).

[Nick Walter]

Really? How many people do you know? The lie most of the people I know tell themselves is that they themselves are better than everyone else.

Yeah, I don't claim there aren't bad lies in the mix. But even the one you cited is really just the dark flipside of another necessary and good lie, the old "I'm a good and loved person, I have value" that keeps a person from being incapacitated by self doubt and self esteem issues.

I don't claim any oracular knowledge of the whole twisty list of things people lie to themselves about, but I think it's fairly obvious that the mechanism is in play and is sometimes useful and sometimes not. I also think it stems from that mechanic that telling one group of people that they are scientifically proven inferior to another group is going to do nothing but promote bad behavior all around.

[Lizard_King]

Really? How many people do you know? The lie most of the people I know tell themselves is that they themselves are better than everyone else. The second most common lie I find people tell themselves is that they are always good at what they do (at least when it comes to things they have a vested interest in).
I think Nick was referring specifically to the sort of "socially conscious" lies that are relevant to this topic, versus just the general lies.

[Mordrak]

Yeah, I don't claim there aren't bad lies in the mix. But even the one you cited is really just the dark flipside of another necessary and good lie, the old "I'm a good and loved person, I have value" that keeps a person from being incapacitated by self doubt and self esteem issues.

I don't claim any oracular knowledge of the whole twisty list of things people lie to themselves about, but I think it's fairly obvious that the mechanism is in play and is sometimes useful and sometimes not. I also think it stems from that mechanic that telling one group of people that they are scientifically proven inferior to another group is going to do nothing but promote bad behavior all around.

I think Nick was referring specifically to the sort of "socially conscious" lies that are relevant to this topic, versus just the general lies.

Oh ok. He meant collective, or social lies, that we all buy into, at least on the surface, that keep society working rather than the individual lies that people tell to themselves to keep going. Thanks for the clarification.

[Nick Walter]

Oh ok. He meant collective, or social lies, that we all buy into, at least on the surface, that keep society working rather than the individual lies that people tell to themselves to keep going. Thanks for the clarification.

That's actually a better way of explaining it, thanks. I wasn't originally making the distinction between the collective vs the individual ones since I think the mechanism is basically the same but yes the concern for this thread lies entirely in the realm of the collective lies that we tell ourselves to keep society running smoothly.

[Sharpe]

Several years ago I read a quote, and I cannot recall the attribution, but it went something like this: "Human equality is not a scientific fact, but is a necessary principle of just human relations".

And that's what I believe. Arguing about group intelligence is largely moot IMO: it's possible that variations in group intelligence exist, but it's also irrelevant. In order for societal relations to function you have to assume a fundamental level of equality between groups of people.

If you want to go beyond that abstract principle, there are two scientific facts, which are well established, that back the idea up. First, if there are variations in group intelligence, they are small, on a per capita average basis. This is well established based on the many conflicting studies. Some studies show no group variance. Other studies show some measurable group variance, but its always within a standard deviation or so, and its always a much smaller fraction of the variation you see on an individual by individual basis.

Second, the variation in intelligence in individuals is very very large, far outstripping the range of variation in groups. This is well established by decades of peer reviewed studies. Even if it were true that one group on average has less intelligence than a second group, the max variation would be small, something like 2 or 3% on a group vs group basis. Meanwhile, the individual varation would be a large multiple of that, which means that a big chunk of people in Group 1 (like 40 or 45%) would be smarter than the average person in Group 2, and that a big chunk of people in Group 2 would be less intelligent than the average in Group 1.

The upshot of these two scientific facts is that establishing societal policies on the basis of group intelligence is going to be inefficient (you will end up discriminating against the higher-intelligence end of the Group 1 pool and inappropriately favoring the lower-intelligence end of the Group 2 pool), is going to be unfair (see above), is going to be a nightmare of enforcement ("this rule shouldn't apply to me! I am too smart to be considered a dumbass group 1 person!"), and is going to lead to a huge amount of social resentment and (based on historical examples) civil unrest.

You just have to treat broad groups equally. It's a necessary principle of justice IMO. You can treat *individuals* differently based on their behavior, but you can't make assumptions about individual behavior based on group membership.

Also, the above argument is pretty well understood, even by people who don't articulate it in that fashion. People who like to harp on group intelligence differences routinely disregard the huge impact of individual variation. And IMO that's a sign that the people who make an issue of group variations don't actually care about the facts or the science, but in fact have biased axes to grind. Or maybe they just want attention.

As to Watson, I think there's a strong argument to be made that he's become a crotchety old bastard who thrives on shock and pushing people's buttons in his old age. Plus he wants to sell books. He participated in a great act of scientific discovery 50 years ago but that doesn't mean his every opinion on every scientific subject is still valid or worthy of discussion 50 years later.

[Dirt]

If some races can generally grow bigger and stronger than others, why can't intelligence be the same?

[Sharpe]

Dirt, two responses:

First, see discussion of individual variation vs group variance, above.

Second, variations in size by group turn out to be a lot smaller than you can observe at first glance once you adjust for diet and nutrition. A lot of the historical variations in size (especially height) had to do with the level of protein consumption in a region's diet, and also the status of pregnant women (nutrition during gestation being a fairly significant factor for later growth). It's my understanding that current diet-adjusted studies do show some regional variation in size but, like intelligence, its fairly small on a group per capita basis, and much smaller than the range of variation in individual size.

[Glenn]

I doubt anyone can come up with an unbiased test for intelligence. What is relevent to one person/group/culture will be more or less relevent to another.Math? Abstract logic? No?

[Jason McCullough]

I knew saving this would come in handy (http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html). It's a technical read, but it's hilarious. He covers basically all the points that usually come up.

Let us consider trying to estimate the heritability of something which is transmitted culturally. Its real heritability is zero, since there is no genetic component to its variance, but the question is rather what the estimated heritability would be, employing the usual methods. In particular, suppose I came up with some quantitative measures of, say, accent. (Talk to some phoneticians (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/004641.html) if you think that wouldn't be possible.) Now I attempt to estimate their heritability. I'd find that identical twins reared apart had more similarity in accent than random members of the general population. They were born at the same time (and population-wide accents drift over time: see, again, Labov (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/002933.html)), in the same place (and so they will tend to grow up near each other, even though raised apart). Moreover, the kind of families receiving children being raised apart are not random samples of the general population. (To pick an example, in one of the Minnesota studies on IQ, race, and adoption (http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ147401&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&accno=EJ147401), the average IQ of the adoptive fathers, all of them white, was over 120, while the state average for white males was 105. For a more formal and detailed version of this critique, see, e.g., Mike Stoolmiller (http://content.apa.org/journals/bul/125/4/392).) The more geographic and social (and, to a lesser extent, temporal) variability I include in my sample, the more such twins will stand out as more similar in accent than the general population. Of course children born and raised in the same family are going to be even more similar, through obvious non-genetic processes. Applying the usual direct estimate based on twins raised apart, or even the kind of analysis done by Devlin et al., I will estimate a non-zero heritability, which is entirely an artifact of neglecting cultural transmission. Another direct estimate of the narrow heritability is proportional to the correlation between separated parents and children. (It's twice that correlation if there's no assortative mating, shading down to just equal to the correlation when mating is perfectly assortative.) This, too, will be positive, if only owing to geographic clustering. The typical indirect estimate, based on comparing the correlation of identical and fraternal twins raised together, is the only one which should work, if they experience environments of equal variance. If identical twins experience more similar environmental influences on accent than fraternal twins, then even it will conclude that accent is, in fact, heritable.

IQ is a proxy for the ability to successfully produce in a bureaucratic-industrial society, not "intelligence." Unlike "some groups are smarter than others," this doesn't require endless epicycles to explain the data.

Let me sum up.

1. The most common formulae used to estimate heritability are wrong, either for trivial mathematical reasons (such as the upward bias in the difference between monozygotic and dizygotic twins' correlations), or for substantive ones (the covariance of monozygotic twins raised apart neglects shared environments other than the family, such as maternal and community effects).
2. The best estimate I can find puts the narrow heritability of IQ at around 0.34 and the broad heritability at 0.48.
3. Even this estimate neglected heteroskedasticity, gene-environment interactions, gene-environment covariance, the existence of shared environment beyond the family, and the possibility that the samples being used are not representative of the broader population.
4. Now that people are finally beginning to model gene-environment interactions, even in very crude ways, they find it matters a lot. Recall that Turkheimer et al. found a heritability which rose monotonically with socioeconomic status, starting around zero at low status and going up to around 0.8 at high status. Even this is probably an over-estimate, since it neglected maternal effects and other shared non-familial environment, correlations between variance components, etc. Under such circumstances, talking about "the" heritability of IQ is nonsense. Actual geneticists have been saying as much since Dobzhansky at least.
5. Applying the usual heritability estimators to traits which are shaped at least in part by cultural transmission, a.k.a. traditions, is very apt to confuse tradition with genetics. The usual twin studies do not solve this problem. Studies which could don't seem to have been done.
6. Heritability is completely irrelevant to malleability or plasticity; every possible combination of high and low heritability, and high and low malleability, is not only logically possible but also observed.
7. Randomized experiments, natural experiments and the Flynn Effect all show what competent regressions also suggest, namely that IQ is, indeed, responsive to purely environmental interventions.

I realize I'm inviting the suspicion that I'm protesting too much. If I really think heritability is irrelevant to malleability, why shouldn't I be happy to accept, say, Jensen's old favored value of 0.8 for IQ's broad-sense heritability, which puts in the same range as highly-malleable height? Why go on at such length about an irrelevancy? I can only offer two replies. One is that I am trying to meet people half way: even if I can't persuade you that heritability has nothing to do with malleability, I hope to persuade you that the current estimates are not reliable, that the notion of a value for IQ's heritability is silly, and that we do, indeed, know squat about that question. The other and more basic reply, however, is that these people are wrong in ways I find intensely irritating.

So: Do I really believe that the heritability of IQ is zero? Well, I hope by this point I've persuaded you that's not a well-posed question. What I hope you really want to ask is something like: Do I think there are currently any genetic variations which, holding environment fixed to within some reasonable norms for prosperous, democratic, industrial or post-industrial societies, would tend to lead to differences in IQ? There my answer is "yes, of course". I've mentioned phenylketonuria and hypothyroidism already, and many other in-born errors of metabolism also lead to cognitive deficits, including lower IQ, at least in certain environments. More interestingly, conditions like Williams's Syndrome, Downs's Syndrome, etc., are genetically caused, and lead to reasonably predictable patterns of cognitive deficits, affecting different abilities in different ways. In many of these cases, it seems very likely (but is not yet established) that these variants cause problems with the signaling pathways which set how gene expression responds to environmental cues. Manipulating those signaling pathways during the right time windows would change what kind of mind the organism has later. The fact that different genetic disorders lead to different patterns of cognitive deficits, rather than just generally making people duller all around, suggests ways of disentangling which genes are relevant to which abilities through which molecular mechanisms. (Cf.) At a popular level, I've still not run across a better description of way the regulation of gene expression couples genotypes and environments during mental development than Gary Marcus's writings, but if you want details there is a whole rapidly-growing field of molecular developmental neurobiology (as I'm not-infrequently reminded).

I suspect this answer will still not satisfy some people, who really want to know about differences between people who do not have significant developmental disorders. Here, my honest answer would be that I presently have no evidence one way or the other. If you put a gun to my head and asked me to guess, and I couldn't tell what answer you wanted to hear, I'd say that my suspicion is that there are, mostly on the strength of analogy to other areas of biology where we know much more. I would then — cautiously, because you have a gun to my head — suggest that you read, say, Dobzhansky on the distinction between "human equality" and "genetic identity", and ask why it is so important to you that IQ be heritable and unchangeable.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

I bet I know where Rollory found this article! (http://www.southafricasucks.blogspot.com/)

[Sharpe]

You can test for things like math and abstract logic and I think you will find some variation between groups in those narrow sub-sets of intellectual ability (but as discussed above, very small group variation compared to the breadth of individual variation). Because individual variation swamps group variation even in these narrower subsets of ability, I don't believe it is reasonable to make societal rules or laws of general application based on these types of group variations.

But let's suppose that you DID find large group variations in one intellectual area, say math ability, and it was statistically big enough to impact individual outcomes. Even then, would that justify treating the low-math group differently than the high-math group? I suppose in areas of public concern than involve heavy application of math, perhaps. But would that matter to things like basic legal rights, right to vote, right to run for office, and so forth? I think even in this hypothetical I would be hesitant to say "Group A is bad at math, NO VOTES FOR THEM!" For most things where math was relevant (say qualifying for an accounting job), the individual performance would be a bigger deal than group based rules.

Bottom line to this whole topic is: people want to be treated as individuals. Discriminating against a whole group collectively is wrong morally, is wrong from an efficiency standpoint (because individual variation far outweighs group variation), and is a recipe for social unrest. People vary a lot, groups also vary, but not much. Most importantly, you have to treat people with equal rights and opportunities. Its a fundamental principle of a just society.

Please note, I said "equal rights and opportunities" -- NOT "equal outcomes". I do think actual outcome is going to vary widely on an individual basis and also in small ways on a group basis. But that's no reason to have different political and legal standards for different groups, like Watson was suggesting.

[Glenn]

I bet I know where Rollory found this article! (http://www.southafricasucks.blogspot.com/)That site just crashed my browser for some raisin, click at your own risk.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Maybe Glenn's browser doesn't support COLD, HARD FACTS.

[Aeon221]

That article is funnier than most of the comedies I've seen recently.

[Glenn]

Maybe Glenn's browser doesn't support COLD, HARD FACTS.Truth bombs are incompatible with Vista.

[Kunikos]

Who is James Watson and why do I care more about him than say, the Grand Dragon of the KKK?

[Lizard_King]

Who is James Watson and why do I care more about him than say, the Grand Dragon of the KKK?
here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson).

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Rosalind Franklin says he's an asshole.

[bigdruid]

Who is James Watson?
Just some science guy who won some piddling award the Swedes give out. Nobody you need to worry your little head about.

[Kunikos]

here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson).

Oh, one of the two guys who stole full credit for discovering the double helix of DNA. Cool.

Just some science guy who won some piddling award the Swedes give out. Nobody you need to worry your little head about.

Right, because there can't be two guys named James Watson. Ever. Douche.

[bigdruid]

Well, it *was* in the second sentence of the linked article, after all.

[Glenn]

Oh, one of the two guys who stole full credit for discovering the double helix of DNA. Cool.The general consensus, so far as I'm aware, is that Watson and Crick thought they were getting the X-Ray diffraction data froma third party named Wilkins, who worked either with or over Rosalind Franklin. Watson and Crick offered to include Wilkins as an co-author in the journal article but he declined, since he hadn't helped to build the actual models.

Those fucking thieves.

Right, because there can't be two guys named James Watson. Ever. Douche.Who's Adam Smith?

[Kunikos]

Who's Adam Smith?

He's a democrat (http://www.electadamsmith.com/), apparently.

[bago]

He always gets confused with Alan Smithee

[ElGuapo]

So, let's argue for devil's advocate sake.

Premise: There are no genetic differences between the races.

Sub-theory: All differences having to do with one race being superior to another with respect to another in one field (the ability to run fast, the ability to do math) are simply cultural biases.

Dismissive argument #1: The reason that Asians and Whites dominate (with outliers) fields/careers that require intelligence is because the focus of Asian and White parents as a general trend are to nurture intelligence.

Dismissive argument #2: The reason the NFL, the NBA, and track and field is dominated by Blacks is because Black parents tend to nurture athletic ability.

To sum, there is no statistical difference between any of the races. It's all culture.

Is this the current argument?

Is this to avoid the perception of a Morlock/Eoli society?

[Kunikos]

I don't know that it's cultural so much as class level. Look around the US and you can see that there are plenty of dumb-ass white people.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Man, my favorite part of my genetics class was listening to my feminist professor lay out her grassy knoll conspiracy theory about Franklin, Watson and Crick. I mean, sure, it may very well be true, but damn she made it sound wacky.

[Kunikos]

http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/2442/250pxdickmuttleyzw1.jpg

"Yess... we will steal the X-Ray Crystallography!"

[Sharpe]

El Guapo, your summary represents what is generally referred to as "The Blank Slate" school of thought. There is a counter view of thought that many scientists subscribe to which holds that there *are* variations in individual traits. A really good book on the topic which IMO effectively debunks the Blank Slate hypothesis is titled (curiously enough) The Blank Slate (http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-1212116-9430219?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192719206&sr=8-1) by MIT professor Steven Pinker. Personally, I think the argument Pinker makes is extremely convincing and that there is good evidence to support a view that genetics has a lot of impact on individual behavior.

However, my post above about how individual variation swamps group variation and that laws based on group identity are wrong, remains in force. Among scientists who don't believe in the Blank Slate type theory, most still believe that discriminating on the basis of group identity is both scientifically invalid and morally wrong.

In my view this whole issue is fairly straightforward: there clearly are biological differences between individuals and (to a less degree on per capita average) between groups. But the individual variation so heavily outweighs the group variation that it is both invalid and unfair to make laws or social policy based on group identity.

Also, some things are more heavily influenced by culture and some more heavily impacted by biology. In your above example, I do think the school-success of certain groups in America is primarily related to culturual factors like emphasis on education. However, I don't think the athletic success of certain groups is adequately explained by culture. If you look at world wide athletic performance you can see that there are regional variations in certain narrow areas of performance (sprinting and leaping are dominated by persons of West African descent, middle and long distance running are dominated by persons of North and East African descent, power lifting is dominated by persons of North European descent, and so forth).

Also, group variations become more pronounced when you look at the "statistical tail" that is the very best in a certain category. So while it may not be true that all persons of West African descent are faster than all persons of European descent, if you look at the top sprinters in the world by region (http://www.iaaf.org/statistics/records/gender=M/allrecords/discipline=100/index.html) you will see that they are almost all of West African descent. The world champion is Jamaican (descended from slaves imported from West Africa); the Asian champion is Quattari citizen who is an emigre from Nigeria, the African champion is a Nigerian, the European champion is a Portugese citizen of Nigerian descent (sense a trend here?) The Australian champ is the outlier: hes of mixed Irish and Aboriginal descent and according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Johnson_(sprinter)) is the only person in world history not of West African descent to crack 10 seconds on the 100m.

I don't see any cultural theory that would explain such a clear variation in sprinting ability. But just because West Africa produced the best sprinters in the world doesn't IMO mean anything larger. Sprinting and leaping are narrow traits, governed by just a few genes, and capable of being selected for in a fairly short span of generations. Generalized human intelligence, IMO is not a narrow trait and you are not IMO going to see meaningful variations on a group basis. Intelligence is a mix of multiple traits, governed by hundreds or thousands of genes.

People seem to get hung up on the "corrollary" arguments here: oh, group A is better athletically, that MUST mean that they are worse intellectually. Why? What's the connection? Or, group B is better at academic performance, that means they are smarter. Not necessarily. Intelligence does impact academic success, but so does culture. On the other hand, no amount of culture is going to get my fat ass across the 100m line in 10 seconds :o.

[Dirt]

The blacks dominate sports in the USA because of natural selection. The voyage from Africa to the USA was extremely harsh for the Africans. Only the strong could have survived. Those genes were then passed on to their descendents.

I don't know how widespread the practice of trying to create "super-slaves" were, but that may have something to do with it too.

Edit: I just read an article a few months back that mentioned that really only the East Asians are the ones that are getting ahead in the USA. The South East Asians are on parity with the Latinos. No, I'm not saying East Asians are smarter than South East Asians; it's all culturally based.

I don't see any cultural theory that would explain such a clear variation in sprinting ability. But just because West Africa produced the best sprinters in the world doesn't IMO mean anything larger. Sprinting and leaping are narrow traits, governed by just a few genes, and capable of being selected for in a fairly short span of generations. Generalized human intelligence, IMO is not a narrow trait and you are not IMO going to see meaningful variations on a group basis. Intelligence is a mix of multiple traits, governed by hundreds or thousands of genes.
There are different kinds of intelligence. Some people are logically smarter, some are artistically smarter. Couldn't certain races be smarter in certain ways than others?

[Fugitive]

So, let's argue for devil's advocate sake.

Premise: There are no genetic differences between the races.
[...]
To sum, there is no statistical difference between any of the races. It's all culture.

Is this the current argument?
It doesn't seem like anybody's claiming that there are absolutely no genetic differences, just that a) it's difficult to test certain things like intelligence in a strictly objective sense, which is important when you're dealing with relatively small differences, and b) any differences have not been proven to be significant enough to be meaningful in any useful sense or to justify any discrimination, changes in social policy, etc., strictly on the basis of race.

Things like the dominance of black athletes in certain sports is probably primarily a statistical effect. You're looking at the very end of the distribution curve there, where the population drops off dramatically enough that relatively small changes in the overall average and standard deviation can cause a disproportionate shift in numbers at the upper percentiles.

Is this to avoid the perception of a Morlock/Eoli society?
I think that's a whole separate argument from the above. And I'd quibble over the word 'perception' there since it presupposes that we've already starkly divided the population that way and just don't want to admit it.

The debate on this point seems to be over whether doing this kind of research can be justified at all. On one hand you can take the stance that all knowledge is inherently worth pursuing, and forbidding it would be a kind of chilling effect, a sign that we're letting social agendas interfere with what should be pure research independent of any morals. But on the other you could also argue that there is no practical benefit regardless of what the results are, as argued above, and doing so will only inflame the racist passions of the ignorant.

[skedastic]

Sharpe, I agree with most of your remarks, but I wonder if you could cite to support your repeated claim that inter-group differences in cognitive ability are vanishingly small in comparison to intra-group differences. As I recall, the difference in adult IQs across whites and blacks in the U.S. is about a standard deviation, which is enormous, and implies that overall variation in IQ is approximately equally attributable to within and across group variation. There is tons of ongoing research in a variety of disciplines trying to explain that gap: it isn't some trivial little thing with which only loonies are concerned.

[wisefool]

The basic freaking problem on Darwinian genetics is the social uses any "scientific" result would be applied to:

The poor are poor not only because they are lazy, but God hates them and now science says they are dumb anyway.

By converse, rich people are smarter and God loves them.

BTW, the numbers I've seen on SE Asian-Americans are that the educational achievement gap diminishes across generations - The first generation AA's do a bit worse, and by the third generation they perform identically to Caucasian AA's. As an immigrant myself, I suspect these biases are because of WHO choses to abandon their life and go to a country were they may not even know the language - the crossing process is difficult enough it is its own filter for the ambitious and risk-takers.

[bigdruid]

The blacks dominate sports in the USA because of natural selection. The voyage from Africa to the USA was extremely harsh for the Africans. Only the strong could have survived. Those genes were then passed on to their descendents.

I've heard that before (my wife is very fond of that theory, to be honest), but I wouldn't throw it out there as if it were fact.

It seems more likely that the slave ships would select for fat, drought-resistant africans, not athletic africans. I'm not saying that slavery didn't have a selection impact - I'm just saying that you shouldn't throw around that theory as if it has any proven factual basis. I'd say that if there's a genetic component to black athletic success, it's innate in the native population (as Sharpe mentioned above regarding sprinters) and not introduced somehow during the exodus to the US.

And I think you are underestimating cultural impact - one reason why blacks excel at sports is it's seen as a way out of the ghetto (or at least a way to gain status). If you were to go back 80 years, you'd find the basketball leagues dominated by Jews (http://www.jewishmag.com/45mag/basketball/basketball.htm).

http://www.jewishmag.com/45mag/basketball/david.jpg

[Mordrak]

No offense to leet Jewish basketball skillz, but go back 80 years and were blacks even allowed to compete?

[Robert Sharp]

I don't know that it's cultural so much as class level. Look around the US and you can see that there are plenty of dumb-ass white people.

Could you give an example? For instance, are you white?

I think Sharpe nailed it. Even if it is true that the groups show a variance between them, as relates to the average, the variance at either end is statistically insignificant. In other words, you can't find grounds for a true bias against all members of a group just because of the mean, median, or mode of that group. It causes false discrimination against many members.

That said, I think it's absolutely correct to note that cries of racism are thrown around too readily in these cases. You can't even discuss racial differences, even if you have scientific data, without someone crying racism. Perhaps we should do the same for everything. Someone could point out that scientific studies that focus on menstruation are sexist because they only account for women and suggest that there is a biological difference between men and women.

[caesarbear]

Man, my favorite part of my genetics class was listening to my feminist professor lay out her grassy knoll conspiracy theory about Franklin, Watson and Crick. I mean, sure, it may very well be true, but damn she made it sound wacky.
He stole her work. How wacky is that?

[caesarbear]

That said, I think it's absolutely correct to note that cries of racism are thrown around too readily in these cases. You can't even discuss racial differences, even if you have scientific data, without someone crying racism. Perhaps we should do the same for everything. Someone could point out that scientific studies that focus on menstruation are sexist because they only account for women and suggest that there is a biological difference between men and women.
What scientific studies point to a difference between races?

[Glenn]

I don't know how widespread the practice of trying to create "super-slaves" were, but that may have something to do with it too.Jimmy the Greek must have written some journal articles that I haven't seen yet.

There are different kinds of intelligence. Some people are logically smarter, some are artistically smarter. Couldn't certain races be smarter in certain ways than others?You could write a sociology thesis on this little statement here.

[Ezdaar]

As I recall, the difference in adult IQs across whites and blacks in the U.S. is about a standard deviation, which is enormous, and implies that overall variation in IQ is approximately equally attributable to within and across group variation. There is tons of ongoing research in a variety of disciplines trying to explain that gap: it isn't some trivial little thing with which only loonies are concerned.

This one is interesting but almost certainly due to cultural differences. Black children raised in black families, regardless of their socioeconomic status will be one standard deviation below white children raised in white families, however black children raised in white families will have the same mean as white children raised in white families. I don't know that anyone has studied white children raised in black families however.

[Robert Sharp]

What scientific studies point to a difference between races?

People have mentioned them throughout this thread, and Watson is referring to them too. But it doesn't matter if everyone of them is wrong. I'm not saying there are racial differences. I'm saying if science showed that there were, people would STILL be upset about it.

[caesarbear]

I don't see any cultural theory that would explain such a clear variation in sprinting ability.
You're assuming that we have representative samples of all human heritages attempting to become the world's fastest sprinters. Ask yourself why someone would attempt to be the fastest spiriter and what they would face or sacrifice to do that, then see if anything might be cultural.

[caesarbear]

People have mentioned them throughout this thread, and Watson is referring to them too. But it doesn't matter if everyone of them is wrong. I'm not saying there are racial differences. I'm saying if science showed that there were, people would STILL be upset about it.
Neither Watson, nor this thread, have pointed to racial differences. Just ethnic ones. That's a big distinction.

[skedastic]

Black children raised in black families, regardless of their socioeconomic status will be one standard deviation below white children raised in white families, however black children raised in white families will have the same mean as white children raised in white families.

Please cite.

[Kunikos]

Could you give an example? For instance, are you white?

Whether I'm white or not (I am) doesn't make much of a difference. What I'm suggesting is that if you're poor then you will have fewer opportunities to get ahead, because your home will be less stable (on average, obviously some parents go the extra mile to try to fight against this) your school will have less materials, worse teachers (who wants to teach in areas where you could get stabbed or shot for handing out a bad grade to a gangbanger, or the area is a dump, or the pay is even MORE terrible), etc. There's also the pressure by parents, or just quality of life problems, on children to get jobs as soon as possible.

In some areas, say urban, this is going to be minorities (and those groups would depend on which urban center it is) and in other areas it has nothing to do with race or religion and more to do with white vs. blue collar workers or the like.

From what I've heard, the Appalachians have plenty of poor white people, and their average level of education is due to all these factors.

[Mordrak]

Whether I'm white or not (I am) doesn't make much of a difference.
Uhh, I don't think his was a serious inquiry...

[Glenn]

You're assuming that we have representative samples of all human heritages attempting to become the world's fastest sprinters.Yup, because that's the only way you could ever determine if there's a genetic component partially accounting for differences in sprinting abilities.

[caesarbear]

Yup, because that's the only way you could ever determine if there's a genetic component partially accounting for differences in sprinting abilities.
Of course there's a genetic component. The problem is assigning that genetic component to a race.

[Glenn]

Of course there's a genetic component. The problem is assigning that genetic component to a race.Right. And there's no possibility of determining that without a perfectly randomized test sample. I guess we'll never know.

[ElGuapo]

Ahhh, here is where the meat of the argument lies. Not in stereotyping or studies, but Watson's perceived consequences of them.

Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "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". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

I can't imagine why that would upset people. Elementary, my dear Watson!

Yikes.

[ElGuapo]

Also, I just realized I heard Watson on NPR . . . last week maybe? He seemed really cool on air. This was before his comments about this stuff came out.

[Robert Sharp]

Neither Watson, nor this thread, have pointed to racial differences. Just ethnic ones. That's a big distinction.

Watson is not talking about an ethnic difference. He is talking about anyone descended from Africans, regardless of ethnicity. Ethnicity is not important to genetics, as far as I know.

[Euri]

Ethnicity is a useless concept, with regards to genetics. I would like to see his science, before getting all enraged. Disputing science is worthwhile, disputing naked assertions is not.

[caesarbear]

Watson is not talking about an ethnic difference. He is talking about anyone descended from Africans, regardless of ethnicity. Ethnicity is not important to genetics, as far as I know.
I'm using ethnicity as in common ancestry, as in Ashkenazi Jews tracing lineage back to specific villages in Germany. It has a big relation to genetics. To categorize someone descended from Africa as an ethnicity is crazy, considering we all descended from Africans. We associate black Africans, or anyone who looks like them, as a race, and that has very little to do with genetics.

[Uncle Larry]

Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "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". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".


Yeah, and anyone who thinks black people are inherently faster obviously hasn't ever ordered from Popeye's.

OHHHHH!

[Morkilus]

From his various attributed quotes Watson seems to be your typical eugenics supporter. If you're all for that (and I know some of you are; I knew several people in college that supported sterilization of stupid people) I can see defending his very un-PC views. Otherwise, write him off.

[Robert Sharp]

I'm using ethnicity as in common ancestry, as in Ashkenazi Jews tracing lineage back to specific villages in Germany. It has a big relation to genetics. To categorize someone descended from Africa as an ethnicity is crazy, considering we all descended from Africans. We associate black Africans, or anyone who looks like them, as a race, and that has very little to do with genetics.

Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, the term 'race' is problematic. That's true. But I always think of ethnicity as having a connection to culture. If you just mean something like tracing them back to a certain time and saying there are characteristics today that fit those characteristics then, that's a different matter. But where do you draw the line then? As you said, we can go WAY back and find common ancestors for all of us. Surely blacks today are not really still ethnically African in any tangible sense, are they? I mean in the U.S. Similarly, while I am descended from Scottish and Irish people, it would be wrong to say that I am ethnically either one (or both).

[Kunikos]

Ethnicity is a useless concept, with regards to genetics. I would like to see his science, before getting all enraged. Disputing science is worthwhile, disputing naked assertions is not.

Sure it is; otherwise you have congressmen using assertions from well-known scientists as "facts" to back-up racist legislation, like minority votes only being fractional of a "full" vote.

[Ezdaar]

Please cite.

Naturally I can't find the notes from the class and a quick google only turns up a passing statement about such a study. I don't have the time to do an extensive search so take that as you will. Either I'm lying or such a study exists which shows things contrary to the Scarr-Weinberg study but isn't quite as famous.

I also concede my choice of language in the original post was bad, I shouldn't have said almost certainly, I should have said there is evidence to show.

[skedastic]

I'm not accusing you of lying, I want to see the research myself: depending on where the data came from and how the statistical analysis was handled, that result could be remarkable evidence or could be dismissable out of hand.

[NoWayJose]

Dismissive argument #1: The reason that Asians and Whites dominate (with outliers) fields/careers that require intelligence is because the focus of Asian and White parents as a general trend are to nurture intelligence.

Dismissive argument #2: The reason the NFL, the NBA, and track and field is dominated by Blacks is because Black parents tend to nurture athletic ability. Yeah, because we all know playing sports doesn't require any intelligence.
The blacks dominate sports in the USA because of natural selection. The voyage from Africa to the USA was extremely harsh for the Africans. Only the strong could have survived. Those genes were then passed on to their descendents. http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/original/2005_0308_urkel.jpg
Say what?
And I think you are underestimating cultural impact - one reason why blacks excel at sports is it's seen as a way out of the ghetto (or at least a way to gain status). Is that where they all live? Damn, I've been wondering.

[Ezdaar]

Sorry, that response came across a bit rude. If I do come across it I'll let you know. I thought it was very interesting at the time.

[caesarbear]

Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, the term 'race' is problematic. That's true. But I always think of ethnicity as having a connection to culture. If you just mean something like tracing them back to a certain time and saying there are characteristics today that fit those characteristics then, that's a different matter. But where do you draw the line then? As you said, we can go WAY back and find common ancestors for all of us. Surely blacks today are not really still ethnically African in any tangible sense, are they? I mean in the U.S. Similarly, while I am descended from Scottish and Irish people, it would be wrong to say that I am ethnically either one (or both).
I don't think slavery in the US is far back enough to make ethnicity a complete non-factor. However, due to slavery, people did not come to the US in cohesive ethnic groups. Enclaves of ethnic africans in the US are generally recent, well after slavery occurred. So perhaps for the average black person in the US, I'd say tracing an ancestry has little interest genetically.

Conversely, in Boston you can find strong ethnic Irish communities, even though Irish immigration is as old as the time of slavery. I'm not a geneticist, but I'd guess there might still be interesting genetic relations. It's the hyper extention of the family tree. Though eventually, like any family tree, the distance of relation will become ethnically and genetically irrelevent.

In terms of culture, the Boston Irish really have nothing in common with the daily culture and norms of Ireland. I can't see ethnicity has tied to culture since one can be altered radically and suddenly or remain stagnant for ages, while the other naturally and inevitably transforms over time.

[Sharpe]

Sharpe, I agree with most of your remarks, but I wonder if you could cite to support your repeated claim that inter-group differences in cognitive ability are vanishingly small in comparison to intra-group differences. As I recall, the difference in adult IQs across whites and blacks in the U.S. is about a standard deviation, which is enormous, and implies that overall variation in IQ is approximately equally attributable to within and across group variation. There is tons of ongoing research in a variety of disciplines trying to explain that gap: it isn't some trivial little thing with which only loonies are concerned.

Hmm I couldnt find anything offhand that addressed the magnitude in a clear way. The link Jason provided has some discussion of the relative magnitude issue. Most of my thinking comes from reading the Blank Slate by Pinker, and various books by books Jared Diamond, Robert Wright, and then earlier, Dawkins and Gould. The Blank Slate in particular is recommended - Pinker strongly believes that biology plays a big role in individual behavior (he says at least one half, maybe two thirds, compared to one third to one half for cultural/environmental influences) but also thinks that group variations are relatively smaller, and that laws and politics should judge people individually, as I do.

As for the "standard deviation" figure for IQ that you mention, I have two comments. First, thats actually a bigger variance than I remember reading about - is that just from an outlying study like the Bell Curve studies, or what? I am fairly certain that if you average out a big chunk of peer reviewed studies, even adjusting for tossing out wacky PC and wacky racist studies, that the variance between groups is a lot less than a standard deviation.

Second, IQ does not equal "intelligence" in the sense I use the term. IQ is a measure of a certain subset of intellectual ability (basically the ability to solve logical puzzles at speed) but when I use "intelligence" in a P&R discussion I am talking about the sum whole of intellectual ability which is relevant to participation in society. This includes IQ, plus memory, plus comprehension, plus ability to communicate, plus ability to understand others (empathy), plus ability to interpret emotions. And "overall intelligence" since its a broader category than just IQ, is going to show less variation between groups. So basically I don't accept your "one standard deviation" number :o.

My big issue is this thread is the implication of the statement that "group X has less intelligence". In the P&R context, the implication is that "group X should receive less political power" (or rights or economic rewards or what have you). That's a pretty big deal. You are basically saying "Group X, you don't get full human rights." Which basically means that you are saying Group X isn't really fully human. How much genetic difference would be required to actually justify different political standards? IMO, it would be a lot, much more than the scientific record shows in us Homo Saps.

Now if there were some remnant population of Austrolopithecines that had survived the onset of Genus Homo and were still existant, they would probably be a strongly different genetic pool, enough that I wouldn't be willing to give them legal human status and human rights (as a practical matter it would depend on what level of actual intellectual functioning they had).

Early on I said that equality is not a scientific fact but is a necessary principle of just human relations. Basically, unless you can show that a group is not human (or is mentally incompetent or undeveloped), then IMO you have to have the same basic core of political and legal standards. And IMO, *none* of the studies on racial differences come within an order of magnitude (or two) of that level of difference.

[Sharpe]

One more thing, on the whole "slave selection of blacks created an athletic black super-race" theory, there doesn't seem to be much support for it. As discussed above, the strongest selective pressure was survival ability, not athletic ability, in the actual ocean passage, which is where most of the selection (death) occurred. Second, even assuming some selective preference for the more physically able slaves, I don't think there were enough generations of slavery to make a huge impact.

And empirically, if you look at world sprinting for example, although descendants of slaves do dominate in America, in the rest of the world, the dominant category is broader: not descendants of slaves, but descendants of the West African genetic pool more broadly (like in my sprinter list example, two of the guys were descendants from slaves, and 3 were of direct Nigerian descent, no slavery involved). So thats empirical evidence not of superior athletic ability amongst descendants of the slave trade but rather of people of West African descent more generally (the slave trade being a subset of all West Africans).

Plus that whole slave-eugenics theory has a creepy vibe IMO.

[Dirt]

If West Africans can be better at sprinting in general, why can't certain races be better at? Apart from the Egyptians (who aren't black), what have the black Africans created of note based on advanced mathematical principles?

[Lizard_King]

If West Africans can be better at sprinting in general, why can't certain races be better at math, science or engineering? Apart from the Egyptians, what have the black Africans created of note?
Well, I don't know any West Africans or descendants thereof who have come to internet forums and said dumb shit like this over and over and over again. So that's pretty awesome. OTOH, Asians are in Big Trouble so far.

[Dirt]

Well, I don't know any West Africans or descendants thereof who have come to internet forums and said dumb shit like this over and over and over again. So that's pretty awesome. OTOH, Asians are in Big Trouble so far.
I'm pointing out that it seems okay to acknowledge and applaud physical superiority of one race over another, yet it seems taboo to point out the same in regards to intelligence. There's plenty of information pointing to the fact that Asians excel in intelligence and academics over blacks and latinos and even caucasians. It seems okay to say that blacks are physically superior because of their presence in sports, but not okay to say that Asians are intellectually superior because of their presence in Universities.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

I don't think a handful of exceptional sprinters constitutes "physical superiority" in the same way that Watson is suggesting mental superiority. Now, if some West Africans could never remember the format of the Dewey Decimal System, that would be comparable.

Edited to add:

There's plenty of information pointing to the fact that Asians excel in intelligence and academics over blacks and latinos and even caucasians. It seems okay to say that blacks are physically superior because of their presence in sports, but not okay to say that Asians are intellectually superior because of their presence in Universities.

Okay, let's ignore the content for a moment. Why do "Asians" get capitalized when "blacks," "latinos," and "even caucasians" don't? Where the hell is your stylebook?

[Sharpe]

Um, Dirt, sprinting and leaping ability does not equate to "physical superiority", just as one group having an edge in some narrow intellectual field does not equate to intellectual superiority.

You can show variations in narrow phenotypes, traits controlled by a few genes like sprinting, or quite probably like spacial perception or other narrow subsets of mental ability. I would be completely unsurprised to see that some populations were better at certain narrowly defined intellectual qualities.

BUT (and this is the big but) as I've been saying, a variation in a narrow trait doesn't equate to group dominance in the broader trait. For example, West Africans dominate sprinting and also sports positions that involve a lot of sprinting and leaping, but not other sports positions that involve other tasks (like throwing a ball or hitting a ball with a stick). Since so much of our popular American sports are focused on sprinting and leaping, you do see an African overrepresentation in US sport. But that doesn't mean that group is "athletically superior" in a general sense. There are plenty of sports that do not emphasize sprinting and leaping and in those sports you see a different distribution. For example, "strongman" sports are pretty much entirely dominated by people from the most northern parts of Europe. Some of that is cultural but some of that is genetic too IMO.

Likewise it may well be true that certain populations are better at the timed problem solving involved in standardized tests - thats a fairly limited subset of total intelligence (basically processing speed and time management) but that doesn't mean that population is "mentally superior".

As to your question as to why it is objectionable to ask such questions, Dirt, the answer is that such theories of racial difference have been used as a tool of brutal oppression in various societies over the centuries. We are rightfully careful about endorsing them.

[Mister Widget]

As to your question as to why it is objectionable to ask such questions, Dirt, the answer is that such theories of racial difference have been used as a tool of brutal oppression in various societies over the centuries. We are rightfully careful about endorsing them.

Indeed. In fact, I have even heard tell that such theories were used by Imperial Japan during their brutal invasion and occupation of China during WWII ! ! !

[Mordrak]

I'm pointing out that it seems okay to acknowledge and applaud physical superiority of one race over another, yet it seems taboo to point out the same in regards to intelligence. There's plenty of information pointing to the fact that Asians excel in intelligence and academics over blacks and latinos and even caucasians. It seems okay to say that blacks are physically superior because of their presence in sports, but not okay to say that Asians are intellectually superior because of their presence in Universities.
Dirt, you should stop soon. Really. It seems like you're conflating, "Berkley's full of Asians!" with intelligence as a set of genetic traits. There's large cultural differences between ethnic groups (and even between classes) and it's absurd to ignore them when looking at statistics.

And actually, some African-Americans take offense to "applauding" that physical superiority because it is a stereotype and first and foremost people are individuals, not statistics. And I've known quite a few Asians that get pissed off when they hear people say Asians are good at math even though most of the time it's meant as a compliment.

I think Sharpe expressed it best in this thread. You should re-read his comments about variation, definitions of superiority, and different cognitive skills. A trait is only superior in very specific contexts, height for example is helpful in basketball, but not so much in figure skating.

[Houngan]

Folks, please check out this magazine from the library:

http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/archives/vol08n01.html

Thank you.

H.

[Gav]

I'm pointing out that it seems okay to acknowledge and applaud physical superiority of one race over another, yet it seems taboo to point out the same in regards to intelligence. There's plenty of information pointing to the fact that Asians excel in intelligence and academics over blacks and latinos and even caucasians. It seems okay to say that blacks are physically superior because of their presence in sports, but not okay to say that Asians are intellectually superior because of their presence in Universities.
I think it's very important to acknowledge the superiority of one race over another. For example, Chinese people have won 6 scientific Nobel prizes, which is related to intelligence.

Japanese people, though, have won 9 scientific Nobel prizes. Clearly, Japanese people are 50% smarter than Chinese people.

[Lizard_King]

I'm pointing out that it seems okay to acknowledge and applaud physical superiority of one race over another, yet it seems taboo to point out the same in regards to intelligence. There's plenty of information pointing to the fact that Asians excel in intelligence and academics over blacks and latinos and even caucasians. It seems okay to say that blacks are physically superior because of their presence in sports, but not okay to say that Asians are intellectually superior because of their presence in Universities.
It's not ok, motherfucker. None of that is ok. You wouldn't know what was ok to say if it bit you in the ass. You wouldn't care, either, because your purpose is just to stir shit up with your pseudoscientific racism.

[Bill Dungsroman]

He stole her work. How wacky is that?
Which part of "it may very well be true, but she made it sound wacky" did you fail to understand?

My point is, even and perhaps especially the truth can sound suspect out of the mouths of the over-invested.

[Funkula]

If West Africans can be better at sprinting in general, why can't certain races be better at? Apart from the Egyptians (who aren't black), what have the black Africans created of note based on advanced mathematical principles?
Wait wait wait. The black Africans created the Egyptians, based on mathematical principles? That sounds pretty impressive to me.

[Bill Dungsroman]

I'm pointing out that it seems okay to acknowledge and applaud physical superiority of one race over another, yet it seems taboo to point out the same in regards to intelligence. There's plenty of information pointing to the fact that Asians excel in intelligence and academics over blacks and latinos and even caucasians.
Start listing some it then.


It seems okay to say that blacks are physically superior because of their presence in sports, but not okay to say that Asians are intellectually superior because of their presence in Universities.
Sure it's ok. All sorts of idiotic bigots or comedians who use stereotypes say all that stuff. Are you seriously stating only one stereotype is ok compared to another? And, funnier still, you're using the wrong one.

[Dirt]

Okay, let's ignore the content for a moment. Why do "Asians" get capitalized when "blacks," "latinos," and "even caucasians" don't? Where the hell is your stylebook?
Because Asia is a continent.

Wait wait wait. The black Africans created the Egyptians, based on mathematical principles? That sounds pretty impressive to me.
All we know is that "proto" man came from Africa. Who says they had to be black? Egyptians certainly don't consider themselves black.

It's not ok, motherfucker. None of that is ok. You wouldn't know what was ok to say if it bit you in the ass. You wouldn't care, either, because your purpose is just to stir shit up with your pseudoscientific racism.
Even if it's supported by real scientific facts, it's not okay? Even if we found the gene/DNA that proved it?

[Soapyfrog]

Where are these real scientific facts?

[Dirt]

Where are these real scientific facts?
It would appear that there are people working on this. An uphill battle in the scientific community it would seem.

[Soapyfrog]

It would appear in your fevered imagination?

[Lizard_King]

Even if it's supported by real scientific facts, it's not okay? Even if we found the gene/DNA that proved it?
The point is it isn't supported by real scientific facts. It's supported by agenda driven propaganda with a thin veneer of scientific propriety on the top.

[Dirt]

It would appear in your fevered imagination?
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115040765329081636-T5DQ4jvnwqOdVvsP_XSVG_lvgik_20060628.html?mod=blog s

[Lizard_King]

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115040765329081636-T5DQ4jvnwqOdVvsP_XSVG_lvgik_20060628.html?mod=blog s
This is you they are talking about:
Web sites and magazines promoting white "racialism" quickly seized on Dr. Lahn's suggestive scientific snapshot. One magazine that blames black and Hispanic people for social ills hailed his discovery as "the moment the antiracists and egalitarians have dreaded."
You're only appropriate as a Chappelle's Show caricature. That research does not mean what you think it means. Scientists who give a shit about the consequences of their research are not worried about the "truth" with respect to racial differences getting out; they are concerned about subtle genetic details being turned into crusades by ignorant racists looking for affirmation for their beliefs.

[Dirt]

You're only appropriate as a Chappelle's Show caricature. That research does not mean what you think it means. Scientists who give a shit about the consequences of their research are not worried about the "truth" with respect to racial differences getting out; they are concerned about subtle genetic details being turned into crusades by ignorant racists looking for affirmation for their beliefs.
I'm not saying it means anything except that it is of a scientific interest. As a non-scientist, I find it fascinating, but I take each person as they come and evaluate them on their own abilities. Some people are born geniuses and others work hard to become geniuses (John Stuart Mill comes to mind).

[Bill Dungsroman]

Even if it's supported by real scientific facts, it's not okay? Even if we found the gene/DNA that proved it?
Or or or what if God appeared and said all black were dumb and all Asians were smart? What about then?

Maybe one day you'll realize factors like culture affect things that you only see being a result of genetics, Dirt. In the meantime, I for one will silently applaud your impressive, yet devious, personal fight to end the stereotype that Chinese people are more intelligent than other people. I say Bravo!

[Lum]

If West Africans can be better at sprinting in general, why can't certain races be better at? Apart from the Egyptians (who aren't black), what have the black Africans created of note based on advanced mathematical principles?

Amazingly, when your home is riven with endemic corruption and near constant warfare, your daily existence is a struggle either with subsistence agriculture or with finding enough cash to buy food, and most schooling stops at the elementary school level, you don't spend a lot of time on theoretical mathematics.

[skedastic]

Hmm I couldnt find anything offhand that addressed the magnitude in a clear way. The link Jason provided has some discussion of the relative magnitude issue. Most of my thinking comes from reading the Blank Slate by Pinker, and various books by books Jared Diamond, Robert Wright, and then earlier, Dawkins and Gould. The Blank Slate in particular is recommended - Pinker strongly believes that biology plays a big role in individual behavior

One must be careful when drawing material from pop books---which is not to say they aren't useful or interesting as I've read at least something from all the authors you list, but the primary peer-reviewed literature is where these authors are getting their material, and that's where we should turn. The enormous black-white score gap has been well-documented in hundreds of studies, as I said (no, this isn't just some Herrnstein-Murray canard: that book is incompetent, but not for claiming that the gap exists, which is uncontroversial). As I also mentioned, there is tons of ongoing research in a variety of fields trying to explain the gap. In this paper, (http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8975.html) for example, Fryer and Levitt (yes, that Levitt) try to understand why the gap widens in early childhood.

I have a copy of The Blank Slate handy. Pinker doesn't appear to say anything quantitative about the black-white gap. On page 143-144 (of the hardcover edition) he does say that inter-group differences are small relative to intra-group differences, but he doesn't provide a cite, and he's just plain wrong: like I said, there are hundreds of studies documenting the enormous gap. The existence of the gap, of course, in and of itself tells us nothing at all about whether it's due to genetic or social factors.

"Intelligence" is usually understood by researchers to either be defined as g or as something tightly proxied by g, where g is "general intelligence," measured as the first principal component of a battery of cognitive functionality tests. (g and IQ are so highly correlated as to be interchangeable for most purposes.) There is, of course, lots of ongoing debate over the concept of intelligence. If we want to use a broader understanding of the term, we need to be able to measure that broader concept if we want to make quantitative assertions. I think your comments about only 2-3% of the variation in intelligence attributable to inter-group differences in this measure was just guesswork. It isn't true that we know in theory that this broader measure will display less inter-group variation than a narrower measure, that depends on the covariance structure of the multiple underlying factors.

I agree with you that no particular policy recommendations follow from the existence of the gap. But your quantitative assertions about the gap itself are very much contradicted by the evidence. As I said, there is tons of ongoing research on this phenomenon; there wouldn't be if the gap were trivially small.

[Funkula]

I think we need to focus on the African genetics program a bit more. You denigrate the math prowess of black people, Dirt, yet you give them credit for engineering the "proto-men" of Egypt. My understanding is that genetic engineering requires a pretty solid foundation of mathematics. Also, you gloss right over their imaginative spirit with the phrase, "Who said they have to be black?" If everyone in your part of the world had variations on the same skin tone, coming up with a completely new one, and most importantly making the genetic changes required to re-engineer the pigment in your newly-created proto-race, is an impressive achievement.

Also, does Egyptian religion figure into this? Are their gods perhaps fragmentary memories of chimeric experimentation by their dusky masters, "human-animal hybrids" in the parlance of our times? I am fascinated by this look into a world of ancient science that I never knew existed.

[Mordrak]

Skedastic, when you say there's plenty of studies saying this black/white gap exists, do those studies control for class?

[Soapyfrog]

Dr. Lahn has drawn sharp fire from other leading genetics researchers. They say the genetic differences he found may not signify any recent evolution -- and even if they do, it is too big a leap to suggest any link to intelligence. "This is not the place you want to report a weak association that might or might not stand up," says Francis Collins, director of the genome program at the National Institutes of Health.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

I find it interesting that those who are willing to accept the Bell Curve's hypothesis as true like to state "well there you go it's proven, black people are stupider" when in fact no such thing has been proven and these theories are in deep dispute.

[skedastic]

When researchers refer to the black-white gap, they are referring to the difference in mean scores on cognitive ability tests, unconditionally. There are many reasons why that difference may exist, certainly including socioeconomic status. It isn't easy to correctly control for socioeconomic status since that outcome is itself partially determined by intelligence, but lots of the studies to which I vaguely referred are specifically concerned with measuring how much of the gap can be attributed to socioeconomic status or other social determinants of cognition. Controlling for socioeconomic status in the easiest (and wrong) manner, which will tend to overstate how much of the gap is attributable to status, removes some but by no means all of the gap (see the Fryer and Levitt study for an example).

Incidentally, here (http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_IQ.pdf) is a recent working paper by Dickens and Flynn (famous guys in this literature) showing the gap has grown smaller in the last thirty years, but remains substantial at about 10 IQ points (or 2/3 of a standard deviation). This can be interpreted as suggestive evidence against a large genetic component explaining the gap. There are lots of references in this paper to other studies measuring the gap.

[Mordrak]

When researchers refer to the black-white gap, they are referring to the difference in mean scores on cognitive ability tests, unconditionally. There are many reasons why that difference may exist, certainly including socioeconomic status. It isn't easy to correctly control for socioeconomic status since that outcome is itself partially determined by intelligence, but lots of the studies to which I vaguely referred are specifically concerned with measuring how much of the gap can be attributed to socioeconomic status or other social determinants of cognition. Controlling for socioeconomic status in the easiest (and wrong) manner, which will tend to overstate how much of the gap is attributable to status, removes some but by no means all of the gap (see the Fryer and Levitt study for an example).

Incidentally, here (http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_IQ.pdf) is a recent working paper by Dickens and Flynn (famous guys in this literature) showing the gap has grown smaller in the last thirty years, but remains substantial at about 10 IQ points (or 2/3 of a standard deviation). This can be interpreted as suggestive evidence against a large genetic component explaining the gap. There are lots of references in this paper to other studies measuring the gap.

Thanks for elaborating and the link.

[Sharpe]

Skedastic, I think we are having a miscommunication. I was talking about gaps in overall intelligence, and perhaps I should clarify: I mean gaps in overall intelligence when you factor environmental factors like class, household stability, and school quality out. In the Levitt article you cite, the authors DO find a "raw" score gap between blacks and whites at the 2nd grade level, but they also attribute the gap to differences in school quality.

Also, as to believing you (a random message board guy who i don't know) vs Steven Pinker, an MIT Professor with a pretty hefty rep in psyche/evolutionary circles, I'll go with Pinker every time, no offense.

Look, I think even after you control for environmental factors, there may well be variations in intellect by racial group, but they are fairly small.

Even if you take the numbers you are using, which is 10 IQ points, thats actually fairly small compared to the range of individual variation. For example, in atypical IQ test, the range for one standard deviation away from the median is between 80 and 120, which is a 40 point range. That's a lot bigger than a 10 point swing (and I think the 10 point swing between races is high).

No matter how you slice it, the empirically tested racial variations in intelligence are small compared to individual variations. Unless you can show me some hard empirical proof that a population of humans doesn't meet the standard of legal mental competence, then I am going to oppose discriminating against that group, as a group. We should treat people as individuals

[skedastic]

Skedastic, I think we are having a miscommunication. I was talking about gaps in overall intelligence, and perhaps I should clarify: I mean gaps in overall intelligence when you factor environmental factors like class, household stability, and school quality out.

Then you are referring specifically to any gap attributable only to genetic variation. Yes, you definitely should have said that's what you meant. There is not any consensus in the literature giving estimates of that gap nearly as precisely as you imply.

What I said was: there is, in fact, an enormous gap between adult blacks and whites in measured cognitive ability, that gap could be attributable to any of many different mechanisms, and there is a lot of ongoing research trying to figure out which of those mechanisms are empirically important. The Fryer-Levitt paper is one such study; they argue, as you say, that the evidence suggests school quality is the critical factor. That hardly overturns anything I said.

You can read the primary literature for yourself and make your own assessment of whether Pinker's off-hand, uncited remark is consistent with the literature. I didn't ask you to "believe me," I stated a well-known result and have now given several cites to the literature documenting that result, and you can find hundreds more studies documenting that result by tracing through the references in those cites. Again, what I said isn't controversial, and Pinker's remark is simply wrong. You really have no basis to argue the point unless you read something besides Pinker on the matter.



Even if you take the numbers you are using, which is 10 IQ points, thats actually fairly small compared to the range of individual variation. For example, in atypical IQ test, the range for one standard deviation away from the median is between 80 and 120, which is a 40 point range. That's a lot bigger than a 10 point swing (and I think the 10 point swing between races is high).

The standard deviation of IQ is by construction 15 points, not 20, and that two-standard deviation range you give encompasses the enormous variation between an individual at the 15th and an individual at the 85th percentile of the distribution of intelligence.

Consider the most recent results reported by Flynn and Dickens, the WAIS-III, and consider the <25 subsample, as the gap there is smallest. On that instrument, the average white scores 102.6 v 90.9 for blacks, with associated standard deviations of 14.59 and 12.31. A little arithmetic shows that that implies that only 17% of blacks score at least as high as the median white. That sort of result has serious implications---it's an enormous gap---and that's why there is so much ongoing research on this question in many disciplines. It doesn't do anyone any good to pretend that the gap either doesn't exist or that it's trivially small. If you want to continue to argue the point, please cite to support your assertions.

For the third time, I do not disagree with your take on the policy implications of the gap.

[Sharpe]

Skedastic, you are more conversant with the technical literature than I so for the sake of this post, lets assume the figures you cite are correct and that recent IQ testing shows a 12 point gap between US whites and blacks, with a standard deviation of 12 for the black group. I still have a huge question: is that IQ result normed for issues of class, educational attainment, home environment, family stability, economic security and general background?

Although I may not be as deep in the weeds on issues of technical IQ literature I do have some experience working with standardized tests. I've taught classes on both the SAT and the LSAT (as well as some moonlighting on GRE & ACT) and I can tell you that ability to score well on a standardized test can definitely be improved by training and preparation. Although genetics probably does help, a great part of the score will depend on technique and experience. The LSAT logical reasoning section for example is quite similiar to an IQ test and in past classes I've taught I've seen substantial jumps in performance on that section and on the tests more generally as students learn skills for the test. Specifically, efficient time management and effective wrong-answer-elimination-plus-guessing techniqes can dramatically improve a score. I've seen jumps from 148 to 168 on LSAT practice tests over a six week course, which is a jump from roughly 45th percentile to roughly 85th percentile, and I can assure you I wasn't injecting my students with a new gene complex to improve their gene make-up :O. That difference in score was caused by environmental factors: improvements in test taking, time management, and aggressive guessing techniques. It is my opinion that similiar "technique" modifications apply to IQ tests.

So when someone trots out a big score differential, I have to ask if that represents a "raw" result or a refined result. I'd be very curious what would happen to that 12 point gap if you put the entire test pool through a 6 week course on how to maximize their score on such a test. Personally, based on my experience I would expect the gap to shrink by a significant fraction.

And a person's societal experience IS equivalent to test preparation in a lot of ways. Some groups are just more experienced with time pressured performance. Some groups are more culturally conditioned to "guess and go" while others are culturally conditioned to avoid guessing (which can kill your score). Some of my greatest LSAT successes were among female students who could be called shy and were very hesitant about guessing on early practice tests. After some instruction in how to eliminate less likely choices quickly and then quickly make a decision, some of them showed very sharp increases in score. That's not genetic; its cultural - my male students were typically much more comfortable with the idea of "cross some out, pick a likely one, and move the hell on".

Here's another reason why I don't trust the raw numbers you are asserting: if believed, it would mean that 83% of US blacks are less intelligent than the 50th% percentile of US whites. I just don't believe that. I think that if that represented actual intellectual functioning, that's the kind of skew that would be noticeable in daily relations and I just don't see it.

As to the researchers scratching their heads to explain the gap, maybe they should do some studies where they level the playing field by "teaching to the test" up front, then see what they get. Because, simply by cultural experience, some groups are going to be more ready for the test than others. Until you eliminate that, the results are basically crap.

[skedastic]

Skedastic, you are more conversant with the technical literature than I so for the sake of this post, lets assume the figures you cite are correct and that recent IQ testing shows a 12 point gap between US whites and blacks, with a standard deviation of 12 for the black group. I still have a huge question: is that IQ result normed for issues of class, educational attainment, home environment, family stability, economic security and general background?

Read my post #99 immediately above for an answer to exactly the same question.

You continue to argue as if you think I think that the gap is entirely due to genetics. I have neither said nor even vaguely implied any such thing. What I have repeatedly said is that there is a large gap and there is a lot of ongoing research trying to explain why the gap exists.

Perhaps an anology would help. Consider the gender gap in wages, which is defined as the difference in mean wages between men and women. It's large, something like 30%. That's the answer to the question:

If we collect a random sample of observations on the wages of adults, by how much do the mean wages of the men and women in the sample differ?

We could then turn to the more difficult question of explaining why men and women earn different wages. One explanation is discrimination, but we might observe such a gap even in the absence of discrimination if men and women systematically differ in other characteristics which affect wages, for example, men and women may obtain different amounts of education on average. We can use statistical methods to hold some of those characteristics constant, and see how much the gap shrinks. The estimates from the statistical model answer the question,

Suppose we had a group of men and women with exactly the same observable characteristics, such as education and experience. By how much would we expect the average wages of men and women to differ in this group?

We are trying to "explain" the gap in terms of other observable factors, and we might suspect that the portion of the gap which remains after statistically holding constant other determinants of wages constant is due to discrimination.

Now, replace "wage" with cognitive ability, "men and women" with blacks and whites, and "discrimination" with genetics.

There isn't a consensus in this literature on which factors are really important in explaining the gap. A lot of evidence points towards a fairly small genetic component, but it would be very bad science to simply assume that there is no genetic component, just like it would be bad science to simply assume that women do not face discrimination in the labour market.

[Sharpe]

What I have repeatedly said is that there is a large gap and there is a lot of ongoing research trying to explain why the gap exists.

To me this is much ado about a statistical artifact, and it seems like willing blindness to the obvious explanation (differential culture-based test taking skill). You are saying there is a large gap in the raw score data, and that there is a lot of research trying to explain why the gap exists. In the #99 post you talk about overcorrecting by factoring in socio-economic status. But to me this is all beating around the bush.

Let me be clear. In my opinion, any standardized test of problem solving (which includes a big part of the SAT, most of the LSAT, IQ tests, etc) is a measure of "innate ability" modified by "test taking skill". Anyone who says these tests are not affected by environmental training and preparation is full of crap. I have seen many many times that training can dramatically improve test taking skill which can then improve scores in a big way. So if you have a gap in the raw score of the test, you might be showing a difference in innate ability or you might be showing a difference in test taking skill. *Unless you control for test taking skill* you are not going to know what proportion each of those factors account for.

And IMO, test taking skill is not randomly distributed in the population. For example, teen boys have more test taking skill on average than teen girls, largely due to having been acculturated to be comfortable with "guess and go" tactics. You can elminate this advantage by teaching the girls how to guess n go. I've done it. (I'm talking about on average here, not in every case). In the general population, I do think cultural factors and life experience have a strong impact on test taking skill. Experience with performance under immediate time pressure, comfort level with being in a classroom taking a test, familiarity with written rule books and test booklets, all of these things are a part of test taking skill. They do affect scores. you can see empirical proof of this by looking at the way scores raise for SAT, GRE, LSAT, etc, with prep courses. It's not like college Seniors are getting gene therapy right before the LSAT or GRE - they are getting training (an environment influence) which boosts their score.

And in the US, racial identity is often strongly correlated with both cultural and economic differences, which IMO can strongly affect test taking skill. These differences are real, empirical and should be viewed as the first line of explanation.

Basically, design a test that is not influenced by test taking skill, then we can talk about what the results say about "innate cognitive ability".

[Linoleum]

Basically, design a test that is not influenced by test taking skill, then we can talk about what the results say about "innate cognitive ability".

Time for Battle School!

[Sharpe]

Oh, as to why I look at the "test taking skill" part of the question first before I start looking at innate skill, see the above response to Dirt about the previous historical abuse of racial theories to justify oppression.

As to the gender-wage-gap issue, that goes in the other direction. There IS historical evidence of gender-based wage discrimination, so it makes sense to look at that as a causative factor of current wage differentials. However, for intelligence, I honestly haven't seen any proven historical evidence for sizable innate cognitive differences. On the contrary, many of the past historical theories about the intellectual abilities of minority groups have been proven demonstrably wrong, which is why I consider such theories an answer of second (or last) resort in this debate.

Keep in mind I don't rule out group differences absolutely. I think some broad based regional differences in human differences are certainly possible, just likely to be quite small and insignificant on a societal level. I also think that the pro-difference side has not come anywhere near meeting the burden of proof to establish a need to discriminate on the basis of race.

On the other hand, I have no objection to scientifically studying such matters, assuming the studies are reasonably designed to elicit scientifically valid results and are not thinly-veiled attempts to apply a patina of scientific respectability to previously held (and unscientific) racist opinions. I don't think reasonably designed studies should be forbidden by PC tenets as somehow "psychologically damaging" by implication. But I do think such studies need to be well designed, and the results presented carefully, without a lot of illogical implications. As we've seen in this thread, people will often take a study result showing some variation in a single trait and use it to argue that "Group X is superior!". If the facts are there, fine, but don't generalize beyond the facts. Claiming superiority implies an accusation of inferiority and a lot of folks don't hold with that, if you know what I mean :o. Them's fightin' words.

[Linoleum]

Thankfully we can still accuse other groups of being inferior on the basis of their Xbox Live Gamerscores.

[bigdruid]

Yeah, you can tell by my low gamerscore that I spend most of my time on my various intellectual pur-soots. I totally pity inferior guys like ElGuapo, with their massive gamerscores, rugged good looks, and long trail of sexual conquests.

[skedastic]

To me this is much ado about a statistical artifact, and it seems like willing blindness to the obvious explanation (differential culture-based test taking skill).
Earlier in the thread, you chided me for having the cajones to assert Steve Pinker was mistaken about an uncited, somewhat vague, assertion in an non-refereed pop book. It seems extremely strange to follow up on that by implicitly claiming hundreds or thousands of researchers whose work focuses on these and related questions have all been fooled by a "statistical artifact" and ignore what is, to you, the "obvious" explanation in favour of "beating around the bush." I'm sure you don't really think that whatever you guess off the top of your head trumps decades of theoretical and empirical research by psychometricians and other *cians, right?

Rest assured that these researchers are well-aware of the possibility that social influences affect measured cognitive ability. But it isn't "obvious" that the entire gap is attributable to social influences, nor is it obvious which of many possible social influences have the most traction in explaining the gap. Nor is it obvious that the genetic component is zero. Science does not progress by assuming the obvious answer is correct, nor by assuming away effects that we find unpalletable.

Look, for example, at the first page of Fryer and Dickens paper. The last paragraph on that page reads in part,

A wide variety of possible explanations for the test-score gap have been put forth. These
explanations include differences in genetic make-up (Hernstein and Murray, 1984, and Jensen,
1973 and 1998), differences in family structure and poverty (Armor, 1992, Brooks-Gunn and
Duncan, 1997, Mayer, 1997, and Phillips et. al., 1998), differences in school quality (Cook and
Evans, 2000), racial bias in testing or teachers’ perceptions (Delpit, 1995, Ferguson, 1998, and
Rodgers and Spriggs, 1996), and differences in culture, socialization, or behavior (Cook and
Ludwig, 1998, Fordham and Ogbu, 1986, Fryer, 2002, and Steele and Aronson, 1998) .
I would emphasize that these references are only examples, not the universe of peer-reviewed publications on these explanations. Note that cultural differences are explicitly referenced (in regards to two quite different mechanisms), yet they are only one of many possible explanations. It may be obvious to you that they are the sole explanation, but it isn't obvious to anyone else, and in fact the evidence suggests otherwise. This paper, for example, goes on to argue that the evidence supports the notion that school quality and not exogneous cultural differences explains the expansion of the gap between kindergarten and the third grade.

However, for intelligence, I honestly haven't seen any proven historical evidence for sizable innate cognitive differences.

See, that's the rub: what is evidence suggesting innate cognitive differences? What empirical evidence can we use to differentiate innate from socially determined differences in cognition?

Explaining differences in cognition across groups is a difficult and important area of current research. Unfortunately, the answers are not obvious.

[Sharpe]

Explaining differences in cognition across groups is a difficult and important area of current research. Unfortunately, the answers are not obvious.

Why is this important? Oh, I agree that understanding human cognition in general is important but what makes "differences in cognition across groups" important?

First, why do "group differences" matter more than individual differences?

Second, the groups that are typically used (such "Caucasian" vs "African-American") don't actually have much (sometimes none) scientific validity. For example, a lot of people who have more European ancestors than African ancestors are nonetheless counted in the African-American group - its based on skin color and the "one drop" rule. Many of the groups we use in the US have very little scientific basis (for example, persons of African descent as well as the "Asian Pacific-Islander" group have a HUGE amount of intra-group variation). In terms of historical gene pools, the current racial classifications are widely off the mark. The classifications we use reflect historical associations and prior discrimination, as well as current political deal-making. If you wanted to group humans by cladistic association, the groups would not bear much resemblance to the current groups. So why does understanding human cognition across these artificially denoted groups matter?

To some of us, including me, harping on the "importance" of "differences" between artificially created groups smells. It smells of the historical racism that underlies these classifications.

Please note this is why I've been so prissy about saying "West African" when talking about sprinters. The evidence is quite specific: the best sprinters in the world are of West African descent, not of generalized African descent. I don't consider "African" to be a particular useful genetic grouping since Africa contains the most genetic diversity amongst humans of any continent. African-American is a political and cultural term, not a useful label in terms of indicating gene pool heritage.

Facts are facts, and I don't fear them. But I do question why it seems to be an obsession to focus on group differences amongst a bunch of artificially created groups that have more to do with culture and politics than genetics.

[caesarbear]

Sharpe I think you're missing the point of these studies. If you can identify a gap then you can identify it's cause. In the Dickens and Flynn article skedastic links, they even reach a partial conclusion:
Blacks have gained 5 or 6 IQ points on whites over the last 30 years. Neither changes in the ancestry of those classified as black nor changes in those who identify as black can explain more than a small fraction of this gain. Therefore, environment has been responsible. The last two decades have seen both positive and negative developments: gains in occupational status and school funding have been accompanied by more black preschoolers in single-parent homes and lower income in those homes
Other causes can be anything from nutrition to pollution. So there is no reason to point to genetics.

The grouping in this study was purely a matter of skin color. What's the use of that? Well 'African-American' is nothing more than a political term, but that's how politics operates. Claiming a Colbert like color-blindness prevents you from acting politically. Dismissing every study because it isn't complete, prevents you from knowing.

Ironically, you've made tremendous generalization yourself with the West African sprinter theory. You're talking about one fifth of the largest continent in the world. Reasons for conglomerating all of West Africa would be for policy purposes, say a program to encourage economic growth and deter corruption in West Africa. Using it for a genetic sample sounds like a very bad idea.

[Sharpe]

Caesarbear, I wasn't generalizing about West Africans as a group. My statements were intended to be quite narrow.

This thread illustrates the tricky nature of this debate. Most of us seem to be in agreement that biology does matter, but that policies should treat people as individuals. However, despite that agreement, there are several "sensitive" spots in the debate. There is the historical pattern of misusing this type of science to support oppressive policies, which makes some people worry that any mention of scientific research on group differences is either a thinly veiled smoke screen for racism or could be used by racists as ammo. On the other hand you have the current vogue of political correctness in academia which tends to attack any rejection of Blank Slate theories and has the potential to suppress scientific inquiry.

My own view is that the science is the science and the facts are the facts. However, sometimes "factual" stances carry a lot of assumptions and bias. I still don't agree with Skedastic's statement that "studying group differences in cognition is important". My disagreement is based on the fact that the groups in question are not particularly valid and that just human relations require us to be treated as individuals, not as members of a group. I think its a lot more important to delve into things like the fundamentals of cognition, the mechanics of consciousness and some of the other "black box" cognitive stuff. I am not saying that a path of inquiry should be barred, or that scientists should be censored, but I do think you have to look at priorities. I understand that my caution may seem a little PC (and I tend to despise PC) but I do think in this case, the historical record does support a cautious attitude. I am not saying there are questions we should never ask, but I do think its germane to wonder "why is that question so important?"

Have I gilded the lily sufficiently now :O ?

[Dirt]

I think we need to break up the "African American" category between those that are first and 2nd generation Africans that came to the USA in the last 30 years and all the other "African Americans" whose ancestors came here as slaves. Then we should examine the economic differences of the two and see what kinds of sociological pressures have effected each in their success and failures.

My thinking is that 300+ years of racism and oppression isn't that easy to get over, for either side.

[SlyFrog]

First, the, "If you were poor, country was at war, etc., you would might not be as smart," comments suggest that the testing that is done does not somehow attempt to capture innate intelligence. I don't know, can it? Second, there seems to be an assumption as to cause and effect going on there that seems strained at best. As Europeans basically made a sport out of homicidally bombing and murdering each other last century (and shooting and stabbing the centuries before that), why isn't Europe filled with retards (insert your pithy response here)? Hell, you'd think the Germans in particular would barely be able to use toilets at this point.

It is also interesting that we automatically assume that if it were determined that people of a certain ancestry, race, whatever were less intelligent on average, that there would be laws passed reducing their power, etc.

If anything, it seems just as likely that laws would be passed protecting them as a class. We go out of our way to accommodate for the disabled. I could easily see the impact of affirmative action, etc. increasing due to such a classification. More money would need to be spent on the groups' education, in order to give them equal opportunity, etc.

[Grifman]

Indeed. In fact, I have even heard tell that such theories were used by Imperial Japan during their brutal invasion and occupation of China during WWII ! ! !

And we all know that was because Japanese are smarter than Chinese.

[Sharpe]

Going back through this thread, I want to offer a clarification: nothing I said should be construed as to imply that I attribute any racial animus to Skedastic (Dirt is another matter :O). I take Skedastic's arguments in good faith; I just disagree about the relative importance of some of this stuff.

And no, Skedastic didn't PM me or anything. I just woke up, reread the thread and felt I was perhaps a bit heavy handed in a couple of spots.

[skedastic]

Researchers aren't "obsessed" with ethnic differences in cognition; the stratification of cognitive ability by ethnicity is just one part of a very large multidisciplinary effort to understand how cognitive ability is formed and how it affects society. Cognitive ability is an important determinant of almost every important social outcome; figuring out why it's distributed across people in the manner we observe therefore helps shed light on how society is structured. There is ongoing research on the formation of cognitive ability at different ages, notably during its production in youth and its decline in old age, across sexes, across socioeconomic strata, and across educational levels, among other group differences (I have published some stuff on differences in cognitive ability across people in various health states, for example).

In part a goal of this research is to understand how malleable cognitive ability is to various interventions. Such results are important for policy purposes, for example, if the Fryer-Levitt results in the paper I cited hold up, there are obviously serious implications for school funding. None of this implies anyone wants to stop "treating people like individuals," rather, we're trying to figure out which policies are likely to be effective in improving quality of life and decreasing social inequality in various dimensions. Understanding how cognitive ability is developed, and why that development differs across various groups of people, is a critical step in that endeavor.

Even if we limit attention to the causes of social inequality across ethnic groups, which, again, is only a small part of this research program, the question remains critically important. Understanding why these differences arise is necessary in order to best way to address these inequalities. For example, Carneiro, Heckman, and Masterov (2005) (http://www.ifau.se/upload/pdf/se/2005/wp05-03.pdf) discuss competing theories of ethnic inequality in labour market outcomes and provide evidence suggesting that the most effective way to address these inequalities is interventions in childhood.

Is this line of inquiry "more important" than neuroscience? I think so, but then again, I'm biased because I am a quantitative social scientist, just as Steve Pinker (or people who've just read his book) likely think otherwise for analogous reasons. But who cares? If we decide that, say, physics is "more important" than biology, does that mean that we should stop studying biology?

Sharpe, your comments do, as you note, come across as quite offensive. Rest assured that the research community doesn't put on white robes and pointy hats before setting off to study these questions.

[Mordrak]

Sharpe, your comments do, as you note, come across as quite offensive. Rest assured that the research community doesn't put on white robes and pointy hats before setting off to study these questions.
No, they hide the pointy hats under their lily white lab coats. Hehe.

[Johan O]

No, they hide the pointy hats hats under their lily white labcoats. Hehe.
Hats hats is a like a short shorts for the head?

[Mordrak]

Hats hats is a like a short shorts for the head?
Hahaha, no it's just my brain skipping.

[deccan]

Dirt has a friend. (http://asianfanatics.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=453028):

If you think about Darwinism and how it relates to modern day man today you too will realize that Asians are the most evolved forms of primates today.

In the past we needed lots of body hair to keep warm, this hair had to be curly to hold in heat so that we could keep warm.

Now that we have evolved, we no longer need hair on our bodies, as we continue to evolve, eventually we will be hairless because we know how to make artificial coverings and heated living quarters. If you think about it, Asians have the least amounts of body hair as well as the straightest hair. Asians will probably be the first to evolve into a hairless human species.

Just on the simple fact that Asians are the least hairiest humans on earth proves we are the most evolved.

[Glenn]

Just on the simple fact that Asians are the least hairiest humans on earth proves we are the most evolved.There are quite a few South American tribes that are basically hairless other than the top of the head and eyebrows. Plus they're kinda from Asia, if you go back 20,000 years.

ALL HAIL.

[magnet]

It is immediately obvious to any casual scientific observer that the most significant evolutionary pressure on the human species is alcohol tolerance.

Asians have a long way to go before they catch up with the master race.

[Dirt]

(Dirt is another matter :O).
:O O:

Dirt has a friend. (http://asianfanatics.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=453028):
That's old stuff. I'll let the educational acheivements amongst East Asians in the USA speak for itself. Though I suspect it's more cultural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination) than anything else

[Rollory]

Note that Watson's real crime was pointing out the obvious: if you believe in evolution, then there is absolutely no necessity for geographically isolated groups of animals, including homo sapiens, to evolve in the same directions; or for the groups to have equal intelligence.

It has long been thought that adaptation to cold (which requires fire making, use of skins as clothing and thus sewing needles, food storage and deferred rewards, etc.) will force evolution of intelligence faster than tropical climates. Jarred Diamond has tried to counter this with his own theories, but it is not generally accepted that he has done so. But whether the "cold makes you evolve smarter" hypothesis holds or not, it is self evident that Watsons statement -- an observation, really -- that geographically isolated groups will evolve differently is true.

It is interesting: in the name of Science, the Kansas school board attempt to have Intelligent Design taught along with evolution was suppressed; but in the name of Equality, a self-evident consequence of evolution earns a major scientist a lesson in humiliation.

The consequences of wide disparities in intelligence among a population are severe. It should be obvious to almost anyone that the educational techniques appropriate for a group of bright normal and above -- say IQ 115 and up -- will be entirely different from those appropriate for dull normal and below -- say IQ 85 and down. This remains true if you make the cutoffs at 90 and 110, or 90 and 115. The cutoff points are not obvious; but that different techniques will work better with each group is hardly to be doubted.

The lower the IQ, the more need for skill training. Everyone can learn to read, but the bright kids will learn more quickly, and catch on to the whole notion of reading, much faster than the dull ones. Still, the same techniques work with both: a combination of drills and exercises (see Roberta Pournelle's work on this) can be used in First Grade with everyone, provided that it is understood that some children will romp through the 70 or so lessons much faster than others.

Everyone can and should learn the addition and multiplication tables, and these too are best taught through drills.

Beyond that, though, the IQ differences make it imperative to adopt different methods for the roughly 3 intelligence groups. While teaching something about number bases and groups and other aspects of "the new math" make sense when taught to bright normal and above, using that instruction technique for normals will not be successful, and using it for dull normal and below is simply insane -- or part of a plot to make sure the dull normal and below population learns no math skills whatever.

John Dewey's "progressive education" methods can be extremely effective with bright children, but again trying to get dull normal and below kids to learn by discovery and inductive reasoning is simply insane -- and it's not the best way to teach the vast majority of kids, either.

Treating bright kids as if they were dull -- the only way that No Child Left Behind can work -- wastes their talents and makes those we will depend on to keep our First World Civilization going hate school and learning; and will hardly challenge them.

Enough. I have done this diatribe before.

The problem, of course, is that if we do sort kids into three broad educational groups and treat each group differently, the three groups will not be racially identical. And since equality is more important than applying the most appropriate education technique to each kid, the result is what Beam Piper used to call decivilization. We are running this experiment now.

"If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly consider it an act of war." Glenn T. Seaborg, Chairman, National Commission on Education. The report was finished in 1983. Most are agreed that the education system was better in 1983 than today.

What has happened to Watson is a monumental crime.

[Nick Walter]

What has happened to Watson is a monumental crime.

What's funny in this whole story is that is a nobel prize winner couldn't see this coming when he opened his trap and let racist crap fly. Isn't this guy supposed to be really smart and have a high IQ?

[Sharpe]

Jerry Pournelle said:
Note that Watson's real crime was pointing out the obvious: if you believe in evolution, then there is absolutely no necessity for geographically isolated groups of animals, including homo sapiens, to evolve in the same directions; or for the groups to have equal intelligence.

Watson went beyond that simple statement though. Here's the original newspaper article:

Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "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". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

He's saying that all African people as a group have lesser intelligence than white people. That's a much stronger statement than merely asserting regional variation. Also, Watson then went on to comment about black employees. I think the implication there shows racial bias.

So I think there was a basis for umbrage at Watson's remarks.

Pournelle then says:
It has long been thought that adaptation to cold (which requires fire making, use of skins as clothing and thus sewing needles, food storage and deferred rewards, etc.) will force evolution of intelligence faster than tropical climates. Jarred Diamond has tried to counter this with his own theories, but it is not generally accepted that he has done so.

Wow, that "cold climate = big brains" theory is new on me. What's the source for that? Keep in mind that the stuff Pournelle mentions (fire, use of clothing, etc) are cultural/technological adaptations (memetic evolution) and there's no direct evidence that biological adaptation (genetic changes) would be involved.

Lastly all these generalizations Pournelle and Watson are making assume that the tests we have are accurate measures of "genetically determined intelligence" which as has been argued extensively here, is not accepted by a lot of people.

There is one thing that Pournelle mentions that I do agree with. He talks about tracking in education and mentions that he thinks one reason the US doesn't want to use tracking is fear that the tracks would be racially segregated. This is probably true. I'd be willing to see some schools use tracking as a test process if the tests used to sort the students were accurate reflections of student ability not environmental tests, and if there were sufficient flexibility for kids who show promise (or the opposite) to be moved into the appropriate track. I'd be curious to see how tracking, if done reasonably, worked in America.

[Rollory]

What's funny in this whole story is that is a nobel prize winner couldn't see this coming when he opened his trap and let racist crap fly. Isn't this guy supposed to be really smart and have a high IQ?

Yes he should have had the sense to see it coming. Anybody with common sense could have (and common sense isn't IQ dependent). But sometimes people forget to keep lying.

Edit: and it's racist only if it's not true.

[Rollory]

That's a much stronger statement than merely asserting regional variation.

Yes. But it is a natural consequence of regional variation. If you have variation at all, *somebody* has to be at the bottom of a linear scale. Do you really think there is evidence to support the idea that Africans are *more* intelligent on average than other ethnic groups?

We don't ask these questions only because of political necessity.

Wow, that "cold climate = big brains" theory is new on me.

It weakens his statement, yes. I don't think it's anywhere near proven. It's not really important when compared to the rest of his points.

The main thrust of what he has to say is discussion of why IQ is important, and what practical effect it has in teaching people what they need to know. This is something you were asking about. I don't know of any counterarguments to what he says.

I'd be curious to see how tracking, if done reasonably, worked in America.

I remember in middle school when they decided to try de-tracking us, mixing the bright kids in with the slow ones in the hopes that the slow ones would get smarter by osmosis or something. I spent 90% of my time in 7th grade reading science fiction novels under my desk. Frustrated the teachers no end. I passed all tests and so on with flying colors of course.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Yeah, the idea that we should treat people as individuals rather than indistinguishable members of a homogeneous group based on superficial differences is such a crock. I hate having to lie to myself and my peers with that one daily.

[Rollory]

And on the closely related subject of education:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/10/24/notes102407.DTL

[Rollory]

Yeah, the idea that we should treat people as individuals rather than indistinguishable members of a homogeneous group based on superficial differences is such a crock. I hate having to lie to myself and my peers with that one daily.

When you have a response to what is actually said as opposed to what you wish was said, do please post it.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

When you have a response to what is actually said as opposed to what you wish was said, do please post it.

Sure, when you do the same. Can you explain why the comment about black employees is not racist?

[Gav]

I can't be bothered to find cites right now, but I've read articles by both Dawkins and Stephen Gould saying that the time lines are too short to allow for the kind of evolutionary divergence Pournelle is talking about. There were other issues too, like the fact that it's very hard to separate genotype from phenotype in Africa, where nutrition is not very good.

IIRC, Gould used a syllogism something like 1. Indian people are short 2. We know that shortness is heritable. 3. Therefore Indians are genetically short. Except that it turned out not be all that true once better nutrition was introduced into India--the average height of Indians starting going up very rapidly. So, even if IQ is heritable (which has yet to be proved), it's not so simple to say "Block X of people is low in IQ; IQ is heritable; therefore block X is genetically programmed to be low in IQ".

Frankly, Pournelle's out of his league here. I would guess Watson is, too--I don't think his does population genetics (which a lot of evol. biologists do), and I'm almost positive he's not an evol. biologist.

[Dirt]

If physical characteristics can be inheritable, why not mental ones? Intelligence does depend on the physical development of parts of the brain, therefore, if a dad or mom had a large grey matter area, there's a good chance that their kid would have it too.

[Rollory]

Sure, when you do the same. Can you explain why the comment about black employees is not racist?

If you deal with employees on an individual basis, and some of them happen to be black, but you hired them because they are really good at what they do, then you're (obviously) not being racist.

If you are hiring from a workforce that generally reflects the the general black population, it is reasonable to assume that the people you hire will have abilities generally reflective of their distribution in that population.

If you hire from a workforce that generally reflects the white - or Oriental - or Indian - population (depending on circumstances), it is reasonable to assume that the people you hire will have abilities generally reflective of their distribution in that population.

Then, you compare the distributions. If one population has a certain trait less-developed than another, and that trait is important for your tasks, but due to the location of your business or equality laws or what-have-you you as the employer have no choice but to hire more from one population than strictly judging on the basis of ability would dictate - then you are stuck with employees who are less capable than what you would have if you'd followed the statistics.

You certainly may have *individual* employees who are as good as the best in their field, regardless of background. The point is not individuals. One runs out of individuals quickly. The point is the aggregate. If a skill or ability or trait is less prevalent in one population than another, it cannot be racist to recognize this fact, any more than it is racist to point out that blacks are more likely to be resistant to malaria.

If there is *no* significant difference in ability between populations, then it certainly would be racist of him to discount blacks in general as being less capable. If he had said that *no* blacks could be as capable as other races, that would certainly be racist. He didn't say anything like that, or anything about having aggregate judgements override individual qualities. He made a comment about overall trends. You can (as has been done in this thread) argue about what factors cause those trends. He says there is a link to biology. There certainly is research that seems to indicate at least something of the sort, though its strength can be argued about. None of this makes the trends racist or invalidates their existence.

[Rollory]

Stephen Gould saying that the time lines are too short

Gould has always been full of crap. "The Mismeasure of Man" is wrong from top to bottom.

There's evidence humanity has been evolving faster recently than ever before:
http://pmsol3.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/human-evolution-happening-faster-than-ever/
http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v6/n2/full/nrn1620.html

There's been plenty of time for this sort of differentiation, particularly considering all modern races started with extremely small and probably inbred populations after the Toba event.

I'm almost positive he's not an evol. biologist.

A lot of evolution biologists are full of crap too, so not being one isn't any kind of disqualification.

Fundamentally it's not evolution biology that's the issue here, it's simple statistics. Either you can show the statistics are wrong, or incorrectly taken, or there are alternate explanations, or you can't.

[NoWayJose]

And on the closely related subject of education:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/10/24/notes102407.DTL
I like this article because it's a good example of an author using himself as a prime example of his thesis.

[StGabe]

The problem with the Pournelle piece is that it is far too focused on nature and not on nurture. There is a huge body of evidence pointing to the fact that natural intelligence is overrated and that the vast majority of talent in any field comes from nothing more than practice. What nature offers to the picture is more of a precociousness or propensity to be interested in practicing one thing or another. Even there, nurture is extremely important. One of the best indicators of talent tends to be early success and support when practicing something. For example, there was a great study done in Australia which found that birth month was a huge predictor for Soccer talent. The reason for this was that kids who were old for their age bracket tended to have more initial success due to being more physically mature than the other kids and this led them to continue practicing.

So instead of denying that there could be racial variance, really I would deny that this variance is significant and think rather that it is easily lost in the noise of variance between individuals in a given society. I would say that what's really going on here is an overestimation of genetic effects on the nebulous notion of "intelligence".

[Flowers]

Rollory.


I will say nothing more about the quality of your opinion than to point out that Dirt agrees with you.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

If you deal with employees on an individual basis
But that's not what his statement was. He made a broad generalization about all black employees, everywhere. Regardless of his science, that's a prejudiced statement, and I don't think it's at all improper for people to lambast him for it. Moreover, it tends to lend credence to the idea that his science is somewhat biased by his now-suspect perspective. And yet you believe what happened to him (which doesn't seem to be much more than some public outcry) is a "crime." Is that because you feel his generalization is unvarnished truth or something?

I mean, based on this thread, it seems like you do think that blacks are less intelligent, because you're really railing against the societal pressures, real or imagined, that prevent you (or Watson) from loudly declaiming the "truth" from the rooftops. You don't seem to accept that there are actually legitimate scientific and social problems with these sorts of studies that need to be addressed before their findings should start to be regarded as "fact," as Sharpe has taken great pains to attempt to explain.

Out of curiosity, say the world did accept that proposition as fact. After that's done, what's next?

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Cookiepants, nearly every nobel prize winner from William Shockley to Albert Schweitzer to Linus Pauling has commented on the absolute irrationality of racial egalitarianism. I'm not going to try to fill in the blanks of your Oxford education going back to the 1800's victorian era. As for all racists being redneck illiterates, well unfortunately for you several recent liberals in the popular press have conceded that white nationalists clearly tend to be high IQ, middle class working professionals, mostly technical and engineering type people with real jobs. Just because Jerry Springer rolls out his Nazi mental patient on a weekly basis does not anything approximating reality make.

The really funny part of your post was the first part. Straight up Oxford gayboy line of questioning.

I served in the Army for four and a half years where I was a minority amongst black soldiers for that entire time. I bunked, ate, served, worked and slept less than three feet from black soldiers during that entire four years and of course as statistics clearly demonstrate time and time again, the hardest of hardcore racists are produced in direct proportion to proximity with blacks. As you move farther out into crackerland far from black living space into mallworld where most white people think Morgan Freeman is a typical black guy, racism decreases to the extent people are only exposed to blacks on the televitz conditioning device.

After leaving the army in '85 I moved to New York and worked, lived and dealt on a daily basis with thousands of black people as part of my job as Senior Systems controller at STREET NEWS, a paper published for homeless people in New York. I know everything there is to know about black people, they don't have any secrets from me. I spoke to them, negotiated with them, helped them get medical assistance, housing, drug counseling on a 24/7 basis, so thick in the black man's world I was having trouble breathing. I'm probably the only white person you have ever known who has worked in Harlem on a daily basis via the subway when I managed the distribution center up there.

When I was in the military I saw how blacks live off-duty and what they do with their minds and their time. Suffice it to say, I have more respect for caged zoo animals. The blacks that I have known in my life were largely occupied with three primary goals in life : loose shoes, tight p***y and a warm place to s**t. I've seen dogs with more complicated psyches and a nobler spirit. I have eavesdropped on their conversations when they grew so accustomed to me they phased me out. When I was pretending to fold socks in the barracks, I have overheard them talking for hours about the bitches they are going to rape, the enemies they are going to shoot and the wickedness they are going to work on a daily basis. It can honestly be said of them they never truly rest ... like the devil in the story of Job, passing up and down in the Earth always seeking some other hideously evil deeds to perpetrate on the world, each more horrific and grotesque than the last. The black man is truly bestial in nature, his heart always set on some thick numb evil he is going to do, his mind insensible and ruthless, bereft of conscience or guilt for anything he might do.

[Nick Walter]

Jesus Unicorn, you might want to make it a little clearer that you are reposting a Cleve rant. I was about to give you the internet equivalent of a HADOUKEN, with maybe a SHORYUKEN thrown in for good measure, until the title of your post clued me in to search for the original.

[Dirt]

I agree with Flowers.

[Linoleum]

There is a huge body of evidence pointing to the fact that natural intelligence is overrated and that the vast majority of talent in any field comes from nothing more than practice.

This gets you to a certain point, but I'd still love to see some example of a long-term education experiment resulting in a large group of young adults from any mix of racial backgrounds being proficient in say, category theory. Leaving race entirely out of the picture I think it's absurd to judge the worth of another human being by some sort of abstract cognitive benchmarking. At the the same time suggesting that with the right education and training, the stock, unmodified grey meat out of the box of every person is capable of the same high order abstract reasoning is silly.

But I think we can all agree that Bertrand Russell deserved way more pussy than Slash.

[Houngan]

Well, to be fair, there are definite gender differences in cognitive ability. These differences are only apparent when you take a large sample, however, and don't speak to case-by-case ability. I wouldn't be shocked if there were some areas that show racial differences as well, but it's almost impossible to isolate the socio-cultural-economic factors, which play much bigger roles.

H.

p.s. While what I said is correct, I'm also trolling for the folks who can't read A without projecting B and C.

[StGabe]

At the the same time suggesting that with the right education and training, the stock, unmodified grey meat out of the box of every person is capable of the same high order abstract reasoning is silly.
Is it? IMO, the confounding variable here is that so much of the crucial practice happens at a very early age. You get the most out of practice that you do at an early age. If you performed such a test starting with kids at age 12 or something, you're already way too late (and you'll get the intuitive result -- that dumb 12 year olds are way too far behind to catch up now). I think you could go a lot younger, even with toddlers, and the same would be true. Starting at birth though I think you'd find that genetic differences simply don't make nearly as large of a difference as you'd think.

Edit: here's a good article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07wwln_freak.html?ex=1304654400&en=2cf57fe91bdd490f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss) on the soccer/birth-month correlation. A good example: at one point where numbers were taken, 54 of the 58 best German soccer player were born in the first 3 months of the year (with league cut offs on Dec. 31st). The guy isn't denying that there is some natural component but it simply doesn't seem to be anywhere near as significant as birth month seems to be.

[StGabe]

P.S. My wife and I were both very successful athletes when we were younger. We also were both born right after cut-off dates for sports. That's nothing more than anecdotal evidence for the discussion but it does really makes me rethink about where that talent came from. I always just sort of assumed that I was naturally good at that stuff and to an extent it was true but not really in the way I initially considered it. My dad was a decent athlete but nothing too exciting and my mom was pretty worthless. Really my "nature" seems to have come more from the sum of my first 6 years life including a lot of initial success as an athlete and a lot of support from my parents.

[Glenn]

Wow, that "cold climate = big brains" theory is new on me. What's the source for that? Keep in mind that the stuff Pournelle mentions (fire, use of clothing, etc) are cultural/technological adaptations (memetic evolution) and there's no direct evidence that biological adaptation (genetic changes) would be involved.I don't have access to scientific journals anymore (is there some sort of "sad dork" emoticon?), but it's not new at all in evolutionary biology journals. The idea is that, if you go back to the long period during which all humans were basically hunter-gatherers, the strongest selective pressure for intellect occurred in the harshest environments, which means cold places and deserts.*

It's not a perfect example since they're a relatively modern group, but Inuits have a tool kit that's far larger and more complicated than any other traditional hunter-gatherers. And they have to remember how to make all those different tools, because if they forget they'll freeze to death overnight.

*Before anyone asks about the name: Because there are a lot more cold places than deserts, that's why.

[Mox]

So are polar bears more intelligent than black bears?

[caesarbear]

Shit, Eskimos must be fucking geniuses!

Thanks to all those lazy ancient hunter-gatherers, who were living large, hanging with the toothless lions and lightweight elephants, we need to start sending our kids to the north pole to get them smarter. Just look how stupid they're getting.

[Sharpe]

The Inuit example sounds more like technological/cultural adaptation to me. You suggest the larger technological toolkit would require greater memory to retain, but there's no direct evidence of that. (For example, technology in the form of mnemomic techniques or other culture-based memory aids might substitute for greater "raw" memory power.) I don't rule genetic change out but the short span of time (geologically speaking) tends to go against that. Is there any evidence that Inuit test higher on cognitive testing than a warm climate hunter/gatherer group like say the Amazon tribes? Of course, you would have to factor out a huge host of language/culture/environmental stuff to have a reasonably fair test.

The core concept of Watson - that human gene pools vary by region, is definitely true. But whether or not that translates into significant differences in intellectual ability by group is IMO unproven. And given that basic human dignity requires people to be judged as individuals, not as group members, I think the threshold to show difference needs to be high, far higher than any of the speculative stuff I've seen so far.

On the other hand, I don't think basic human dignity requires equality of outcome, just equality of opportunity. That's one reason why I oppose affirmative action preferences in the US. But by the same token I don't want to deny opportunity to a group based on group differences that IMO don't even come close to the necessary threshold. Bottom line, outcomes should be based on the performance of the individual.

[Glenn]

The Inuit don't actually work, because as I said, they're a modern group. That was just for purposes of illustration.

The theory mostly relates to the tens of thousands of years between the exodus from Africa until the rise of civilization, so you want the groups that were situated at northern latitudes during that period, which is basically Caucasians and Mongoloids (and actually, I think Inuit are technically included in the latter along with all other Native Americans).

However, as mentioned previously I'm not a proponent of the theory nor am I intimately familiar with it. So if you want to learn more, everybody feel free to collectively pop a Valium and then go consult your local University library.

[Dirt]

Bears do use tools.

[Glenn]

Thank you, Dirt. Your participation, as always, is invaluable.

[Tankero]

Where does Judge Foglio and Armand stand on this issue? I don't care for the other two dwarves, they seem to lean more towards more ephemeral interests.

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

I think it's very important to acknowledge the superiority of one race over another. For example, Chinese people have won 6 scientific Nobel prizes, which is related to intelligence.

Japanese people, though, have won 9 scientific Nobel prizes. Clearly, Japanese people are 50% smarter than Chinese people.

You have to look at population as well: There's at least 5 times more Chinese than Japanese, which makes the Japanese 250% smarter, at least.

[Dirt]

If the Japanese are so smart, why did they bomb Pearl Harbour and drag the USA into the war?

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

And on the closely related subject of education

Not directly related to the article, but re: differences in schools:
It's been over 10 years since I went to school in the US. I went to a big public high school, what they called a 'magnet school', with three broad academic tiers. The lowest was filled with the urban poor (blacks, Vietnamese), the middle had a decent mix of everything, and the top was almost all white middle-class and up.

I have no doubt that this may be better for individual students (I know I was never really challenged until math in High School, for instance) but I believe the benefit of avoiding such social segregation as I saw in the US is worth not doing it.

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

If the Japanese are so smart, why did they bomb Pearl Harbour and drag the USA into the war?
The Americans have won even more Nobel Prizes/Population, so they outwitted the Japanese. The Japanese were not smart enough to think of this.

Nothing compared to the Jews, of course; with 23% of all prizes and just .25 % of the world's population, they're so far out of everyone else's league that discussion of other racial differences becomes insignificant.

[Enidigm]

Japanese-American Jews?

[Lizard_King]

If the Japanese are so smart, why did they bomb Pearl Harbour and drag the USA into the war?
That's a complex strategic issue. Many would argue (and I would agree) that Pearl Harbor is easy to criticize in retrospect, but it's a bold risk in the face of an intractable problem in its proper context, namely the fact that the US was strangling imperial Japan via embargoes and blockades. Like the Inchon Landing or Normandy, minus the success.

[Dirt]

Nothing compared to the Jews, of course; with 23% of all prizes and just .25 % of the world's population, they're so far out of everyone else's league that discussion of other racial differences becomes insignificant.
I find it interesting that the Kèjīa (meaning "guests in their own home") people also tend to be the smartest and best educated of all Chinese people (most people who get M.A.'s in Taiwan are Kèjīa people and they often did really well in the Imperial exams). I've found that there's something about alienation (they're often referred to as the "Jews of China") that seems to drive people to higher goals and accomplishments. Once again though, it's more cultural than anything else.

[Gav]

If the Japanese are so smart, why did they bomb Pearl Harbour and drag the USA into the war?
If the Chinese are so smart, how did they lose to the Japanese?

I think it's pretty clear here that Dirt is trying to tell us that
Americans > Japanese > Chinese

[Dirt]

If the Chinese are so smart, how did they lose to the Japanese?

I think it's pretty clear here that Dirt is trying to tell us that
Americans > Japanese > Chinese
Do the Japanese rule China now?

Wait another 50 years. China and the USA will reach parity. At this point, even Japan is beginning to realize that it's future lies in working with China instead of demonizing it along with the USA.

[Rollory]

Pearl Harbor wasn't a failure. It was a stunning success. It was Midway that was the failure, and that only just.

As for China in 50 years, don't bet on it. Ever hear of the Social Security crisis when the boomers retire? Apply that to the consequences of China's one-child policy. Stupidest damn thing any country ever did. They'll have the demographics of Europe only without the 100-odd years of thriving industrialized economy to absorb the shock of all handling all those old people.

[wisefool]

He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

What a tool. This is the instinctive reason most "liberals" are on the nurture side of the argument is because the social darwinists would start using "poor genetics" as an excuse for the status quo. Justifying the status quo is poor morality because we have not reached our potential as human beings in education, civility, or social organization.

I hope he fathers an autistic kid and then learns that EVEN IF HE IS RIGHT it does not mean you give up on human beings. Rant for a bit if you want, but why doesn't he do something with his smarts to fix it?

As an example, is it that difficult to understand why Jamaican immigrants succeed much better than an US-raised black kid in a crappy neighborhood in schools where the teacher is more concerned of being knifed and keeping children from putting their feet on the table?
Sorry if I sound like Bill Cosby (http=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=2Kt&q=bill+cosby+culture&btnG=Search). Maybe the lot of you were born geniuses, but for the rest of humanity, mothers who have time, energy, and the habit to spank their children and tell them to do their homework is a winning combination.

[Cad]

Maybe the lot of you were born geniuses, but for the rest of humanity, mothers who have time, energy, and the habit to spank their children and tell them to do their homework is a winning combination.
Actually, both of those have been shown to be the opposite of a winning combination when it comes to good behavior and learning.

[Rimbo]

Bullshit

[wisefool]

Please note the above message is for dramatic purposes only and not meant to be an encouragement for the viewing audience to use corporal punishment including but not limited to paddling boards, toy-car tracks, willow branches, fists, palms, belts, rulers, brooms, vacuum cleaners, playstation 3 controllers, or Nike trainers.

[Rollory]

I hope he fathers an autistic kid and then learns that EVEN IF HE IS RIGHT it does not mean you give up on human beings.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/05/1057179206284.html

James Watson would have aborted his son if a genetic test had been available at the time warning that his child would be born with severe epilepsy.

Declaring "I'm not a sadist", the man who co-discovered DNA said that parents, especially mothers, should have a right of genetic veto over the make-up of their child.

"Any time you can prevent a seriously sick child from being born, it is good for everyone," Dr Watson told The Sunday Age.

I don't think you can claim he does not understand the implications of his statements.

Now of course his son might be a bit perturbed at such a thing. But it isn't equivalent to saying "I would like to murder you right now". Sort of like the Jewish argument that for God to create humanity was a mistake, but having made the mistake, it is best not to reverse it.

[Cad]

Bullshit
Rimbo, I assume you were responding to me?

Google for any number of studies on spanking, and you'll find that there seem to be no positive outcomes for spanking, while there is a fair amount of evidence that it may actually increase behavioral problems. Obviously, that plus homework won't be a winning combo; there's no evidence I've seen that homework is useful for a kid of the spanking age range, either.*

A parent spanking their highschooler certainly has an interesting relationship, but I certainly don't know anything about that.

*edit -- found some newer evidence when digging deeper for meta-analysis, so I now have to say I've seen some evidence, it's just not very strong. check out http://rer.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/76/1/1

Please note the above message is for dramatic purposes only and not meant to be an encouragement for the viewing audience to use corporal punishment including but not limited to paddling boards, toy-car tracks, willow branches, fists, palms, belts, rulers, brooms, vacuum cleaners, playstation 3 controllers, or Nike trainers.
Glad to see taser didn't make your list, but its exclusion makes sense: it is far safer than those other items, builds character, tickles, and is great for non-permissive environments (school or home).

Also, for reference, I don't think someone who thinks spanking is ok is someone beating the snot out of their child, but I don't see any good reason to do it either.

[wisefool]

Did not mean to derail the conversation, but for the record I hope I never become so frustrated I hit my kids.

As for homework, it does seem very counterintuitive that encouraging your child to read and learn stuff is erm, bad. Maybe the study says more about the poor quality of K-6 homework. Some schools turn into state-sponsored comformity-teaching babysitters. Learn to obey the nuns with the ruler or you get punished!

P.S. ran into an very interesting set of educational links debunking bad science taught in schools.

http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadScience.html

[shift6]

Did not mean to derail the conversation, but for the record I hope I never become so frustrated I hit my kids.
Nobody should ever discpline kids in frustration or anger. We don't lock people in prison because we're pissed, we lock them up to separate them from society. Same thing with punishing kids (whether spanking, restrictions, whatever).

[Unicorn McGriddle]

We don't lock people in prison because we're pissed, we lock them up to separate them from society.

You gotta believe!