Count Dookkake
Member
We accept physical differences.
I see no need to refuse the possibility of mental ones.
I see no need to refuse the possibility of mental ones.
The studies I've glanced at seem to say that whatever correlation there is goes down with age, which would be consistent with the hypothesis that environment is far more important than genetics.
I don't think it is that simple. There isn't the same uproar when geneticists look at traits in the positive light like East African distance running. Even in the last decade there has been more evidence of genetic ties than were initially thought and immediately dismissed.Honestly, I would imagine that at the point something becomes racist, it stops being science.
I don't know anything about the author referenced in the OP. He may be the biggest asshole in the world and his work deservedly dismissed. I don't think this subfield of genetics (differences in sets of human population) should be dismissed just because you might not like the answers though.
What do you guys think? Is rejecting and condemning a certain field of science justified because it might be racist?
Oh, then carry on.The author in the OP isn't a geneticist or biologist. His dissertation was in public policy.
This could explain why Jeremy Lin sucks now.There are several factors that weigh into the different IQ tests. For instance, blacks often feel pressure to disprove stereotypes regarding intelligence in their community, so they often don't perform well under pressure due to the fact that there's more of a burden upon them.
The same thing occurs with women and mathematics. Women often feel anxiety because of the stereotypes involving women not being good at mathematics.
Tim Wise has an excellent article refuting the claim that African American IQ is statistically lower than White American IQ.
This could explain why Jeremy Lin sucks now.
I don't think it is that simple. There isn't the same uproar when geneticists look at traits in the positive light like East African distance running. Even in the last decade there has been more evidence of genetic ties than were initially thought and immediately dismissed.
The fact is there are going to be differences in the races. As we elucidate more about genetics this will only become more apparent. Some of the results are going to be controversial. Some of them may just be polygenic, some may be just predispositions, some may be epigenetic, and some may incontrovertible.
I don't know anything about the author referenced in the OP. He may be the biggest asshole in the world and his work deservedly dismissed. I don't think this subfield of genetics (differences in sets of human population) should be dismissed just because you might not like the answers though. Like always, we should wait til unbiased and independent researchers produce repeatable results and go from there.
It's like with Sickle Cell Anemia- yes, the people with it are all black. But it has nothing to do with them being black and everything to do with it being an evolutionary defense against Malaria that developed in a region where the people happened to have black skin.
A tendency for higher testosterone production among African-Americans in the US is a real thing, though, creating that false impression.. But again, it's not the same genes at work for skin color and testosterone.LOL, perhaps.
And also why white professional basketball players often suck compared to black basketball players (or so the belief goes). There's the stereotype that white guys are naturally athletically inferior to black guys, but that's absolutely false.
It's all a psychological illusion.
A tendency for higher testosterone production among African-Americans in the US is a real thing, though, creating that false impression.. But again, it's not the same genes at work for skin color and testosterone.
Yeah, was trying to differentiate the group from people of African descent in general, lol.lol at the bolded.
But they could certainly be linked. If they are close enough in map units on a chromosome it is difficult to get one trait without the other even though they may be entirely unrelated.A tendency for higher testosterone production among African-Americans in the US is a real thing, though, creating that false impression.. But again, it's not the same genes at work for skin color and testosterone.
If I recall correctly, it's a correlation unique to the US, suggesting something else at work. (could be totally off on this, however.)But they could certainly be linked. If they are close enough in map units on a chromosome it is difficult to get one trait without the other even though they may be entirely unrelated.
If I recall correctly, it's a correlation unique to the US, suggesting something else at work. (could be totally off on this, however.)
There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest racial differences in IQs are due to race itself. In fact, all reputable researchers attribute it to economic background, as the data is nearly a perfect match.
Also all you need to know about Jason Richwine is that he opposes immigration for hispanics because they test lower on IQ tests and would "damage" the country or something with their idiocy.
It's almost classical racism. Usually you don't see it in such a pure form.
Because they tend to have higher reproductive rates, helping keep the US from running into the same elderly quagmire that Japan and other developed nations are experiencing right now.What the two ton elephant people refuse to touch when discussing about the Richwine affair is, and that was the heart of what his research implies: Why is it a good idea to import more children of low skilled immigrants, who on average need much more help than American ones, when the American education system is already creaking on the seams?
There has yet to be a convincing argument against that question.
What the two ton elephant people refuse to touch when discussing about the Richwine affair is, and that was the heart of what his research implies: Why is it a good idea to import more children of low skilled immigrants, who on average need much more help than American ones, when the American education system is already creaking on the seams?
There has yet to be a convincing argument against that question.
Because they tend to have higher reproductive rates, helping keep the US from running into the same elderly quagmire that Japan and other developed nations are experiencing right now.
There's a sustainable level of population growth. You'd much rather shoot above it than below it, because digging out of it is very difficult.So one gets more of them in order to prop up the pension system. What happens when those immigrant children become older? Does one open the doors again for more of their kind so to get more progeny to support it further?
If we're takling about the Wechsler test, then it measure far more than just logic. Broadly, the four categories it measures are verbal comprehension, processing speed, working memory, and perceptual reasoning. Subtests include matrix reasoning (which are logic-based and may be what you are thinking of; another type of IQ test called Raven's Progressive Matrices is based entirely on these types of tests), general knowledge, concept/word assocations (questions range from "how is an animal like an orange?" to "how are friends and enemies similar?"), digit span (how many digits you can repeat, forward, backward, interspersed with letters, etc.), basic calculations, recreating an image using colored blocks, and so on.It seems to me it's mostly based on logic. It doesn't take into account creativity or emotional intelligence. Ends up making an exclusive association between intelligence and logic, failing to take into account two of the things that have been of the utmost importance in human evolution.
Is there a better one?
"Everybody but me is irrational"The very reactions he stated are the ones already seen early in this thread.
The topic is too emotional for people to talk about rationally, with many posters already raising anecdotal evidence or specific subsample evidence to try to (and fail to) disprove larger statistical surveys.
Unfortunately this thread isn't going to change any minds and getting involved will only burn.
So one gets more of them in order to prop up the pension system. What happens when those immigrant children become older? Does one open the doors again for more of their kind so to get more progeny to support it further?
"Everybody but me is irrational"
Why hasn't anyone brought up the fact that hispanic is not a race? Even Mexican is not a race. There are hispanics who wouldn't look out of place in sweden and some with skin as dark as sudanese.
He keeps going on about intelligence yet he makes this simple mistake.
But of course he already knows this and all this iq talk like the others who keep bringing it up have absolutely no interest in discussing it just being racist dickwads.
Even if some races were more intelligent than others, so what? Whats there to talk about?
Some words about your reason for posting this would help us determine how to treat you,
Hmm that is actually quite interesting, will read the article later.There are several factors that weigh into the different IQ tests. For instance, blacks often feel pressure to disprove stereotypes regarding intelligence in their community, so they often don't perform well under pressure due to the fact that there's more of a burden upon them.
The same thing occurs with women and mathematics. Women often feel anxiety because of the stereotypes involving women not being good at mathematics.
Tim Wise has an excellent article refuting the claim that African American IQ is statistically lower than White American IQ.
There's a sustainable level of population growth. You'd much rather shoot above it than below it, because digging out of it is very difficult.
Snide but not meaningless. It's funny because you and TCRS are supposedly defending rationality or science, but instead of responding to the objections raised you resort to this sad accusation that people here can't act rationally or won't accept the truth. You took the easy way out brother."Meaningless snide post"
"I'm not going to look at the facts, instead I will find reasons to attack you."
edit.No surprise there.
Why hasn't anyone brought up the fact that hispanic is not a race? Even Mexican is not a race. There are hispanics who wouldn't look out of place in sweden and some with skin as dark as sudanese.
He keeps going on about intelligence yet he makes this simple mistake.
But of course he already knows this and all this iq talk like the others who keep bringing it up have absolutely no interest in discussing it just being racist dickwads.
Even if some races were more intelligent than others, so what? Whats there to talk about?
The very reactions he stated are the ones already seen early in this thread.
The topic is too emotional for people to talk about rationally, with many posters already raising anecdotal evidence or specific subsample evidence to try to (and fail to) disprove larger statistical surveys.
Unfortunately this thread isn't going to change any minds and getting involved will only burn.
IQ is a terrible measure of intelligence.
Not at all similar. Intelligence has to do with socioeconomics more than biology.
The Flynn effect suggests that it's not biological and could be strongly associated with early childhood nutrition/more familiarization with standardized tests, though.
The author in the OP isn't a geneticist or biologist. His dissertation was in public policy.
Race said:A Q&A with a geneticist
Last week there was some debate across the blogosphere about race and IQ (again), much of it springing from the controversy of Jason Richwine's dissertation, "IQ and Immigration Policy." You can read my thoughts here, here, and here. One helpful critique made of these posts by Razib Khan held that they could use more science. Razib added some of that in his own post which was rooted in this paper:"Characterizing the Admixed African Ancestry of African Americans."
I read the paper, understood most of it, but was basically lost trying to understand the graphs. (It's true that my math and science foundation is fairly weak.) So I read it again. Still not quite getting it, I reached out to one of the authors -- geneticist Neil Risch, who directs the Institute for Human Genetics at University of California San Francisco. Professor Risch agreed to chat with me via e-mail. He also sent me these two papers ("The Importance of Race and Ethnic Background in Biomedical Research" and "Assessing Genetic Contributions to Phenotypic Differences Among 'Racial' and 'Ethnic' Groups"), which I found enlightening and would urge everyone to read.
I want to thank Professor Risch for his time. Our conversation is below.
[...]
One question pops out at me. You indicate some suspicion to referring to African-Americans as a "race" but (in some of your research) you support using "race" in terms of collecting med data and disease studies. Is this a case of a definition -- though it may be imperfect, clunky and at times even misleading -- still telling us something? From what I gathered from those articles "race" can be a proxy not just for genetic stuff, but for social phenomenon too (such as access to health care.) Am I seeing that right? Is it correct to say, for instance, "Yes, race is a social construct, but this does not make it meaningless." It still useful to look at "race," for instance, when studying sickle-cell. Perhaps some day, when we have more refined technique, it won't be.
Definitions can indeed be "clunky." I would use the phrase race/ethnicity rather than just race because in common parlance it is a better description. I tend to think that race has been used more in terms of continental origins (Africa, East Asia, Europe, Americas). On that basis, one would not characterize African Americans as a racial group, but rather as an ethnic group. We sort of implied this in the Genome Biology paper. The reason is that African Americans typically have European as well as African ancestry (and possibly other ancestries as well) and are also culturally distinct from Africans. Sort of similar to Latinos - who from a genetic ancestry standpoint can be nearly anything. Hence our use of race/ethnicity.
Just to opine a bit, I think part of the problem is the notion of a causal relationship -- i.e. "dark-skin" or "blackness" causing sickle-cell -- as opposed to a more geographic definition that might encompass people regardless of skin color.
Yes, exactly. Groups living in isolation from each other for long periods of time have acquired many genetic differences. The large majority of those are due to "genetic drift" -- i.e. random fluctuations in gene frequencies. That also includes many genetic variants that code for traits and diseases. But then there are some genetic variants that differ in frequency due to differential selection pressure in different environments. The best examples are for genes that confer resistance to malaria. One of those causes sickle cell disease in those who carry two mutations; those who carry one copy have sickle cell trait, which is generally benign but confers greater resistance to severe malaria infection. Mutations for sickle cell disease are found at pretty high frequency in some African populations, but also found in parts of the middle east and India. Beta thalassemia is another disease where carriers are offered greater protection from malaria. This disease is more common around the Mediterranean (e.g. Greeks).
Then there is G6PD deficiency. Mutations for that are found at increased frequency in parts of Africa, but also in the Middle East. The mutations underlying these disorders generally differ geographically, which is another indication that while the mutations are different ancestrally, they achieved high frequency in different populations for similar reasons (i.e. resistance to malaria). Another more recent example is a gene called ApoL1. There are a couple of genetic variants found in West Africans (and African Americans); when carrying two of these, there is an increased risk for kidney disease if hypertensive. It was shown that these variants likely provide some immunity from African Sleeping Sickness (tsetse fly disease) which may have led to them becoming more common where the disease is prevalent.
Various populations have an increased frequency of genetic diseases, which are often unique. Probably a lot or most of it is just chance, but perhaps not all of it. Proving historical selective advantages can be pretty challenging. So, as I mentioned above, groups living in isolation developed their own genetic (and cultural) profiles. Generally, there is no cause and effect between the traits that differentiate groups. East Asians have dark hair and eat with chopsticks. But there is no causal relationship. You can use a whole variety of different traits to place individuals into the same categories, but those traits may have nothing to do with each other etiologically.
[...]
One last question. Your paper on assessing genetic contributions to phenotype, seemed skeptical that we would ever tease out a group-wide genetic component when looking at things like cognitive skills or personality disposition. Am I reading that right? Are "intelligence" and "disposition" just too complicated?
Joanna Mountain and I tried to explain this in our Nature Genetics paper on group differences. It is very challenging to assign causes to group differences. As far as genetics goes, if you have identified a particular gene which clearly influences a trait, and the frequency of that gene differs between populations, that would be pretty good evidence. But traits like "intelligence" or other behaviors (at least in the normal range), to the extent they are genetic, are "polygenic." That means no single genes have large effects -- there are many genes involved, each with a very small effect. Such gene effects are difficult if not impossible to find. The problem in assessing group differences is the confounding between genetic and social/cultural factors. If you had individuals who are genetically one thing but socially another, you might be able to tease it apart, but that is generally not the case.
In our paper, we tried to show that a trait can appear to have high "genetic heritability" in any particular population, but the explanation for a group difference for that trait could be either entirely genetic or entirely environmental or some combination in between.
So, in my view, at this point, any comment about the etiology of group differences, for "intelligence" or anything else, in the absence of specific identified genes (or environmental factors, for that matter), is speculation.
And you are basing that opinion on what? Because the APA disagrees with you.