Race differences

[TCO]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
'Kay, but did it include reference to earlier studies of Amerindian pop?

Yes.
.
.
.
.
.
OH! You want them?

[TCO]

Originally posted by Ramo

No time right now (spent enough tonight writing this post ).

You have my full empathic sympathy.

[TCO]

Actually Kitty, I can't find a survey on Amerindians referenced in the book after looking at it for a while. (Race stuff is only about a 1/4 of the book and most of it is on B/W.)

[problem_child]

I couldn't read the whole of this thread becouse it was making my tiny little brain hot, but my points:

Intelligence has more to do with density of neurons and synaptic-connection between hemisphere's then mere "BIGGA! UGH!" only people backward enough to take craniology seriously would think overwise.

The human mind is more complex then just racial breeding believe me, once you've got a brain capable of language, abstraction, symbology, delayed gratification, pattern recognition and association- a few generations worth of gene entropy counts for not much really. Its like saying "a black rocket can make it to the moon but a white rocket will make it to the moon and five miles further", if you know anything about rockets and the distances involved in traveling to the moon then you'd know that this is a meaningless statement that only someone who does'nt understand rockets would make. For racial differences in intelligence to be meaningful- white and Asian people would have to display considerably more intelligence then they do now, they'd each have to match Mozart by age 6 to even register as a consistant difference of racial intellect, anything else is just noise.

Nutritian and individualistic genetic heritage (eg: you have your mothers eyes) makes alot of difference between individuals, but racial groups swallow those differences like spikes lost on a fractal edge.

I don't believe we're all equal, I believe we're all equally different. If I was a racist- I'd rather use the argument that one cultural environment is superior to another for the development of the mind, the rest is just live-stock, hardware. Europeans were pretty much the same as Africans, Native Americans and Polynesians until the Romans turned up and "civilised" em, and the Romans lived near a great crossroads of civilizations, thats why they got so organized. Just as in Civ3, contact between different cultures is what makes the difference between a bunch of inbred savages and a cosmopolitan out-going society. Ironic that, when you think about it.

[Tingkai]

Good points problem_child.

I have a question about these IQ tests. What kind of intelligence do they attempt to measure?

There are various types of intelligence, I don't know the exact divisions, but we've probably all met the creative genius who has no social intelligence.

So how do you compare the intelligence of a brilliant writer/social idiot to the brilliant leader/math idiot? Lets say the writer scores 130 IQ while the leader scores 100 IQ. Is it really meaningful to say the writer is more intelligent than the leader when the leader is more intelligent when it comes to interpersonal skills?

[TCO]

Tingkai, IQ tests measure something called "g" or general intelligence. It is problem solving ability. What people refer to when they call somebody "smart".

IQ tests do not measure social skills, etc.

[Tingkai]

Do IQ tests measure creative intelligence, i.e. could it measure a person's ability to write a book or create a painting, or a computer game?

[chequita guevara]

They can. IQ tests can be crafted to measure specific parts of intelligence. We've come quite far in our ability to make objective tests and measure IQ. A lot of the "research" one which the Black-white-Asian difference, however, is based on older, less reliable tests.

There are variations between broadly defined social groups. Laying this at the feet of genetics, when there are far more compelling and proven explanations is just looking for validation for one's own racism.

[Tingkai]

Is it possible that a person who is a brilliant musician could end up with a low score on a general intelligence test?

Is it possible that IQ tests do nothing more than tell us how a person would score on an IQ test?

If IQ tests measure "general" intelligence, then is this an accurate average mathematical measurement of general intelligence or is it a measure of problem-solving intelligence?

[Tingkai]

I'm interested in this for my industry - journalism.

Would a general IQ test be a good yardstick for measuring the types of intelligence required to be a good reporter (namely, problem-solving intelligence, social intelligence and creative intelligence). Someone who is great at solving problems, but lacks interpersonal skills would not be a great reporter.

[chequita guevara]

Many things are possible. People who don't test well show lower IQs than they really have, but there are other ways to measure it in cases like this.

IQ tests measure the what they are crafted to measure. If it's targetting problem-solving, then it will measure that. If it's measuring general intelligence, etc.

[Tingkai]

So is there an IQ test that would measure all of the different types of intelligence and be able to identify a person as being extremely smart when it comes to creative skills, but not so smart when it comes to solving math questions, and, say, average when it comes to interpersonal intelligence?

[chequita guevara]

Yes.

[chequita guevara]

A few years back I worked for a company that did these tests. Learned a lot about them.

[Tingkai]

What's the name of the test?