Race, Intelligence, & Genetics or How James Watson pissed off a lot of people.

[Kuciwalker]

Kid: duh. That's why they administer tests like that on control groups, administer standard IQ tests on the same group years later, and measure the correlation, establishing that such a test is a good measure of IQ.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Er, political decisions are only partially based on reality. Genetic evidence of intelligence discrepancies would establish that AA is the wrong policy, even if the politicians didn't actually eliminate it.

No it wouldn't. AA is not there simply to give people the jobs they should've gotten by intelligence. It is there to give minorities and other discriminated classes opportunities they otherwise could not have gotten due to the status and property that was denied them in the past. It does not make any claim to pretend to equalize for intelligence.

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by VetLegion


Jaguar?

How is children's intelligence as 12 month olds highly correlated with their intelligence as adults if at 12 months there is no difference between the groups compared, while in adulthood there is a significant difference? Do you understand the problem with your claim?

First of all, it's not my claim, but I can still explain that.

The results are correlated, meaning that the more intelligent 1-year-olds tend to be more intelligent adults. That shows that there is innate intelligence. The fact that they vary somewhat later in life (some kids who test in the 90th percentile will drop to the 75th later in life) shows that environmental factors may also play a role.

It's not much of a stretch to suggest that there are environmental factors hurting the intellectual development of some races.

Say that children who test in the 50th percentile when they're 1 still tend to be around the 50th percentile, with a small deviation, when they're adults.

Say the Black kids who test around the 50th percentile as 1 year olds tend to become 40th or 45th percentile adults, and the white kids who test around the 50th percentile as one year olds tend to become 55th or 60th percentile, on average. Average children are remaining mostly average, there are just other factors in play as well. Just because one thing is correlated with another doesn't mean it's the only factor affecting it.

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I don't know if Jaguar read that the article. It says in the abstract that white children begin edging out blacks by age 2.

white children don't begin edging out minorities until later in life.

2 years old is later in life. My reading is fine; how's yours?

[Berzerker]

"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."

Isn't this obvious? Individuals within the races dont have equal intelligence, why would the races? I assume intelligence is in part environmental too, some Amazonian Indian could author an encyclopedia on S American herbal medicines but he doesn't even know how to write. Environment shapes intelligence, so does genetics...

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Jaguar

white children don't begin edging out minorities until later in life.

2 years old is later in life. My reading is fine; how's yours?

Usually when people talk about later in life for a one year old they don't mean 2 years old. I read your post as meaning when they are adults and then read the article. My mistake.

[Berzerker]

doesn't matter, many genes dont necessarily operate at birth but kick on at different stages in life

[snoopy369]

Intelligence is unfortunately defined by the person or group who is measuring it (of course). I think there is nothing wrong with Watson's statement, per se, if it is understood from a particular definition of intelligence. (Nothing wrong scientifically; it is a poor thing to say regardless of the scientific background.)

Restating it as "White children evolved a higher intelligence in the areas that are considered important in European society" has a significantly higher chance of being correct. I'd still expect significant scientific research to be done on the matter; but I think that is a more reasonable statement. What was necessary for reproduction in Europe, assuming that any process of evolution might have occurred in the very short time span we are looking at (4,000 to 8,000 years, iirc), may have involved different types of reasoning - say, mathematical versus spatial versus analytical - than in other environments.

That doesn't mean that other humans didn't evolve intelligence of a different sort - a brain more capable of multi-tasking, or of spatial reasoning, etc. Things that we might not classify as "intelligence" because they don't follow the European model of intelligence, but still involve "intelligence" from a more neutral point of view.

That is why any discussion of "intelligence" in the races (or cultures) is pointless and idiotic until/unless it is grounded in a neutral understanding of these things - at which point it would be clear that there is no one true measure of intelligence, and trying to assign intelligence quotients to different cultures is like trying to compare between apples and oranges, or more accurately for Apolyton, between bananas and plantains.

[Barnabas]

If it is like comparing apples and oranges then humans are not all the same?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by snoopy369
No it wouldn't. AA is not there simply to give people the jobs they should've gotten by intelligence. It is there to give minorities and other discriminated classes opportunities they otherwise could not have gotten due to the status and property that was denied them in the past. It does not make any claim to pretend to equalize for intelligence.

AA is complete nonsense when there's actually a good reason for an employer to have hired a disproportionate number of one race.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Isn't this obvious? Individuals within the races dont have equal intelligence, why would the races?

This question demonstrates that you are absolutely clueless wrt random variables and statistics.

[Berzerker]

well thats nice, but does that mean you think the races and individuals should be equally intelligent or are you just finding a nasty way of agreeing with me?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Oh, that has nothing to do with it. You can have communist meritocracies. Kid wouldn't wan to live in one, though.

How would that work? In, ideal, communism everyone is supposed to be perfectly equal so having a meritocracy would seem counter to perfect equality.

Maybe you are refering to a socialist like system where there is still some social and economic stratification?

[Kuciwalker]

I was actually just getting a dig in at Kid... but in a working communist economy (oxymoron alert) jobs would be assigned based on skill, just like (ideally) within any organization. Rewards wouldn't necessarily be meritocratic.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Berzerker
well thats nice, but does that mean you think the races and individuals should be equally intelligent or are you just finding a nasty way of agreeing with me?

I meant that your argument was nonsense because the premise (intelligence varies between individuals) doesn't in any way imply the conclusion (intelligence varies between large groups of individuals).