The 10,000 Year Explosion

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
41

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
orion wrote:
TBT4ver wrote:
michezwick wrote:
Wow you seem pretty interested in the topic. I’ve personally never given the topic much thought so maybe you can help me out. In a psychology class I took freshman year, we did a section on intelligence. Differences in the intelligences of racial groups just happened to come up.

I remember a particular explanation my professor (whose degree is in physical anthropology) gave us for why he believed any differences found along racial lines should be met with skepticism.

He described a Japanese minority that consistently tested below the average Japanese population on IQ tests. However, the difference in test scores between the minority and majority groups only occurred when Japanese-raised individuals were tested. When you tested both groups of Japanese-Americans (raised in the US rather than Japan), there was no difference. Presumably this is because the minority group is no longer cultured to think they’re inferior.

I was just wondering if anyone else had heard of this study…

Sounds like an interesting study. Another question I’d have is how education affects IQ test scores. I know that IQ tests are only supposed to measure raw intelligence, but I’d be shocked if twins, one of which was well schooled and the other was not, would score identically (or even nearly identically) on this test. Anyway have know of some studies on this subject, or have I completely missed the boat?

There is an interesting study about American black Army kids in Germany.

They had they same IQ as any other German kid, so it is highly questionable that intelligence is correlated to race either way, even though African Americans do score lower on IQ tests in the US than their white counterparts.

That would raise some interesting questions though, the first one being, what happens to black kids that they do not live up to their genetic potential?

This paper pretty much answers all of those questions:

Like I said, everything from the Left is just wishful thinking and religiosity. Obviously, no one wants to believe that there are any differences, because that is un-PC and violates our sense of egalitarianism. But the science just doesn’t agree.
[/quote]

The entire article is ultimately inferential. If you have a hard view on this issue, you’re following a religion, and not fact. You claim this is religiosity from the left, but it’s equally illogical to believe this article. I think people love to believe this stuff because it makes them anti-PC.

In order to actually resolve this debate, one would have to find specific alleles that directly correspond to intelligence, and map them along racial lines. Until this is done, most of this work is simply inferential reasoning from relatively imprecise data taken from relatively imprecise methods of testing (relative to the specificity of the genome).

We simply do not have the bio-chemical knowledge of DNA to come to any final conclusion on this topic.

42

[quote]SpartanX wrote:
If you’ve gone through a multicultural public school…it’s pretty obvious some people are just more unintelligent than others. I remember a whole skintone practically was at 2nd grade level reading in 4th grade, while another was 6th grade level in 4th grade…nature or nurture, you decide. We all went through the same system.[/quote]

Seriously? Do people actually think this simplistically?

43

[quote]Demiajax wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
orion wrote:
TBT4ver wrote:
michezwick wrote:
Wow you seem pretty interested in the topic. I’ve personally never given the topic much thought so maybe you can help me out. In a psychology class I took freshman year, we did a section on intelligence. Differences in the intelligences of racial groups just happened to come up.

I remember a particular explanation my professor (whose degree is in physical anthropology) gave us for why he believed any differences found along racial lines should be met with skepticism.

He described a Japanese minority that consistently tested below the average Japanese population on IQ tests. However, the difference in test scores between the minority and majority groups only occurred when Japanese-raised individuals were tested. When you tested both groups of Japanese-Americans (raised in the US rather than Japan), there was no difference. Presumably this is because the minority group is no longer cultured to think they’re inferior.

I was just wondering if anyone else had heard of this study…

Sounds like an interesting study. Another question I’d have is how education affects IQ test scores. I know that IQ tests are only supposed to measure raw intelligence, but I’d be shocked if twins, one of which was well schooled and the other was not, would score identically (or even nearly identically) on this test. Anyway have know of some studies on this subject, or have I completely missed the boat?

There is an interesting study about American black Army kids in Germany.

They had they same IQ as any other German kid, so it is highly questionable that intelligence is correlated to race either way, even though African Americans do score lower on IQ tests in the US than their white counterparts.

That would raise some interesting questions though, the first one being, what happens to black kids that they do not live up to their genetic potential?

This paper pretty much answers all of those questions:

Like I said, everything from the Left is just wishful thinking and religiosity. Obviously, no one wants to believe that there are any differences, because that is un-PC and violates our sense of egalitarianism. But the science just doesn’t agree.

The entire article is ultimately inferential. If you have a hard view on this issue, you’re following a religion, and not fact. You claim this is religiosity from the left, but it’s equally illogical to believe this article. I think people love to believe this stuff because it makes them anti-PC.

In order to actually resolve this debate, one would have to find specific alleles that directly correspond to intelligence, and map them along racial lines. [/quote]

You mean something like this?

44

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
Demiajax wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
orion wrote:
TBT4ver wrote:
michezwick wrote:
Wow you seem pretty interested in the topic. I’ve personally never given the topic much thought so maybe you can help me out. In a psychology class I took freshman year, we did a section on intelligence. Differences in the intelligences of racial groups just happened to come up.

I remember a particular explanation my professor (whose degree is in physical anthropology) gave us for why he believed any differences found along racial lines should be met with skepticism.

He described a Japanese minority that consistently tested below the average Japanese population on IQ tests. However, the difference in test scores between the minority and majority groups only occurred when Japanese-raised individuals were tested. When you tested both groups of Japanese-Americans (raised in the US rather than Japan), there was no difference. Presumably this is because the minority group is no longer cultured to think they’re inferior.

I was just wondering if anyone else had heard of this study…

Sounds like an interesting study. Another question I’d have is how education affects IQ test scores. I know that IQ tests are only supposed to measure raw intelligence, but I’d be shocked if twins, one of which was well schooled and the other was not, would score identically (or even nearly identically) on this test. Anyway have know of some studies on this subject, or have I completely missed the boat?

There is an interesting study about American black Army kids in Germany.

They had they same IQ as any other German kid, so it is highly questionable that intelligence is correlated to race either way, even though African Americans do score lower on IQ tests in the US than their white counterparts.

That would raise some interesting questions though, the first one being, what happens to black kids that they do not live up to their genetic potential?

This paper pretty much answers all of those questions:

Like I said, everything from the Left is just wishful thinking and religiosity. Obviously, no one wants to believe that there are any differences, because that is un-PC and violates our sense of egalitarianism. But the science just doesn’t agree.

The entire article is ultimately inferential. If you have a hard view on this issue, you’re following a religion, and not fact. You claim this is religiosity from the left, but it’s equally illogical to believe this article. I think people love to believe this stuff because it makes them anti-PC.

In order to actually resolve this debate, one would have to find specific alleles that directly correspond to intelligence, and map them along racial lines.

You mean something like this?

You’re on the right track, but what that article shows is how little we know, because it’s still inferential. He’s found two significant allele markers, but does not even know exactly how they bio-chemically affect intellect. Some theorize that up to 40% of the human genome governs intellectual ability, we’re not even close to figuring out how.
Again, this whole debate is largely irrelevant until someone is smart enough to “unlock” the specific interaction between gnome and brain formation.

45

http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_response.pdf

A partial response to some of the criticism leveled at previous studies by PRCD’s article.

46

[quote]Demiajax wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
Demiajax wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
orion wrote:
TBT4ver wrote:
michezwick wrote:
Wow you seem pretty interested in the topic. I’ve personally never given the topic much thought so maybe you can help me out. In a psychology class I took freshman year, we did a section on intelligence. Differences in the intelligences of racial groups just happened to come up.

I remember a particular explanation my professor (whose degree is in physical anthropology) gave us for why he believed any differences found along racial lines should be met with skepticism.

He described a Japanese minority that consistently tested below the average Japanese population on IQ tests. However, the difference in test scores between the minority and majority groups only occurred when Japanese-raised individuals were tested. When you tested both groups of Japanese-Americans (raised in the US rather than Japan), there was no difference. Presumably this is because the minority group is no longer cultured to think they’re inferior.

I was just wondering if anyone else had heard of this study…

Sounds like an interesting study. Another question I’d have is how education affects IQ test scores. I know that IQ tests are only supposed to measure raw intelligence, but I’d be shocked if twins, one of which was well schooled and the other was not, would score identically (or even nearly identically) on this test. Anyway have know of some studies on this subject, or have I completely missed the boat?

There is an interesting study about American black Army kids in Germany.

They had they same IQ as any other German kid, so it is highly questionable that intelligence is correlated to race either way, even though African Americans do score lower on IQ tests in the US than their white counterparts.

That would raise some interesting questions though, the first one being, what happens to black kids that they do not live up to their genetic potential?

This paper pretty much answers all of those questions:

Like I said, everything from the Left is just wishful thinking and religiosity. Obviously, no one wants to believe that there are any differences, because that is un-PC and violates our sense of egalitarianism. But the science just doesn’t agree.

The entire article is ultimately inferential. If you have a hard view on this issue, you’re following a religion, and not fact. You claim this is religiosity from the left, but it’s equally illogical to believe this article. I think people love to believe this stuff because it makes them anti-PC.

In order to actually resolve this debate, one would have to find specific alleles that directly correspond to intelligence, and map them along racial lines.

You mean something like this?

You’re on the right track, but what that article shows is how little we know, because it’s still inferential. He’s found two significant allele markers, but does not even know exactly how they bio-chemically affect intellect. Some theorize that up to 40% of the human genome governs intellectual ability, we’re not even close to figuring out how.
Again, this whole debate is largely irrelevant until someone is smart enough to “unlock” the specific interaction between gnome and brain formation. [/quote]

A researcher doesn’t need to explain the biochemical effect to impute improtance to the finding; in this case the authors do make note of a triple-repeat marker in the brain which may in some way connect gene, brain and IQ.

But silence speaks more loudly here: this is hot stuff. If it were true–that two alleles predict IQ–and reproducible, there would be an avalanche of research in this one topic. In the ensuant 14 years–nada, zilch. This died in the birthing. The lead authors are next onto SNPs, which will prove this decades waste of genomic research.

47

[quote]A researcher doesn’t need to explain the biochemical effect to impute improtance to the finding; in this case the authors do make note of a triple-repeat marker in the brain which may in some way connect gene, brain and IQ.

But silence speaks more loudly here: this is hot stuff. If it were true–that two alleles predict IQ–and reproducible, there would be an avalanche of research in this one topic. In the ensuant 14 years–nada, zilch. This died in the birthing. The lead authors are next onto SNPs, which will prove this decades waste of genomic research.[/quote]

So what’s your take on the heritability and racial disparities of IQ?

48

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
I guarantee there are people from every minority group that would kick your ass or mine in an IQ contest.

Of course. And, on average, they would be Han Chinese, Ashkenazi Jews, Japanese, Koreans, etc. It would be wherever the guassian distributions of the intelligence of the other races overlapped the white distribution on the end of the white IQ distribution higher than my IQ. If I knew my own IQ, we could sit here and calculate how many blacks/hispanics/Asians/? in the US are smarter than me. This exercise should be pretty much trivial for a PhD like yourself. [/quote]

  1. “Gaussian”

Simple thought: IQ doesn’t measure intelligence, it measures how well an individual takes the IQ test. IQ may covary with intelligence, or certain attributes of achievement.
When Binet devised it, it was intended to highlight mental deficiencies. There is an apocryphal story that Stanford’s Terman, who adapted and extended its use, was profoundly shaken when, in sample after sample, Jews, particularly from Belorussian immigrant families, persistently outscored native Americans, and even immigrants of the “races” he thought possessed ore native intelligence (Nordics, British,etc.) He doctored and expunged the data, and still could not make the test “come out right.” The differences of Ashkenazi Jews (AJ) persisted for generations.

Results are not in a perfect Gaussian distribution: there is skewness and different standard errors for each sub-group of test-takers. So, for example, AJ have a mean IQ of 112 to 115. The IQ test has a SD of 16, so that data would mean that the score of the 'average" AJ exceeds about 84% of other test-takers.
Charles Murray, of dubious credentials in this matter, nevertheless points out that AJs comprised a fraction of 1% of the European population, but accounted for 20% of the Nobel Laureates of the 20th century; 25%, if one looks only at Nobel Laureates since 1950, after the loss of 1/3 of the population.

  1. Genetics

Evolution is fast, there should be no doubt that oodles of genes, SNPs and controls have arisen in 10,000 years. This is not “Lamarkian” by any means.

So why NOT intelligence? Defining it is hard enough, but we are just now understanding epigenetics and the plasticity of the human brain before the age of 6. Why not admit ignorance, and presume that genes are just the most primitive scaffolding, and there are much more important roots of intelligence, and ones which may be influenced, not by white-coated scientists, but by every thoughtful parent?

Garrison Keillor: “Intelligence is not a virtue. It is an attribute. Like having sharp teeth.”

49

[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:

So why NOT intelligence? Defining it is hard enough, but we are just now understanding epigenetics and the plasticity of the human brain before the age of 6. Why not admit ignorance, and presume that genes are just the most primitive scaffolding, and there are much more important roots of intelligence, and ones which may be influenced, not by white-coated scientists, but by every thoughtful parent?

Garrison Keillor: “Intelligence is not a virtue. It is an attribute. Like having sharp teeth.”

[/quote]

I totally agree.

50

[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:

A researcher doesn’t need to explain the biochemical effect to impute improtance to the finding; in this case the authors do make note of a triple-repeat marker in the brain which may in some way connect gene, brain and IQ.

[/quote]

My point was more that since IQ itself is a questionable measure of determining intellect, something biochemical would be more substantive than simply linking an allele to increased IQ. But,point taken.

51

Am reading this at the moment. Essentially, it builds on Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs & Steel’, but includes the genetic adaptations that Diamond overlooked.

There is a good review of it in Seed Magazine here:

“Even with its flaws, Cochran and Harpending’s book has provided the best example to date of what E.O. Wilson would recognize as consilient history: not history done just with science in mind or even done scientifically, but history done with human biology treated as an essential cause and effect of the stories that history tells, and as a key without which history cannot make sense.”

http://seedmagazine.com/news/2009/02/be_fruitful_and_multiply.php

52

One thing’s for sure - the IQ, and intelligence - of many people here is NOT at the top level.

Popular science books = science fiction

Again, I am not going to spoon feed people, experience shows that is a waste of time trying to educate those who can’t educate themselves. … and especially if they have a vested interest in “proving” some point - like their own racial supremacy. Or cultural supremacy. Or any other shit they are trying to prove.

I am not saying the only difference between people is skin colour, as some fool suggested.

If you want something to consider, then consider dogs - all same species. Selective breeding has created a great variety of dogs in a brief amount of time. Not all dogs are the same intelligence, disposition, attitude, strength etc…

To some degree this has happened with humans.

However note that dogs are an unusual case. You can’t for example breed cats in the same way - you just get a very limited range of different cats. Dogs can be varied in the extreme. Cats cannot. Chickens can a bit. Humans can, but just a bit, you don’t for example get 2 foot tall humans, 10 foot tall humans, humans with mega long limbs etc… or wide skin colour variation, or hair colour, and you definetely do not get wide intelligence variation as the countless examples of genius and dimwit from all races demonstrates. The percentage of each in a culture is nothing to do with a race. And don’t give me that shit about moving people to a culture and they still do badly, when they still have the parents / background / language of a different culture.

Never underestimate the power of an agenda in popular science to skew all the results.

53

One thing’s for sure - the IQ, and intelligence - of many people here is NOT at the top level.

Popular science books = science fiction

Again, I am not going to spoon feed people, experience shows that is a waste of time trying to educate those who can’t educate themselves. … and especially if they have a vested interest in “proving” some point - like their own racial supremacy. Or cultural supremacy. Or any other shit they are trying to prove.

I am not saying the only difference between people is skin colour, as some fool suggested.

If you want something to consider, then consider dogs - all same species. Selective breeding has created a great variety of dogs in a brief amount of time. Not all dogs are the same intelligence, disposition, attitude, strength etc…

To some degree this has happened with humans.

However note that dogs are an unusual case. You can’t for example breed cats in the same way - you just get a very limited range of different cats. Dogs can be varied in the extreme. Cats cannot. Chickens can a bit. Humans can, but just a bit, you don’t for example get 2 foot tall humans, 10 foot tall humans, humans with mega long limbs etc… or wide skin colour variation, or hair colour, and you definetely do not get wide intelligence variation as the countless examples of genius and dimwit from all races demonstrates. The percentage of each in a culture is nothing to do with a race. And don’t give me that shit about moving people to a culture and they still do badly, when they still have the parents / background / language of a different culture.

Never underestimate the power of an agenda in popular science to skew all the results.

54

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:

This paper pretty much answers all of those questions:

Like I said, everything from the Left is just wishful thinking and religiosity. Obviously, no one wants to believe that there are any differences, because that is un-PC and violates our sense of egalitarianism. But the science just doesn’t agree.
[/quote]

One paper written by one university does not mean that everything about egalitarianism is garbage. Please motherfucker.

Who’s that study funded by? Who’s it intended to reach? What do other studies say? As Magar said, it’s so easy to politicize that shit that while you can’t discount the evidence, you have to do your homework on who and what it’s about first.

I know you’ve got a hard-on for thinking that blacks are not as smart as whites- you’ve made that clear in the past. But c’mon.

55

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:

This paper pretty much answers all of those questions:

Like I said, everything from the Left is just wishful thinking and religiosity. Obviously, no one wants to believe that there are any differences, because that is un-PC and violates our sense of egalitarianism. But the science just doesn’t agree.

One paper written by one university does not mean that everything about egalitarianism is garbage. Please motherfucker.

[/quote]

The term ‘egalitarianism’ applies to the equality of opportunity, not the equality of outcome. ‘Equality of outcome’ is a more of a USSR idea, one that you no doubt support.

Please try argue with what people have actually said, not what you’ve made up in your mind.

56

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:

This paper pretty much answers all of those questions:

Like I said, everything from the Left is just wishful thinking and religiosity. Obviously, no one wants to believe that there are any differences, because that is un-PC and violates our sense of egalitarianism. But the science just doesn’t agree.

One paper written by one university does not mean that everything about egalitarianism is garbage. Please motherfucker.

The term ‘egalitarianism’ applies to the equality of opportunity, not the equality of outcome. ‘Equality of outcome’ is a more of a USSR idea, one that you no doubt support.

Please try argue with what people have actually said, not what you’ve made up in your mind. [/quote]

Funny how you left out the rest of my post, though. I guess that was your best point? Ain’t surprising with you.

57

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:

This paper pretty much answers all of those questions:

Like I said, everything from the Left is just wishful thinking and religiosity. Obviously, no one wants to believe that there are any differences, because that is un-PC and violates our sense of egalitarianism. But the science just doesn’t agree.

One paper written by one university does not mean that everything about egalitarianism is garbage. Please motherfucker.

The term ‘egalitarianism’ applies to the equality of opportunity, not the equality of outcome. ‘Equality of outcome’ is a more of a USSR idea, one that you no doubt support.

Please try argue with what people have actually said, not what you’ve made up in your mind.

Funny how you left out the rest of my post, though. I guess that was your best point? Ain’t surprising with you.[/quote]

I left out the rest of your post because I believe it to be irrelevant and/or frothing anger from someone whose cognitive abilities are obviously impaired by a few too many blows to the head.

If you want someone to address your “points,” perhaps you should refrain from insulting the person.

Maybe you should just whine to somebody else altogether. Lixy’s a pretty good whiner. You two should commiserate.

58

There are very short humans (pygmies and khosians). There are very tall humans (7’+). On average, some races are taller than others. There are also wide-ranging skin color differences and hair-color differences. Mean IQs vary widely depending on the race.

There are countless dimwits of all races. On average, there will be more (perhaps many more) in some races than others depending on the mean IQ of that particular race. There are far fewer dimwitted Ashkenazi Jews and Japanese (as a percentage of their total population) than other races

59

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:

If you want someone to address your “points,” perhaps you should refrain from insulting the person.

[/quote]

Oh, so you’re a bitch. I got it.

60

“One paper written by one university does not mean that everything about egalitarianism is garbage.”

I guess the question is, if you believe in evolution, why would you expect complete equality in every respect? Clearly athletic differences have arisen in addition to superficial physical differences in skin colour.

And the psychometric research is pretty clear - so there is circumstantial evidence for differences in group averages being partially genetic with some overlap (ie. it doesn’t mean much about particular individuals).

Gene variants (rs2760118-C on SSADH, rs324650-T on CHRM2, and rs760761-C on DTNBP1, for example) which have been tied to IQ are not distributed evenly among the populations sampled in the Hapmap, so this there is some room for speculation.

David Friedman discusses this here:

"The denial of male/female differences is the most striking example of left wing hostility to the implications of Darwinian evolution, but not the only one. The reasons to expect differences among racial groups as conventionally defined are weaker, since males of all races play the same role in reproduction, as do females of all races. But we know that members of such groups differ in the distribution of observable physical characteristics–that, after all, is the main way we recognize them. That is pretty strong evidence that their ancestors adapted to at least somewhat different environments.

There is no a priori reason to suppose that the optimal physical characteristics were different in those different environments but the optimal mental characteristics were the same. And yet, when differing outcomes by racial groups are observed, it is assumed without discussion that they must be entirely due to differential treatment by race. That might turn out to be true, but there is no good reason to expect it. Here again, anyone who argues the opposite is likely to find himself the target of ferocious attacks, mainly from people on the left."