MewTwo
Freeing Pokemon From Their Masters Since 1996
I see intelligence as an equation. I do believe genetics AND environment are variables in that equation.
Can we have a thread debunking Race Science i.e. The Bell Curve, Human Bio-Diversity?
- Thread starter Ya' Cousin Cleon
- Start date
@Son of Sierra Leone I can't believe I ever marginally liked Sam Harris close to a decade ago. What he's become is deplorable. I know Hitchens would be pissed.
MewTwo
Freeing Pokemon From Their Masters Since 1996
DrBanneker
Space is the Place
I did two big posts on research material to tackle this in other threads. I am dropping it here. Also I recommend reading the Funding of Scientific Racism by William Tucker, Race, Genes, and Ability by Alondra Oubre, and the IQ Game by Howard Taylor.
An interesting look on genetic variation in African peoples (minus the Bell Curve fakery) can be found in Genetic Variation and Disorders in Peoples of African Origin by James E. Bowman (Valerie Jarrett's dad in fact) and Robert Murray.
An interesting look on genetic variation in African peoples (minus the Bell Curve fakery) can be found in Genetic Variation and Disorders in Peoples of African Origin by James E. Bowman (Valerie Jarrett's dad in fact) and Robert Murray.
Second post: the topic of IQ and race is fraught with difficult and to be honest, if you don't have a deep and detailed understanding of related research in genetics, both population genetics as well as molecular genetics, and some understanding of techniques in cognitive psychology, you end up reporting BS off the web that screams "realism" and "science" without knowing its holes and context.
I refer you again to the links in my earlier post
See a good bunch of papers on the topic here
First, IQ is a test. Whether it should be the end all of what constitutes "intelligence" is pretty controversial, even amongst cognitive psychologists. That being said, on average and in aggregate, we as a people score lower on the test than Whites/Asians. But what does this mean?
1. Understand IQ has not been fixed over the years it is measured, Black and White IQs have gone up about a standard deviation (15 points) since WWII so it is a moving target. Granted this Flynn effect has not narrowed the gap but other factors are slowly working in Black folks favor. First, the common mentioned Blacks are 85, Whites are 100 has two issues. It is based on a national data set about 50 years old (that hasn't been redone) and it was an average across geographical regions.
Why is the fact that it is an average over geography important? Because Blacks score different in different areas depending on opportunities and socioeconomics. Blacks in the North and developed parts of the West scored 90 or above while poor Southern Blacks scored near 80. So people decided a "fair" average was 85. You see the same pattern in Whites. Interestingly, Blacks in some states in the North repeatedly scored above Whites in some Southern states. The racists tried to claim the Blacks in the North were self-selected and thus the "best" of Black people which compare better to the worst of Whites in the South, but if that was the case, they should be ok with Northern Blacks smashing Southern White chicks on "eugenics" grounds
Anyway, a guy named Otto Klineberg who assisted the NAACP with the Brown vs. Board case showed Southern Blacks that moved North could improve their IQ in schooling so the difference wasn't all genetic and a lot is based on generations and collective opportunity.
Negro-White Differences in Intelligence Test Performance: A New Look at an Old Problem
Also note that if you normalize scores, Whites in the early 20th century scored lower than any African country today. Were they all mentally retarded?
2. Even with Blacks scoring lower, that gives you absolutely ZERO information on any individual. Someone implying Maxine Waters is low IQ since she has Black is spitting ZERO scientific content and does not understand any statistics. IQ varies more within races than between them and individuals from all races hit all scores. Even the godfather of "Blacks are genetically disadvantaged in intelligence", Arthur Jensen, admitted this point.
3. You see a lot of people quoting 'African' intelligence. There has never been a comprehensive study of Africa and a lot of the studies are old and go back to the colonialist days. Even the ones more recent (from 90s on) are not necessarily done on Blacks in ideal conditions/backgrounds etc. even compared to AAs. There were some tests of S. African Blacks in the early 2000s that showed Black university students were as smart as the average White person and the "Blacks are just dumb" crowd did their best to try to rationalize away this result. They don't want us to seem equal, period.
The map of Africa with IQ scores you may see on the web is mostly not based on recent and broad based testing in those countries. Lynn and others tested refugee/immigrant kids in Europe and guestimated some of the countries so I give the Africans = 70 "fact" a big grain of salt. An average IQ of 70 would directly imply 50% of Africans are mentally retarded. You have to be a complete fool or apartheid minded White person to even think that is remotely true, especially if you've been to Africa.
There is also a supposed "culture free" test called Raven's Progressive Matrices people throw out. I won't go into its issues here but it is not culture free, increases over time, and cannot be mapped correctly to any IQ score.
Here are some reference papers:
African IQ and Mental Retardation
Case for Non-Biased Intelligence Testing Against Black Africans Has Not Been Made
A systematic literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans
4. A lot of people talk about "heritability" to prove genetics cause most differences in IQ. People, even scientists, keep not using that concept correctly. Heritability is not the % of a trait that is genetic nor does a higher number mean more "heritable" or caused by genetics. The concept of heritable and heritability are different. Heritability is hard to generalize beyond the testing group and only talks about variance IT HAS NO BEARING ON AVERAGE IQ (OR ANY AVERAGE FOR ANYTHING) NEITHER WITHIN OR BETWEEN RACES. It was originally created to measure the response of a trait under selective pressure (natural or artificial). If you don't fully understand that last statement and how the calculations work out in natural or lab populations, you have no business throwing that term out.
For some detail, see:
The Intelligence of Heritability
General Intelligence (g) and Heritability (H2, h2)
There is so much on this that books have been written. But people read a little genetics and some blogs and think they got this. Most don't.
