The Question of Which Race it the Most Intelligent?

The worth of such studies has been mentioned numerous times in this thread. I mentioned it in my first post in here that I don't think this topic is super interesting, but it does have some value. For example, you could use the information to identify the evolutionary effects of different living conditions upon groups of people over time. It could help understand the modern day social dynamics of a race in our society and how people are treated and perceived. It could help identify what biological traits help to determine intelligence (e.g. if races with larger brains have higher IQ, then what part of the brain is larger and why does that correlate to the higher IQ?).

I think you're assuming that because you can't identify valid reasons for the information, there must not be any. I would assume the opposite, and then make a more specific determination based on specific studies and their stated purpose and usage.

I can't think of any real reason for you to believe that. It just sounds like that's your intuition, again because you can't identify alternate solutions, there must not be any. It is much more logical to assume there are explanations you haven't thought of until you find out otherwise.

To do these types of studies, you first define what you mean by "race" and what you mean by "intelligence". For intelligence it can be pretty easy. One way would be to choose a certain type of IQ test and for the purposes of the study define the score on that test as the measure of "intelligence". It doesn't matter if that is not a universally accepted definition, or if some people confuse intelligence with other traits that you consider to be separate, because if you define that in your study then a person viewing the results will know what you mean by using your definition.

Race is a little harder, but not that much. You can define it based on skin color, or ancestry (certain % of ancestors of a specific race), or by self identification. Any of those definitions can provide useful information, and as long as you define what you mean by "race" then you won't have problems.

And finally, note that these are sociological studies as much as they are biological ones. I'm not sure why that would matter, though.

 

And as I said there is a sociological value since race is primarily a sociological construct. As far as the rest as Otto noted there have been studies already done looking at cranial capacity and shape. This seems to be a study done based on skin color. As far as the different living conditions I already responded to that. If you are looking at living conditions you should test people who live in those conditions. As I pointed out Asian / Mongoloid people have lived for many many generations in all sorts of climates so a study based upon people with those features will tell you very little about climate effect on intelligence.

Of course there is such a thing as pure science but there still must be some end to that and for that matter the effects of such research do need to be considered. For example the US government from 1932 to 1972 conducted a study on syphillis. What they did was to not treat a group of people, poor blacks, who had syphillis and then see what the effects were. This study was unethical yet from a pure information gathering point was valid. If you are going to understand the progression of a disease the best thing is to run a control where you let it run its course. Now under your argument that there is something valid there is nothing wrong with it since scientifically it makes sense.

In this case though there is a bigger problem in that the science is inherently flawed given what we know of the human genome and the history of human settlement, colonialism and slavery to be able to make accurate determinations. Not forgetting the inherent subjectivity in regard to IQ tests.

I've stated the problems and pointed out that that these are based on how it says the studies were conducted, its not intuition. ON the contrary you seem to be relying upon belief that such problems have been addressed without offering counter information. That isn't a logical assumption since you have not shown the basis why it should be concluded that the issues I raised were addressed. Its merely speculative.

That doesn't sound like much of a rigorous study since you are conceding that both the measure of intelligence and race is subjective.

For example if my standard of intelligence is knowledge of the Houston Rockets and I conduct an experiment to see what nationalities are the most intelligence based upon that test. I could easily conclude that Americans and Chinese are the most intelligent, Canadians are near the top but Russians are very unitelligent.

And as I point out those are subjective. For instance if by skin color does Vanessa Williams qualify as white then since her skin tone is lighter than many people who call themselves.

It matters because race is primarily a sociological construct and as such as a bearing on sociology. As the human genome study shows overall humanity is more similar than different and you are as likely to find genetic diversity between two individuals of one races as you are between the race. I agree with the sociological import but that determination isn't so much a determination of intelligence as a determination of how do socially defined groups, the races, perform in regard to another social construct an IQ or some other test that claim to prove intelligence.

 

I'll try to boil down my thoughts into a couple distinct areas to reduce the size of my response. It was getting long and repetitive.

• First, the syphilis studies were unethical because they purposefully didn't treat people with syphilis! That's a far cry from asking someone to take an IQ test. The difference between actual unethical behavior and a (legitimate) fear that some people will be unable to interpret the results appropriately is vast.
  
  
• You indicated you were talking about specific studies. I'm sorry, I missed that. I was talking about these types of studies in general based on the original post of the thread. You said you pointed out specific flaws in "the study". Could you show me again? I assume you looked at the text of the study to determine whether they failed to address the problems you're proposing, so I'd like to look at the text, too, if it isn't too time consuming. I don't think the "race is hard to define in North America" and "what is intelligence" flaws count unless you specifically disagree with how the study defined those two things.
  
  
• With this type of study, it seems pretty obvious that you just define race, define intelligence, gather data, look for correlations, and add that to other data to try to draw conclusions. If an individual (like Vanessa Williams) doesn't fit well in your pre-determined categories of race, don't include that person in the study. If you want to define "intelligence" as it relates to your study as the knowledge of the Rockets team history, you can do that, too, as long as it's clearly defined. (Although it's probably best to stick to more common measures of intelligence, like IQ.)
  
  
• This type of information is both sociological and biological in nature. In fact, a huge part of the point is determining what sociological factors have an evolutionary effect on the biology of the group. So continuing to claim that this type of information is sociological in nature doesn't preclude it from being a valid basis for a genetic study.
  
  
• Did you know that if you are of Jewish ancestry and you (or your wife) is pregnant they advise you to take a test for a specific disease (Tay-Sachs)? This is true even now in the United States, even though many Jews have married and procreated outside of their religion (or race). It is still done because there is still a strong correlation between that specific ancestry and incidences of the disease. You say that two people of different races are as likely to be genetically similar as two people of the same race. That's just not true. There are definite biological factors that determine race, from skin color and other physical features to less noticeable internal physical characteristics. Heck, the definition of race is a grouping of people based on heritable characteristics.
  
  If you do know that there are genetic factors that separate one race from another, then you seem to be under the impression that just because people have mixed races numerous times, and just because there are no exact biological determinants for identifying a specific race, that those factors can't also show correlations with other biological elements. But again, they certainly can and do. And the exact point of these studies is to determine what type of correlations exist.

I want to make an analogy. Let's say we wanted to compare the shooting efficiency of point guards and centers in the NBA. Given the same logic you are using above, here would be your arguments for why such a study would be bad:

1. What defines a point guard? What defines a center? In the NBA, many players play multiple positions, or switch between offense and defense or depending on which teammates they are playing with. It's too subjective to identify someone as a PG or C.
2. Shooting efficiency is too subjective as well. You have to take into account three pointers and free throws and how often someone is fouled when shooting and stuff like that.
3. The information could be misused. People might identify a point guard with a poor shooting percentage and assume he is a bad player when his worth might be in distributing the ball and playing defense.

I would hope you could see how those "flaws" could be worked around or avoided and you could still come up with some interesting information on the general shooting efficiency of point guards and centers. Maybe there wouldn't be a strong correlation, maybe there would be, but that result would be independent of these "flaws".

Oops, still long and possibly repetitive. Sorry about that.

 

QUESTION: What would be the purpose of such Tests?
What would this hard earned knowledge be used for?

Rocket River

 

Quick, easy read for people new to this subject.

I've studied this extensively, have placed my high "IQ" (not that it means anything) in various environments and social classes, and was forced to see things the way Otto has tried to illustrate.

 

+1 uolj those are some really good points. I definitely couldn't have said it any better. Thanks for your post. I would rep you some more but I cant.

 

Just a few examples off the top of my head, I'm sure there are better ones:

You could use the information to identify the evolutionary effects of different living conditions upon groups of people over time. It could help understand the modern day social dynamics of a race in our society and how people are treated and perceived. It could help identify what biological traits help to determine intelligence (e.g. if races with larger brains have higher IQ, then what part of the brain is larger and why does that correlate to the higher IQ?).

 

agreed.. and you might find out that different races learn differently. Minorities are always complaining that the education system puts them at a disadvantage.

 

I don't think the great book by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel* has come up yet. It's a very detailed a persuasive look at how perceived differences in races over history boil down to which ones had access to easily domesticated crops and animals first. That's the nutshell version of it.

Overall, I guess my problem with these thoughts on "intelligence" is that we mean about 18 different things with that word, and the idea that one race or another is genetically better at *all* 18 of those things just seems absurd to me, in terms of probability. That assumes that there's enough genetic difference for the way the brain development is encoded, and from what I've read, there is simply not enough difference there genetically to support further investigation.



* = referencing the metal, not the GOP spokesman

 

The uses are endless and examples have been posted throughout the thread. On a more individual level, an example would be if we discover a certain genetic combination is predisposed to having more difficulty with math and less with language skills. If you know that about a certain kid, instead of just deciding he's stupid at math, you could spent more time on math and less on English, and end up with a student that has a better potential future. But really, the uses of this type of information depend on what exactly you learn.

If you just learn the ancestral information, it might be useful in learning how humans and societies evolved in different ways over time. If you can learn more specific genetic information, you could apply that more to individuals today.

What disturbs me most about this thread is that it seems that people who normally really value science are running away from the idea of this being potentially valuable information topic because they don't like the potential implications. To me, that seems to go against the very nature of science, which is to learn what is true and what is not - regardless of the consequences or implications of that knowledge. It's certainly an ugly subject that opens the door to lots of misinterpretations and misuse, but it doesn't invalidate the topic.

 

The most intelligent race is the indians.

 

Dude, you are so right.

DD

 

There is a place for such discussions. That place is not a BBS among a bunch of people who don't know what they are talking about. Anybody with a doctorate in a related field, I think you might have something useful to say. But googling a couple of web pages doesn't make you an expert. Spouting the same experimentally disproved and inherently bigoted "common sense" extrapolations from a couple of personal observations that people were spouting 150 years ago to demonstrate the inferiority of the black man just makes you the next fool in a long line of fools.

This thread is like discussing the pros and cons of various surgery techniques with a Christian Scientist, or discussing early inflationary models of the early universe with a Creationist. The hubris of thinking you can "reason out" the truth to a subject in five minutes of BBS postings that whole people have dedicated their entire careers attempting to test and measure without resolution is magnificent hubris.

 

I think alot of it is the lack of trust in how it will be used.
Remember, we live in country that committed Genocide on One group people and enslaved another group . . .armed with the knowledge that they were 'inferior' and 'savages'

NOW, being a descendent of one of those groups of people
makes me a bit weary of all this talk of scientific inferiority.

Basically. . . in my eyes. .. the Harm FAR EXCEEDS the good that can
be gleamed from this field of study

The quest for knowledge is noble but . . . at what cost
[See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskeegee_Syphilis_Study]

Science has its INQUISITIONS and DARK AGES too

Rocket River

 

Just don't drink the turd wine. I haven't seen anybody do what you claim above, but I might have simply overlooked it or ignored it. Maybe you could do the same and join the interesting conversation going on?

You're right this is just a BBS, though. Perhaps the conversation shouldn't be taken so seriously? I honestly don't agree that you need a doctorate on a given subject to ruminate on it.

 

Somehow I doubt that anybody studying this type of question would claim that all 18 different things would be better in one race or another. It's much more likely that they would focus on one or two to study and figure out where the results of those lie, without extrapolating them to the other 16.

Who is talking about "inferiority"? I'm aware that it is easily implied, but in my opinion the valid use of this type of study ignores the question of superiority or inferiority, except as it implies to the specific trait.

So questioning which races tend to have superior IQ is commentary only on IQ itself, and nowhere near an overall assessment of which race is similar. Even intelligence itself, or smartness, or whatever you want to call mental aptitude is much too broad of a topic to infer that an answer on intelligence translates to mental aptitude in its entirety. Studying the one or two topics does not automatically imply the results of the other 16, and so it doesn't make sense to infer superiority or inferiority for the overall 18. Anybody who does so is wrong, and to avoid the study because you fear some might is wrong as well in my opinion.

 

This thread should go back to the 20th century where it belongs.

 

Your right. Maybe we should just ignore stormfront.com, too. I mean, they may be hateful violent neo-nazis, but what the heck? Why take it so seriously? It's just a BBS!

You are being willfully blind to the sortied history of the study these subjects by half-baked dilettantes and the damage they wrought on the world. I'm still hoping its just youthful arrogance.

 

Do I even dare go to that site so I can find out what you're talking about?

Regardless, the same thing applies. It is absurd to expect people to be experts in a subject before they are allowed to discuss it. This is especially true of controversial subjects, in my opinion, as it leads to more closed-mindedness, not less.

And I'd imagine the problem with stormfront.com is the sentiment expressed in their posts, not the fact that they dare discuss certain topics. You keep acting like there are a bunch of horrible posts in this thread, too, but since you refuse to point them out or even hint at them, I have no idea where they are or what you find objectionable about them. Instead, it seems that you assume that it is impossible to talk about such a subject without offensive and insulting opinions, despite the otherwise reasonable discussion going on here. The problem with a neo-nazi is what he says, not the fact that he engages in the discussion.

Finally, you claim that I am blind to the sordid history of these types of studies, despite my repeated references to them and explanations on why one can have a reasonable discussion despite them. Can you address my argument that it's possible to talk about a controversial subject without ending up falling into the trap of nastiness that surrounds the topic? Or do you think it is simply not possible (except by experts) and should never be attempted?