The Question of Which Race it the Most Intelligent?

... or like a bunch of Rockets fans discussing religion. Or health policy. Or global warming science. Or the details of how torture and terror should be handled. Or any of the other many things that are discussed here. I don't see why this is any better or worse a topic than any of those - none of us are experts in those fields either.

 

Choosing to just never know something because you're afraid of how that knowledge might be used doesn't seem like the ideal solution. Ignorance is not bliss - it's just ignorance.

Actually, they weren't armed with any such knowledge. Perhaps if they had been armed with the facts, they wouldn't have considered those people inferior or savages.

But we have no idea what good could come from it until we actually know the results.

These were specific harmful experiments. No one anywhere in this thread (or anywhere else on this topic) has suggested any such thing.

 

When was the last global warming denier lynching in the USA?

 

When was the last person who committed a lynching concerned if there was scientific evidence to justify his beliefs?

 

I obviously can't give you exact figures, but that is pretty much the reoccurring theme of the 20th century. Read the Stephen Jay Gould book. You can also read anything written by Alfred Rosenberg. The Nazis were all about using bogus science to justify their evil. The Frenchmen who wanted to justify slavery were all about finding scientific "proof" that black men were inferior and needed be treated as inferior. Somehow their results always proved exactly what they believed.

That is what I've been saying from the beginning. If you have nasty thoughts deep down in your soul that you'd like to express but feel some degree of internal conflict, describing it as scientific fact seems to be the primary method chosen by racists and bigots to absolve themselves.

I'm not making a case against a hypothetical danger here. For the last 100+ years, every time this area of research has been used outside the sphere of pure academia by non-professionals, it has been used as a tool to justify and support racism of one kind or another.

 

Maybe you should learn about it before discussing it? Is that really so novel?

 

Which is basically why I sid the BAD outweighs the GOOD
That can come from this.

we would like to live in IDEAL WORLD
but
we do not!

In REAL WORLD . . the whiff of the concept of inferiority is nothing more than a justification of inequity.

We would like to sit her and think we are 'better' than our forebearers in this . . . but I doubt it.

The study of man and the tags of INFERIOR and SUPERIOR
have probably been around since the Scientific Method
Personal Bias ALWAYS infuses itself into the study

FOR INSTANCE . . . I seriously doubt a <INSERT GROUP> Scientist will conclude that his Group is the inferior group.

Look at this Thread: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=183160

"Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs."

Strangely enough . . I suspect that a Evolutional Psychogist is Liberal and maybe an Atheist . . and strangely enough . . .he concluded his group had Higher IQs . . . wow! How surprising. </end sarcasm>
Of course all those who are Liberal and Atheist immediately agree and beleive it because. . . it basically justifies what they always felt . . or at least puts them in a position of superiority

NOW - Let's say that his study is 100% True [which I do not beleive it to be but . . let's say it is] WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THIS KNOWLEDGE?
Abolish all religions with the ideal that it will make Humanities collective IQ rise? Do you crush all conservative thought? You would rework the whole school system to be gear to these principles and ideas?

Rocket River

 

this thread is stupid, sounds like when the french and english tried to conquer the world to colonise and spread the idea of the smart white man with the most civilized culture...

 

I think discussion is a good way to share knowledge and increasing understanding of a topic. That's what discussion boards are for.

But this particular topic ... I really don't see what the value is in it. Suppose we knew one race was less "intelligent" than another, on average. What good would come of knowing that?

 

see, this sums it up for me, and it's why I think Major is really off base (not to pick on him, but he's beeen pretty up front with a collegial advocacy position.)

*If* there are significant genetic differences between races when it comes to any mental quality, it will probably be characterized by two aspects: (1) it would be a very specific thing (e.g. just spatial relations or ability to learn languages, let's say), and (2) it will be of an incredibly small difference statistically! #2 is the huge point. Like: "on average, purple people are 0.2% better at learning languages than green people!"

Now, what good is that going to do the world? Are we going to nicely segregate where purple people will become language teachers and green people will just say "oh, I'll just stick to my native tongue." I hope not, because the 0.2% is going to be completely meaningless in the case of individuals, with 49% of green people, on average, being better at languages than their nearest purple neighbor.

And forget the touchy-feely language teaching example -- that's not what would really happen with such a research result. Every bass-ackward non-green person on earth would say "I just KNEW they weren't as smart. I'll never let my kid have one as a teacher, and I'll never hire a greenie for anything but moving crates around." Worse still, your average green person who didn't get much statistics training would say "well, yeah, I probably should stay away from math and science, you know." He hangs his head just a bit.*

And these stupid reactions would be based on 0.2% linguistic ability, averaged over millions of people.

Take that to the bank! Because regardless of color, ignorance (myself included) is absolutely universal.


* = I can put myself in these shoes right now. It's easy to imagine. If research found tomorrow that hybrid french-native-american-irish people were 0.2% worse at languages, it would really make me think for a bit, because I suck at languages even though I want to take Spanish. And I get statistics, but I'd seriously pause and think about myself differently.

 

So what if, through scientific research, we were able to conclusively prove that there was no genetic difference regarding intelligence between races?

I don't find the solution to the problems you suggest to be to simply choose not to learn, leaving the field to only the crackpots. It seems to me the only reason to avoid the subject is if we suspect the results are what we don't want them to be.

 

But you're assuming all we learn is the historical side of it. What if you find the genetic component that causes, for example, a problem with spatial relations? Then you're not guessing on 0.2% - you can identify the exact people that are potentially facing those challenges and work on ways to help address it. We do that with any number of other things - if we think people are genetically at risk (through heredity) of diabetes or what not, that's extremely useful knowledge as we can do things to try to focus on their diet, etc. Why would it be any different for knowing that someone is genetically vulnerable to a certain educational challenge?

Knowing the science is the first step to working on solutions and helping people lead better lives. I simply don't like the idea that we run away from that because we're afraid the crackpots will exploit the data. The crackpots are going to be crackpots no matter what - fake science or simply lies will work just fine for them in the absence of good science. If they want to believe the worst, they will find the rationale to do it. If anything, solid science and a better understanding of genetic histories is the counter to that.

 

I think that is a very good reason. The results of these sort of studies should not have any bearing on how we interact with one another. So why bother?

 

It's not crackpots, Major. Really, even though it's 2010, I don't see how you think racism around the world is just a few crackpots. Look at what's happening in Europe with respect to racial tensions even.

Diabetes is a nice example, in one sense, but the way our culture views intelligence, and what that has meant in our history (yes, history but important history) is so completely different than how we view who has what insulin level.

What I like about the diabetes example is this: it underscores that whatever we might find genetically about mental abilities will not be centered on one race or another. You'll get something with a 5% signal for gene G, and green people will be 0.2% more likely to have gene G. So now we're really talking about something irrelevant, racially.

 

Actually, I should point out that if someone is 0.2% more at risk for something we typically pursue a policy of not doing anything different for them (in health care, or anything) because that's just not statistically significant to the individual walking into a doctor's office. Certainly wouldn't garner hard-won education money.

 

Oh sorry - I think I misunderstood you. I was thinking you meant that because a race is more likely to have a certain trait doesn't mean an individual necessarily would, and thus the likelihood of identifying "purple people" as developmentally challenged is inefficient. I was saying that if, instead of generalizing it to the race, you could identify the particular genetics, then you don't have to generalize anymore. You could find the people with the exact trait, and thus raise your hit rate from 0.2% to substantially higher.

 

It turns out girls can be just as good in math as boys when given the proper influence and encouragement.

I wonder how that is possible considering their "brains are wired differently"...

 

Yeah, you were a little ahead of me on that one. A pure genetic link will typically have a stronger than 0.2% signal, or it's not considered a signal. I think the made-up number of 0.2% for a given *race* is a pretty good figure for discussion though.

I know you're coming from a good place, and these kinds of studies are going to happen anyway at some level.

 

But my point is that those people exist even in the absence of the science. They don't use science to justify their views - they are going to hate regardless. The people that do need science to justify their views (or are swayed by it) exclusively are being served by the crackpots right now - so they have their "science" right now. The counter to that is real, accurate science that shows exactly what you suggest - that the races and genes are so mixed up right now, there's unlikely to be any actual purely racial component to it.

That part is really a side effect of the science I'm referring to, though - which is more about the individual genetics. But to get to this, you open up that same can of worms.

Absolutely - that's the beauty of knowing the science. You can kill the stereotypes and focus on the real problem (if there is one). But if you're not willing to touch the subject out of fear of it being exploited, you can't ever get to the real problems or the real solutions. My opinion is the fear of exploit is overblown because the people who are going to use it are the ones who already hate now, just through use of other justifications.

 

I think this is wrong thinking on two levels.

Your first sentence sounds like you're referring to individuals. The type of correlations and tendencies we're talking about are generalized to a large group, and any (and many) individuals can go against the general tendency.

The second sentence implies that brains wired differently can't come to the same outcome. Why not? Just because two people have different genetics doesn't mean they both can't have the same outcomes. Does a brown-eyed person not see just as well as a blue-eyed person?