race, genetics and intelligence (1 Viewer)

[Enteebee]

Surely there has to be SOMETHING to the idea that the different genetics that come with a different race could effect something as precarious as intelligence... I mean look at the representation of racially jewish nobel-laureates, rich businessmen and entertainers...

 

[scarybunny]

The way Gardner says it, if you can be good at it, it's a type of intelligence.

Just because we value mathematical and verbal ability more than anything else doesn't mean that these are the ONLY things that make a person 'intelligent'. Yes in our society they're what will help you be successful but in other societies they don't mean shit.

If you can live in the desert I think that involves intelligence, but there's no maths or verbal ability to it.

I don't see how they can eliminate social differences when measuring IQ, so that it only comes down to race.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

The way Gardner says it, if you can be good at it, it's a type of intelligence.

Just because we value mathematical and verbal ability more than anything else doesn't mean that these are the ONLY things that make a person 'intelligent'. Yes in our society they're what will help you be successful but in other societies they don't mean shit.

If you can live in the desert I think that involves intelligence, but there's no maths or verbal ability to it.

I don't see how they can eliminate social differences when measuring IQ, so that it only comes down to race.

One of the first links http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php said that they were testing specifically for intelligence valued in western society

 

[scarybunny]

One of the first links http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php said that they were testing specifically for intelligence valued in western society

Awh. Haha.

Well then yeah of course different races are better at it. I would have thought that was obvious. If your race has never needed to do crosswords or number patterns then there's no reason why that area of your brain would be well-developed. You're probably better at other things, but you'd score badly on western intelligence tests.

(of course the teaching thing "everyone is good at something" is drilled into me so I don't like to write people off as stupid because they can't do abstract maths)

 

[A High Way Man]

The SAT has a bias to those with a WASP background.

It is hardly a measure of absolute intelligence.

 

[A High Way Man]

Moreover, I think genetics can be a factor but in a different way; I don't think it has to do with 'intelligence' directly but maybe more with maybe some races are predisposed to being diligent/studious in their learning/education which will correlate to a higher IQ.

Think of natural selection The harsh African environment wouldn't select bookworms. They would die out.

 

[+Po1ntDeXt3r+]

i opt for the migrant theory in terms of say the number of immigrants children that goto university..

thats a natural selection process.. u only want smart/safe migrants.. but then.. when they start doing better than the established population.. u form one nation

 

[bshoc]

In our modern, politically correct society, you can't be right if it could be offensive to some people, anyone want to study how homosexuality disrupts normal human function similar to other mental disorders? Yeah didn't think so ..

 

[fernando]

The SAT has a bias to those with a WASP background.

It is hardly a measure of absolute intelligence.

you must not speak.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

It's more of a measure of your likeliness to succeed in western society, they admit that much.

Still I think if they want to find a link between genetics and intelligence they should be looking at genes and the brain in different races rather than psychometric testing

 

[Captain Gh3y]

Yea man, good point... I'm sure that's how they compare IQ's, these guys go out and do studies with such a huge, blatant, fucking flaw as that eh?

yeah my point wasn't about the studies i'm sure they're valid for what they are it's just the whole premise behind them is flawed

 

[banco55]

Who cares? Perhaps there is some slight deviation in the intelligence of different races (if we can even define intelligence). How is this worthy of discussion, let alone reasearch?

Because in western (and East Asian/South East Asian) countries it makes a huge difference in who becomes doctors, lawyers and accountants. Once again the differences between say Chinese-Americans and African-Americans is not "slight".

 

[squeenie]

We have too much variance within the races themselves.

And because of that, any correlations between races would be inaccurate.

So why does this even matter? What is intelligence, anyway? What one person's definition of intelligence could be someone else's definition of stupid. Similarly, you can't define or measure sanity, happiness (and any other emotion) or anything, really. It's all subjective.

Surely there has to be SOMETHING to the idea that the different genetics that come with a different race could effect something as precarious as intelligence... I mean look at the representation of racially jewish nobel-laureates, rich businessmen and entertainers...

Well the Jewish way of life puts a strong emphasis on education, but the whole genetics thing is still valid. There's lots of evidence to support that.

But still, I can't imagine how offended a black person would be if they were told their race was stupid. Generalisations are harsh, but sometimes we have to accept the fact that they're based on truth. An offensive, politically incorrect truth, that is. Well the only way I could probably relate to that is that people make generalisations about Asians and how they're always 'really smart'. I mean, yeah, most of them are, but I know some who are total idiots.

 

[Slidey]

Hah. Who said Asians are smart? A defining trait of Asians seems to be a lack of common sense.

Like a defining trait of Americans seems to be an inability for compromise and an alarmingly black and white view of the world.

On both counts its a cultural thing, though. The brain literally shapes itself based on the culture and family it is brought up in. The only case you could really even try to claim genetic differences are responsible for intelligence is with Australian aborigines, who have been separated from all other human races for 40,000+ years. Even then they still split after the development of language and society, and 40,000 years is a very short amount of time for evolution to act on (but jaw differences and colour differences obviously indicate it is nonetheless enough).

 

[squeenie]

Hah. Who said Asians are smart? A defining trait of Asians seems to be a lack of common sense.

That's me! Lol.

Like a defining trait of Americans seems to be an inability for compromise and an alarmingly black and white view of the world.

That's also true.

On both counts its a cultural thing, though. The brain literally shapes itself based on the culture and family it is brought up in. The only case you could really even try to claim genetic differences are responsible for intelligence is with Australian aborigines, who have been separated from all other human races for 40,000+ years. Even then they still split after the development of language and society, and 40,000 years is a very short amount of time for evolution to act on (but jaw differences and colour differences obviously indicate it is nonetheless enough).

Could the way the brain develops also be genetic? Like with how a person grows physically is genetic? Sounds like an interesting topic for research...

 

[Slidey]

Could the way the brain develops also be genetic? Like with how a person grows physically is genetic? Sounds like an interesting topic for research...

Yes, it could, but in terms of large social differences, evidence indicates that's not the case.

For example, a recent study I quoted in another thread demonstrated that Americans tend to approach judgement from a literal perspective whilst Asians tend to approach it from a lateral perspective; when each race had to perform the other type of judgement, the same area of the brain in each case was working overtime to account for the type of judgement which the brain wasn't used to. That is: the brains developed differently (because brains are extremely plastic for about 20 years after birth, and then some) but in both cases, used the same part of the brain for foreign judgements/decision making.

The more one identified with their respective culture, the stronger this "judgement gap" was found to be, regardless of actual racial background. (Id est: it's probably not genetic.)

As I said before, you can only really imply genetics when there has been a sufficiently large amount of time for evolution to work on (and you'd typically want a small starting population or an extremely aggressive mutation in terms of fitness). A few thousand years is nowhere near enough, and the last population bottleneck in humans was at about the same time as the development of language (70,000 years ago - Toba catastrophe). And it's doubtful it's an aggressively competitive mutation because such a thing would be rather easy to detect. I believe genetic variation in humans is startlingly low (probably in part because of the Toba bottleneck which reduced the human population on Earth to about 1,000 to 10,000 people).

Altering how one grows physically often results in many neutral variations. Altering how the brain grows however - most mutations there are deadly or result in significant fitness loss. As such, it's not hard to see why there appears to be less neural variation compared to physical variation.

None-the-less, a few well-known neural variations do exist such as: ADHD, which increases evolutionary fitness (accounting for the large number of people with the mutation: about 5 to 6% of the Western world and 8 to 10% of the entire world) - it is intelligence neutral, with anecdotal evidence suggesting it increases intelligence slightly; Autism, which may decrease fitness based on high incidence of asexuality and poor social integration - fairly intelligence neutral, sort of trading emotional intelligence for other areas of intelligence.

 

[Kwayera]

Could the way the brain develops also be genetic? Like with how a person grows physically is genetic? Sounds like an interesting topic for research...

It could be, epigenetically - one thing that I was interested to discover today in Ecophysiology is that the environment of your birth greatly influences the development of your intestines.

Why? Because you inherit gut flora from your mother's digestive tract during birth.

Why is this important? Because having those bacteria present is a <i>requirement</i> for the development of your digestive tract past the rudimentary stage at birth - i.e. for the genes for crucial further development of the gut to be "turned on", certain bacteria (including E. coli!) must be present at birth and early infancy. Mice born and raised in a germ-free environment were experimentally shown to have severely stunted bowel development.

Cool, huh?

 

[Slidey]

Epigenetics was about the only interesting area of developmental biology.

 

[russs]

Just for the record:

I had my IQ tested in Year 5 in Australia using a pattern recognition test... which was designed for people who DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH.

To this date, the results of that test are fairly accurate when I take IQ tests designed for average English-speaking people, with results ranging from 118-140 (big diff across tests, but you can deduce the average I guess).

So, there are ways to test IQ without resulting to "their culture is different, so it doesn't work for them...".

I definitely beleive there is a correlation between race and intelligence.... It's just we can't talk about it because its too "controversial".

:uhhuh:

 

[scarybunny]

Heh this topic comes up again just as I look at intelligence in my course.

Intelligence is no longer widely accepted because it implies that people are born with a certain level of ability or potential to reach this level.

And how true is this, really? How many of the indicators of intelligence are just developed from favourable circumstances and greater experience in particular ways of thinking?