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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Spino
Upbringing and work ethic always seem to be the buzz words and yet nobody has actually shown how these factors can turn mediocrity into genius, let alone give someone a 10-15 point advantage in IQ.
So humanity has became about 20 points smarter in IQ since they started the IQ tests thanks to thier improved genetical makeup? Upbringing and study methods have a major influence on IQ.
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Originally Posted by Spino
STFS made an interesting point about the relative intelligence of Jews and how their academic performance must be genetically related. Oddly enough a year or so ago a highly controversial and fascinating article was published in New York magazine titled "The Jewish Brain" (Larry David's prominent balding cranium was featured on the cover) dealt with this exact subject.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/culture/features/1478/
As with blacks and athletics it's a bit much to insist that every Ashkenazi Jewish scholar, scientist or mathematician of note was a success due to boundless ambition, an unequalled work ethic or an ideal family atmosphere. Jews account for a mere 0.25 percent of the world population and 3 percent of the US population and yet they account for 27 percent of all American Nobel Prize winners, 25 percent of all ACM Turing Award winners for computer science and 50 percent of the world's chess champions. It really is a bit much to think that environment is the main factor at work here.
I'll give you that the American Jews can very well be more intelligent than the average American, although I suspect that the most influencal thing happened a bit more than 70 years ago. If you export the social elite and exclude the rest, you're going to have disprotional numbers for some generations afterwards, both to genetical factors and environmental).
Point is that blacks, whites, southeast asians are very large groups and unless you can find signs that they have had genetical tendencies to breed more intelligent people then you don't really have a genetical argument.
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Originally Posted by Spino
Arguing over the definition of race or ethnicity and attempting to intellectualize those terms to some unwieldy abstraction smacks of subconscious fuelled fear. Why aren't we seeing these same sort of arguments taking place in professional sports? How do we define fast? How does one accurately measure testosterone levels? What are the criteria for determining short or long muscle strands? Etc., etc. The crux of the problem is that intelligence is a sore spot with most people and is a topic few people discuss as openly as physicality.
I like the separation of wisdom and intelligence by the D&D game system so I'll push on that. To make an example I red about a while ago:
It was student who was considered very good by the teacher that had gotten an assignment on writing about some subject (don't remember) and he wrote an exellent article about it. It was only one flaw, it was an exact copy of a newpaper article, so he failed the assignmet due to cheating. This angered the student very much as he hadn't cheated in his opinion, he had memorized the article word by word... Is he intelligent or not? I would say no and yet I know that his skill would show great intelligence in plenty of subjects.
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Originally Posted by Spino
The idea that everyone has the same genetic potential as everyone else flies in the face of the laws of nature (if it were the case then we'd be a species of monozygote siblings or clones) so why shouldn't it apply to groups that have a higher percentage of shared genes than others? The idea that intelligence can be considered a distinct and seperate category from any other physical trait is in itself a feat of fear fuelled egotism.
You're mixing induviduals and major population groups again, the induviduals varies, but you'll need more concrete evidence of why they should be a genetical difference when it's known that the environmental factors have considerble influence.
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Originally Posted by Spino
Oh to have a time machine to play with! I firmly believe that a day will come where every aspect of the human animal is going to laid bare, dissected and categorized to the extreme. I wonder what kind of chuckles future generations are going to have when they look back at our ego fueled delusions about our own species.
You mean the age when your fate was chosen before you was born? Lets hope that there isn't a lack of sevage workers at the time of you conception --> birth, not that you care, you'll do an exellent job on it and like your work as well. Charming days
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My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
The Big Question is, where are we going with this?
Oh right there's genetic variation between groups. Everyone agrees, group-hug et cetera. However, "races" is just a particularly expressive term denoting to differences in melanin, caused by, you guessed it, genetics.
In other words, it is entirely an artificial creation that marks a genetic difference not that much more important than any other gene differences, except maybe if you go on the evolutionary psychology trip and argues a case where humans like to segregate based on something visible, i.e. because skin tone is a very visible phenotype it is slightly more important than genotypes that don't get a chance to be expressed. That would probably explain key genetic differences between groups but even then I'm not particularly sure of the validity of the argument.
The appearance of a stonewalling aversion from us liberals to the point that Louis raised (controversially ~;) ) is mostly due to what conclusion people suspect this will lead to. We all know what that means: "Oh right, whites are smarter/stupider/stronger/weaker/hotter than blacks, let's segregate and make our educations different." Also, Papewaio points out that the recognition of this "fact" is essentially irrelevant from an everyday viewpoint especially since variation between individuals are much greater than variations between the artificial groups -- if one focuses on that skin tone one's completely missing the point.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfmrJwRLL0s
"Please do not show me that at this point in time."
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
It is not a matter of race, but of environment. Many blacks in America and Europe grow up in poorer areas where schools are wretched and there are very few ways to upgrade one's living conditions. However, many whites live in areas with significantly better schools and environments in which the 1 in 1.000.000 chance fo becoming a professional athlete or turning to crime are not the two ways to improve one's situation.
Wow, it feels good to be back in the backroom.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
[QUOTE=IrishArmenian]It is not a matter of race, but of environment. Many blacks in America and Europe grow up in poorer areas where schools are wretched and there are very few ways to upgrade one's living conditions. However, many whites live in areas with significantly better schools and environments in which the 1 in 1.000.000 chance fo becoming a professional athlete or turning to crime are not the two ways to improve one's situation./QUOTE]
This does nothing to explain how Hispanics of say, Mexican ancestry (a group that suffers many of the same ills you mentioned) move into those same poor neighborhoods with lousy environments and schools and yet still manage to do better than blacks. Nor does it explain how east and southeast asian immigrants, many of whom arrive in America unable to speak English, also move into rough or not-so-spectacular neighborhoods and in the span of one generation manage to wind up doing better than everyone else while ranking last in crime, illegitimacy, drug & alcohol abuse, etc.
Sunset Park is the neighborhood next to mine. It was until about 10-15 years ago, predominantly Afro-Hispanic (Puerto Rican & Dominican) and always more 'criminally exciting' than my own. Around 1993 or so I noticed more and more Chinese faces getting on the train at the Sunset Park stops (59th St, 53rd & 45th Streets). The overwhelming majority of those immigrants were clearly in the low income tax bracket, you could tell just by looking at their discount shop clothing. About 5 years later it became painfully easy to identify which sections of Sunset Park were Chinese and which were Puerto Rican and Dominican. The Chinese areas sport less graffiti, less trash on the streets, better kept properties and virtually none of their kids loiter about after dark. The most glaring difference is the number of new and successful businesses one finds in the Chinese section. Pretty damn good for people who came to the States with next to nothing and a had to overcome a huge language barrier.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
well, Spino, differences in culture can explain all of that. in fact, cultural anthropologists were the group of scientists that disagreed most to the statement "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens." in a survey conducted in 1985 (more than 20 years ago, people.)
east asian excellence in maths can probably explained in the way business and enterpreneurship is emphasized in their culture as the path to success. They are comfortable with numbers because early in life they are taught that it is integral to business.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Kuni
well, Spino, culture can explain that.
This reminds me of the chicken or egg argument. Culture is a by-product of humanity, not the other way around. One could argue that cultures which inculcate a sense of responsibility and encourage and strong work and study ethic in people are themselves the by-product of intelligence affecting genes which help create a more effective survival strategy. This is not to say that intelligent ethnic groups will always create effective, adaptable cultures but it is to say that they're more likely to create cultures that are conducive to survival than ethnic groups of comparatively lower intelligence.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
I don't think culture can be dictated by such small differences in genes among peoples.
it's interesting that you tie culture to survival, in that somehow culture can dictate survival. I disagree.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
If skin colour, bone structure, muscle tissue or susceptibility to certain physical and mental afflictions aren´t spread evenly across the races, why would intelligence, of all the human faculties, be spread equally?
Differences in (average) intelligence between races and culturally homogenous groups have been demonstrated ad nauseam, it is no use denying them. However, we are mostly unwilling to acknowledge such facts because we fear the consequences of our acknowledgment, particularly its abuse in the political arena.
Most people don't understand the law of averages. The fact that one group scores lower on intelligence than others does not preclude a particular member of that group being the most intelligent person in the world.
Anyway, I wouldn't want to live in a world that judges people by their intelligence only, and not by moral faculties (such as honesty or courage) and aesthetic faculties (creativity) as well. Better still, I wouldn' t want to live in a world that judges people solely by the group they come from, on any ground whatsoever.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Better still, I wouldn' t want to live in a world that judges people solely by the group they come from, on any ground whatsoever.
Have you considered moving to another world ?
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Tribesman
Have you considered moving to another world ?
Frequently, until I learned that whole groups of people are considering the same move. Kinda killed the fun.
Seriously, there are enough people around with non-tribal attitudes to make my life bearable. My universe isn't all black like yours...
*desperately trying to stir up controversy*
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
Seriously, there are enough people around with non-tribal attitudes to make my life bearable. My universe isn't all black like yours...
*desperately trying to stir up controversy*
There goes, these white stars make that black sky so much, much prettier.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Fragony
There goes, these white stars make that black sky so much, much prettier.
Are you waxing poetical on me, my friend on yonder Watergate? :beam:
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
Are you waxing poetical on me, my friend on yonder Watergate? :beam:
If so I would have chosen Wilfred's Owen's 'Futility'. But go ahead rub me right there ~:flirt:
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
Anyway, I wouldn't want to live in a world that judges people by their intelligence only, and not by moral faculties (such as honesty or courage) and aesthetic faculties (creativity) as well. Better still, I wouldn' t want to live in a world that judges people solely by the group they come from, on any ground whatsoever.
Hear, hear
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
Hm... a test form chosen by whites, shows that whites are smarter than blacks, and some whites think that is conclusive proof that they're smarter than blacks... I wonder who is most stupid? :stupido:
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
If skin colour, bone structure, muscle tissue or susceptibility to certain physical and mental afflictions aren´t spread evenly across the races, why would intelligence, of all the human faculties, be spread equally?
The problem here is that race is just a cultural construct - pointing out and explaining the differences among races, because it is merely a cultural construct (not biological etc), is meaningless. moot.
To illustrate: Suppose we divide all english nursery rhymes into three groups, based on how much the letter e appears in them. Even if we do establish that one group is better in artistic merit, and another in moral/social merit, it is meaningless, as the division is arbitrary.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
Hm... a type of test made by whites, shows that whites are smarter than blacks, and some whites think that is conclusive proof that they're smarter than blacks... I wonder who is most stupid? :stupido:
You should really read up on the topic. Tests 'made by whites' consistently show that Asians are smartest. How could that be if the tests were self-serving? Intelligence tests have been corrected, refined and balanced for all sorts of factors that you couldn't even dream of (unless you are an accomplished statistician). The days of Whitey devising tests that illustrate his own superiority are long gone. There are Chinese IQ tests, African IQ tests...
Read The Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, a comprehensive 1994 overview of the issue (and vilified the world over by critics and reviewers who never took the trouble to read it).
The book discusses some of the consequences of the uneven spread of intelligence, defined as the capacity to perform logic-symbolic operetions. In a post-industrial economy that relies heavily on such operations, intelligence becomes a new and eventually dominant source of social stratification. The authors maintain that this explains many transitions that took place in post-war American society. They also state that intelligence correlates highly with meaningful social success (after duly factoring out all obvious bias).
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Kuni
The problem here is that race is just a cultural construct - pointing out and explaining the differences among races, because it is merely a cultural construct (not biological etc), is meaningless. moot.
By definition social constructs are never meaningless, they convey and attribute meaning. Berger and Luckmann's 1966 classic The Social Construction of Reality even states that all facts are social constructs so reality as a whole is socially constructed. Discuss. But do not dismiss easily.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
[quote=Spino]
Quote:
Originally Posted by IrishArmenian
It is not a matter of race, but of environment. Many blacks in America and Europe grow up in poorer areas where schools are wretched and there are very few ways to upgrade one's living conditions. However, many whites live in areas with significantly better schools and environments in which the 1 in 1.000.000 chance fo becoming a professional athlete or turning to crime are not the two ways to improve one's situation./QUOTE]
This does nothing to explain how Hispanics of say, Mexican ancestry (a group that suffers many of the same ills you mentioned) move into those same poor neighborhoods with lousy environments and schools and yet still manage to do better than blacks. Nor does it explain how east and southeast asian immigrants, many of whom arrive in America unable to speak English, also move into rough or not-so-spectacular neighborhoods and in the span of one generation manage to wind up doing better than everyone else while ranking last in crime, illegitimacy, drug & alcohol abuse, etc.
Sunset Park is the neighborhood next to mine. It was until about 10-15 years ago, predominantly Afro-Hispanic (Puerto Rican & Dominican) and always more 'criminally exciting' than my own. Around 1993 or so I noticed more and more Chinese faces getting on the train at the Sunset Park stops (59th St, 53rd & 45th Streets). The overwhelming majority of those immigrants were clearly in the low income tax bracket, you could tell just by looking at their discount shop clothing. About 5 years later it became painfully easy to identify which sections of Sunset Park were Chinese and which were Puerto Rican and Dominican. The Chinese areas sport less graffiti, less trash on the streets, better kept properties and virtually none of their kids loiter about after dark. The most glaring difference is the number of new and successful businesses one finds in the Chinese section. Pretty damn good for people who came to the States with next to nothing and a had to overcome a huge language barrier.
At that point it is a culture issue. It seems many in the African American culture do not stress education as much as others, which is a crime! Education is the way to not just a way of life, but also a greater understanding which is one of the greatest assets one can have.
Education is not intelligence, but to get an education is an intelligent choice and a move in the right direction.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Fragony
There goes, these white stars make that black sky so much, much prettier.
Stars are blackbodies ~:)
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
Differences in (average) intelligence between races and culturally homogenous groups have been demonstrated ad nauseam...
At first I read you as saying there were differences in intelligence between races even when they were of the same culture. That would have been interesting given Kuni's response to Spino.
But then I re-read it and it seems you are just saying IQ differs between races and between cultures, which is less interesting. The point at issue here is not whether IQ differs between groups, it is whether it differs because of genetic factors (like skin pigment differs) or because it differs because of environmental factors. I don't think anyone is denying that, for example, blacks in the US tend to score lower on IQ tests than Chinese in the US. As you say, there have been many tests that show such results. But then I don't think anyone is arguing that Black US "culture" and Chinese US "culture" are the same either.
One thought experiment is how you would expect a white baby to grow up if swapped at birth with one of another race - a sort of "Trading Places" scenario. Personally, my money is on the environment - not the genes - playing the dominant role between racial groups (even if the reverse is the true between individuals).
I conducted IQ tests in different primary schools in Kenya and the variation between (African) schools was enormous. The (rich) private school urban kids were hotshots, the (dirt poor) pastoralist Masai were lagging horribly. But I am pretty sure that was largely due to differences in family background and schooling, not genes. (I don't buy the argument that IQ is unrelated to schooling - it seems manifestly absurd, when the act of sitting down for 45 minutes and concentrating on a mental test is exactly what schooling trains you to do). Ditto racial differences in IQ.
Ashkenazi Jews and the people of the Chinese disapora may have smarter genes than whites. But it is not proven. And in the absence of hard scientific evidence of this, I think it is more plausible to ascribe it their cultural backgrounds where there are credible stories you can tell. [In parenthesis, it is interesting that high average IQ is a characteristic of Jews and Chinese who are not in Israel or China - which suggests race is not the driver.]
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If skin colour, bone structure, muscle tissue or susceptibility to certain physical and mental afflictions aren´t spread evenly across the races, why would intelligence, of all the human faculties, be spread equally?
Yes, indeed, if red heads and blondes can differ in hair colour, why would they have equal intelligence? :wall:
The point is that racial groups are massive, heteorgenous entities defined by rather superficial and vague differences. There is little reason to expect those arbitrary differences to be associated with significant genetically determined differences in average IQ. It does not follow that just because one population group is at greater risk of sickle cell aenemia, it will have a different average IQ. Most of the genetic differences between races identified so far are pretty esoteric and minor - for example, a recent study separate whites, black and East Asian by two markers, one of which was genetic intolerance to milk (found in many Chinese) - the other was equally trivial (which is why I've forgotten it).
If we take a more general and major human characteristic - body size - that may be more comparable to IQ. I know that the scientific consensus on body size is that you do not need to standardise between ethnic groups. Given the same food intake, white babies, Japanese babies, black babies etc will tend to follow similar growth paths.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
This article shows that "the lower a child’s socioeconomic status, the less impact genes had on I.Q." - and this is from a study that used twins.
snippets:
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The heritability of I.Q. was different in different environments! The influence of genes on I.Q. was far less in conditions of poverty, where environmental limitations seem to block the expression of genetic potential.
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these data argue that the controversial differences reported in mean I.Q scores between racial groups may well reflect no more than poverty
edit: tags
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
If skin colour, bone structure, muscle tissue or susceptibility to certain physical and mental afflictions aren´t spread evenly across the races, why would intelligence, of all the human faculties, be spread equally?
Intelligence is far more complex than most things related to 'physical' traits. We have drugs that make you stronger, faster, have more endurance, build more muscle etc. We don't have any (seriously proven scientific) way to make people smarter. Intelligence is only measurable by how we define the measure, there are tons of different kinds of reasoning. Asking who is the most intelligent is like asking who is the best athlete when comparing sports. Ultimately, it's subjective since different criteria are weighed against eachother.
And let's not forget that mankind often balances on the edge of what (human like) intelligence can be. Many superintelligent people have other (mental) problems. I've spent way too long studying engineering to deny that there seems to be a correlation between intelligence and bad social skills (though there are of course, plenty of socially 'normal' people in those studies too, statistics still apply).
But maybe I'm biased since the smartest person I've ever met was from subsaharan Africa. He sure could rant about the problems with the African mentality.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
You should really read up on the topic. Tests 'made by whites' consistently show that Asians are smartest. How could that be if the tests were self-serving? Intelligence tests have been corrected, refined and balanced for all sorts of factors that you couldn't even dream of (unless you are an accomplished statistician). The days of Whitey devising tests that illustrate his own superiority are long gone. There are Chinese IQ tests, African IQ tests...
Whites invented the IQ measure itself, which is very much uncorrelated to practical work performance in terms of intelligence. The IQ measure tests:
1. analysing only very simple models, but never nature-like complex models with >5 factors. A person who excel at seeing patterns in systems with 1 or 2 factors are often very incompetent when it comes to seeing patterns in multi-factor models.
2. ability to find patterns, many of which have a very unnatural form that would probably never occur in a practical setting. Being more concerned with pattern-finding, than with ability to find accurate models of reality, the IQ test can give high scores to people who are very unskilled in real applications of intelligence. In fact, natural models usually follow exponential or linear curves (and a few others), whereas IQ test patterns can involve a square divided into 9 parts with several snapshots, showing a flower rotating counterclockwise and a bug rotating clockwise between subsequent snapshots of it, in a "what comes next" type of problem. Another type of pattern is when you show a set of figures in a row in a "what comes next" problem, but the pattern isn't numerical, but a matter of seeing a pattern in the characters used to make up the numbers: a pattern that is very uncommon in real applications, and is the last thing a skilled mathematician would look for, in being presented to the test.
3. the test score becomes lower if you don't know certain words or other knowledge used in the tests. This was an issue in older tests. Now, this has been "solved" by removing most of these questions, and replacing them almost entirely with numbers and figures.
4. many of the test questions ignore the fact that there are multiple valid choices, due to lacking knowledge of the test constructor. One test I had the doubtful pleasure of doing, showed the following question:
"Which item does not belong? a. orange, b. lemon, c. tomato, d. banana"
If you answered d, banana, you scored, because the banana wasn't round.
If you answered c, tomato, because the others are fruits and tomatoes vegetables, you didn't score.
If you answered c, tomato, because a tomato has a warm color while the others have cold colors, you didn't score.
If you answered b, lemon, because the lemon tastes sour while the others have high enough pH value to be considered non-sour when eaten, you didn't score.
If you answered a, orange, because the others have primitive colors whereas an orange is orange which is a mix of red and yellow, you didn't score
etc. etc.
5. if you make a few IQ tests, you will learn which types of patterns are always included in IQ tests, such as rotations and translations in visual "what comes next" problems, etc. etc. On average, people were demonstrated to be able to increase their IQ by at least 15 points by practising IQ tests!
That Asians happened to score better was an unlucky side effect for the whites who created them, discovered after the tests were made. The tests were formed with the subconscious desire to show that all less industrialized persons or countries had inferior scores. Therefore, a simple meaningless and unrealistic pattern finding present in elementary schools of industrialized countries was chosen to be the basis for the test.
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
The book discusses some of the consequences of the uneven spread of intelligence, defined as the capacity to perform logic-symbolic operetions.
A quite odd definition of intelligence in my humble opinion.
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
In a post-industrial economy that relies heavily on such operations,
The operations performed in a post-industrial economy are very different from those tested in an IQ test.
Oh and just so you don't think I'm critical to IQ tests because I didn't score well: I scored 155 when I was 9 years old, and full marks in a Mensa test 2 years ago. However, I consider these test results lesser indications of intellectual abilities, than my ability to see that the IQ test is completely unrepresentative of intelligence demonstrated in a practical setting.
And as for using grades as a sign of intelligence, that would also "show" that rich people are smarter than whites. However, it is well known that many rich people attend snob schools where you practically buy higher grades.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
Whites invented the IQ measure itself, which is very much uncorrelated to practical work performance in terms of intelligence.
This is untrue. There is a high enough correlation between economic performance and IQ score to suggest that IQ is the main determining factor of economic success in today's society. The tired excuse that IQ merely measures economic success has long been factored out by statisticians. Factor analysis on countless sets of aggregate data bears this out. The authors of The Bell Curve demonstrate this with the utmost scrutiny and precision. They also demonstrate that, roughly speaking, IQ was not a major factor in economic success in the U.S. before WWII and has gradually become the major factor in the post-war era due to the changing nature of work in (post)modern society.
Of course IQ is not the only factor that determines economic success, and modern psychologists will readily agree that its practical application in a work setting requires various other capacities. This is why, for instance, the concept of Emotional Intelligence was developed. An IQ test merely establishes whether a candidate has the goods, not whether he or she will deliver.
Interestingly, the results of highly different genres of tests converge, even those that test highly complex abstract operations on the one hand and those that test simple oculomotor coordination (such as reacting to a light flash or following a moving dot on a screen with a pointer) on the other hand. The same applies to tests that were made compliant with different cultures and their daily learning environments. IQ testing has also opened major venues of neurological research, for instance into the causes and effects of the difference of brain size and composition between males and females, the functional split between hemispheres etcetera.
There really is much more to the issue (and history) of IQ testing than a couple of assumptions about unconscious racism, sexism and other PC excuses.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
4. many of the test questions ignore the fact that there are multiple valid choices, due to lacking knowledge of the test constructor.
I can usually do this with the mathematical series if they include a too limited set of numbers, the range of options when confronted with a series of three (or even four) numbers to 'model' the series is just immense.
In the end none of it really matters, from a genetic point of view, the amount of your genes (or the same genes in different people) spread to future (long term) generations is what matters.
It's probably not a coincidence that intelligent, successful people often have few kids. They concentrate on making a small, stable 'dynasty'. Whereas poor, or unsuccessful people often have lots of kids so that, statistically speaking, the chances of their genes making it to future generations is higher. The chance of creating a 'lucky' offspring who can also fund his/her own dynasty also increases.
Personally I think intelligence variations in populations is probably due to 'genetic shift', much more than long term racial correlation. The industrial revolution started here, which created a much higher 'niche' for high intelligence people in society (engineers, scientists, economists,...) so those who could fill the gaps became more successful and had relatively more offspring than they would have had in a previous era, so the average intelligence level rose over time. In Asia there has been a strong will to move society forward towards western standards, this created/creates a huge demand for intelligent people and so they became highly successful.
Now look at black Africa, tribal warfare has been going on for millennia, the area is hugely unstable, which is an environment where physical strength is preferred to intelligence (they never really developed much tactical or strategical warfare afaik, probably due to the terrain, climate and the lack of useful animals for warfare). This hasn't really changed in the last century or so. Colonization was mostly the white man doing all the thinking and the black man doing all the work. Slavery was similar, being a smart slave is probably not always a good thing. There has until about 40 years ago been only a tiny niche for intelligent black people. We're now only in the second or third generation where intelligence is actually becoming a highly valued asset for them. There's already an obvious brain drain going on from Africa to the US and Europe, where these intelligent people believe they can be more successful, and probably will be. A lot of highly talented musicians and composers (classical and modern) are already black. In academic circles it will take somewhat longer probably, since you don't often get a professorship before you're 30 or 40, and academics tend to have kids very late. In society at large it's also a somewhat slow process due to the 'white aristocracy' and racial bias by employers.
So a difference in average intelligence is explainable, not because of genetic superiority, but merely because of a genetic shift due to the changing circumstances. We'll see in about a century how big the differences still are. A difference in the average level of intelligence means little to nothing (if you're going to be so crude as to use a gaussian approximation at least have the decency to include the variance).
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
@Adrian: And what is your response to the problems with IQ tests I described above? Surely a measure that is so easy to cheat can't be a very good measure of intellectual capabilities? If you measure intelligence within a western society, the blacks usually have a disadvantage because they're poorer on average than the whites, and therefore have less chances of proper education (have you ever visited a ghetto school and a rich man's school and compared the differences in their education?). If you measure it Europe+America vs Africa, Africa (blacks) have less industrialization and therefore again an unfair disadvantage in possibilities for education.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
@Adrian: And what is your response to the problems with IQ tests I described above? Surely a measure that is so easy to cheat can't be a very good measure of intellectual capabilities?
The word 'cheat' betrays your mind-set.
You probably know that different sorts of IQ tests have a different 'g-load', i.e. a different balance between pure intelligence and capacities that can be taught through training such as specific skills. The more knowledge and memory are assumed, the more susceptible the test will become to the effects of training. IQ tests geared toward the prediction of scholastic achievement for instance will have a lower g-load because they are intended to predict future achievement on a concrete set of skills in a concrete setting. Such scholastic aptitude tests predict whether people are susceptible to training. Hardly surprising if it turns out that they are...
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If you measure intelligence within a western society, the blacks usually have a disadvantage because they're poorer on average than the whites, and therefore have less chances of proper education (have you ever visited a ghetto school and a rich man's school and compared the differences in their education?). If you measure it Europe+America vs Africa, Africa (blacks) have less industrialization and therefore again an unfair disadvantage in possibilities for education.
Once again, IQ tests measure IQ, not 'advantages' and 'disadvantages'. All sorts of outcomes can not be explained by poverty, industrialization or any other deus ex machina.
A simple example would be the diverging average score of blacks and whites on 'forward digit span' and 'backward digit span' exercises.
In the digits forward exercise the subject is asked to repeat a random sequence of one-digit numbers given by the examiner, starting with two digits and ending when the subject has completely lost track. The digits backward exercise works the same way, only the digits must be repeated in the invrse order.
It appears that whites are on average a little better than blacks on digits forward, but a lot better on digits backward. And this in the same black and white subjects, in the same test session, with the same examiner, etcetera. This difference can not be explained by cultural background, industrialization, parenting, poverty or any other social factor. There is no conceivable reason why black culture or history would hold blacks back from using their 'full digits backward potential', is there?
Of course you can argue that all measured differences in IQ are irrelevant, meaningless, etcetera. To a scientist they are not, or at least they shouldn't be.
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Re: Whites are Smarter than Blacks
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
You probably know that different sorts of IQ tests have a different 'g-load', i.e. a different balance between pure intelligence and capacities that can be taught through training such as specific skills. The more knowledge and memory are assumed, the more susceptible the test will become to the effects of training. IQ tests geared toward the prediction of scholastic achievement for instance will have a lower g-load because they are intended to predict future achievement on a concrete set of skills in a concrete setting. Such scholastic aptitude tests predict whether people are susceptible to training. Hardly surprising if it turns out that they are... Once again, IQ tests measure IQ, not 'advantages' and 'disadvantages'. All sorts of outcomes can not be explained by poverty, industrialization or any other deus ex machina.
Would you care to give an example of an IQ test you consider fair, so we can analyze it together?
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
And this in the same black and white subjects, in the same test session, with the same examiner, etcetera. This difference can not be explained by cultural background, industrialization, parenting, poverty or any other social factor.
Why not? If the black and white persons are sampled in an unbiased manner from a country population, the black subjects will on average have a background of more poverty and less education chances. An unbiased sample from a population biased on a variable causally connected or correlated to what is to be measured in the statistical test, will give a biased end result.
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Originally Posted by Adrian II
Of course you can argue that all measured differences in IQ are irrelevant, meaningless, etcetera. To a scientist they are not, or at least they shouldn't be.
To try to measure intelligence in an exact manner, resulting in a single numerical figure, is just as ridiculous as it would be to try to measure morality on a scale from 1 to 10 with two decimals.
