Segregation Returns to US Schools

[Viking]

What large groups are there? Seriously.

How large groups can you create based on a few specific genes? Pretty large ones, I think. The probability of this basically boils down to how genetics works when it comes to intelligence; which I think is almost completely unknown.

[Montmorency]

Ah, so you're positing the most literal interpretation.

This gives us the Parkinsonian race, the stuttering race, the cystic fibrosis race, and so on.

Just presses home the limited value of the term "race" itself. Nebulous from the outset, whatever legitimate classes it might capture with repurposing either already have terms or do not need them.

[Kadagar_AV]

So, what denominator should we use to explain the difference in humans from different social and geographical areas?

Cultural and socioeconomic influence aside, it's logically impossible for each and every sub-species (?) to have evolved in the exact same way, under different conditions.



As a sidenote, I think some has been "lost in translation". In swedish, race is a collective word. We talk about races of dogs, we have no comparison to "breed".

I have now understood that the word "race" is seen as a negative term.

I meant racial differences as the same way we have breeds of dogs.

YES all dogs are dogs, but different breeds leads to extremely different cognitive and physical abilities.

YES all humans are human, but we also differ, and that is - as you all know, a pure and simple fact.

So again, how do we diversify the different cultural and / or geographical tendencies... Without talking about race? Don't get me wrong, races can also be divided into sub-races...

South of Saharan Africans are from my perspective generally of a darker skin tone than ethnical Swedes. I think the use of the drug Khat is way, way, way bigger in that African area, compared to, say, European countries.

I believe that there exists differences between races yes. However, I am not saying the differences are so big you should judge someone solely from that perspective.

Heck, every race I ever heard of has had absolutely brilliant thinkers... Thus you should never "judge a book by it's cover".

However, on a political level (the level I am discussing) one has to face the FACT that, say, intelligence is divided unequally.

As an example, say that Swedes have 0,01% of its population that need extra pedagogical resources in school.

Say that Somali immigrants have 0,03% people who qualify for special pedagogical needs.

Does that mean all Somalis are stupid? Of course not.

It DOES however lead to 3x the pedagogical needs. This needs funding, and time from the teacher. In this example, a 300% increase is absolutely DEVASTATING on a national level.

It says absolutely nothing about individual people though.

I hope I made my point more clear this time around.

[Montmorency]

Fundamentally, the problem is of what constitutes a race. Similar skin tones, or living on the same continent, are pretty useless determiners since they don't tell us anything.

As for dogs, which are much simpler creatures in the first place, they have in terms of breeds been systematically bred to exaggerate specific attributes.

This has never been done with humans. Now, if we were to spend a thousand or two years cross-breeding the most successful humans, bolstering this with genetic engineering, maximal quality of diet, and so on, we could expect to produce a legitimate "race".

Until that happens, get a grip - there are no races or breeds of men that come even close to matching up with preconceived sociocultural categories. "Black", or "sub-Saharan African", is simply not a productive racial classification if you're looking for genetic regularities.

[Beskar]

"sub-Saharan African", is simply not a productive racial classification if you're looking for genetic regularities.

Paradoxically, Sub-Saharan Africans are the most genetic diverse population, more so than the rest of the world combined.

[Fragony]

As for dogs, which are much simpler creatures in the first place, they have in terms of breeds been systematically bred to exaggerate specific attributes.

And how would inbreeding not lead to specific attributes then with humans. Granted in advance, that goes beyond racial theory and is not intended to be one. We can make a full 360 when it comes to social-economic considerations on why some groups perform so badly without taking race into the equation, but a much nastier one, culture.

[Viking]

Ah, so you're positing the most literal interpretation.

This gives us the Parkinsonian race, the stuttering race, the cystic fibrosis race, and so on.

Not really. Let's say we have X number of ethnic groups where the prevalence of some genetics are above, say, 90%. These groups could then on average exhibit greater intelligence than other groups, and unless we knew about the genetic cause, this average is all that we would be able to observe, anyway.

Just presses home the limited value of the term "race" itself. Nebulous from the outset, whatever legitimate classes it might capture with repurposing either already have terms or do not need them.

I've already argued against the concept of race, so race is not what I am talking about. At least not with the common meanings of the word, anyway.

[Montmorency]

Let's say we have X number of ethnic groups where the prevalence of some genetics are above, say, 90%

Sure. The problem for genetic supremacists - of any stripe - is that intelligence is too diffuse*, and whatever genes there may be around that enhance relative cognitive performance would only be subject to random, or incidental, selection in any population defined in social-racial terms.

For example, it is technically possible that:

1. The Black Death did not affect sub-Saharan Africa.
2. The Black Death affected all of Eurasia.
3. Resistance to the Black Death somehow happened to coincide with intelligence-boosting genes in Eurasians.
4. The Black Death killed the stupider half of Eurasia and left only the more intelligent to breed with one another.
5. Average intelligence in Eurasia increased.

Of course, just because something is possible doesn't mean that it has happened, so any way you look at it the genetic supremacists have an uphill struggle when it comes to assembling evidence that there are regular genetic differences between any grouping (to say nothing of evolutionary explanations for them), again recalling the arbitrariness of racial groupings.

Also keep in mind that a scenario such as the one I made up above ignores the massive ethnic variation within sub-Saharan Africa, meaning that those who entertain such possibilities must also own that its technically possible for the most intelligent group of humans (by virtue of genetics) to be a group of sub-Saharan Africans. I see no coherent reason a priori why this could not be the case, if we are taking a proper agnostic approach to the issue.

*i.e. intelligence is clearly not "additive", though it is modular and subject to developmental baseline and differential expression under variable environmental conditions

[Viking]

Of course, just because something is possible doesn't mean that it has happened, so any way you look at it the genetic supremacists have an uphill struggle when it comes to assembling evidence that there are regular genetic differences between any grouping (to say nothing of evolutionary explanations for them), again recalling the arbitrariness of racial groupings.

The possibility of such a thing happening as well as how it could happen is what I originally replied to. If it actually has happened is indeed a separate topic.

*i.e. intelligence is clearly not "additive", though it is modular and subject to developmental baseline and differential expression under variable environmental conditions

I don't see any incompatibility between modularity and additivity. Not sure what your point is.

[Montmorency]

I don't see any incompatibility between modularity and additivity. Not sure what your point is.

Well, first note that you're not the only person included in the discourse, so I shouldn't be considered as addressing these solely to you.

In principle there is no incompatibility between modularity and additivity, but we have observed that additivity in itself can't really be associated with intelligence.

Think about it: what exactly would that look like, both behaviorally and epistemologically, if intelligence could be 'added up like a sum'. It recalls to mind the cartoon image of a person with an opened cranium having brains scooped into his skull so that he could become "more smarter".

This isn't to say that intelligence is fixed within or between individuals, that it can't change or increase, just that with regards to the present context we should not approach this from the assumption that the base is "zero" intelligence and genes 1-10 can each "add" some amount of intelligence for a 'natural' maximum where all the genes are present.

[Montmorency]

And how would inbreeding not lead to specific attributes then with humans.

Africans in general - and their 'diaspora' - are obviously not inbred, Frags. But yes, this is for example why Ashkenazi Jews have relatively-high rates of incidence of Tay-Sachs and cystic fibrosis.

[Fragony]

I'll order one of these if I see them.