Racial differences...

[Louis VI the Fat]

Intelligence does not simply run on a low - high scale. More on a useful - unuseful scale.

Different populations, under different evolutionary pressures, will evolve in different ways. Each one is fit to his environment. Cognitive traits serve a multitude of purposes. One is not necessarily more intelligent than the other. Never mind superior, no more than a polar bear is superior to a kangeroo.


One could argue that diversity creates cultural and intellectual richness.

[Viking]

Intelligence does not simply run on a low - high scale. More on a useful - unuseful scale.

Different populations, under different evolutionary pressures, will evolve in different ways. Each one is fit to his environment. Cognitive traits serve a multitude of purposes. One is not necessarily more intelligent than the other. Never mind superior, no more than a polar bear is superior to a kangeroo.


One could argue that diversity creates cultural and intellectual richness.

What I mean with intelligence is the ability to think abstract, to reason etc. It is possible to be superior in this regard. Kangaroos can be superior to polar bears and vice versa depending on which criterions you judge them by.

Please specify what you mean by "cognitive traits", it's not clear what this is supposed to mean.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Please specify what you mean by "cognitive traits", it's not clear what this is supposed to mean.

Everything between your ears.

[Viking]

No, something specific. An ability that you can name.

Abstract thinking and complex reasoning rewards regardless of which environment you are adapted to. It's simply about understanding your surroundings.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Abstract thinking and complex reasoning rewards regardless of which environment you are adapted to. It's simply about understanding your surroundings.

That works for you. It does not work for the mollusc, which is fantastically adapted to its demanding environment.


The Neanderthaler had bigger brains than us. Perhaps, he was smarter too. And physically more robust to boot. What he lacked, some theorise, was simply verbal cognitive capacity. So he might have lost out to people who were less intelligent than him, but still more fit.

[Lemur]

Intelligence does not simply run on a low - high scale. More on a useful - unuseful scale.

This. Precisely.

Also, "race" is an imprecise, sloppy and loaded excuse of a term, when we really should be considering genomes. Someone from South Africa will have very different genetics than someone from Kenya. What use is "race" in this context? Likewise, a Japanese man is going to have very different genes from a Thai man. So what use is "race", again?

All this race talk sounds suspiciously like a discussion of the humors, dowsing and phrenology. "Race" as such is meaningless; genetics are everything. Will we find statistical deviance between groups of genomes? Most likely. Where will this matter? Medicine.

[Viking]

That works for you. It does not work for the mollusc, which is fantastically adapted to its demanding environment.


The Neanderthaler had bigger brains than us. Perhaps, he was smarter too. And physically more robust to boot. What he lacked, some theorise, was simply verbal cognitive capacity. So he might have lost out to people who were less intelligent than him, but still more fit.

If I am careful with fire and boiling water, it is instinct and not intelligence. If I get attracted to the opposite sex rather three-legged horses, it is instinct and not intelligence. If I am good [enough] at keeping my balance, it is instinct and not intelligence. If a mollusc is intelligent, it could figure out a new way to get fed when its main source of food has gone dry.

I am well aware of the fact that intelligence alone does not make winners; it's only an advantage. One animal that strikes me as pretty intelligent, is the orca. (A) certain population(s) of the orca has developed a technique that orca populations elsewhere do not practise: they hurl themselves at beaches to catch seals. There is also an example of one single orca mother who has found her own unique way of hunting seals; the particulcar method which she uses has yet not been observed elsewhere. Such activities takes more than just creativity, you must also be aware of the dangers; and thus intelligence is needed.

If your specie runs fast enough already, there are other things that will settle whose genes that will be dominant tomorrow.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I am well aware of the fact that intelligence alone does not make winners; it's only an advantage.

Everything comes at a price. That's why we are not as fast as a cheetah and as strong as a horse, nor is a mollusc as creative as us. They are not worthwhile.

Abstract thinking and complex reasoning benefit you, in your environment. To others, it may be a detrimental waste. It can be a waste in general, or it can even get in the way of a more useful mode of thinking, perhaps more verbal, communicative oriented. The ability to understand how to get to that fruit that's hanging just out of reach is as important as the ability to understand and settle in-group conflict. Both intelligences vary between populations and within populations, and even the spread of variation within the population differs.

Capacity for empathy in some environments means people cooperate better, increasing their survival chance. In other environments, it may be detrimental. Agression rates may vary. Abstract thinking varies.

[HoreTore]

I have never understood why people bother discussing "racial intelligence".

The fact is, that unless we perfect the art of human cloning, we can never separate what is hereditary and what is environmental. Considering that our score on the IQ tests by army recruits have gone up over the last 100 years, how can one even make the claim that intelligence is mostly hereditary in the first place?

[Viking]

Everything comes at a price. That's why we are not as fast as a cheetah and as strong as a horse, nor is a mollusc as creative as us. They are not worthwhile.

Abstract thinking and complex reasoning benefit you, in your environment. To others, it may be a detrimental waste. It can be a waste in general, or it can even get in the way of a more useful mode of thinking, perhaps more verbal, communicative oriented. The ability to understand how to get to that fruit that's hanging just out of reach is as important as the ability to understand and settle in-group conflict. Both intelligences vary between populations and within populations, and even the spread of variation within the population differs.

Capacity for empathy in some environments means people cooperate better, increasing their survival chance. In other environments, it may be detrimental. Agression rates may vary. Abstract thinking varies.

But just how expensive is gaining that little extra bit of intelligence anyway? It doesn't have to cost much.

Humans are not that weak; I don't know how strong an animal of with our build-up could be in theory, but it's not long ago that we were hunters. Still some humans can hunt down their prey using sheer strength:



And this is a specie that has "focused" on brain power.

[Louis VI the Fat]

But just how expensive is gaining that little extra bit of intelligence anyway? It doesn't have to cost much.

But to what end? It is a waste, a detriment. I don't need to track a kudu. It is almost like asking why I don't have the hearing of a cat, or the smell of a dog.

Intelligence is not a linear process of progression, from dumb to smart as evolution progresses. It is in many ways more akin to size. Size must suit the animal, there is no such thing as a scale that runs from small / inferior to large / superior. A mouse would starve it were the size of an elephant. An elephant would be defenseless it were the size of a mouse.

Likewise, cognitive abilities must suit the entire design, suit the purpose for which it is needed. In this sense, more evolutionary / philosophically than psychologicaly, intelligence has no absolute scale.


To a dog, I am a wizard. I can tell by some supersense, without so much as a sniff, where to find canned dog food next month. To me, a dog is a wonder. What to me is an empty forest, is to the dog a world rich in information - between those trees a male karibou, hurt and in distress, passed three days ago. An olfactory system, nose and nerves, a million times more complex than mine.
(The symbiosis between man and wolf is one of the great wonders of the modern age - such a bummer it must've been for the other animals!)



Speaking of your Khoisan video: would they be more genetically disposed to wander around outside, to be in the company of a small band of men, more disposed to seek reward on a short timescale, than me? I must say I can't help but wonder. The implications are devastating. If true, then far from maintaining respect and equality, taboos surrounding differences create inequality if the basic premise of genetic equality is false. For one, it can force the minority to act as the majority, resulting in the minority being forced to abstain from what it excells in, and forced to do what it is lacking in.
If I were to be transported to a society where most everybody is better in tracking, but worse in verbal expression, I'd hate to be told I'm equal only for me to have twenty hours of tracking courses in school and two hours of language courses - because odds are, a society that breeds trackers, is organised around tracking. I would be had in this scenario! I'd be considered a dumbass when I'm really not. I would get frustrated, skip school, hang outside, be agressive.


I predict a coming collision between the accumulating body of scientific data regarding human evolution and differentiation, and the PC shibboleth that all men and all populations are exactly equivalent. This last assumption has become so deeply ingrained in science and society that it is a complete career destroyer to publicly question the idea.
The result of this, however, is that philosophy, politics and ethics are not at all equipped to deal with inequality. And hence seek to keep the genie in the bottle for as long as possible. Whereas I would take Napoleon's approach: one must accept the inevitable, and work it towards one's advantage.

[Viking]

But to what end? It is a waste, a detriment. I don't need to track a kudu. It is almost like asking why I don't have the hearing of a cat, or the smell of a dog.

It's not a waste, because it has a greate possibility of being beneficial. That's not to say that other traits could be much more beneficial, such that the intelligence remains unchanged for the most part while species evolve.

Intelligence is not a linear process of progression, from dumb to smart as evolution progresses. It is in many ways more akin to size. Size must suit the animal, there is no such thing as a scale that runs from small / inferior to large / superior. A mouse would starve it were the size of an elephant. An elephant would be defenseless it were the size of a mouse.

That's how you like to define intelligence, but with other definitions it can more easily be viewed as a linear scale.

To a dog, I am a wizard. I can tell by some supersense, without so much as a sniff, where to find canned dog food next month. To me, a dog is a wonder. What to me is an empty forest, is to the dog a world rich in information - between those trees a male karibou, hurt and in distress, passed three days ago. An olfactory system, nose and nerves, a million times more complex than mine.
(The symbiosis between man and wolf is one of the great wonders of the modern age - such a bummer it must've been for the other animals!)

Are you going to call dogs intelligent? Molluscs too?

Speaking of your Khoisan video: would they be more genetically disposed to wander around outside, to be in the company of a small band of men, more disposed to seek reward on a short timescale, than me? I must say I can't help but wonder. The implications are devastating. If true, then far from maintaining respect and equality, taboos surrounding differences create inequality if the basic premise of genetic equality is false. For one, it can force the minority to act as the majority, resulting in the minority being forced to abstain from what it excells in, and forced to do what it is lacking in.
If I were to be transported to a society where most everybody is better in tracking, but worse in verbal expression, I'd hate to be told I'm equal only for me to have twenty hours of tracking courses in school and two hours of language courses - because odds are, a society that breeds trackers, is organised around tracking. I would be had in this scenario! I'd be considered a dumbass when I'm really not. I would get frustrated, skip school, hang outside, be agressive.

Is it necessarily the ones at the highest end of the IQ scale who fare the best in human society? You would perhaps have been labeled a dumbass, but successful =/= intelligent. I think that intelligence can help in learning the skill of tracking (it's kind of an abstract concept), but if they had instincts or prior knowledge and/or experience that you don't have, then you'll probably be lacking.

[Paltmull]

The question was From a darwinistic evolutionary perspective, what reasons would there be for certain so-called "races" to become more intelligent than others? The answer is that we have a random element, and thus it is perfectly possible. The differences between different groups of humans developed long ago, at a time when life was much different. The civilisations are not that old.

I think that intelligence matters in contemporary evolution as well, it might decrease the chances of individuals doing outright stupid things which could lead to death at young age. It's not random which youth that dies in traffic accidents due to taking unnecessary risks, and this could have to do with genetics.

Whoops, I'd forgotten that i had posted here. Started quite a discussion...

Anyway, I had about the same argument as that of Moros in mind. Even though there is a random element; doesn't evolution still tend to be very 'deterministic'? The advantage that higher intelligence (however we define that) gives will need to be very significant in order for it to become an evolutionary factor. If not, it will simply stay on an individual level. And, as I said earlier, since different enviroments probably didn't require different "levels" of intelligence, all "races" are most likely similar in this area.

[A Nerd]

I beleive the body evolves, the mind learns. The idea of race is body types and appearances changing over the years and the minds ability to interpret it. Seemingly, in a sense of superiority over another more times than not.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I believe that we are part of the same clinal species, which has had a tendency toward further speciation until the upswing in global trade 6000 years ago. I believe that we are now becoming more ethnically similar day by day.

To deny that there are differences between racial groups is absurd. The recent studies that sugest that northern europeans, southern asians, eastern asian and pacific islanders are comprised of DNA from separate species of human beings highlights what we all know to be true, in spite of well meaning political correctness. We are very different, but what makes us different is nowhere near as imense or important as what makes us all the same.

[Lemur]

It's high time this thread addressed the real threat: Humanimals:

[miotas]

To deny that there are differences between racial groups is absurd. The recent studies that sugest that northern europeans, southern asians, eastern asian and pacific islanders are comprised of DNA from separate species of human beings highlights what we all know to be true, in spite of well meaning political correctness. We are very different, but what makes us different is nowhere near as imense or important as what makes us all the same.

Different subspecies perhaps, like a dog is a subspecies of wolf. If we were different species however, then interbreeding would either produce no offspring, or infertile offspring.

[Beskar]

Evil Furries and their beastiality ways.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Let's be obscure:

It's high time this thread addressed the real threat: Humanimals

No species sees its own as just another species, but as a standard, as normal, as individuals. To a dog, all cats and all humans are just that - cats and humans. He will recognise different individuals, but they are all the same to him. A dog is something more, a person, a person with which he is in competition with, with which he has intimite relationships with, persons governed by the same passions as he himself. The only species of the same ontological plane as him, above, at least separate from, all other animals. so much so, that one can wonder if a dog recognises himself as an animal.

Humans are so accustomed to seeing humans as individuals - to focus on slightly different hairlines, eyes, facial expressions, the recognition of all which is hardwired - that it is easy to not see that we are just an animal like all the others. An ape, just another ape. These pictures should hopefully confuse the reader:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

How many of the above are human?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

One of them is not human:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It is that poor mutated hairless chimp in the last picture.

A mutation that several hundred thousand years ago became dominant in humans.

[Viking]

Whoops, I'd forgotten that i had posted here. Started quite a discussion...

Anyway, I had about the same argument as that of Moros in mind. Even though there is a random element; doesn't evolution still tend to be very 'deterministic'? The advantage that higher intelligence (however we define that) gives will need to be very significant in order for it to become an evolutionary factor. If not, it will simply stay on an individual level. And, as I said earlier, since different enviroments probably didn't require different "levels" of intelligence, all "races" are most likely similar in this area.

I don't know. Different enviroments are different, and so you get possibilities - they don't have to be big.

It is that poor mutated hairless chimp in the last picture.

A mutation that several hundred thousand years ago became dominant in humans.

I don't know about that, the average human is hairier.

[Beskar]

I don't know about that, the average human is hairier.

That chimp makes me look as hairy as a sheep.

[Louis VI the Fat]

That chimp makes me look as hairy as a sheep.

I think we must appear terribly bizarre and ugly to other apes. Bunch of freaks, we are.

I don't know about that, the average human is hairier.

You mean, mostly hairless body, but with facial hair? Sure:








(Don't feel inferior. Chimp females have certain 'preferences' that have had a profound effect on male chimp anatomy)

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Let's be obscure:


No species sees its own as just another species, but as a standard, as normal, as individuals. To a dog, all cats and all humans are just that - cats and humans. He will recognise different individuals, but they are all the same to him. A dog is something more, a person, a person with which he is in competition with, with which he has intimite relationships with, persons governed by the same passions as he himself. The only species of the same ontological plane as him, above, at least separate from, all other animals. so much so, that one can wonder if a dog recognises himself as an animal.

Humans are so accustomed to seeing humans as individuals - to focus on slightly different hairlines, eyes, facial expressions, the recognition of all which is hardwired - that it is easy to not see that we are just an animal like all the others. An ape, just another ape. These pictures should hopefully confuse the reader:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

How many of the above are human?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

One of them is not human:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It is that poor mutated hairless chimp in the last picture.

A mutation that several hundred thousand years ago became dominant in humans.

Oh come on, number one isn't human, two I can believe, and three clearly is human.

[Moros]

I think number one is supposed to be a reconstruction of an australopithecus (afarensis?) which would be one of our evolutionary ancestors. But if that's the case were talking about a complete different species. Which even if there would be one a live and some man/woman was so disgusting to want to make a child with it, it wouldn't even be possible. Either way I fail to see how similar species have anything to do with racial differences. (talking just about the pics, not the dog analogy)

[Louis VI the Fat]

I think number one is supposed to be a reconstruction of an australopithecus (afarensis?) which would be one of our evolutionary ancestors. But if that's the case were talking about a complete different species. Which even if there would be one a live and some man/woman was so disgusting to want to make a child with it, it wouldn't even be possible. Either way I fail to see how similar species have anything to do with racial differences. (talking just about the pics, not the dog analogy)

It is a Paranthropus boisei. Humanoid more than human, perhaps.

It has got to do with racial differences because it makes the point just to what extent humans are animals, and thus evolving under evolutionary impulses like the rest of the natural world..
I think there are two reasons for the prevailing idea that all humans are equal in mind: firstly, out of trauma from the racism of the past two centuries or so. Human dignity has been philosophically and socially understood to mean human equality.
Secondly, because of secular creationism. That is, the idea that the human mind is excempt from evolutionary impulse. Even otherwise atheist Darwinists are still in the grip of the idea of human exception. Of the idea that the mind functions as a soul: the area of man that trancends evolution, that belongs to a different plane, excempt from such beastly affairs as evolutionary impulse. Often understood as the idea that the human mind has been somehow excempt from evolutionary forces ever since humanity split up some 60/150 thousand years ago. It is sheer creationism. The full implications of Darwin's dangerous idea are still not fully sunk in, the uglyness of man as ape is still not fully accepted.

even if there would be one a live and some man/woman was so disgusting to want to make a child with it,

That's speciecism. Why the aversion to mating with boisei? What is disgusting about it? Fear of miscenegation? Fear yhat your pure, beautiful little species might become contaminated with alien blood?




All of which begs the question, what is a human? Only modern man? What of the other humans that we genocided, such as Neanderthals, Flores people, and that new Siberian man, who all lived until very recently ago?

What would happen if they were alive today? We probably can produce fertile offspring with at least the Neanderthals, they at least ought to be classified as humans. What if they were around today? Are they part of the 'all human populations are equal' paradigm? Should we genocide them all, save for a handful to be kept in zoos? (As we are doing with other apes)
What of human-Neanderthal hybrids? (Some argue that quite a few people are partly descended from Neanderthals!)

[Lemur]

I think we must appear terribly bizarre and ugly to other apes. Bunch of freaks, we are.

Nonsense. We are the midpoint between God and animals, lower than the seraphim but higher than the badger. It's all about the Great Chain of Being.

[Tellos Athenaios]

No species sees its own as just another species, but as a standard, as normal, as individuals. To a dog, all cats and all humans are just that - cats and humans. He will recognise different individuals, but they are all the same to him. A dog is something more, a person, a person with which he is in competition with, with which he has intimite relationships with, persons governed by the same passions as he himself. The only species of the same ontological plane as him, above, at least separate from, all other animals. so much so, that one can wonder if a dog recognises himself as an animal.

There are numerous issues with your example: the relationship between dog and human is explicitly that of the family: the only social mechanism wolfs understand (a pack is little more than an extended family which bands together to hunt large prey, the social bonding lasts only for as long as the source of prey does). It might in fact come to regard other pets in your household as part of the same family. Within this family (or pack) there is a certain competition for the spot of top dog, and ill-disciplined dogs do display signs of competition towards their incompetent owners.

The fact that dogs bark towards humans (rather than growl) at first suggest that dogs treat us as dogs, not as humans and they'll proceed to sniff where they figure your genitals are. By contrast cats definitely understand the divide between humans and cats because they employ a different type of communication (the meow) towards us than they do towards other cats, and they will not approach until they have verified you are not a threat to them.

The real problem is however that dogs do not have any memory or intelligence anywhere near powerful enough to engage in such reflection. Dogs are every bit as devoid of intellectual thought as ants are[*], and considerably less clever than cats or pidgeons (both species have to perform far more complex mental exercises to survive). [*] Perhaps even more so as a colony of ants is capable of far more complex and intelligent behaviour than dogs are: as a colony ants are able to farm and herd and they perform accounting of the number of ants trespassing on their territory.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

All of which begs the question, what is a human? Only modern man? What of the other humans that we genocided, such as Neanderthals, Flores people, and that new Siberian man, who all lived until very recently ago?

What would happen if they were alive today? We probably can produce fertile offspring with at least the Neanderthals, they at least ought to be classified as humans. What if they were around today? Are they part of the 'all human populations are equal' paradigm? Should we genocide them all, save for a handful to be kept in zoos? (As we are doing with other apes)
What of human-Neanderthal hybrids? (Some argue that quite a few people are partly descended from Neanderthals!)

You are making an unfounded assumption, that Neandathal-Us hybrids are themselves fertile, and that we are therefore part of the same species. Your argument is provocative, but not very logical.

Killing other Apes is not the same as killing humans, and trying to draw equivolence does your case no good. Much better to say that killing other animals is generally bad, as is destroying their habitat, or destruction of any kind.

[Louis VI the Fat]

You are making an unfounded assumption, that Neandathal-Us hybrids are themselves fertile, and that we are therefore part of the same species. Your argument is provocative, but not very logical.

Research is developing at an astonishing pace. This month's New Scientist described new research that indicates that we are indeed hybrids.

I myself am very proud of my Neanderthal origin:

Any human whose ancestral group developed outside Africa has a little Neanderthal in them – between 1 and 4 per cent of their genome, Pääbo's team estimates. In other words, humans and Neanderthals had sex and had hybrid offspring. A small amount of that genetic mingling survives in "non-Africans" today: Neanderthals didn't live in Africa, which is why sub-Saharan African populations have no trace of Neanderthal DNA.
It's impossible to know how often humans invited Neanderthals back to their cave (and vice versa), but the genome data offers some intriguing details.
"It must have been at least 45,000 years ago," says David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who was involved in the project. That's because all non-Africans – be they from France, China or Papua New Guinea – share the same amount of Neanderthal DNA, suggesting that interbreeding occurred before those populations split. The timing makes the Middle East the likeliest place where humans leaving Africa and resident Neanderthals did the deed.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ns.html?page=1

The Neanderthal does pose fine questions. They are clearly different from modern humans, but are still most definately human.

Their skulls are so different from us, that they in all likelyhood had very different cognitive abilities. Yet they produced fertile offspring with humans, they are the same species as us. The question is whether they are not better described as a different human race.


Neanderthals had bigger brains. Perhaps they were more intelligent than us. Usually, it is hypothesised that they lacked in verbal capacity. Which makes for the intruiging possibility that superior peoples were driven to instinction by us, by our more ant-like, or network intelligence.
If one can not easily verbally exchange ideas, then the individual needs a lot of creativity, spontaneous problem solving ability. This, the Neanderthal may have excelled in.

Of course, the real winner would be a population that adopted aspects of the Neanderthal's superior brain. Incorporated, say, a few percent of their genes into their own design. Interestingly, the great artistic revolution of modern man ocurred around the same time that the interbreeding with the Neanderthal occured. Could your innate desire to express yourself non-verbally, to convey ideas non-verbally, be your inner Neanderthal? Is not the caveman brute, but Picasso the true face of the Neanderthal?

[Louis VI the Fat]

Nonsense. We are the midpoint between God and animals, lower than the seraphim but higher than the badger. It's all about the Great Chain of Being.

I have this hierarchy in my mind. A pidgeon over a cockroach. A cat over a bird. An ape over a cat.

I do stop there. There is more glory in being a rising ape than a fallen angel.