Key

So if it's sunny a lot in places, can we consider being a lobster a race?

Howard the Duck

i can't be an Albert Einstein bird

or even a Stephen Hawking bird

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Malaise is THE dominant human predilection.

hip hop bunny hop

A few things;

1) Even if one believes that race is primarily a cultural construct, this does not mean that there are not substantive differences in the frequency of certain genetic traits in various populations. see Genetic Drift (link)

2) There various races do have different average IQ scores; I talked about that here (link). The debate, then, is whether or not race is a causal factor.

3) Every known bit of currently existing life lives on earth, so I've no idea what point you were trying to get across with, "All humans live on planet earth." Are you suggesting Lobsters & American Indians have no significant genetic difference?

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Have mercy on the poor.

Guybrush

Of course there will be differences in how different races score on average in IQ tests. Generally, it's hard to separate genetics from environment, but as we are different in height, colour, shape, it makes sense that we're also a little different in our brains. My problem with it is people using that knowledge responsibly. I don't think it's right to rank people's worth by how well they can score IQ tests and I would not like people to apply that kind of thinking to making sweeping generalizations about peoples and their worth.

At the moment, I don't think there's much good this knowledge can do for us so when it comes to where to spend research money, I think they're probably better off researching something else.

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yoshimitsu

I don't see why a link between race and intelligence should be sought. I know morons and geniuses in every race

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"He that keeps his mouth keeps his life. He that opens his lips too wide shall bring on his own destruction"

hip hop bunny hop

Eh? You honestly don't think this information should impact debates about immigration? All other aspects of immigration aside, this has tremendous impacts on the nation receiving immigrants. Social stratification is a thorny issue as is, but if there is a quantifiable & significant difference in IQ along racial lines within a nation there will be tremendous problems. IQ is not a perfect measurement of intelligence, but it is very useful at predicting, amongst other items, likely income. The practical reality is, then, that any nation home to two racial groups with significant differences in average IQ will experience racial stratification.

Considering that historical precedence shows that racial stratification is tremendously dangerous, it would seem advisable to avoid an immigration policy where it would likely result.

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Have mercy on the poor.

anticipation

And here is the fallacy of your argument. When you step out of a materialistic and consumption-driven world view, then there is no correlation between intelligence and ability to earn "income". First, it is an incredibly ignorant assumption that wealth is an indicator of anything. The pursuit of wealth is the most vapid, superfluous, and disgraceful lifestyle a person can live. Living things are driven by social relations, now how many shells you can collect in your lifetime or how many shiny things you own. To say that earning power is tied to intelligence is also a ridiculous argument, because there are many people who acquire massive wealth yet are the most vile, stupid and reprehensible people on the planet. If anything, being driven by the pursuit of material things instead of social relations, cooperation, and meaningful contributions to society is a sign of low intelligence because wealth will not aid a living organism in any way.

Secondly, a foreign policy that allows selectively allows both "intelligence" and "race" to become key factors in admission into the country would fail rather quickly. Our workforce in large part already depends on the huge numbers of immigrants we have coming both legally and illegally into this country. If anything, the key to preventing racial stratification is the allow more immigrants of various races to work throughout all areas of our society. It is when racial politics such as gerrymandering and Jim Crow laws were being widely used was when racial stratification was deeply entrenched in America, and only in the last few decades have we been able to make strides in achieving at least a semblance of racial equality in the workplace.

hip hop bunny hop

Anticipation, thank you for that thought out argument.

I disagree:

Income does not equal wealth, as wealth is inherited:

Both quotes were pulled from here, link


The rest of this paragraph of yours is moralizing & uses anecdotal evidence, and while I'm sympathetic to your arguments against crass materialism, it is the current nature of our culture.



I mean this in the most non-dick way possible, but I'm assuming that by foreign policy you meant immigration policy. Anyways...

You are correct that our current economy relies upon mass immigration both legal and illegal. However, is this a good thing? It is hardly controversial to contend that, if demand remains constant (Y), an influx of any particular good (X) will result in a lower price (P). This doesn't just apply to physical goods, but to labour as well.

Our current policy of allowing mass, unskilled immigration has had its beneficiaries; however, these beneficiaries have been clustered at the upper end of the income spectrum. The bourgeois like it because when there's more (X), (P) will decrease as more people are competing for the same number of jobs - allowing them to pay less, thus gain higher profit margins. Upper-middle class individuals like this because when (P) gets low enough they can enjoy formerly exclusively bourgeois privileges such as enjoying the comfort of part-time domestic help. The middle class who are property owners receive some fringe benefits as well when (P) gets low enough, such as being able to get roofing at rock bottom prices.

Unfortunately, for the working class, they receive no direct benefits from this. It has been argued that the benefits "trickle down" to them, as rates of spending of disposable income are relatively static, so when (P) gets low enough the upper class just ends up buying more stuff. However, personally, I'm skeptical about this, particularly as our massive trade deficits indicate the tremendous outflow of wealth to the working class beyond our borders.

Now, the working class is the most diverse segment of American life, which is a kind way of saying it has the highest percentage of non-asian minorities. As such, our immigration policies have a largely negative (economic) impact on NAM individuals & communities, whereas the beneficiaries are the predominately white, asian, & jewish upper classes. (these last groups having average IQs of 103, 106, & 113, respectively)

I really can't emphasize this last point enough; our current immigration policies are skewed to benefit the rich, and have their most profoundly negative impact on the working class.


Well, firstly, there are no laws preventing any individual of any race from working wherever. However, there are market forces at play; the simple fact of the matter is that less intelligent people are less likely to be qualified for jobs which require a high degree of specialized knowledge. This is why we see a disparity of racial representation in such fields. You may claim that latent racism has had an effect, and although I'm skeptical of this (what capitalist would indulge racism at the expense of profit?), I concede it may play a small role.

You are correct that since the disappearance of Jim Crow & similar laws that either mandated or allowed discrimination, we have seen greater social mobility for the races previously disenfranchised. However, the groups who have made the greatest strides in this era have been Asians & Jews. Yes, there have been movements by black & hispanic Americans, but the changes have not been nearly as dramatic as those by Asians & Jews, as one would expect considering the difference in IQ between these groups.


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Phew. Hopefully the above is clear; I tried to be concise as possible. Also, I truly do appreciate that you put time & effort into your post.

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Have mercy on the poor.

Guybrush

Doing IQ tests today faces some massive challenges, for example separating nature from nurture and the fact that people in general are getting better at IQ tests - fast - something which is called Flynn effect. Here's an awful graph that illustrates the point :



A possible explanation for the Flynn effect is that humans have not really reached the "roof" of their IQ yet and that means that environment is, at the moment, more important than the genes. Imagine environment drives this graph upwards. It would be unfair to compare environments at different stages of this graph. Unless you are comparing two nations/peoples who live in an environment where they have both reached the roof of the Flynn effect, the percieved differences may not tell you that much about biological potential for intelligence.

I think it is reasonable to expect that if we all lived in the same ideal society under the same ideal conditions, differences in IQ would still be present between races, but the differences would generally be small. Races are generally "large", containing a lot of variation and there's a lot of gene flow between races and we're all evolving to become more like eachother. Hence, there are way more important potential problems that should influence your judgment when deciding on issues on immigration. How compatible the immigrants culture is to the new culture for example and how effective integration can be expected or whether or not the immigrant is already a criminal are far more important considerations than how well their race does on average in present day IQ tests. Would you really discriminate someone based on something like that?

I believe some races/peoples will be significantly "stupider" than other races, but I think they will generally be a lot more isolated from gene flow from outside their population. An isolated population of islanders could have been founded by people who were comparatively smart or comparatively stupid compared to the parent population (see founder effect) and, as there's been little influx of genes, such a population could have a significant higher or lower intelligence compared to the parent population today.

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Something Completely Different

hip hop bunny hop

The Flynn effect is neat, Tore. A common theory now is that the division between rural/urban has been eliminated in advanced societies due to the proliferation of technology has reached such a point that rural denizens no longer miss out on the stimulating effect it has. Pretty cool, eh?

Anyways, even if one accepts the ameliorist standpoint it will take several generations for the lagging populations to approach a level wherein the disparity is negligible. Even if, say, tomorrow we could eliminate the problem for all babies born from there on out, the disparity would still haunt society until all prior generations died off.

If we take black Americans as an example, their average IQ scores have improved faster than the mean; however, when one readjusts for the Flynn effect throughout the general population, the cumulative gains are only a few points. Granted, the difference between two standard deviations and a standard deviation and a half is important, but it's still significantly below average.

The other issue is the notion of a ceiling; if that ceiling doesn't exist (or is a long way off), it is feasible that those groups at the upper ranges will continue to pull away from the average group at greater and greater rates. It's an odd thing to note, but people do have a tendency to self-segregate along IQ lines, and this tendency manifests itself in mating as well.

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Have mercy on the poor.