hatsoff

Believe me, this isn't lost on me. I realize that most traits aren't, say, mere single-gene sex-linked traits, like baldness. Even simple skin color requires a whole host of autosomal factors. Yet on a large scale I think generalizations are appropriate. It just has to be a *sufficiently* large scale. Washington and Jefferson were quite intelligent--and neither were farmers. Washington made his earliest living in land surveying. Jefferson was a college student before he became a politician.

Unlike these blokes, I was actually in your position. I took Calc II in high school, aced the BC AP test, and never bothered with math again. Then I sort of ran off into drugs and alcohol for nine years or so, and only recently came back to it. I *just* finished taking Calc 1 as a refresher course. Do you need trig? Yes and no. Yes, you really need to re-learn it, but, no, you don't need to take a class on it. Remember, trig was just a unit in Geometry, and you learned more about it in Algebra 2 and Calc 1. But it was never its own class. The identities are helpful, but unnecessary. Just remember the good ol' Pythagorean Theorem. That's the basis of all identities, anyway. But you should learn them, regardless. Just remember, you don't *need* to re-take trig, but you *will* need to re-learn it some way, usually online. So be ready.

So I'm not crazy in thinking that it is heritable. That helps, thankyou. So why don't you think it follows the path of *every other* heritable trait? True, but that doesn't mean a definition isn't possible, or even that it doesn't exist. Psychology is working hard on this admitted problem. Have you ever taken a non-verbal test? I have. It's a bit Alfred Hitchcock-like. But an argument from emotion is not what I'm about. One problem of The Bell Curve is that they didn't compensate for socio-economic differences in IQ scores. What they needed to do was compare middle-class blacks that lived in the suburbs with middle class whites that lived in the suburbs. Intead, they ended up comparing middle class whites that attended private schools in the suburbs with blacks who lived in the inner city. Apples and oranges. Another problem is using the information to make social and political judgements. If you plot "intelligence" on the y-axis vs number of people with that value on the x-axis, you will end up with a bell-shaped curve (the title of the book). Even in The Bell Curve, the curves for IQ scores had a HUGE overlap. The means differed (where the most people had a particular IQ score), but that doesn't help you with the individual. Faced with 2 job applicants -- one white and the other black -- it doesn't tell you which is more intelligent because it is extremely easy for the black to be on the right hand side of the curve and white to be on the left hand side. Thus, on an individual basis, the black has about a 50:50 chance of being smarter than the white. So you can't use any differences (even if they exist) in any meaningful way for social or political judgements.

Hey, all. This is my first post on these forums, and it's going to be a doozy! I have two questions: 1) Is The Bell Curve a logical, sound book with reasonable, if unverified, conclusions? 2) Is intelligence heritable, and, if so, is it not reasonable to assume that geographically separated populations will have varying intelligence trends? I know these issues are hot buttons, but I'm hoping you'll help me wade through the bullshit, as it were. EDIT: Oh, I'm putting this thread in the "Evolution" section because it deals with heritability. I would have put it in the psychology section if one existed. The mods can move it if they have a better idea.