Intelligence and race

[hatsoff]

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.

[YT2095]

to save a little legwork: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

[lucaspa]

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?

 

1) The Bell Curve is useful only for toilet paper or, perhaps, as an example of bad science.

 

2) Intelligence is both heritable and determined by the environment. It is NOT reasonable to "assume" that geographically separated populations are going to have statistically different intelligence levels.

 

You've got several problems:

1. Define precisely what you mean by "intelligence". No one has so far. We have an intuitive feel for it, but no precise definition.

2. Figure out a way to objectively test for it. And no, IQ tests don't do that because they test for knowledge that is cultural. For instance, you could ask you and I what continent France was located on. Or you could ask us how many people are on a football team. Both of those are cultural but give an indication of our "knowledge" or "intelligence", but a !Kung wouldn't know the answers. BUT, ask us which plant indicates underground water in the Kalahari desert, and we would be stumped. A !Kung would know, however.

 

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.

[someguy]

I think undoubtedly yes intelligence can be different for different populations and yes it is inherited, but not perfectly. It depends on how your society is geared and whether or not intelligence gets highly favoured in a society. the thing is that from a specie point of view, once language has been invented you only need a few highly intelligent individuals making discoveries and inventing stuff because they can teach others and make tools for others and stuff like that. so evolutionarily it's not really necessary for an entire population to evolve to be very highly intelligent. but a certain specie of monkey in its entirety did and that made us, and that was probably due to geographical conditions.

 

western societies were never geared towards intelligent beings, it has always been geared towards greed and money. But in at least some Asian countries it was different and i feel that because of that as a whole some of the asian countries are smarter than we are but not all of them because still some of them were farmers and stuff. basically China's society was the closest to plato's philosopher kings the world has ever seen. Japan looks like it was pretty crazy too but i don't know much about japan government.

[Sisyphus]

I don't know whether it's plausible that there would be significant overall genetic differences, but I am pretty sure such differences would be almost impossible to demonstrate. lucaspa sums it up pretty well. "Intelligence" is only extremely vaguely defined, first of all. (Are some people "smarter" than others? Sure. But what does that mean, exactly? We don't know.) Thinking we can accurately test diverse populations for it as if it were some substance that is present in greater or lesser amounts is fairly ridiculous. Comparing "intelligence quotients" of people living in nearly identical circumstances is already borderline pseudoscience. Comparing such from people from wildly different cultures and life experiences is just hopeless, especially if you think you're going to learn about the genetic component, when so many other factors are at work.

[Wormwood]

Figure out a way to objectively test for it. And no, IQ tests don't do that because they test for knowledge that is cultural. For instance, you could ask you and I what continent France was located on.

That is not at all how I.Q. tests work. I.Q. tests don't have factual trivia type questions on them (not any that I've seen anyway). They test for problem solving ability and pattern recognition using shapes and numbers. I have heard people claim that standardized tests were culturally biased, but this is the first instance I have heard of people saying I.Q. tests were culturally biased.

[someguy]

IQ tests are still not adequate though and still to some degree rely on what you have learned. for example certain questions are easier with a good understanding of math. IQ tests are not really tests of intelligence. they are feats that generally intelligent people are better at doing. being tall is very good for playing basketball but you wouldn't measure how tall people are based on how they perform in a basketball game. though often you'd be right that the taller players do better, and so testing that way wouldn't be completely useless but still not very precise. it would be much better to use a ruler to measure height.

[Daecon]

Every ethnic group has it's "Six year old boy with 7 GCSEs" as well as it's "George W Bush" types.

 

Even a cross-section of a particular group can't be absolutely conclusive of the larger group in general.

[hatsoff]

Intelligence is both heritable and determined by the environment.

 

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?

 

You've got several problems:

1. Define precisely what you mean by "intelligence". No one has so far. We have an intuitive feel for it, but no precise definition.

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.

 

2. Figure out a way to objectively test for it. And no, IQ tests don't do that because they test for knowledge that is cultural. For instance, you could ask you and I what continent France was located on. Or you could ask us how many people are on a football team. Both of those are cultural but give an indication of our "knowledge" or "intelligence", but a !Kung wouldn't know the answers. BUT, ask us which plant indicates underground water in the Kalahari desert, and we would be stumped. A !Kung would know, however.

 

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.

[someguy]

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?

i think it does.

 

but for one thing human beings due to language and our capacity to invent and share knowledge don't evolve conventionally anymore. we don't grow fur in order to cope with cold, we invent heaters and coats. in order for human society to be "smart" as a whole you only need a few of these inventors as our social construct will share any new technology with anyone, so there is no advantage for everybody being smart from an evolution point of view. but there is in being able to understand language and in having a few inventor types that invent things, discover stuff and write books and stuff about them.

 

 

other than that the human race is more and more evolving with "defects" more and more people are needing glasses, being blind is fine little people will continue to grow in numbers stuff like that. (btw i don't mean those are defects of people or that these kinds of people are worse in some sort of absolute sense, just that in the case of if we were in the wild without technology those things might cause you to die early) so unless being smart as an individual gives you a better advantage to survive over other traits, which in our case it doesn't, the proportion of highly intelligent people should remain roughly the same though perhaps the absolute values may differ. so the bell curve would remain roughly the same shape but the smartest person in the world may get smarter as time marches on. and for intelligence as far as i know there is no limit an individual could evolve to but for lack of intelligence there is a certain limit, and being too unintelligent could easily get you killed at a young age, so i think the bell curve would eventually warp very slightly. so basically the maximum can increase but the minimum will remain fixed.

[Paralith]

I definitely agree with someguy in that modern human society really only requires a few people to be truly gifted, in a manner of speaking, to be the ones to make the real advancements, as those advancements will then be disseminated culturally to the rest of the species. But let's apply this to the question of race. Races arose largely due to a certain degree of geographical separation, which each subgroup adapting to its specific environment without too much dilution from other groups. So wouldn't the people in each geographical area need their few smart people in order to make the necessary cultural advancements? The nature of these advancements will of course vary according to the cultures and the environments, thus the nature of "intelligence" and "knowledge" will not be the same for all races. But this certainly doesn't mean that only one geographical area, only one race needed their smart people, while the others all had it so easy that all the smart genes dropped out.

 

As far as intelligence being heritable, look at what lucaspa said: Intelligence is BOTH heritable and determined by the environment. While genes may give you a tendency towards low or high intelligence, that tendency may not make much of a difference if the environmental conditions are those that highly favor the cultivation of intelligence, the proper development of your brain. Perhaps the brain needs to be challenged enough, or perhaps a child needs to be encouraged to learn and then they will learn more, or other things along those lines. Obviously we're not 100% sure what all these factors are and/or how they work, but they definitely make a difference.

 

Heck, we can even wade waist deep into wild conjecture and say that perhaps every human has within them the capacity for high intelligence, so that in the chance event that those few smart people of the species don't reproduce genetically intelligent children, environmentally smart children can step in and take their place, thus ensuring that species never goes without their intelligent caretakers.

[SkepticLance]

Just an interesting observation on race.

We are all supposed to be descendents from Africans. About 55,000 years ago, all our ancestors diverged from the one home base.

 

An interesting genetic observation is that people today of recent African descent have more diverse genomes than those of other 'races' such as white European or Chinese Asian.

 

This is supposed to be the reason why people of recent African origin are disproportionately represented in top class sportspeople, such as olympic runners. Since the genetic normal distribution curve is wider in those of recent African descent, there will be more at the top end of exceptional sportspeople. Of course, if this is true, there will also be more at the other end of the curve.

 

I cannot comment on whether this is true of intelligence. If so, we will discover over time that Africans have a disproportionate number of geniuses, plus a disproportionate number of those of very low intelligence.

[Reaper]

western societies were never geared towards intelligent beings, it has always been geared towards greed and money. But in at least some Asian countries it was different and i feel that because of that as a whole some of the asian countries are smarter than we are but not all of them because still some of them were farmers and stuff. basically China's society was the closest to plato's philosopher kings the world has ever seen. Japan looks like it was pretty crazy too but i don't know much about japan government.

 

I disagree. Look at the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and ancient Athens. Modern Asia is heavily influenced by western philosophy.

[someguy]

ya i don't deny that there have been intelligent people that existed in europe. and great technological feats and things like that. for a while they were kept completely silenced hence the renaissance but what i meant that was society was not geared towards intelligence being the guiding force of society. in europeen societies what was the governing force has been pretty much only money. he who became the next ruler was the relative of the king rich guy with all the power, or someone who killed him and was sneaky and backstabbing or something. in the middle ages anyways before that it was more like now and right after also but still money ruled. even now when we have democracies where the media influences us and we are under the impression that we decide who rules when really we are convinced of who to choose like commericals to buy dishwashing powder or something. we are manipulated. maybe we should leave the efficiency of democracy for another time though.

 

but similar to what plato wanted, in China the government was selected according to how well people would do in exams basically the smartest ones would get the government jobs and the lesser would do the manual labor and that was pretty much all there was. they listened strongly to confucious and buddah highly intelligent individuals that taught them alot. in europe jesus was killed by the wealthy ruling elite and later constantinople took the bible changed a little and made christianity mandatory.The Chinese society was geared towards intelligence ruling rather than the destructive freedom of the market place that is consuming everything and destroying our planet and causing wars and all that good stuff.

 

ya i agree the eastern world is really being flooded with western philosophy, even religion wise. and this really frustrates me and pisses me off.. great technology and great monuments and great objects are not really signs of a intelligence based society i don't think, not in the sense i mean anyways. but we are always told that we are helping people when we are giving them technology when that is not the case. signs of a enlightened society are things more like refinement and expertise in simple things only the necessary things and the practice of moderation. but greed style can be really good at winning wars because it makes good weapons. you see in asia they devised great complex fighting techniques. in europe they made metal armor to protect the wealthy and fought battles by using large numbers of expendable peasants. and that's stil lwhat happens but the weapons get much better in the name of saving more peasants... there aren't really any europeen fighting styles appart for those devised for sport or with strict rules. like boxing or fencing. europe was greed asia was enlightened now we are all becoming greed but it won't last forever.

[Paralith]

I don't think I really agree with you about the greed/intelligence thing. The guiding force of any society is power. Money is one avenue to power, by buying your way there, essentially. I don't know that much about Chinese history, but just going off of what you said, think about it - who set up this system of the smart people working in government? The leaders at the time must have set up the examination system, and perhaps even over time a cultural belief in the importance of serving the government (/king/emperor/county, etc) - and those leaders drafted all the smart people to come work for them. Sounds like another good way to gain power - control all the intellectuals in the country for their own uses. But I think this is getting off topic, we should probably steer back.

[someguy]

to seek power for the sake of power is greed. to seek power in order to exploit those with less power is greed. to take power as it is your responsibility since you are best equipped to serve the public is somehow more respectable, more sweet, don't you think? it's different. you assume that man is naturally greedy for power and therefore any society must work towards getting power. but if you look at the the europeen kings who had huuuuge palaces full of gold and hats of expensive and sticks of expensive just to show off their wealth (not unlike kip hop today) and then you look at the asian ones, simple wood and paper, still large of course the whole government lived there. but they were more reserved and did not seek possession and consumption. power for the sake of using it for the people and power for the sake of using for yourself is different. near the end when the british came over to china and did things like getting them addicted to opium so that the Chinese would finally trade with them, a greedy concubine took power of the throne and this you can see clearly is how things happened in europe. usually people who seek power are the least deserving of it. the most deserving would do it out of duty. Plato wanted this, Jesus wanted this, regardless of whether or not there is a god, there was a jesus, and if there was no god he knew that for sure, and that means there must have been a reason for inventing god, and that reason would be to get people to live a healthy lifestyle, to make the world a better place. he did not do it for greed, not for power, for duty for people. religions were pretty muc hall this way they all promote moderation and avoiding greed. In asia the religions took hold at a good time and i think influenced the societies in a great way. the asians have a great community culture they are or at least were much safer, and they all have a great work ethic. and captialism is brand new to them. they had the work ethic first. for jesus capitalist style living was already strong money and greed already the driving force of society. he advertised living opposed to what the state wanted, since they had the money and power and wanted to keep it. they finally found him and killed him. and then constantinople change dthe religion slightly republished the bible and made christianity the law. then, the church and the state became the same thing and the church became the greedy entity it was originally designed to destroy. that's why asia and europe are different. religion.

[lucaspa]

That is not at all how I.Q. tests work. I.Q. tests don't have factual trivia type questions on them (not any that I've seen anyway). They test for problem solving ability and pattern recognition using shapes and numbers. I have heard people claim that standardized tests were culturally biased, but this is the first instance I have heard of people saying I.Q. tests were culturally biased.

 

Of course they are. For instance, the IQ tests on the web look for pattern recognition by saying France is to Europe as India is to ... and then give you choices, one of which is the continent "Asia". Guess what, that is culturally biased to a Western education system to give you the basic facts to recognize a pattern!

 

Another problem solving question involves figuring distances by saying "A car travels south for 15 minutes at 60 miles per hour ... " Guess what? You need basic math and the culture to solve that. A !Kung tribesman is that takes time from positions of the sun is not going to know that 15 minutes is 0.25 hours.

 

So if you are going to compare intelligence in populations from "geographically isolated" regions, that also means you have different cultures in those regions! Now, if you had an IQ test for !Kung and it asked you to solve a problem such as "village A is 12 goongs from you and it is noon, would you arrive in time for dinner?" you and I couldn't answer it correctly. For one thing, we don't know the distance of a "goong".

 

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?

 

Because (and the Bell Curve) have a distorted notion of what "every other heritable trait" is. Most traits are polygenic -- that is, they are the result of many genes. It is the combination of alleles that gives the trait. And, in a very important sense, intelligence does follow the path of every heritable trait: you have a broad bell-shaped curve for every population. Those curves overlap since all human populations can interbreed.

 

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.

 

BUT, until you can get a precise definition so that you can accurately measure the trait, the studies comparing different poplations simply can't be done. Your error in determining "intelligence" can make differences appear that don't exist. It's not like measuring height or body mass. The Bell Curve was written when such a definition -- and the corresponding measurements -- don't exist.

 

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.

 

The non-verbal tests still assume cultural equality. Even your description of it -- "Alfred Hitchcock-like" -- assumes that we share a culture so that we know what that phrase means! Not all cultures have the same non-verbal cues or responses.

 

But in at least some Asian countries it was different and i feel that because of that as a whole some of the asian countries are smarter than we are but not all of them because still some of them were farmers and stuff.

 

Farmers aren't intelligent? You ever try to be a successful farmer?

 

This illustrates how different people define "intelligent". You look at technology and occupation. Are you seriously going to tell us that our hunter-gatherer ancestors weren't as smart as we are? Or that Washington and Jefferson were not intelligent because they were "farmers"?

[someguy]

 

 

 

Farmers aren't intelligent? You ever try to be a successful farmer?

 

This illustrates how different people define "intelligent". You look at technology and occupation. Are you seriously going to tell us that our hunter-gatherer ancestors weren't as smart as we are? Or that Washington and Jefferson were not intelligent because they were "farmers"?

 

intelligence and knowledge are not the same. and yes i don't consider farmers to be intelligent in the way i am speaking. it's all relative of course. all humans are smarter than the majority of animals. but in the way i meant the large majority of human beings would not be intelligent. only a small minority would be. the ones responsible for all of our knowledge. if you think about it, were it not for others and language and books sharing the knowledge from generation to generation how much really would we know? pretty much nothing. just inventing language was a huge leap. look at plato and socrates and stuff they were some smart dudes but look how little they knew. now think of how little everyone else knew. and language had been around for a while already by then, and they had a fair amount of know-how in construction and stuff like that. most of the people i would deem to be intelligent of the caliber i was referring to are people to which pretty much every body knows their names for precisely the reason that they brought knowledge to our specie.

 

I don't care what your job is i don't care about technology. i don't judge value by looking at the price tag. but you don't need to be smart to be a farmer. In China the smartest people worked for the government and the others did manual labour.

 

our hunter gatherer ancestors were just as not smart as we are.

 

from what i know about washington he didn't need to be smart. but i don't know much about him so i could be wrong but jefferson was pretty smart. if he lived in China at the time he wouldn't have been a farmer, i would guess he would have worked for a provincial government, or maybe a teacher, teachers were really valued too but i think they may have been of the lowest of government but i'm not sure exactly where teachers fit in. wealth was not prestigious, only knowledge was.

 

I would define 3 sections of intelligence, but with varying degrees between them. so, it would be a smooth progression between each section with some nice gray areas but still 3 separate sections. the first would be incapable of comprehension like most animals and insects and stuff. next would be comprehension, and next would be invention. when i said intelligent i meant invention. so you're right i used an ambiguous word and i should have defined it better.

[Paralith]

to seek power for the sake of power is greed. to seek power in order to exploit those with less power is greed. to take power as it is your responsibility since you are best equipped to serve the public is somehow more respectable, more sweet, don't you think? it's different. you assume that man is naturally greedy for power and therefore any society must work towards getting power.

 

It does sound awful harsh when you say it that way, but yes, in a manner of speaking I do consider humans in general to be naturally "greedy for power." Because in the days of our evolution, the most powerful individual, the one with the highest social status in the group, was the most desirable mate, and enjoyed reproductive success. In modern days power translates into many different things - social influence, amount of resources, etc. But we do have a genetic predisposition to seek some sort of dominant position in our social group. Notice I say predisposition, not a determinant - some people are more driven in this manner than others, and the manifestation of this drive can vary and change. (In fact, it's my personal feeling that this constant complex social challenge might be a continuing selective force that favors the maintenance of a certain degree of intelligence for most people. Just a thought, though.)

 

The nice thing about being human, though, is that you can choose to go against your behavioral predispositions, or still use them but assign a different meaning to them during your lifetime. I never said that anyone who seeks power must necessarily be doing it for greedy purposes, but there is always an element of selfishness involved. Yes, you may be seeking it because you wish only the best for the people you intend to govern - but what makes you think you're really the best person for the job? I disagree that farmers are necessarily not as smart as people working in government. What they have is a different knowledge set - I'm sure farmers know a lot more about their plants and animals than your average government flunkie ever will. But then your government flunkie will probably have a more detailed understanding of politics and the various systems of government. That doesn't mean that the intellectual mechanisms behind these different sets of knowledge are themselves inferior or superior. They can be, but not necessarily.

 

I also think it's a little unfair that you assign all the greediness in the world to Westerners. Asian rulers also had palaces and gold and lived at much higher standards than the commoners that they ruled. They fought wars and attempted to conquer each other. And on the flipside, even during the dark ages in Europe, a king or lord's job was to protect his realm and the people in it from attackers and marauders, the likes of which were common during those times. I'm sure some of them were greedy gold hoarders, but I'm sure some Asian rulers were also this way. And both regions have their share of benevolent rulers.

[SkepticLance]

Paralith said :

 

I also think it's a little unfair that you assign all the greediness in the world to Westerners.

 

I totally agree. You don't even have to look at history. Think of today's leaders. Robert Mugabe has to be one of the most evil individuals on the planet. Mao Zhe Dong lived in luxury while his subjects died of starvation. Ditto for Kim "the dear leader" in North Korea. Idi Amin in Uganda. The military junta in Myanmar, and lots more cases.

[lucaspa]

intelligence and knowledge are not the same. and yes i don't consider farmers to be intelligent in the way i am speaking. ...most of the people i would deem to be intelligent of the caliber i was referring to are people to which pretty much every body knows their names for precisely the reason that they brought knowledge to our specie.... In China the smartest people worked for the government and the others did manual labour.

 

How do you know in China all the intelligent people worked for the government? You are confusing social status with intelligence. And you are ignoring that Mao, in the Cultural Revolution, sent a lot of intelligente people to the farms!

 

our hunter gatherer ancestors were just as not smart as we are.

 

You contradicted this when you said:

intelligence and knowledge are not the same. ... if you think about it, were it not for others and language and books sharing the knowledge from generation to generation how much really would we know? pretty much nothing. just inventing language was a huge leap. look at plato and socrates and stuff they were some smart dudes but look how little they knew. now think of how little everyone else knew.

 

First you say intelligence and knowledge are not the same, but then you equate the 2. You have no reason to say our hunter-gatherer ancestors were not as smart as we are UNLESS you say they don't know as much as we do. Otherwise, they are just as smart. After all, who invented language? Our hunter-gatherer ancestors!

 

from what i know about washington he didn't need to be smart. but i don't know much about him so i could be wrong but jefferson was pretty smart. if he lived in China at the time he wouldn't have been a farmer, i would guess he would have worked for a provincial government, or maybe a teacher, teachers were really valued too but i think they may have been of the lowest of government but i'm not sure exactly where teachers fit in. wealth was not prestigious, only knowledge was.

 

Washington was very smart. It needed a smart person to 1) figure out a strategy to defeat the British and 2) find improvisations to keep his army fed and supplied. Again, you are confusing intelligence with occupation. Getting into a particular occupation does not equal intelligence. After all, you say "teachers were really valued". That means that people would try to get their relatives into teaching -- no matter how intelligent they were.

 

so, it would be a smooth progression between each section with some nice gray areas but still 3 separate sections. the first would be incapable of comprehension like most animals and insects and stuff. next would be comprehension, and next would be invention. when i said intelligent i meant invention. so you're right i used an ambiguous word and i should have defined it better.

 

However, animals have invented. I remember looking at documentaries showing how macaques invented new ways to separate sand and grain. One genious female macaque took the mixture the the shore and dropped it into the water. Sand sank, the kernels of grain floated! The other macaques were intelligent enough to copy the invention. So now you have overlap of intelligence based on your between humans and animals and you have lost your "smooth progression". After all, there are lots of things macaques cannot comprehend -- such as language -- but they invent.

 

It's not that you used an "ambiguous" word, but rather that "intelligence" itself is ambiguous. Back to the OP. Which of your 3 sections is tested by standardized tests, including IQ? Or are all 3 tested?

 

Interestingly, you say teachers in China were the most intelligent. But they didn't invent, did they? How would that compare to a farmer that invented a new way to plow his/her field? By your 3 sections, the farmer would be more intelligent than the teacher.

[hatsoff]

Because (and the Bell Curve) have a distorted notion of what "every other heritable trait" is. Most traits are polygenic -- that is, they are the result of many genes. It is the combination of alleles that gives the trait. And, in a very important sense, intelligence does follow the path of every heritable trait: you have a broad bell-shaped curve for every population. Those curves overlap since all human populations can interbreed.

 

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.

 

intelligence and knowledge are not the same. and yes i don't consider farmers to be intelligent in the way i am speaking. it's all relative of course. all humans are smarter than the majority of animals. but in the way i meant the large majority of human beings would not be intelligent. only a small minority would be. the ones responsible for all of our knowledge. if you think about it, were it not for others and language and books sharing the knowledge from generation to generation how much really would we know? pretty much nothing. just inventing language was a huge leap. look at plato and socrates and stuff they were some smart dudes but look how little they knew. now think of how little everyone else knew. and language had been around for a while already by then, and they had a fair amount of know-how in construction and stuff like that. most of the people i would deem to be intelligent of the caliber i was referring to are people to which pretty much every body knows their names for precisely the reason that they brought knowledge to our specie.

 

I don't care what your job is i don't care about technology. i don't judge value by looking at the price tag. but you don't need to be smart to be a farmer. In China the smartest people worked for the government and the others did manual labour.

 

our hunter gatherer ancestors were just as not smart as we are.

 

from what i know about washington he didn't need to be smart. but i don't know much about him so i could be wrong but jefferson was pretty smart. if he lived in China at the time he wouldn't have been a farmer, i would guess he would have worked for a provincial government, or maybe a teacher, teachers were really valued too but i think they may have been of the lowest of government but i'm not sure exactly where teachers fit in. wealth was not prestigious, only knowledge was.

 

I would define 3 sections of intelligence, but with varying degrees between them. so, it would be a smooth progression between each section with some nice gray areas but still 3 separate sections. the first would be incapable of comprehension like most animals and insects and stuff. next would be comprehension, and next would be invention. when i said intelligent i meant invention. so you're right i used an ambiguous word and i should have defined it better.

 

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.

[CDarwin]

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.

 

That is true. Washington and Jefferson weren't out hoeing the fields are anything. They were 'planters', not 'farmers' in the sense we would think of.

[foodchain]

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.

 

Well, the bell test is primitive, at least that’s my opinion. For instance, look at the chemistry of life, understanding that would probably evolve the entire field of chemistry, but we fully are not at that point yet. Another angle is that the bell test probably shares in a primitive nature with such tests in general.

 

The majority of this thread is basically attempting to gauge a not to well defined concept, such as intelligence, but the tests are created by what and operate though what to what. Basically organisms, which have as you are looking for a nature and a nurture, or hardware and software as I like to think about it. Like if I was to issue you an I.Q test in Japanese, and use concepts from a culture completely alien to you(not Japanese but in Japanese). The other concept basically is then an I.Q test is trying to qualify aspects of biology of an organism for heritable traits that apply, well that’s a vast concept. Typically I have a great memory for music, better then other things I would say, is that environmental or heritable? What if some people have a great working memory for colors, or what would appear to be a natural aptitude for such? How about pattern recognition?

 

Some people are born with conditions that allow them to remember perfectly entire phonebooks on recall, but yet these same people cant muster the mental or cognitive ability to brush there own teeth, which is not physical in a sense of muscles, but mentally they cannot complete such a task, yet they can recite entire phonebooks they read years ago.

 

I think more or less the question quickly reduces to a point ignorance, or really lack of understanding say humans for instance, or life in general. The bottom line to me is to try to understand the question you posed in some objective framework would basically mean experimentations overall on the human genome over diverse populations, on that note though you can see the impact of such in say people born with handicaps.

[pioneer]

I define intelligence as things computer can't do, since intelligent computer do not yet exist. My calculator can add faster than me, so at that level is it more intelligent? Adding is very useful, to be able to do in one's head, but it is a skill. The calculator is more skilled at adding, but not more intelligent since intelligent computer don't exist. I can memorize things, but my computer can do it faster and better. That too is a skill, with the computer more skillful that I am. One can do research and bring together all types of data and ideas to create new relationships. The computer is a faithful dog that can fetch the frisbe for you. But this is an area where the computer will get its butt whipped. That is intelligence and not skill since the computer is good at skills but lacks intelligence.

 

Being able to dance like a prima ballerina takes intelligence. It is not analytical intelligence, but I would challenge the best robot to do better. How about a work of art that can anticipate the future or stir the soul. Computers can generate art but not this type, which takes intelligence.

 

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