bering strait Posted June 11, 2016 Posted June 11, 2016 (edited) Mikemikev needs to explain why Sierra Leone and several other Sub-Saharan African countries have higher national IQ's than some European countries (e.g. Albania, Serbia). There is no global IQ pattern. You conspicuously didn't post a LINK for that [Cherry Picked] information lest it betray there IS a pattern. (and with such activist/Demanding-LINK moderation too! This really betrays an Agenda.) LINK? Let me help. Sierra Leone (Liberia too), is a country in good part made up of interbred and returned slaves (See Wiki for Both) does indeed have a higher IQ, 91, but is the EXCEPTION not the rule. https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country/sl-sierra-leone You'll note YOUR number and the more typical/fair read of/IS the Global pattern of sub-Saharan 70, ±5 pts is, actually all from the same source, Richard Lynn: the world's foremost expert on Race and IQ, later the less 'racial' ... IQ and the Wealth of Nations. But... you can call me Ray, and you can call me Jay... It all comes out the same/the truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/National_IQ_per_country_-_estimates_by_Lynn_and_Vanhanen_2006.png ! Edited June 11, 2016 by bering strait
StringJunky Posted June 11, 2016 Posted June 11, 2016 (edited) You'll note the Global pattern of sub-Saharan 70, ±5 pts IS, actually all from the same source, Richard Lynn: the world's foremost expert on Race and IQ, later the less 'racial' ... IQ of Nations. A PhD in psychology qualifies him to authoritatively pontificate on a matter of genetics, does it? Edited June 11, 2016 by StringJunky
MonDie Posted June 11, 2016 Posted June 11, 2016 Assuming Bering Strait is not a puppet, I'll point out that Madagascar and the few nearby islands do not fit the pattern despite being right off the east coast and being populated with what look like Africans.
bering strait Posted June 11, 2016 Posted June 11, 2016 (edited) Assuming Bering Strait is not a puppet, I'll point out that Madagascar and the few nearby islands do not fit the pattern despite being right off the east coast and being populated with what look like Africans. How disingenuous. A "pattern" does note mean every single country Near sub-Saharan Africa has the same low IQ. Of course, "Islands", less cemented to a base population, and more open to genetic inflow/trade/etc, might be a Small bit different... and of course, just one color/shade diffrerent, does Not ruin the "Pattern"! If they were Blue or Purple, THAT would be interesting/not fit. I already addressed Sierra Leone to No rebuttral. And pointed out the numbers being used by my Opponent (conspicuously Unlinked no less) as attempted rebuttal, were those of Richard Lynn, who I agree with. Thanks to yet another poster who acknowledges those numbers as part of his really weak attempt at same.. and which do NOT break the pattern. Edited June 11, 2016 by bering strait
MonDie Posted June 11, 2016 Posted June 11, 2016 (edited) The people of Madagascar still look "black" to me, whatever their true ancestry is. Anyway, your map does not reflect the higher IQ of Sierra Leone for some reason. Edited June 11, 2016 by MonDie
EgalitarianJay Posted June 11, 2016 Author Posted June 11, 2016 A consistent pattern means the same races show roughly the same IQ wherever they are, it doesn't mean major races are homogeneous within. Nobody thinks this and it is a strawman. Native Americans are a low density race which probably evolved less over the last 20000 years. That's more plausible than your "no change" or "same evolution" hypothesis, which is more to do with emotions and politics than data. That's nothing more than a just-so story and no if so-called races show major variation between populations then there is no consistent pattern. For example if Southeast Asians and Northeast Asians are the same race then you can't say there is a consistent pattern of East Asian > Europeans if Southeast Asians have even lower IQs than a lot of European countries. The only way you can rationalize this is if you claim that Northeast Asians and Southeast Asians aren't really the same race and differ in IQ because of racial differences. If you do this I would have to ask you what the scientific basis for your racial classification scheme is. I have made many arguments against the consistent pattern claim. As far as Native Americans are concerned you need to explain how having a low density populations would affect their IQs. If the Cold Winter evolutionary theory is correct then they would have lived under the same selection regime as the ancestors of Northeast Asians and have evolved a similar level of intelligence. How is the evolution of intelligence and brain size affected by having a low density population? In reality it is actually the racialist theory that is motivated by an emotional desire to advance an ideological agenda in order to pursue a political goal. White Nationalists for example absolutely need there to be racial differences in mental traits in order to justify their racist ideology. The idea that Egalitarians such as me need there to be racial equality in mental characteristics in order to justify Egalitarianism is morally absurd. Even if your racist views of human nature were correct I would still be an Egalitarian because I believe in equality regardless of differences. For instance I believe that the mentally handicapped and disabled should be treated fairly even though I believe their mental affliction is genetically determined to a substantial degree. If your racial theories turned out to be true I would not advocate racial separatism, sterilization, genocide or think less of myself for not belonging to the smartest or most well-behaved race. The position that all human populations share the same general variance in mental characteristics such as intelligence and personality because of a shared evolutionary history that resulted in genes for these traits being represented equally in each population is scientifically sound. Your theory is based on pseudoscience. A PhD in psychology qualifies him to authoritatively pontificate on a matter of genetics, does it? You are right to express skepticism at the idea that Richard Lynn is somehow the foremost expert on "Race & IQ" which isn't a scientific discipline. Richard Lynn has done more work on documenting national IQ averages than any scholar that I know of however he is far from the foremost authority on this subject and his theories are regarded as fringe and discredited in the scientific community as is Scientific Racism in general. For example the American Psychological Association published a statement denouncing theories of racial differences in intelligence while acknowledging that there were things we don't know about intelligence and the relationship between the variance in IQ between demographic groups and nations that are said to represent racial distributions in intelligence. That statement was published in 1996. A more recent article in 2012 published by Richard Nisbett and his co-authors further concluded that racial differences in IQ do not have a genetic basis. The American Anthropological Association denounced the concept of race altogether and stated that Scientific Racism did not represent Anthropology. There have been many scholars in the fields of biology, genetics, anthropology and psychology that oppose the work of Lynn, Rushton, Jensen, Gottfredson and others who have advanced the idea that human races differ considerably in mental characteristics for genetic reasons and that there is a racial hierarchy in these mental characteristics. There is a reason why this research is not taught in academia. Racism is simply not scientific.
Strange Posted June 11, 2016 Posted June 11, 2016 The people of Madagascar still look "black" to me, whatever their true ancestry is. Although, linguistically, they are Austronesian they are largely African by ancestry/genetics (with a small South East Asian component).
MEC1960 Posted June 12, 2016 Posted June 12, 2016 Again, in terms of biology the concept of human races is of little value. Much better to speak of populations as defined by biologists; discrete largely (that is.. not exclusively) interbreeding groups. That is because the many traits we associate with "race"; skin, hair and eye color, facial and morphological characteristics, disease resistance/risk groups, etc, exist in our species on continuums that don't allow for discrete categorization. Genes, however, are discrete units of heredity and thus it is populations of people that ought to be compared, not races. In these terms there may well be differences in cognitive abilities between populations in as much as intelligence is party due to genetics. However, unlike skin or eye color, our intelligence is not a direct result of gene expression. It is an emergent property of a complex interaction between our genes, our development and the environment in which we live. It isn't controlled solely by our genes. This is why IQ comparisons across political borders (comparing one country to another) doesn't say much about about the underlying IQ of the people in those studies. They may instead reflect differences in non-genetic influences. These are extremely difficult to untangle (the techies know this as an "NP Hard" problem). I don't think those arguing here for racial differences mean that any particular member of one racial group is more intelligent than any particular member of another, just that on average there is a difference. Biologically that is an unsupported claim because in humans racial groups have little useful biological meaning. If however the word "racial" is replaced with "population" then, although there is scant evidence of any such differences, there is at least a reasonable scientific path forward to test it. One must first define the populations to be tested, however and therein is a much bigger problem. What suite of gene expression traits impact intelligence and how do those change over time? We are very far from understanding that. In the end - I believe there is no biological support for the usefulness of race in questions of human intelligence. 2
Dlouro Posted July 19, 2016 Posted July 19, 2016 Here is the best video against racism . Thank you Disney Humans, regardless of the "race" are beautiful. About those discussions about I.Q. did they ask the right questions ? How they measured it ? As a portuguese what I know about living in the desert or in Amazonia ? How can I and all of you survive there. It means we have a zero I.Q. when the tests ask questions about their way of living. When I was in the States I didn't understood tipping and baseball .
bering strait Posted July 25, 2016 Posted July 25, 2016 (edited) EGjay: That's nothing more than a just-so story and no if so-called races show major variation between populations then there is no consistent pattern. There is 100 YEARS of "consistent Pattern." :^) EGjay: For example if Southeast Asians and Northeast Asians are the same race then you can't say there is a consistent pattern of East Asian > Europeans if Southeast Asians have even lower IQs than a lot of European countries. Except that also is NOT true. Just because Races/subspecies can be further divided/grouped, doesn't mean Anyone claims they are "the same." Aforementioned Lynn ALWAYS separated the two (or 3 or 4!) in his Race/IQ studies. A Chart from his book: Race Differences in Intelligence (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Race ------------------------------------- Mean I.Q -- Mean brain size (cc) East-Asians (China, Taïwan, Japan, Korea) 105 --------- 1416 Europeans -----------------------------------100 ----------1369 South-East Asians ----------------------------90 ----------1332 Pacific Islanders ------------------------------85---- ------1317 South Asians and North africans-------------84 ---------- 1293 Africans----------------------------------------67 ----------1282 Australian aborigines ------------------------ 62 ----------1225 (tho I see they've taken the nasty chart out, just as PC Wiki has obliterated the many charts from it's general Race/IQ page So seen here. It was derived from chart 16.2 in the book, which includes other info as well as Brain size. https://pumpkinperson.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/photo-3-e1419180314970.jpg ) EGjay: You are right to express skepticism at the idea that Richard Lynn is somehow the foremost expert on "Race & IQ" which isn't a scientific discipline. Richard Lynn has done more work on documenting national IQ averages than any scholar that I know of however he is far from the foremost authority on this subject and his theories are regarded as fringe and discredited in the scientific community as is Scientific Racism in general. For example the American Psychological Association published a statement denouncing theories of racial differences in intelligence while acknowledging that there were things we don't know about intelligence and the relationship between the variance in IQ between demographic groups and nations that are said to represent racial distributions in intelligence. ... You are welcome to use Jensen or Rushton if you like.. and then Bash them.. too. For anyone who studies, and mentions this topic in all but denialist terms, is Smeared with the usual non-scientific PC nonsense. The 1996 APA statement not only acknowledged there WAS a difference (oops EGjay!), but said it Could NOT be accounted for by socio-economic factors. Leaving Genes about the only answer.. but they didn't/couldn't say that. More on Expertise: http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence .......... Opinion of experts in 1987 The 1987 "Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence and Aptitude Testing" was published in American Psychologist (the official journal of the American Psychological Association). It surveyed 1020 IQ experts 661 of which completed the questionnaire. One question was "Which of the following best characterizes your opinion of the heritability of black-white differences in IQ?"[7] 14% declined to answer the question. 24% voted that there was insufficient evidence to give an answer. 1% voted that the gap was "due entirely to genetic variation". 15% voted that it "due entirely to environmental variation". 45% voted that it was a "product of genetic and environmental variation".[7] The survey formed one part of the 1988 book The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy which argued that the public was misled regarding the expert opinion on the issue.[8] Opinion of experts in 2013 In 2013 a similar survey was presented. Researchers were invited to participate only if they had recent intelligence-related publications in peer-reviewed journals. Invitations were emailed to 1237 persons and at the end 228 (18%) completed the process (70 fully and 158 partially). As far as the authors could make it out, “lefties” and “righties” turned down the offer in equal numbers.[28] Asked: What is the influence of average cognitive ability level and highly cognitive competent persons on positive development of society, the economy, technology, democracy and culture? All of the results were above the mid point, suggesting agreement about a positive relationship between high intelligence and social progress.[28] Asked: What are the sources of U.S. black-white differences in IQ? 0% of differences due to genes: 17% 0-40% of differences due to genes: 42% 50% of differences due to genes: 18% 60-100% of differences due to genes: 39% 100% of differences due to genes: 5% On average for all experts, 47% of the difference was due to genes (SD=31%).[28] Perhaps only restrained frrom being Much Higher Genetically by PC. And of course, IQ is 75% Heritable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#Estimates So it would be quite illogical if it wasn't highly so among groups as well. WOW. The format here is the most 'eccentric' I've ever seen, and I've see a few hundred. Terrible. Forgive this post. I tried to edit: bold, and 'EGjay' it, to make it clearer Edited July 25, 2016 by bering strait -2
nimae Posted October 20, 2016 Posted October 20, 2016 In Africa you become successful if your father is successful, And or if you have bigger guns. Not exactly the best environment to force people to use their brains. And people don't use their brains unless they have to.
Delta1212 Posted October 20, 2016 Posted October 20, 2016 I would think navigating a complex and volatile political environment where access to food is often inconsistent and personal survival is frequently at risk would force people to use their brains quite a bit more than plopping on the couch with Netflix every night. Just saying. 2
meLothedestroyerofworlds Posted October 21, 2016 Posted October 21, 2016 (edited) Of course they do. This has been validated by numerous studies. That's nothing more than a just-so story and no if so-called races show major variation between populations then there is no consistent pattern. For example if Southeast Asians and Northeast Asians are the same race then you can't say there is a consistent pattern of East Asian > Europeans if Southeast Asians have even lower IQs than a lot of European countries. The only way you can rationalize this is if you claim that Northeast Asians and Southeast Asians aren't really the same race and differ in IQ because of racial differences. If you do this I would have to ask you what the scientific basis for your racial classification scheme is. I have made many arguments against the consistent pattern claim. As far as Native Americans are concerned you need to explain how having a low density populations would affect their IQs. If the Cold Winter evolutionary theory is correct then they would have lived under the same selection regime as the ancestors of Northeast Asians and have evolved a similar level of intelligence. How is the evolution of intelligence and brain size affected by having a low density population? Race is a semantics game, it doesn't matter how you define it, the pattern still exists between populations. North east asians are not the same as southeast asians. South east asians are a mix between mongoloid and australoid while north east asians are almost purely mongoloid. The only just so story here is the cold winter theory, it's not so much the cold weather that selects for higher levels of g its that climate change in general does. In reality it is actually the racialist theory that is motivated by an emotional desire to advance an ideological agenda in order to pursue a political goal. White Nationalists for example absolutely need there to be racial differences in mental traits in order to justify their racist ideology. The idea that Egalitarians such as me need there to be racial equality in mental characteristics in order to justify Egalitarianism is morally absurd. Even if your racist views of human nature were correct I would still be an Egalitarian because I believe in equality regardless of differences. For instance I believe that the mentally handicapped and disabled should be treated fairly even though I believe their mental affliction is genetically determined to a substantial degree. If your racial theories turned out to be true I would not advocate racial separatism, sterilization, genocide or think less of myself for not belonging to the smartest or most well-behaved race. The position that all human populations share the same general variance in mental characteristics such as intelligence and personality because of a shared evolutionary history that resulted in genes for these traits being represented equally in each population is scientifically sound. Your theory is based on pseudoscience. No, the theory is not motivated by political agenda, it's proponents are. You assume that because me and the other fellow believe in intrinsic mental differences between "races" that that means we have some kind of sense of superiority, or that we are using this data to back right wing extremism. I am NOT a white nationalist, I am even mixed race myself, and trust me I am appalled at some of my peers who use this scientifically sound data to back their racist conclusions. Some of these theories are completely bullshit like r/k selection theory or cold winter theory. But the fact that there are cognitive discrepancies between differing ethnic groups(that is at least somewhat genetic) is not bullshit and is empirically verifiable. You are right to express skepticism at the idea that Richard Lynn is somehow the foremost expert on "Race & IQ" which isn't a scientific discipline. Richard Lynn has done more work on documenting national IQ averages than any scholar that I know of however he is far from the foremost authority on this subject and his theories are regarded as fringe and discredited in the scientific community as is Scientific Racism in general. For example the American Psychological Association published a statement denouncing theories of racial differences in intelligence while acknowledging that there were things we don't know about intelligence and the relationship between the variance in IQ between demographic groups and nations that are said to represent racial distributions in intelligence. That statement was published in 1996. A more recent article in 2012 published by Richard Nisbett and his co-authors further concluded that racial differences in IQ do not have a genetic basis. The American Anthropological Association denounced the concept of race altogether and stated that Scientific Racism did not represent Anthropology. There have been many scholars in the fields of biology, genetics, anthropology and psychology that oppose the work of Lynn, Rushton, Jensen, Gottfredson and others who have advanced the idea that human races differ considerably in mental characteristics for genetic reasons and that there is a racial hierarchy in these mental characteristics. There is a reason why this research is not taught in academia. Racism is simply not scientific. HBD is the new anthropology. If hitler said 2+ 2= 4 is he wrong because he's hitler? Of course not! And that's all bullshit I could give a shit less what the scientific consensus is, if it's wrong it's wrong, The gap between black and white IQ scores has remained constant over the century and in some areas has even increased. Evolution is real, our brain has been evolving for millions of years so that implies there is a genetic component. Hell genes for myopia is concentrated more in east asian populations and is shown to effect IQ levels. It's not taught because people on both sides are too stupid to set aside their emotional/illogical reasoning. White nationalists are just as bad as blank slatists.EDIT: funny how I am getting downvoted but no one will actually provide a rebuttal for my claims. Edited October 21, 2016 by meLothedestroyerofworlds -2
sethoflagos Posted October 21, 2016 Posted October 21, 2016 What a depressing thread. And one that a board dedicated to science should be ashamed of. Because there is no science here. Just the recycling of political dogma that has poisoned the intelligence of one particular race of humanity for centuries. -2
Over 9000 Posted October 21, 2016 Posted October 21, 2016 (edited) Again, in terms of biology the concept of human races is of little value. Much better to speak of populations as defined by biologists; discrete largely (that is.. not exclusively) interbreeding groups. A race is a type of population defined by shared ancestry or genetic similarity. An "interbreeding group" could be anything from a state to a multi-racial hippy commune. This is not what your opponents are talking about. Why do you pretend that taxa defined by ancestry are "in terms of biology...of little value"? They are fundamental to biology. That is because the many traits we associate with "race"; skin, hair and eye color, facial and morphological characteristics, disease resistance/risk groups, etc, exist in our species on continuums that don't allow for discrete categorization. We can divide continua discretely. Genes, however, are discrete units of heredity and thus it is populations of people that ought to be compared, not races. This makes no sense because A) we define or infer race by many or all genes simultaeneously. B) "population instead of race" still doesn't capture your strawman "single discrete gene" defintion. Real bad non-sequitur upon strawman sentence. In these terms there may well be differences in cognitive abilities between populations in as much as intelligence is party due to genetics. However, unlike skin or eye color, our intelligence is not a direct result of gene expression. It is an emergent property of a complex interaction between our genes, our development and the environment in which we live. It isn't controlled solely by our genes. This is why IQ comparisons across political borders (comparing one country to another) doesn't say much about about the underlying IQ of the people in those studies. They may instead reflect differences in non-genetic influences. These are extremely difficult to untangle (the techies know this as an "NP Hard" problem). In my opinion a consistent race/IQ correlation across national borders strongly suggests genetic causes. Especially combined with an IQ heritability (differences caused by genes) of 75% within races. Height is also developmentally complex, is it also impossible to estimate heritability for height? You are looking at a consistent pattern and saying it could be something else. That isn't parsimony, it isn't science. It's wishful thinking. Have to give you some Science Points for inaccurately and irrelevantly referencing "NP Hard" though. Sounds clever. I don't think those arguing here for racial differences mean that any particular member of one racial group is more intelligent than any particular member of another, just that on average there is a difference. Biologically that is an unsupported claim because in humans racial groups have little useful biological meaning. If however the word "racial" is replaced with "population" then, although there is scant evidence of any such differences, there is at least a reasonable scientific path forward to test it. One must first define the populations to be tested, however and therein is a much bigger problem. What suite of gene expression traits impact intelligence and how do those change over time? We are very far from understanding that. No, replacing the word "racial" with "population" is just a completely pointless distraction. The races in question are defined by ancestry or genetic similarity. How can you criticise your opponents terms if you don't even know how they are defined? Unless this is an intentional strawman argument. You seem to have a problem with heritability estimates. Again, we don't need to know the developmental pathway of height, and we don't, to make a good heritability estimate. In the end - I believe there is no biological support for the usefulness of race in questions of human intelligence. Yes, we got that. And your attempt to back up that pre-conceived conclusion with scientific rationalisation was poor, but entirely typical. --- Rushton and Jensen and Lynn are correct in saying that the 100% environmental hypothesis cannot be maintained. Nisbett's extreme statement has virtually no chance of being true. Human Intelligence, Earl Hunt Edited October 21, 2016 by Over 9000 -1
MonDie Posted October 21, 2016 Posted October 21, 2016 (edited) No, the theory is not motivated by political agenda, it's proponents are. You assume that because me and the other fellow believe in intrinsic mental differences between "races" that that means we have some kind of sense of superiority, or that we are using this data to back right wing extremism. I am NOT a white nationalist, I am even mixed race myself, and trust me I am appalled at some of my peers who use this scientifically sound data to back their racist conclusions. Some of these theories are completely bullshit like r/k selection theory or cold winter theory. But the fact that there are cognitive discrepancies between differing ethnic groups(that is at least somewhat genetic) is not bullshit and is empirically verifiable. I would really like to see the evidence that the IQ gap has not changed... That flies in the face of the adoption studies and could actually mean that we aren't fighting racism well enough. This is my personal speculation, but I think it would be better to have it said. Of course IQ and other forms of intelligence have genetic contributions. Any twin study would tell us this. Furthermore, there are probably some contributing genetics that will incidentally vary between ethnic groups. How negligible the difference is I do not know, but many genetic contributions are actually mediated by environmental variables — this is the gene-times-environment paradigm. The genetically average African/Asian/Caucasian probably would have succeeded in the environment they were adapted to, leading to healthier development and better cognitive function thereby. This wouldn't matter anymore, however, because the Savanna principle describes the new state of affairs: technology is changing our environment so rapidly that our inherited traits and instincts have stopped serving our survival how they used to. The conflict: Is intelligence selected for in some environments more than others, or is intelligence an emergent feature of overall fitness to the environment? Edited October 21, 2016 by MonDie
CharonY Posted October 22, 2016 Posted October 22, 2016 We can divide continua discretely. And thus arbitrarily. This makes no sense because A) we define or infer race by many or all genes simultaeneously. B) "population instead of race" still doesn't capture your strawman "single discrete gene" defintion. Real bad non-sequitur upon strawman sentence. If we did we would not be able to define race, at least not in the way you seem to use it it. As it has been repeatedly discussed, the variation within groups shows can shower higher diversity than between groups. And as far as population studies go, the diversity of e.g. African populations as a whole are more diverse than populations outside (in accordance with migration patterns). Instead, for tracing ancestry you actually have to use only specific set of alleles that show the difference that you need to do the categorization in the first place. It has been argued to death here, but first of all, the general categorizes often used to define races in common usage based on skin color can be rejected almost immediately as they poorly reflect ancestry. The ancestry of a black person in the US is unlikely to share many similarities with a black person in France, or Brazil, for example. Santos et al. (2009) have shown for example, that in Brazil self-declared whites can share more African ancestry than some self-declared black people in the US. The second issue is whether genetic markers can trace ancestry. In principle, this is a given. And in fact some very useful markers can be use to trace regional ancestry. However, mapping out a tree in order to create clear categories is difficult and the more markers you add, the less distinct it becomes (i.e. the opposite as to what you claim happens). Going back to actual biological usage, categories below the species level (ignoring issues with species concepts for the moment) are typically only useful, and therefore used, if they delineate some kind of differences in gene flow that are relevant to a question under investigation. Such boundaries can include e.g. geographic separation. So, in other words, a race as a different concept as population only makes sense, if a categorization of a race explains a significant chunk of the variance in a population. Obviously the more fine-grained you get, the more variance can be explained theoretically, but then the categories become less useful. Now is a good point to add that categories as these are not biological. They are artificial and are only used if they can be helpful in explaining biological phenomena. And I fear, this is the part that many people get wrong as many use the inverse logic. As the example above shows, skin colour is not great in identifying ancestry. It may work in some areas (e.g. US) and fail in others, making it not only not biological, but also useless as an indicator of ancestry. So let us turn to some quantitative means using molecular information. As I mentioned, you could cherry-pick markers that conform with certain aspects of interest. But what if we need to define groups, how can we do that? As I said before, a category such as race would only be used if they can explain a significant portion of variance. So what is the threshold to designate races? It is convention in these types of study to differentiate between races if 25% or more of the genetic variability that they share is found as between population differences. As you can see by the nice round number, it is an arbitrary and useful convention. Armed with that knowledge we can now got back at human data (see various papers by Alan Templeton, who also used data from the famous Rosenberg et al. 2002 paper that sometimes is mentioned). Now, doing a variance analysis it was found that over 90% of the genetic variation is found among individuals within a sampled population. While it is generally expected that this variations has the highest contribution it also means that the remaining variance is far too low to allow a demarcation between races (which was ~ 4%). In other words, in human populations we have significant gene flow that prevents us to define decent race boundaries that capture sufficient genetic variance to be useful. I.e. to hit the 25% threshold one would have to create hundreds (maybe more) populations in order to be able to form groups in which the variance between groups is 25% or more, if it is possible at all. This all means that in contrast to many other species our gene flow is so significant that we may be able to identify isolated populations, but we will have trouble to come up with any useful race level categorization that make objective sense. As usual, found typos are yours to keep.
nimae Posted October 22, 2016 Posted October 22, 2016 I would think navigating a complex and volatile political environment where access to food is often inconsistent and personal survival is frequently at risk would force people to use their brains quite a bit more than plopping on the couch with Netflix every night. Just saying. On the individual level you're right, However when time and different levels of social grouping are taken into account, Things change. I can assure you the average 6 year old Cameroonian boy is more intelligent than almost any Westerner when it comes to individual short term goals. However when you go long term and add different social groupings, You can see how the individual survival would take from social and long term intelligence. Long term thinking wouldn't work in Africa, Social thinking wouldn't also work much in Africa because you're on your own.
Over 9000 Posted October 22, 2016 Posted October 22, 2016 (edited) And thus arbitrarily. It would be arbitrary if it was a perfect continuum. And yet still a valid scientific operationalisation. Does this look like a perfect continuum to you? http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mcdonald/PCA84pops.html I'm seeing significant clusters, which in addition are orthogonal in terms of correlated variation, with some minor admixed populations scattering between. Either the clustering or the orthogonal variation would put the Caucasoid/Negroid/Mongoloid/Native American division as the first natural division. Either way the "continuum" objection is invalid. We can divide continua arbitrarily to describe them. Further, human races are not divided arbitrarily. If we did we would not be able to define race, at least not in the way you seem to use it it. As it has been repeatedly discussed, the variation within groups shows can shower higher diversity than between groups. This known as Lewontin's fallacy. Fst is actually irrelevant to the validity of taxonomy, and is only applied in race denial arguments in humans. Many subspecies have Fst similar or lower than the human ~0.15. Feel free to show me Fst <0.5 being used to deny taxa in another species. It's an ad hoc race denial argument. Any overall between group variation, however small, justifies taxa. The taxa are about that variation. And as far as population studies go, the diversity of e.g. African populations as a whole are more diverse than populations outside (in accordance with migration patterns). Instead, for tracing ancestry you actually have to use only specific set of alleles that show the difference that you need to do the categorization in the first place. Nonsense. A greater genetic diversity in one group does not mean one cannot trace ancestry through phentics or genomics. This is another ad hoc race denial argument. West Eurasians are more similar to each other than East Asians or Africans whether or not one group has higher diversity. One could argue that Africans, if they have higher diversity, should be divided first. Fine. Why is this an objection? Can you reference the higher diversity in Africa? I mean with numbers. I know it's "common knowledge" and repeated everywhere. Take a look at this. In contrast, overall differentiation among African populations was modest (maximum masked FST = 0.19) (Supplementary Fig. 4) and only 56/1,237 sites remained in the tail distribution after masking (Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Table 6). This suggests that a large proportion of differentiation observed among African populations could be due to Eurasian admixture, rather than adaptation to selective forces (Supplementary Note 6). http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7534/full/nature13997.html Thoughts? It has been argued to death here, but first of all, the general categorizes often used to define races in common usage based on skin color can be rejected almost immediately as they poorly reflect ancestry. The ancestry of a black person in the US is unlikely to share many similarities with a black person in France, or Brazil, for example. Santos et al. (2009) have shown for example, that in Brazil self-declared whites can share more African ancestry than some self-declared black people in the US. Well you're bashing some other irrelvant definition. Race defined by skin color, which is not what I'm talking about, versus race defined by ancestry, which is what I'm talking about. No scholar who uses the race concept defines it by skin color. This is irrelevant. The second issue is whether genetic markers can trace ancestry. In principle, this is a given. And in fact some very useful markers can be use to trace regional ancestry. However, mapping out a tree in order to create clear categories is difficult and the more markers you add, the less distinct it becomes (i.e. the opposite as to what you claim happens). Going back to actual biological usage, categories below the species level (ignoring issues with species concepts for the moment) are typically only useful, and therefore used, if they delineate some kind of differences in gene flow that are relevant to a question under investigation. Such boundaries can include e.g. geographic separation. So, in other words, a race as a different concept as population only makes sense, if a categorization of a race explains a significant chunk of the variance in a population. Obviously the more fine-grained you get, the more variance can be explained theoretically, but then the categories become less useful. This sounds agreeable. How do you square this with Lewontin's fallacy? Now is a good point to add that categories as these are not biological. They are artificial and are only used if they can be helpful in explaining biological phenomena. And I fear, this is the part that many people get wrong as many use the inverse logic. How do you define artificial versus biological categories? I would describe categories defined by descent a la Darwin or genomic similarity a la Mayr as by definition biological. Define "biological category" please. As the example above shows, skin colour is not great in identifying ancestry. It may work in some areas (e.g. US) and fail in others, making it not only not biological, but also useless as an indicator of ancestry. So let us turn to some quantitative means using molecular information. As I mentioned, you could cherry-pick markers that conform with certain aspects of interest. But what if we need to define groups, how can we do that? By ancestry inferred from overall genetic or phenetic similarity? Darwin defined taxa by ancestry (including explicitly human races) and operationalised them with degree of phenetic differentiation ("descent with modification"). Mayr supported using genomic similarity alone to define groups. Thought experiments such as how we would classify a genomic human born to a horse seem to support this. Or more realistically, if an organism was born which more genetically similar to other than its ancestors, which is at least possible. As I said before, a category such as race would only be used if they can explain a significant portion of variance. So what is the threshold to designate races? It is convention in these types of study to differentiate between races if 25% or more of the genetic variability that they share is found as between population differences. As you can see by the nice round number, it is an arbitrary and useful convention. Armed with that knowledge we can now got back at human data (see various papers by Alan Templeton, who also used data from the famous Rosenberg et al. 2002 paper that sometimes is mentioned). Now, doing a variance analysis it was found that over 90% of the genetic variation is found among individuals within a sampled population. While it is generally expected that this variations has the highest contribution it also means that the remaining variance is far too low to allow a demarcation between races (which was ~ 4%). In other words, in human populations we have significant gene flow that prevents us to define decent race boundaries that capture sufficient genetic variance to be useful. I.e. to hit the 25% threshold one would have to create hundreds (maybe more) populations in order to be able to form groups in which the variance between groups is 25% or more, if it is possible at all. This all means that in contrast to many other species our gene flow is so significant that we may be able to identify isolated populations, but we will have trouble to come up with any useful race level categorization that make objective sense. Absolute nonsense. Templeton's "25% Fst" is an ad hoc boundary used to deny the human race concept. It's based on a misreading of the 75% rule for phenetic classification of hybrids in subspecies contact zones, see eg. Smith 1997 who Templeton references. There is nothing about Fst. Feel free to show me this "25% Fst" being applied to subspecies outside Templeton applying it to humans. I'll be happy to go over this in a lot more referenced detail if you want. Jonathan KaplanJune 10, 2014 • 4:29 pm I don’t want us to get too side-tracked into arguments about Fst values. There is no firm cut-off re: Fst values in the literature for identifying subspecies that is widely accepted, and about this, Templeton and Hoffman for example are, indeed, just wrong. https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/on-the-biology-of-race/#comments Edited October 22, 2016 by Over 9000
meLothedestroyerofworlds Posted October 22, 2016 Posted October 22, 2016 I would really like to see the evidence that the IQ gap has not changed... That flies in the face of the adoption studies and could actually mean that we aren't fighting racism well enough. The genetically average African/Asian/Caucasian probably would have succeeded in the environment they were adapted to, leading to healthier development and better cognitive function thereby. This wouldn't matter anymore, however, because the Savanna principle describes the new state of affairs: technology is changing our environment so rapidly that our inherited traits and instincts have stopped serving our survival how they used to. The conflict: Is intelligence selected for in some environments more than others, or is intelligence an emergent feature of overall fitness to the environment? Right here: https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/09/19/is-the-black-white-iq-gap-shrinking-updated-and-revised/ How are you so sure racism is the cause of the gap? It's a little bit of both, Cold weather will select for higher g because of bergman's principle and spatial demands while the heat will select for it through circuit redundancy, high mutation, and species turnover rates. IQ is the best measure of g, which is general ability and it is useful in all environments, people who score well on one subtest tend to score well on all of them. This known as Lewontin's fallacy. Fst is actually irrelevant to the validity of taxonomy, and is only applied in race denial arguments in humans. Many subspecies have Fst similar or lower than the human ~0.15. Feel free to show me Fst <0.5 being used to deny taxa in another species. It's an ad hoc race denial argument. Any overall between group variation, however small, justifies taxa. The taxa are about that variation. In contrast, overall differentiation among African populations was modest (maximum masked FST = 0.19) (Supplementary Fig. 4) and only 56/1,237 sites remained in the tail distribution after masking (Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Table 6). This suggests that a large proportion of differentiation observed among African populations could be due to Eurasian admixture, rather than adaptation to selective forces (Supplementary Note 6). How can one disregard fst as evidence and then use it when it is convenient? Unless I misunderstood something. Blacks have more neutral DNA because they are the oldest race, so of course they have higher genetic diversity, but that doesn't mean they have higher phenotypic diversity too(though they may). -1
Raider5678 Posted October 23, 2016 Posted October 23, 2016 Taken from an average "IQ" of black people, white people are smarter!!! Why? Because the majority of black people live in third world countries. Poor people with a lot less access to proper education, so go figure a trend developed. Asians, get lots of education, and go figure their "IQ" is higher. And as a final point, IQ means little to nothing. The "evidence' of these arguments are expected trends based off of education.
meLothedestroyerofworlds Posted October 23, 2016 Posted October 23, 2016 Taken from an average "IQ" of black people, white people are smarter!!! Why? Because the majority of black people live in third world countries. Poor people with a lot less access to proper education, so go figure a trend developed. Asians, get lots of education, and go figure their "IQ" is higher. And as a final point, IQ means little to nothing. The "evidence' of these arguments are expected trends based off of education. No, these patterns persist even when socio economic status is controlled. The gap is both genetic and environmental. IQ means a lot. It is the best measure of g. -2
CharonY Posted October 23, 2016 Posted October 23, 2016 (edited) There is quite a bit to deconstruct here. Basically there are about three major approaches that utilize the concept of race, which I will go to when I got more time on my hands. For now I want to focus on the last link, which basically outlines that race is not a biological useful concept. Rather it highlights an issue that I touched upon earlier: lack of genetic diversity in humans. The author merely disagrees with using the cutoff, which is somewhat common in ecological studies. If you read past that point you would have noticed how the post in itself echoes some issues already mentioned: I A biologist obsessed with finding subpopulations — a classic splitter — could no doubt split up the human population into different many different “subspecies,” but why think they would resemble the populations we now pick out as “races” in social discourse? There was never a time when the so-called “major races” as usually identified were separate from each other (where there wasn’t gene-flow) for an extended period of time. To the best of my knowledge, every recent study that has looked for it has found evidence for extensive gene flow between the so-called “major races,” and, conversely, has shown that population structure — differential gene-flow — goes “all the way down” to tiny geographic regions. There just isn’t anything *biologically* special about the populations usually identified as “races” in ordinary discourse. In short: Biology simply does not force the “races” identified in our ordinary racial discourse on us as obvious divisions of our species. Biology cannot explain why we identify *these* populations as races rather than others; cannot explain why we use this set of categories rather than a different set. Other ways of sorting people into subpopulations are equally well, and in some cases perhaps better, justified by our best biological practices. will leave with the quote from the post which echoes the basic issues. When I find time I can address several of your worries and also why ancestral grouping also fails as demarcation, if you are really interested. Just a few quick comments, Lewontin's fallacy is not a logical fallacy, but the title of a paper written by Edwards. And a major issue, the limited amount of genetic markers was circumvented by using the same data from the Science study. I can also provide a quick answer regarding the variance within Africa: much of the recent work uses key data is derived from the HapMap project as well as the 1000 genomes study (Nature 2003 and 2012) but there is also the work from Tishkoff as well as numerous others who used different genetic markers. Edit: reply was meant for post 119. IQ has loads of other issues that have been addressed elsewhere in this forum. Edited October 23, 2016 by CharonY
Raider5678 Posted October 23, 2016 Posted October 23, 2016 No, these patterns persist even when socio economic status is controlled. The gap is both genetic and environmental. IQ means a lot. It is the best measure of g. You would have to define "g". If IQ was a measure of anything other then pattern recognition, then maybe it would mean something.
Over 9000 Posted October 23, 2016 Posted October 23, 2016 There is quite a bit to deconstruct here. Basically there are about three major approaches that utilize the concept of race, which I will go to when I got more time on my hands. For now I want to focus on the last link, which basically outlines that race is not a biological useful concept. Rather it highlights an issue that I touched upon earlier: lack of genetic diversity in humans. The author merely disagrees with using the cutoff, which is somewhat common in ecological studies. If you read past that point you would have noticed how the post in itself echoes some issues already mentioned: I will leave with the quote from the post which echoes the basic issues. When I find time I can address several of your worries and also why ancestral grouping also fails as demarcation, if you are really interested. Just a few quick comments, Lewontin's fallacy is not a logical fallacy, but the title of a paper written by Edwards. And a major issue, the limited amount of genetic markers was circumvented by using the same data from the Science study. I can also provide a quick answer regarding the variance within Africa: much of the recent work uses key data is derived from the HapMap project as well as the 1000 genomes study (Nature 2003 and 2012) but there is also the work from Tishkoff as well as numerous others who used different genetic markers. Edit: reply was meant for post 119. IQ has loads of other issues that have been addressed elsewhere in this forum. Oh, I read past that point, thanks. I read all of the comments too. They indeed cover other subjects than the one I used it to reference, such as the "counting races" race denial fallacy. I simply referenced that to present another view on Templeton's "25% Fst" which most of your other post seemed to be based on. Are you agreeing that was wrong now? If so we can happily change the subject to "whether we can say how many items there are in a branching taxonomy". How can one disregard fst as evidence and then use it when it is convenient? Unless I misunderstood something. Blacks have more neutral DNA because they are the oldest race, so of course they have higher genetic diversity, but that doesn't mean they have higher phenotypic diversity too(though they may). I disregarded an Fst cutoff value (Templeton's parroted everywhere "25%" nonsense) as being necessary to satisfy a taxonomic distinction. Many subspecies are well below this. The poster also claimed Africans were more genetically diverse, which is a separate point (and also something parroted without looking at the figures it seems). Whether or not they are more diverse they still constitute a natural division as they are more similar to each other than to Eurasians. And higher African diversity is something of a myth, as the paper I referenced covers.
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