Talk:Racial realism
Contents |
[edit] Dear lord, this talk page is hilarious
Oh man, I'm having so much fun watching all the racists scramble all over each other to say that all nonracists are somehow the real racists. Thanks guys, really, you made me laugh my ass off.
And if you're all trolls like I hope, you are remarkably skilled.— Unsigned, by: 68.49.233.154 / talk / contribs
[edit] Nonsense
This page is an embarrassment even by RationalWiki standards. Race is a biological reality. It isn't based on "one gene that varies in it's distribution by a few percentage points."
- Good job ignoring basic history and genetics. Don't worry, I'm sure it's all a massive conspiracy against your ilk and your ignorant idea of the truth.
[edit] "What human genetic groupings actually look like."
*Posts map of the distribution of a single gene* Fail. 210.101.189.92 (talk) 00:53, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
[edit] Why are the terms caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid still used in science?
People are using this as proof that race is still valid. — Unsigned, by: Prophetofreason / talk / contribs 19:49, 5 November 2014
- Because you touch yourself at night. Wèàšèìòìď
Methinks it is a Weasel 19:54, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- Seriously are you going to help me or not? prophetofreason 20:09, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- Seriously have you encountered these terms in contemporary science? What was the context? ΨΣΔξΣΓΩΙÐ
Methinks it is a Weasel 20:25, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- Looking at Special:Contributions/prophetofreason, that person sure likes to ask questions...--ZooGuard (talk) 20:42, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- Source https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/jspui/bitstream/10593/3408/1/07pudlo.pdf Pg. 60 Analysis of somatic characteristics. Both the term "caucasoid" and "negroid" are used. Why?
- Looking at Special:Contributions/prophetofreason, that person sure likes to ask questions...--ZooGuard (talk) 20:42, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- Seriously have you encountered these terms in contemporary science? What was the context? ΨΣΔξΣΓΩΙÐ
- Seriously are you going to help me or not? prophetofreason 20:09, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
This seemed easier. I have emailed other researchers and I still have not heard from them after a month. prophetofreason 22:01, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- I just googled "Aleksandra Pudlo, Anthropological Review, 1999". Looks like the only people citing that paper are racists.
Radioactive Misanthrope 22:10, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- Either way, anthropology isn't really 'science' other than in the loosest sense. & It's a study of peoples at a cultural level rather than a genetic level. ΨΣΔξΣΓΩΙÐ
Methinks it is a Weasel 22:17, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- No -- physical/biological anthropology is a branch of anthropology. Molecular anthropology is a field that studies human genetics. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 02:29, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
- Either way, anthropology isn't really 'science' other than in the loosest sense. & It's a study of peoples at a cultural level rather than a genetic level. ΨΣΔξΣΓΩΙÐ
- I just googled "Aleksandra Pudlo, Anthropological Review, 1999". Looks like the only people citing that paper are racists.
- Because they are valid as abstract categories if they are used to refer to mean statistical frequencies of certain skeletal measurements found in (continental) populations. [1] Forensic science can then predict the geographical ancestry (Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid) with about 70-80% accuracy of a skeleton. None of this however lends support to "race realism" because you can find mean statistical frequencies of traits among populations that don't match putative 'races' of different classifications, or social 'races' in general. Zoobies (talk) 23:03, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- Im not a race realist btw. Oh and can you give me an example of these populations that don't match? This will be useful info. prophetofreason 00:45, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
- They aren't. I've never seen the terms used in any current or recently published research, or in any bio courses. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 02:33, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
- Just look at the FORDISC population reference bank by skeleton (which uses Howells' cranial data). [2] So we have:
- They aren't. I've never seen the terms used in any current or recently published research, or in any bio courses. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 02:33, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
- Im not a race realist btw. Oh and can you give me an example of these populations that don't match? This will be useful info. prophetofreason 00:45, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
- Norse: Northern Europe, Oslo
- Berg: Central Europe, Austria
- Teita: East Africa, Kenya
- Dogon: West Africa, Mali
- Zulu: South Africa
- etc. All these would be separate 'races' which contradicts "race realism" which instead opts to cluster all Europeans together as 'Caucasoid' and all Sub-Saharan Africans together as 'Negroid'. Zoobies (talk) 17:05, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
[edit] Genetic cluster "race realism" debunked
"Given the relatively small numbers and limited locations of human beings who have been genotyped, the distribution of individuals sampled is important for any assessment of population structure. Serre and Pääbo (2004) argued that sampling often concentrates on “the extremes of continental land masses” (p. 1680), maximizing the geographic and therefore genetic distance between individuals presumed to belong to distinct continental clusters. Without “a sampling strategy that maximizes the geographic distribution of samples and keeps similar sample size for each geographical area,” they warned, researchers risked falsely creating “apparent substructures” (Serre and Pääbo 2004:1681). In contrast, when these researchers designed a study that sampled individuals “such that their geographic distribution around the world approximates the distribution of the human population as a whole and includes areas where Africa, Asia, and Europe meet,” the pattern of genetic variation they found was “one of gradients of allele frequencies that extend over the entire world, rather than discrete clusters” (Serre and Pääbo 2004:1679-1680)." Does Genomics Challenge the Social Construction of Race? Sociological Theory. 2014, Vol. 32(3) 189–207. — Unsigned, by: Zoobies / talk / contribs
- Yep. I mean it's not like anyone is arguing that no genetic differences exist in the human species, just that every notion of "race" is spaced arbitrarily to satisfy the needs of whatever idiot is eager to jump to conclusions. Ikanreed (talk) 19:03, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
- True. But even if genetic clusters existed, a "race realist" must then explain what this has to do with race. There are at least 5 other race concepts: cladistic, geographical, ecological, morphological, zoological (subspecies). All of them provide different classifications, this goes back to Diamond 1994: "There are many different, equally valid procedures for defining races, and those different procedures yield very different classifications". No "race realist" has ever been able to solve this. It actually cannot be solved: Ugly duckling theorem. Categorizing (by similarity) involves making certain variables or characteristics more important or salient than others, which is not logical. All of taxonomy is actually arbitrary for this reason. Of course this goes way above the head of any "race realist". There is a deeper philosophical dimension they are too dumb to understand. Zoobies (talk) 17:58, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
- Apply all of these concepts and produce the "very different classifications". Oh, they're the same. 203.226.201.16 (talk) 03:30, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- True. But even if genetic clusters existed, a "race realist" must then explain what this has to do with race. There are at least 5 other race concepts: cladistic, geographical, ecological, morphological, zoological (subspecies). All of them provide different classifications, this goes back to Diamond 1994: "There are many different, equally valid procedures for defining races, and those different procedures yield very different classifications". No "race realist" has ever been able to solve this. It actually cannot be solved: Ugly duckling theorem. Categorizing (by similarity) involves making certain variables or characteristics more important or salient than others, which is not logical. All of taxonomy is actually arbitrary for this reason. Of course this goes way above the head of any "race realist". There is a deeper philosophical dimension they are too dumb to understand. Zoobies (talk) 17:58, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
No they obviously aren't dummy. Read a book. There is a mismatch objection to race. Here's an example: according to the Cladistic Race Concept, races have to be reproductively isolated: "Cladistic races would, thus, be monophyletic groups of reasonably reproductively isolated breeding populations" and: "The cladistic account requires that races be monophyltetic groups, a population must be reproductively isolated over a significant portion of evolutionary history before it can be designated a cladistic race" (Andreasen, 2007), but this would only produce "groups not typically deemed races" today like the Amish, or an isolated tribe in the Amazon rainforest:
- "Such genetic isolation might refer to the Amish in America (Appiah 1996, 73) or to Irish Protestants (Zack 2002, 69), but they clearly cannot refer to those groupings of people presently subsumed under American racial census categories. Because the concept “race” can only apply to groups not typically deemed races (Amish, Irish Protestants), and because this concept cannot apply to groups typically deemed races (African Americans, Whites, Asians, Native Americans), a mismatch occurs between the concept and its typical referent." - Race (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- "Zack and Appiah offer what we can call mismatch arguments. A mismatch argument holds that the true account of the extension of a term or concept x would be sharply different from what is believed about the extension of x. In this case of race, Appiah and Zack think that the fact of the absence of reproductive isolation among major racial groups (as identified in ordinary discourse) would result in none of them being races (in the sense of being biological populations). Thus, if we allowed that the term ‘race’ does pick out biological populations, it would turn out that none of the groups commonsensically considered races are races. Conversely, other groups that are not thought of as races (e.g., Appiah suggests the Amish, and Zack, Irish Protestants) might count as races." (Mallon, 2006)
- "Beyond what we have already seen, clearly non-racial populations that are reproductively isolated would seemingly have to count as 'races' on unconstrained accounts. That is, economic classes, peasants, the Amish or Ivy Leaguers." (Glasgow, 2009)
- "The Amish, however, might come out as a race on this view, since they are a relatively reproductively isolated local population." (Appiah, 1996)
However even Andreasen (2007) points out that: "It is unlikely that the condition of reasonable reproductive isolation is being met today... human races are most likely on their way out". She is basically agnostic on the existence of cladistic human races. While the Amish might be "reasonably reproductively isolated" today, they have not been isolated for a "significant portion of their evolutionary history". Let's for the moment though just ignore this and say the Amish pass Andreasen's criteria. You now have Amish as a race, while "Whites", "Blacks", "Caucasoids" etc all fail to pass as races. Where is the Amish on your genetic cluster plot? You totally ignore them for your own classification and genetic race concept, which once again shows why race is arbitrary. Zoobies (talk) 14:53, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
[edit] Improving the article
You can counter some of the claims posted on the Metapedia "racial realism" entry as a better template:
| "Virtually all anthropologists and biologists from the 18th to the mid-20th century were in agreement that races existed in Homo sapiens biologically or taxonomically. |
True, but this predated 'population thinking' and the modern evolutionary synthesis (late 1930's, 40's) such as Huxley's clines. What scientists believed two centuries ago is pretty irrelevant.
| "The roots of race denialism can be traced to Boasianism. Outright denial of race however did not appear until as late as the 1960s, influenced by the "Civil Rights" movement, Afrocentricism pseudo-anthropology and political correctness in the West. |
These claims are false. I guess what can be called 'race skepticism' emerged as having significant support after the modern evolutionary synthesis, e.g. the 1950 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on the "Origin and Evolution of Man". Here race typology was abandoned, and those few biologists who attempted to salvage race (Dobzhansky, Mayr etc) had to re-define race entirely in terms of 'population thinking': "Strong genetic influence weakening the race concept is also seen growing out of the concept of clines and supporting data... The concept of cline began to enter anthropological awareness in the 1950s" "The rejection of the race concept by most anthropologists beginning most recently in the 1960s, was based on the genetic evidence reviewed earlier. Conformity to political correctness was not the cause of these changes" - Lieberman et al. 2003 [3] Zoobies (talk) 23:30, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
- Feel free to add this stuff, it's interesting and useful history. This is also further reason to merge this with Scientific racism - they really are the same thing - David Gerard (talk) 11:52, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
[edit] The following was removed for some reason.
Judge for yourself how awfully racist and horrible it is, and how it clearly must be censored for the good of mankind:
"'Adaptation to environments, including social environments, through natural and sexual selection is the linchpin of evolution. Remembering this means knowing why scientific racism is ridiculous. To argue that races or ethnic groups differ innately in intelligence, however defined, is exactly equal to an assertion that intelligence has proven less adaptive for some people than for others. This at minimum requires an explanation, a specifically evolutionary explanation, beyond mere statistical assertion; without that it can be assumed to be cultural bias or noise. Since most human intelligence is in fact social intelligence — the main thing the human mind is built for is networking in human societies — this would require this social evolutionary arms race to have somehow stopped.'
So let me see if I get this straight.
The ultimate refutation of these evil horrible racists who don't know anything about science is that there can't be any genetically influenced mental differences between population groups, because 'intelligence' is always good and different groups could never be under different selection pressures.
Isn't that argument like saying 'If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?!?!'?
Humans and, say, chimpanzees don't have different mental abilities because we decided to climb some metaphysical ladder and place ourselves as the Kings of Evolution, we have different mental abilities because our common ancestor had descendants that lived in different environments. Chimpanzees adapted to one environment, humans to another.
The common ancestor of all modern humans also had descendants that lived, and live, in different environments. And evolution didn't suddently stop because Homo sapiens sapiens entered the scene — the ancestors of humans and chimps belonged to the same species once upon a time, but I don't think it's controversial to assume that the ancestors of modern chimps were less intelligent (as we measure it) than the ancestors of modern humans, even when those two groups were interfertile.
Chimpanzees are social animals, as are humans. Yet we are not identical, mentally or physically. Why is it so self-evident that all human population groups have to be identical when it comes to our neurology?
I'm not an expert on this topic and don't know nearly enough about the available research to feel confident in drawing any conclusions, but this page is simply lazy. Look, I'm a feminist and a vegan and a liberal and an atheist and all those things that should make me like this wiki, but this whole reflexive anti-HBD bias is just silly. Are the authors of this page confident that they don't let their fear of the consequences of belief in genetically influenced mental differences between population groups influence their belief in genetically influenced mental differences between population groups?
Edit: Note that I'm not defending the, to my admittedly untrained eye, rather archaic division of the human species into three or four 'races' based on phenotype. And relatively few of the HBD bloggers that I have read seem to care about these 'races', mainly because they make little genetic sense. (Then again, I only became interested in this subject very recently, so I might not have sufficient data.) Seems kind of like a straw man to me. In any case, that's not what I see as the main problem with this page."
- I removed the section because of Zoobies attack against BlackProg which you can find in the edit history. The way you've structured this makes it seem like you are "just asking questions" to me. Considering you affirm to "not know nearly enough about the available research to feel confident in drawing any conclusions" then why are you posting here in the first place --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 17:00, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- You're right, I should just lie and pretend to be all-knowing, like a normal Internet person. And I'm not sure what you hope to accomplish by insinuating that asking questions is a suspicious act. — Unsigned, by: 213.113.125.113 / talk / contribs
- See RationalWiki's article on JAQing off. Also, please sign your talk page posts with four tildes: ~~~~ which also places a time stamp, so readers may see who said what, and when. Thanks, Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 17:41, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks! I'm not very used to wiki editing, so I don't know a lot about proper etiquette. (Although maybe I should pretend to know more about that than I actually do, too.) The reason I am "just asking questions" is that I genuinelly don't know as much as I would like to about this topic, but I do use what little knowledge I have to point out what I see as problematic arguments. It just bothers me that a community ostensibly dedicated to rationality and to updating one's beliefs in accordance with the best available research would allow such sloppy reasoning to pass just because it happens to "tow the party line", so to speak. I've seen this when it comes to other topics as well. I'm not a very smart person, so I try to make do by listening to people more intelligent and knowledgeable than me, but then it's in my interest to make sure that the public debate is objective and rational, to a reasonable degree. (Yes, I come to the Internet ready and willing to change my mind. I don't know what I'm thinking.) 213.113.125.113 (talk) 17:58, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Protip: your character would be more convincing without the rather laboured self-depreciation. Trolling = SRS BNS. Robledo (talk) 18:30, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- The word is "self-deprecation". Don't worry, English isn't my first language, either. In any case, from the quality of the responses so far it seems that my gut feeling about the intellectual rigour of the anti-HBD side's arguments was spot on. I guess I have little choice but to become a racist, then. 213.113.125.113 (talk) 18:45, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- I think that is mainly because it is largely considered an argument that is, thankfully, in the past. There isn't any evidence to back up mental differences between races, there is nothing out there substantial enough to bolster these kinds of prejudices. Your notion that evolution is ongoing has some credence. The idea that it happens so fast that it outlasted human migration is notional but you again have no evidence to back it up and evolution happens over vast periods of time. To be honest I think even considering this sort of thing is racist, why would there be mental differences between races? At what stage in evolution is this meant to have occured? How does this stand up to the regular migration that has happened throughout history? --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 18:52, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- "To be honest I think even considering this sort of thing is racist". Are you absolutely certain you're not a parody? Not even being willing to consider things is pretty much the very definition of irrationality. Anyway. There are pretty obviously mental differences between different population groups, that in itself is an indisputable fact. The controversial question is how much of this difference is a result of differences in environment of the individuals' personal history, and how much is the result of differences in the environment of their evolutionary history. I myself don't know (as said, I became interested in this topic recently), but I think convincing arguments could be made for a whole range of potential distributions of the two sources' relative influence.
- Not really, I meant the notion of seriously considering it, of believing that there are distinct mental differences due to the evolutionary history of various races, I think that this is exactly what white supremacists have been trying and failing to prove for hundreds of years. For the record I didn't intend to get involved in this dispute really, I only removed the section in order to try and prevent an argument between editors. My views on this topic are firmly set --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 21:01, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- "My views on this topic are firmly set". Spoken like a true rationalist. I accept your concession. 213.113.125.113 (talk) 21:04, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Sure thing, if you are using the information from HBD blogs or forums as the basis for your arguments, you don't have anything to say that I haven't read before anyway --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 21:09, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- "My views on this topic are firmly set". Spoken like a true rationalist. I accept your concession. 213.113.125.113 (talk) 21:04, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Not really, I meant the notion of seriously considering it, of believing that there are distinct mental differences due to the evolutionary history of various races, I think that this is exactly what white supremacists have been trying and failing to prove for hundreds of years. For the record I didn't intend to get involved in this dispute really, I only removed the section in order to try and prevent an argument between editors. My views on this topic are firmly set --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 21:01, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- "To be honest I think even considering this sort of thing is racist". Are you absolutely certain you're not a parody? Not even being willing to consider things is pretty much the very definition of irrationality. Anyway. There are pretty obviously mental differences between different population groups, that in itself is an indisputable fact. The controversial question is how much of this difference is a result of differences in environment of the individuals' personal history, and how much is the result of differences in the environment of their evolutionary history. I myself don't know (as said, I became interested in this topic recently), but I think convincing arguments could be made for a whole range of potential distributions of the two sources' relative influence.
- The word is "self-deprecation". Don't worry, English isn't my first language, either. In any case, from the quality of the responses so far it seems that my gut feeling about the intellectual rigour of the anti-HBD side's arguments was spot on. I guess I have little choice but to become a racist, then. 213.113.125.113 (talk) 18:45, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Protip: your character would be more convincing without the rather laboured self-depreciation. Trolling = SRS BNS. Robledo (talk) 18:30, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks! I'm not very used to wiki editing, so I don't know a lot about proper etiquette. (Although maybe I should pretend to know more about that than I actually do, too.) The reason I am "just asking questions" is that I genuinelly don't know as much as I would like to about this topic, but I do use what little knowledge I have to point out what I see as problematic arguments. It just bothers me that a community ostensibly dedicated to rationality and to updating one's beliefs in accordance with the best available research would allow such sloppy reasoning to pass just because it happens to "tow the party line", so to speak. I've seen this when it comes to other topics as well. I'm not a very smart person, so I try to make do by listening to people more intelligent and knowledgeable than me, but then it's in my interest to make sure that the public debate is objective and rational, to a reasonable degree. (Yes, I come to the Internet ready and willing to change my mind. I don't know what I'm thinking.) 213.113.125.113 (talk) 17:58, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- See RationalWiki's article on JAQing off. Also, please sign your talk page posts with four tildes: ~~~~ which also places a time stamp, so readers may see who said what, and when. Thanks, Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 17:41, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- You're right, I should just lie and pretend to be all-knowing, like a normal Internet person. And I'm not sure what you hope to accomplish by insinuating that asking questions is a suspicious act. — Unsigned, by: 213.113.125.113 / talk / contribs
- Can we have a sockpuppet check against this IP please? --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 17:05, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Dissent! Clearly, I'm actually Hitler. I can't recall ever posting anything on RationalWiki before, but you never know. I might actually be The Enemy (tm), which would make whatever I wrote irrelevant. — Unsigned, by: 213.113.125.113 / talk / contribs
- IP check as requested. Easy enough for anyone to do. At first glance, this IP seems reasonable. At least their tone is civil, which I count as a good thing. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 17:41, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks, wanted to make sure it was a new user rather than Mikemikev pretending to be somebody just discovering the topic --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 17:45, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Well, an IP check does reveal that I'm from Skåne, which is pretty much synonymous with being a racist. So I guess you got me there. 213.113.125.113 (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- You know that's not what I meant by it --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 18:24, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Nah, it's not that. There's this asshat in South Korea who keeps on making sock accounts. He has a huge hate-boner for Jews and other topics related to racism. He comes around every few months, and got blocked here a couple of days ago, so him trying to circumvent the block would fit his patterns.
- As I understand it, the current scientific evidence against 'racial realism' is just how malleable human development is. I don't know the precise word for the effect, so I'll call it environmental influences. If, when you are young, you get plenty to eat (and the right nutrients) and see a lot of different things, read a lot, etc, you will grow up more intelligent than if you were half-starved, eating only TV dinners, and told to go play in a corner all the time. There was a US study started back in the 80's, to track the development of 'crack babies' (children whose mother used crack cocaine while she was pregnant), who were a big concern at the time. The study, like other good studies, used kids from non-crackhead parents and other segments of society as their controls and for comparisons. They found out that growing up in poverty had a much more hindering effect on the children's development--child and adult IQ scores, crime rates, all that--than did getting a prenatal hit of crack.
- I've also read about how feral children, ones raised by hippopotamuses or severely neglected, if they don't learn language skills by the time they're two or three years old, they just won't learn it because their brain doesn't develop the whole language connections. Like, a part of their brain literally doesn't develop like it should because no one talked to the kid. Environmental influences when you're growing have a huge effect on your final result.
- A lot of the groups assumed to be inferior by your normal racist are the ones who tend to grow up in poverty, or deprivation because someone didn't know you really can't farm a desert, or a war knocked over the crop production, or they got exiled from their homeland and grow up as refugees, or whatever. So every time something comes up to try to show How We Are, it seems to support that the real differences in raw intelligence come from your environmental influences.
- Cultural/political/social beliefs, well, those are tougher to nail. Getting into memes and all that, and it's tough to be sure what's going on there, as of yet. --Maxus (talk) 18:47, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Just wanted to say that I intend to read and respond to this later, but I will probably remain busy with other stuff the rest of the day. Thanks for not just saying "lol racist", though! (Well, unless you said it in the part I haven't read yet.) 213.113.125.113 (talk) 18:58, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Right, let's see if I can write something comprehensible. It seems like this is turning into one of the usual debates about nature versus nurture, and I'm fairly certain that such a discussion could go on for years. In any case, I haven't objected to the idea that environment has an immense influence on one's mental capabilities, and I very much doubt that most HBD people would deny that. What I object to is the dogmatic assertion that there can't be genetically influenced mental differences between population groups, that anyone even suggesting such a thing is a racist and that such differences are self-evidently impossible because of how evolution works. Do you yourself agree with what's said in the section called "Adaptation doesn't work like that"? That section, not whether or not environment influences mental abilities (it obviously does), is what's under discussion. 213.113.125.113 (talk) 20:25, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Well, an IP check does reveal that I'm from Skåne, which is pretty much synonymous with being a racist. So I guess you got me there. 213.113.125.113 (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks, wanted to make sure it was a new user rather than Mikemikev pretending to be somebody just discovering the topic --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 17:45, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- IP check as requested. Easy enough for anyone to do. At first glance, this IP seems reasonable. At least their tone is civil, which I count as a good thing. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 17:41, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Dissent! Clearly, I'm actually Hitler. I can't recall ever posting anything on RationalWiki before, but you never know. I might actually be The Enemy (tm), which would make whatever I wrote irrelevant. — Unsigned, by: 213.113.125.113 / talk / contribs
Response: The post the IP quoted is correct, so I don't know why they are trying to challenge it. For example the average Kalahari Bushman in Lynn's books on race and intelligence score in the "mentally retarded" IQ category. Yet Lynn uses a Western/American measure of intelligence: "But peoples of widely different cultures, who generally perform badly on American intelligence tests, nevertheless function with complete competence in their own milieu. In the hash environment of the Kalahari Desert where a Westerner could not survive, the Bushmen feed, shelter, and protect themselves by using the complex body of assimilated and integrated information generated by their culture as a basis for making judgments" (King, James C. [1981]. The Biology of Race. University of California Press. p. 85). If you devised a Kalahari measure of intelligence, Richard Lynn himself would be classified as "mentally retarded" and the Kalahari Bushmen would instead score high. The simple point is that there is no standard measure of intelligence, not that mean differences between populations don't exist. Zoobies (talk) 19:00, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- That's not what the text says. "To argue that races or ethnic groups differ innately in intelligence, however defined, is exactly equal to an assertion that intelligence has proven less adaptive for some people than for others." (My emphasis.) Saying that Khoisan people's neurology have adapted to one environment and Western Europeans' neurology have adapted to another seems to be exactly what the HBD people are claiming. But the wiki page is currently saying that all population groups must be equally intelligent, however you define intelligence. If that is not the intended meaning, the text should be changed to be less misleading. 213.113.125.113 (talk) 20:26, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- I read that sentence as absolute/overall intelligence, not intelligence in regard to, i.e. while populations do not differ (on average) in intelligence, they differ (on average) in intelligence in regards to x (environment, culture whatever). Since intelligence differs by context, there is no unique answer, or way of measuring how one population (on average) is overall more clever or dumber than another. The idea though that all populations on average are equal in intelligence in regard to American/Western IQ data is obviously false. 500+ studies are producing the same average differences. Zoobies (talk) 20:25, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- If I actually agree as much as you seem to think I do with the text I quoted, I wonder why I'm a racist. In any case, isn't it a bit strange to say that populations do not differ in "absolute/overall" intelligence while also saying that there is no way of measuring if one population is more intelligent than another? Aren't we then simply assuming that they do not differ in this unmeasurable "absolute/overall" intelligence, rather than drawing that conclusion based on the available data? Do they differ in measurable forms of intelligence, but just happen to not differ in the unmeasurable forms of intelligence? Such an idea seems more based on ideology than science. 213.113.125.113 (talk) 20:37, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Wait, am I being fooled? Is Zoobies actually a racist? D: 213.113.125.113 (talk) 20:40, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- If I actually agree as much as you seem to think I do with the text I quoted, I wonder why I'm a racist. In any case, isn't it a bit strange to say that populations do not differ in "absolute/overall" intelligence while also saying that there is no way of measuring if one population is more intelligent than another? Aren't we then simply assuming that they do not differ in this unmeasurable "absolute/overall" intelligence, rather than drawing that conclusion based on the available data? Do they differ in measurable forms of intelligence, but just happen to not differ in the unmeasurable forms of intelligence? Such an idea seems more based on ideology than science. 213.113.125.113 (talk) 20:37, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- I read that sentence as absolute/overall intelligence, not intelligence in regard to, i.e. while populations do not differ (on average) in intelligence, they differ (on average) in intelligence in regards to x (environment, culture whatever). Since intelligence differs by context, there is no unique answer, or way of measuring how one population (on average) is overall more clever or dumber than another. The idea though that all populations on average are equal in intelligence in regard to American/Western IQ data is obviously false. 500+ studies are producing the same average differences. Zoobies (talk) 20:25, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
No there's no assumption. Everyone is of equal intelligence since there are no constraints on what constitutes overall intelligence. This means if population x scores higher on average than population y in something, I can find/use something else showing the opposite, and this can be done infinitely for both - so they are equal. You can only show someone is more or less intelligent by introducing in what respects to which is a constraint (I showed this above with environment or culture). Unless you have a constraint you are left with equality. There is even a maths theorem that shows this. Zoobies (talk) 21:23, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Now that's a Pyrrhic victory if I ever saw one. If the only way to say that two populations are of necessity equal in intelligence is to dilute the content of that intelligence to the point where it bears little resemblance to any definition used by either scientists or laymen, it seems that the victory belongs to those HBD racists after all. In the interest of not wasting more of my free time, I'll gladly concede that according to your definition of intelligence, no two human population groups differ in intelligence — and the human species is of equal intelligence to the hedgehog species. RationalWiki indeed. I'm not sure what I'm gaining from even attempting to speak to the contributors here, considering that invectives and nonsense are all you appear capable of.213.113.125.113 (talk) 21:44, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Gould, in The Mismeasure of Man, points out that "intelligence" has no objective existence on its own, usually being no more than a misguided reification "what intelligence tests claim to measure." It is a mistake to think that mental capabilities can be usefully measured in a way that boils down to a single number, or that such a number allows anything more than a tenuous superficial comparison between individuals. Trying to compare populations on any such basis generally says more about the shortcomings of the test than it does about the actual people. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 22:12, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, good response. My point was simply: unless you can quantify or measure to determine variable limits, you are left with infinity or at least something indefinite, and since 'overall intelligence' cannot be measured or computed - every individual is of equal intelligence unless you bring in a constraint (i.e. intelligence in regard to environment etc). A putative hedgehog and human are of equal intelligence. This is not irrational at all. Zoobies (talk) 22:32, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- I would not go so far as to put humans and hedgehogs on an equal footing w.r.t. intelligence, which I consider to have a big component of flexibility, or ability to learn and adapt. A hedgehog kept as a pet might learn the sounds and smells of food being prepared, and come running, but a human female living traditionally in the Kalahari is expected to learn the location of individual plants sparsely scattered along the route of a yearly migration covering perhaps hundreds of miles, and come back to their edible roots with only withered stems showing amidst the clutter, or hidden completely in it. If she doesn't, her family doesn't eat so well.
- Yes, good response. My point was simply: unless you can quantify or measure to determine variable limits, you are left with infinity or at least something indefinite, and since 'overall intelligence' cannot be measured or computed - every individual is of equal intelligence unless you bring in a constraint (i.e. intelligence in regard to environment etc). A putative hedgehog and human are of equal intelligence. This is not irrational at all. Zoobies (talk) 22:32, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Gould, in The Mismeasure of Man, points out that "intelligence" has no objective existence on its own, usually being no more than a misguided reification "what intelligence tests claim to measure." It is a mistake to think that mental capabilities can be usefully measured in a way that boils down to a single number, or that such a number allows anything more than a tenuous superficial comparison between individuals. Trying to compare populations on any such basis generally says more about the shortcomings of the test than it does about the actual people. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 22:12, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- That said, I would say equating the intelligence of humans and hedgehogs is a straw man, along the lower reaches of a slippery slope. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 22:44, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- The IQ measurements in things like The Bell Curve could well be correct. <Ducks>
- The racist inferences drawn from them are not. The error is to assume that IQ tests measure anything worth measuring. They don't. They were designed to ensure that the people who designed them would score well on them (which anyone of similar background can do, with training and practice). Someone trained in mental arithmetic as a child has a good chance of finding the arithmetic questions a piece of piss; whereas someone who wasn't has no chance.
- That has everything to do with cultural background and upbringing, and nothing at all to do with intelligence, Mr or Ms BoN. ProblemChimp (talk) 22:47, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- That's not what the consensus modern academic psychology states. It is the consensus among leftist pseudoscientists divorced from facts though. Try reading your IQ article and maybe this. 211.200.178.175 (talk) 07:36, 29 November 2014 (UTC)