How much are genetic variations responsible for the U.S. black-white IQ differences?

[bilby]

I don't have a better definition - that's my point. 'Race' doesn't have any good definitions; And the bad definitions we have render it valueless as a concept. If race is defined in terms of one's ancestors, it it merely an historical oddity.

"My ancestors mostly came from Europe, with a small percentage from Africa and Asia" tells you no more about me than "My ancestors mostly worked in agriculture, with a handful of blacksmiths and very few soldiers" or "My ancestors mostly ate wheat, with very little rice or maize".

How much are our ancestors' diets or occupations responsible for the US black-white IQ differences? Why would we assume that their location was any more responsible than those other ancestral factors?

No good definitions of race. I would expect that you would have your own definition, or it seems inappropriate to claim that DNA tests don't tell me about race.

Not at all. There are lots of made up concepts that don't map to anything in reality. Race is one such fiction.

This is a chart that illustrates four different processes of speciation, from Dana Krempels of the University of Miami's Department of Biology. In the first row, you have single populations with no racial divisions. In the second row, you have geographic isolation (with the exception of the sympatric process). In the third row, you have genetic variations along the given geographic boundaries, and the races are color-coded. In the fourth row (presently irrelevant for humans), you have races that fully split into different species due to their genetic divergence.

<snipped graphic>

It may be misleading to think of it in terms of steps, because each "step" is gradually transitional. This is what I mean by "races." Humans would be at the third row (the second row would last only one generation). Do you find anything wrong with this concept? Or is it just a historical oddity with no biological relevance?

It is far more misleading to think in terms of arrows. Humans are not at the third row, because this simple unidirectional progression is a massive oversimplification of reality. Humans are in the process of moving back from the third row up to the first - our population has been re-homogenising since the invention of long distance transportation, a few thousand years ago, and at a rapidly accelerating rate.

Geographic separation, niche isolation, and inbreeding did not have sufficient time to achieve speciation in humans before they were reversed and wiped out by our ability and inclination to break down those barriers with technology - first ships, then railways, then motor vehicles, and now airliners.

This stuff applies to the wide world of non-domesticated species. It no longer applies to any significant degree to the small world of human technological achievement. I can be almost anywhere on the planet in a couple of days; my gene pool, like yours, is the whole of humanity.

The time-scale of human movement in the modern world is so short (in comparison to the time-scale at which evolution acts) that we are effectively one population. We live in a small area; If you look at other species, a group all of whom live within a couple of days travel of each other is too small for the effects on line two of your graphic to get a toe-hold. Only the last column is even open as a possibility for modern H. Sapiens; and there is no evidence that it is happening in the real world - people seem to be very happy to interbreed when their ancestors come from very widely separated locations, to the point where even the huge efforts expended in the 19th and 20th centuries by various political movements to prevent such interbreeding were unable to do so.

Hence the relevance of race only as a reference to ancestral (pre-technological) populations of humans.

Race doesn't have any good definitions; that doesn't mean it doesn't have any definitions at all - just that none of them are useful for anything. The word 'race' is rather like the word 'God' in this respect. I don't need to have a good, better or best definition of 'God' in order to assert, with confidence and accuracy, that DNA tests don't tell us anything about God.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I am with you that the process is not necessarily unidirectional. Such a process can go up the chart the same as going down, or some race pairs can go up and others go down and others stay the same. I am not with you that global travel somehow makes races irrelevant. Would races exist until the time of global travel and then they suddenly stopped existing or they suddenly became biologically irrelevant? I don't think so, because genes persist no matter where we travel. When Europeans immigrated to the Americas, India, Australia, Philippines and South Africa, they took their ancestral genes along with them. When Africans were shipped as slaves to the Americas, they likewise took their ancestral genes along with them. Maybe the race pairs start to flow up the chart instead of down (if the admixture is sufficiently frequent), but they would still be at an intermediate range within that chart until they reach the first row, which has not yet happened. Human races are still at the third row.

 

[bilby]

I am with you that the process is not necessarily unidirectional. Such a process can go up the chart the same as going down, or some race pairs can go up and others go down and others stay the same. I am not with you that global travel somehow makes races irrelevant. Would races exist until the time of global travel and then they suddenly stopped existing or they suddenly became biologically irrelevant? I don't think so, because genes persist no matter where we travel. When Europeans immigrated to the Americas, India, Australia, Philippines and South Africa, they took their ancestral genes along with them. When Africans were shipped as slaves to the Americas, they likewise took their ancestral genes along with them. Maybe the race pairs start to flow up the chart instead of down (if the admixture is sufficiently frequent), but they would still be at an intermediate range within that chart until they reach the first row, which has not yet happened. Human races are still at the third row.

The third row exists only as part of a very simplified diagram of speciation that is not intended to encompass all of the complexity of real species, much less the additional complexity with respect to H. Sapiens, that is imposed by our use of technology.

There is no 'maybe' about the fact that the flow in human genetic populations is generally 'upwards' in reference to this over-simplified chart; But there is a very big 'maybe' about whether it is useful to refer to that chart at all when considering variations within H.Sapiens in the post-agricultural (much less post-industrial) era.

Nothing happens 'suddenly' in evolution. But it is certainly true that races became biologically irrelevant with the advent of global travel, and will be non-existent in fairly short order. genes don't just persist wherever we travel; they mix, blend and recombine wherever we travel. Humans are generally disinclined to inbreeding.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I am with you that the process is not necessarily unidirectional. Such a process can go up the chart the same as going down, or some race pairs can go up and others go down and others stay the same. I am not with you that global travel somehow makes races irrelevant. Would races exist until the time of global travel and then they suddenly stopped existing or they suddenly became biologically irrelevant? I don't think so, because genes persist no matter where we travel. When Europeans immigrated to the Americas, India, Australia, Philippines and South Africa, they took their ancestral genes along with them. When Africans were shipped as slaves to the Americas, they likewise took their ancestral genes along with them. Maybe the race pairs start to flow up the chart instead of down (if the admixture is sufficiently frequent), but they would still be at an intermediate range within that chart until they reach the first row, which has not yet happened. Human races are still at the third row.

The third row exists only as part of a very simplified diagram of speciation that is not intended to encompass all of the complexity of real species, much less the additional complexity with respect to H. Sapiens, that is imposed by our use of technology.

There is no 'maybe' about the fact that the flow in human genetic populations is generally 'upwards' in reference to this over-simplified chart; But there is a very big 'maybe' about whether it is useful to refer to that chart at all when considering variations within H.Sapiens in the post-agricultural (much less post-industrial) era.

Nothing happens 'suddenly' in evolution. But it is certainly true that races became biologically irrelevant with the advent of global travel, and will be non-existent in fairly short order. genes don't just persist wherever we travel; they mix, blend and recombine wherever we travel. Humans are generally disinclined to inbreeding.

Among other species, the patterns between races are about as complex as the patterns of races among humans, and the ease of travel and common admixture does not change the general principles much. When you have many different colors of paint on a palette, then you can mix some of the colors on the palette and create new colors, but they will still be meaningful. They lose their meaning only when you mix all the paint into a single brown paint, and maybe such a thing will happen in the future, but it hasn't happened yet. The analogy has limitations, as genes do not quite mix like paint--Barack Obama has a genome with one half of the genes from his Europoid mother and the other half from his African Luo tribe father, and the genome is mixed, but each gene is distinct, and the genome is an approximate result that could have come about ONLY with the recombination of a Europoid and a Luo, not an Australian aborigine and a Mohican nor any other combination.

A paper that provides a pretty good education on the topic of problems of races is EO Wilson and WL Brown's "The Subspecies Concept and Its Taxonomic Application," 1953. The age of the article has not apparently affected its accuracy nor theoretical relevance. Wilson and Brown argue against Mayr's proposal of designating races (of any species) with the Latin taxonomic Genus species subspecies scheme, because the various biological complexities of races/subspecies would make it unfitting and misleading for discrete taxonomic classifications.

I make sense of the current human race situations as being parapatric, per that chart. Among parapatric races, they will interbreed where they overlap, it will be difficult to tell the difference between one race or the other at the overlap, the boundaries are fuzzy, and the transition is clinal. The overlap of the racial genetic frequencies would actually be spread throughout the whole of each race, as any gene can bleed throughout the whole of each population. Given a sufficiently small rate of admixture, speciation would eventually happen between the two far ends, though a cline would remain between them. The fact that the locations of human races are fluid may seem to be a key difference, but it is merely a difference in appearance, so long as there is only an intermediate rate of admixture.

It seems reasonable to postulate that, given a sufficiently high rate of admixture, the two races would eventually merge back together into one, regressing up the chart, but it would NOT happen if the admixture is sufficiently low, in which case the progress would be down the chart. I would love to know which human race pairs are merging and which are not. There seems to be an especially high rate of pairing between white men and Asian women, so that may be the best candidate. I am inclined to think that the rate of admixture would need to be greater than 50% for movement up the chart, which even the American Asian-white pairing pattern is far from accomplishing, but that is only a lay guess. Remember that genetic admixture is not like the mixture of paint--50% of the genes between two parents are discarded in a single reproduction, so foreign minority alleles would tend to be lost within a population. I should speak to a population geneticist about it. It is apparently the anthropologist Henry Harpending's opinion that the major races are drifting apart, but I don't know his math or his arguments, if any exist. Henry Harpending is a co-author of The 10,000 Year Explosion.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Harpending is quoted in a pop science article as saying:

“Human races are evolving away from each other,” Harpending says. “Genes are evolving fast in Europe, Asia and Africa, but almost all of these are unique to their continent of origin. We are getting less alike, not merging into a single, mixed humanity.” He says that is happening because humans dispersed from Africa to other regions 40,000 years ago, “and there has not been much flow of genes between the regions since then.”​

His scientific article is here, which I have yet to study more deeply. It has a damn integral.

Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution, by John Hawks, Eric T. Wang, Gregory M. Cochran, Henry C. Harpending, Robert K. Moyzis, 2007.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Of course it isn’t. Racism would be favouring one kind of explanation and dismissing others due to preconceptions. Or the tendency to see support for those preconceptions in 'evidence' that doesn’t actually support them (or even suggests the contrary).

I doubt it. The self-selected 18% of experts who (presumably) accepted the question terms broadly agree with the (even fewer) respondents here : most believe the differences are mostly not genetic and may well not be at all. Taking the same side of an argument more strongly isn't taking the other side.

You seem to equate "racism" with "irrationality," which I suppose you can get away with since "racism" can mean just about anything.

Nah, I was quite specific.

But I think I am on the same page as Underseer when he thought of anyone not answering "0%" as being "racist." That is how most people think of it, because, if it is not exactly 0%, then, if all environments between the races were perfectly equal, there would still be racial economic inequalities.

Can't speak for Underseer (whom I suspect you misrepresent), but your inference is a double non-sequitur. If the genetic component is tiny, economic inequality wouldn't necessarily follow; and even if it did, it doesn't follow that most people regard belief in anything but nil genetic component as racist.

Arguably, maybe a lot of respondents who answered "0%-40%" did so for the same reason beero1000 did: a statistically-minded person never answers exactly 0% or exactly 100% for anything, but they may allow values extremely close to 0%. But, they would still be in the minority at most, at 42% of the respondents (the 17% solid black slice would fully overlap with the 42%).

Not as small as the minority who think the differences are mostly genetic. And that's just among a self-selected 18% who, presumably, accept the question terms. And that's just among intelligence researchers who aren't necessarily the final authorities here. Population geneticists increasingly don't even think race is a properly biological categorisation. I'd guess many intelligence researchers didn't respond because any discrete percentage would convey a facile misunderstanding of the complex interaction between genes, environment and heredity. Also, a best guess at a percentage range should include ranges into the minuses if one acknowledges the possibility of both genetic and non-genetic components but is agnostic over to extent to which either predominates. The question, as is, basically asks exactly how genetically superior is whitey on a scale of 100 ?

The poll bears out the claims of Richard Nisbett and Linda Gottfredson: it is the scientific consensus among intelligence researchers that the racial IQ gaps are at least partly genetic, a consensus at great odds with the opinions of the public and with the opinions among other scientific fields, even with other sub-fields within psychology. I have an undergraduate psychology textbook with a few pages devoted to debunking Arthur Jensen.

Yeah, if you regard the competing camps as [experts : some genetic component] vs [everyone else : shocked at the very idea]. But that's just this weird thing you keep saying. I very much doubt that belief in non-zero genetic component is "greatly at odds with" or likely to elicit "shock and disbelief" from yer average punter. Regardless of that - and whatever might ultimately be true about IQ score differences - accepting or dismissing explanations depending whether they fit ones preconceptions about black/white/whatever people is racist. As is seeing evidence for them in non-evidence and even contrary evidence.

 

[Canard DuJour]

I should speak to a population geneticist about it.

Indeed. Here ya go :

"The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise for reasons that were already clear to Darwin." - Luigi Cavalli-Sforza.

Cavalli-Sforza is the world authority on population genetics who basically wrote the textbook. Now, were you to find his conclusion "lacking" or something and favour the opinion of some relatively obscure anthropologist, why should anyone care?

 

[ApostateAbe]

I should speak to a population geneticist about it.

Indeed. Here ya go :

"The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise for reasons that were already clear to Darwin." - Luigi Cavalli-Sforza.

Cavalli-Sforza is the world authority on population genetics who basically wrote the textbook. Now, were you to find his conclusion "lacking" or something and favour the opinion of some relatively obscure anthropologist, why should anyone care?

No, I agree! The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise. EO Wilson and WL Brown explain those problems of taxonomies of races in their paper here: "The Subspecies Concept and Its Taxonomic Application," 1953. It is worth reading for its educational value. The position that races are generally biologically useless is a different matter, and you can probably quote-mine Cavalli-Sforza effectively to that end (probably not Darwin), but that does not matter to me so much. I accept the spectral biological nature of races regardless of authorities at this point. The problem I would like to resolve is the question of whether human races are merging or splitting.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I investigated Cavalli-Sforza a little more, and the history of his opinions on race is interesting. He made a family tree of human "populations" in his 1994 textbook.



He was rightly criticized for this depiction because family trees of races are misleading at best. Such a tree may mislead viewers into thinking that a closer distance between two branches means a closer genetic relationship, but, as there is plenty of horizontal gene flow between two otherwise distant branches of the tree (i.e. between the caucasoid Indians and the mongoloid Chinese), they may be closely related in spite of distance branches on a family tree, and ANY such family tree is misleading. A better depiction of genetic racial similarities is through principal component analysis, which Cavalli-Sforza also depicted to his credit.



The illustration I most prefer is through cluster analysis, i.e. Tishkoff et al, 2009, page 1038.

Show

Cavalli-Sforza's views on human races apparently evolved over his lifetime. His earlier writings assume the reality and validity of human races, but his later writings are more dismissive of it, and he instead uses the word "populations" in a way that means the same biological concept as "race." The reason for this shift is found in a quote of AWF Edwards in the 2010 paper by Neven Sesardic titled, "Race: a social destruction of a biological concept." The excerpt from Neven Sesardić's paper is as follows:

Oddly, even the scholars who have been at the very forefront of empirical research on race are prone to use fallacious reasoning in order to downplay the importance of that concept. For instance, Cavalli-Sforza, geneticist and the lead author of the path-breaking History and Geography of Human Genes (CavalliSforza et al. 1994), states in a book co-authored with Walter Bodmer: "Races are, in fact, generally very far from pure and, as a result, any classification of races is arbitrary, imperfect, and difficult" (Bodmer and Cavalli-Sforza 1976—italic added). Is any classification of races imperfect? Yes. Difficult? Perhaps. But arbitrary? No, this certainly does not follow from the premise, "as a result".

Speaking about Cavalli-Sforza, it is interesting that he tried to defuse potential political attacks on his research by a simple and sometimes surprisingly effective rhetorical ploy. At one point he just stopped using the term "race" and replaced it with a much less loaded expression "human population", which in many contexts he actually used more or less with the same meaning as "race". On one occasion this terminological switch gave rise to an amusingly ironic development, as described in the following episode involving Cavalli-Sforza's collaborator, Edwards:

When in the 1960s I started working on the problem of reconstructing the course of human evolution from data on the frequencies of blood-group genes my colleague Luca Cavalli-Sforza and I sometimes unconsciously used the word 'race' interchangeably with 'population' in our publications. In one popular account, I wrote naturally of 'the present races of man'. Quite recently I quoted the passage in an Italian publication, so it needed translating. Sensitive to the modern misgivings over the use of the word 'race', Cavalli-Sforza suggested I change it to 'population'. At first I was reluctant to do so on the grounds that quotations should be accurate and not altered to meet contemporary sensibilities. But he pointed out that, as the original author, I was the only person who could possibly object. I changed 'present races of man' to 'present populations of man' and sent the paper to be translated into Italian. When it was published the translator had rendered the phrase as 'le razze umane moderne'. (Edwards undated, unpublished manuscript)​

AWF Edwards was thanked as a reviewer of this paper, and he is the author of "Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy," which effectively struck down the most popular established argument against the biology of human races. He became much less considerate of modern misgivings about human races, apparently, than Cavalli-Sforza. The politics has caused games to be played with words. Since you are much less likely to get textbooks published and sold if you talk about "race" as though it is biologically significant, authors use different words to mean the same thing, and the needed science gets done, but it makes the science a confusing house of mirrors. Neven Sesardić's paper is one I highly suggest reading to clear the air.

 

[Jokodo]

I investigated Cavalli-Sforza a little more, and the history of his opinions on race is interesting. He made a family tree of human "populations" in his 1994 textbook.



He was rightly criticized for this depiction because family trees of races are misleading at best. Such a tree may mislead viewers into thinking that a closer distance between two branches means a closer genetic relationship, but, as there is plenty of horizontal gene flow between two otherwise distant branches of the tree (i.e. between the caucasoid Indians and the mongoloid Chinese), they may be closely related in spite of distance branches on a family tree, and ANY such family tree is misleading. A better depiction of genetic racial similarities is through principal component analysis, which Cavalli-Sforza also depicted to his credit.



The illustration I most prefer is through cluster analysis, i.e. Tishkoff et al, 2009, page 1038.

Show

Cavalli-Sforza's views on human races apparently evolved over his lifetime. His earlier writings assume the reality and validity of human races, but his later writings are more dismissive of it, and he instead uses the word "populations" in a way that means the same biological concept as "race." The reason for this shift is found in a quote of AWF Edwards in the 2010 paper by Neven Sesardic titled, "Race: a social destruction of a biological concept." The excerpt from Neven Sesardić's paper is as follows:

Oddly, even the scholars who have been at the very forefront of empirical research on race are prone to use fallacious reasoning in order to downplay the importance of that concept. For instance, Cavalli-Sforza, geneticist and the lead author of the path-breaking History and Geography of Human Genes (CavalliSforza et al. 1994), states in a book co-authored with Walter Bodmer: "Races are, in fact, generally very far from pure and, as a result, any classification of races is arbitrary, imperfect, and difficult" (Bodmer and Cavalli-Sforza 1976—italic added). Is any classification of races imperfect? Yes. Difficult? Perhaps. But arbitrary? No, this certainly does not follow from the premise, "as a result".

Speaking about Cavalli-Sforza, it is interesting that he tried to defuse potential political attacks on his research by a simple and sometimes surprisingly effective rhetorical ploy. At one point he just stopped using the term "race" and replaced it with a much less loaded expression "human population", which in many contexts he actually used more or less with the same meaning as "race". On one occasion this terminological switch gave rise to an amusingly ironic development, as described in the following episode involving Cavalli-Sforza's collaborator, Edwards:

When in the 1960s I started working on the problem of reconstructing the course of human evolution from data on the frequencies of blood-group genes my colleague Luca Cavalli-Sforza and I sometimes unconsciously used the word 'race' interchangeably with 'population' in our publications. In one popular account, I wrote naturally of 'the present races of man'. Quite recently I quoted the passage in an Italian publication, so it needed translating. Sensitive to the modern misgivings over the use of the word 'race', Cavalli-Sforza suggested I change it to 'population'. At first I was reluctant to do so on the grounds that quotations should be accurate and not altered to meet contemporary sensibilities. But he pointed out that, as the original author, I was the only person who could possibly object. I changed 'present races of man' to 'present populations of man' and sent the paper to be translated into Italian. When it was published the translator had rendered the phrase as 'le razze umane moderne'. (Edwards undated, unpublished manuscript)​

AWF Edwards was thanked as a reviewer of this paper, and he is the author of "Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy," which effectively struck down the most popular established argument against the biology of human races. He became much less considerate of modern misgivings about human races, apparently, than Cavalli-Sforza. The politics has caused games to be played with words. Since you are much less likely to get textbooks published and sold if you talk about "race" as though it is biologically significant, authors use different words to mean the same thing, and the needed science gets done, but it makes the science a confusing house of mirrors. Neven Sesardić's paper is one I highly suggest reading to clear the air.

1. The fact that you can calculate clusters doesn't make it so that races as commonly are a useful concept. Saying that populations A and B form a cluster with C and D as the outgroup just means that individuals from A and B on average share more markers with each other than with individuals of C and D. It could still be that there are almost as many markers that are frequent among A and C, or A and D, or B and C but not the rest - but when you're done counting, you're free to discard them if they're ever so slightly outnumbered by the other type.

2. Those studies focus on inert genetic material. If your goal is to trace ancient migrations, population splits and mergers, you want to actively avoid genes that might be positively selected for - because those are the ones that will easily jump from one population to the other and take the whole old world in a blitzkrieg in the presence of even just very moderate gene flow between subpopulations.

3. Because of 1., it is anywhere from utterly stupid (if you actually believe it) to intellectually dishonest (if you use it as an argument to lend a veneer of scientific credibility to your preformed conclusions) to have a strong a priori expectation that any trait for which we don't understand the genetic basis in sufficient detail (such as intelligence) to pattern with the clusters found by population geneticists. Because of 2., it's arguably even stupid to expect such differences in the first place unless you can convincingly show that higher intelligence is more advantageous in some environments than others, which you can't.

You can't show that because in order to do so, you'd need to know a whole lot more about not only the physical environments of ancestral populations, but also their social structures. Of course you can say that an environment with seasonally scarce resources (which are more typical of higher latitudes) requires higher intelligence - but you can just as easily claim that an environment with plentiful venomous creatures (more typical of the tropics) does. Or you could argue that a more demanding physical environment leads to smaller group sizes and thus a less demanding social environment and by consequence a less intellectually demanding environment overall (along the lines of Dunbar et al.'s conjecture that brain size in primates is best predicted by group size). If you can explain anything and its polar opposite using a comprable amount of additional assumptions, you're better off admitting that you can't explain the data.

If you really want to argue for (a) a genetic basis for the difference in performance, and (b) a selectionist account thereof, your best bet is probably pathogen load and not differences in how intellectually demanding different environments were. We know that pathogen load is higher in the tropics than in temperate climates, and we know that many genes have effects in seemingly unrelated domains (one gene for one trait is the exception, not the rule), so its not a huge leap to assume that some genes might have been selected for in some environments but not others despite a slight negative effect on intellectual capacities because they conveyed better resistance to germs.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I investigated Cavalli-Sforza a little more, and the history of his opinions on race is interesting. He made a family tree of human "populations" in his 1994 textbook.



He was rightly criticized for this depiction because family trees of races are misleading at best. Such a tree may mislead viewers into thinking that a closer distance between two branches means a closer genetic relationship, but, as there is plenty of horizontal gene flow between two otherwise distant branches of the tree (i.e. between the caucasoid Indians and the mongoloid Chinese), they may be closely related in spite of distance branches on a family tree, and ANY such family tree is misleading. A better depiction of genetic racial similarities is through principal component analysis, which Cavalli-Sforza also depicted to his credit.



The illustration I most prefer is through cluster analysis, i.e. Tishkoff et al, 2009, page 1038.

Show

Cavalli-Sforza's views on human races apparently evolved over his lifetime. His earlier writings assume the reality and validity of human races, but his later writings are more dismissive of it, and he instead uses the word "populations" in a way that means the same biological concept as "race." The reason for this shift is found in a quote of AWF Edwards in the 2010 paper by Neven Sesardic titled, "Race: a social destruction of a biological concept." The excerpt from Neven Sesardić's paper is as follows:

Oddly, even the scholars who have been at the very forefront of empirical research on race are prone to use fallacious reasoning in order to downplay the importance of that concept. For instance, Cavalli-Sforza, geneticist and the lead author of the path-breaking History and Geography of Human Genes (CavalliSforza et al. 1994), states in a book co-authored with Walter Bodmer: "Races are, in fact, generally very far from pure and, as a result, any classification of races is arbitrary, imperfect, and difficult" (Bodmer and Cavalli-Sforza 1976—italic added). Is any classification of races imperfect? Yes. Difficult? Perhaps. But arbitrary? No, this certainly does not follow from the premise, "as a result".

Speaking about Cavalli-Sforza, it is interesting that he tried to defuse potential political attacks on his research by a simple and sometimes surprisingly effective rhetorical ploy. At one point he just stopped using the term "race" and replaced it with a much less loaded expression "human population", which in many contexts he actually used more or less with the same meaning as "race". On one occasion this terminological switch gave rise to an amusingly ironic development, as described in the following episode involving Cavalli-Sforza's collaborator, Edwards:

When in the 1960s I started working on the problem of reconstructing the course of human evolution from data on the frequencies of blood-group genes my colleague Luca Cavalli-Sforza and I sometimes unconsciously used the word 'race' interchangeably with 'population' in our publications. In one popular account, I wrote naturally of 'the present races of man'. Quite recently I quoted the passage in an Italian publication, so it needed translating. Sensitive to the modern misgivings over the use of the word 'race', Cavalli-Sforza suggested I change it to 'population'. At first I was reluctant to do so on the grounds that quotations should be accurate and not altered to meet contemporary sensibilities. But he pointed out that, as the original author, I was the only person who could possibly object. I changed 'present races of man' to 'present populations of man' and sent the paper to be translated into Italian. When it was published the translator had rendered the phrase as 'le razze umane moderne'. (Edwards undated, unpublished manuscript)​

AWF Edwards was thanked as a reviewer of this paper, and he is the author of "Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy," which effectively struck down the most popular established argument against the biology of human races. He became much less considerate of modern misgivings about human races, apparently, than Cavalli-Sforza. The politics has caused games to be played with words. Since you are much less likely to get textbooks published and sold if you talk about "race" as though it is biologically significant, authors use different words to mean the same thing, and the needed science gets done, but it makes the science a confusing house of mirrors. Neven Sesardić's paper is one I highly suggest reading to clear the air.

1. The fact that you can calculate clusters doesn't make it so that races as commonly are a useful concept. Saying that populations A and B form a cluster with C and D as the outgroup just means that individuals from A and B on average share more markers with each other than with individuals of C and D. It could still be that there are almost as many markers that are frequent among A and C, or A and D, or B and C but not the rest - but when you're done counting, you're free to discard them if they're ever so slightly outnumbered by the other type.

2. Those studies focus on inert genetic material. If your goal is to trace ancient migrations, population splits and mergers, you want to actively avoid genes that might be positively selected for - because those are the ones that will easily jump from one population to the other and take the whole old world in a blitzkrieg in the presence of even just very moderate gene flow between subpopulations.

3. Because of 1., it is anywhere from utterly stupid (if you actually believe it) to intellectually dishonest (if you use it as an argument to lend a veneer of scientific credibility to your preformed conclusions) to have a strong a priori expectation that any trait for which we don't understand the genetic basis in sufficient detail (such as intelligence) to pattern with the clusters found by population geneticists. Because of 2., it's arguably even stupid to expect such differences in the first place unless you can convincingly show that higher intelligence is more advantageous in some environments than others, which you can't.

You can't show that because in order to do so, you'd need to know a whole lot more about not only the physical environments of ancestral populations, but also their social structures. Of course you can say that an environment with seasonally scarce resources (which are more typical of higher latitudes) requires higher intelligence - but you can just as easily claim that an environment with plentiful venomous creatures (more typical of the tropics) does. Or you could argue that a more demanding physical environment leads to smaller group sizes and thus a less demanding social environment and by consequence a less intellectually demanding environment overall (along the lines of Dunbar et al.'s conjecture that brain size in primates is best predicted by group size). If you can explain anything and its polar opposite using a comprable amount of additional assumptions, you're better off admitting that you can't explain the data.

If you really want to argue for (a) a genetic basis for the difference in performance, and (b) a selectionist account thereof, your best bet is probably pathogen load and not differences in how intellectually demanding different environments were. We know that pathogen load is higher in the tropics than in temperate climates, and we know that many genes have effects in seemingly unrelated domains (one gene for one trait is the exception, not the rule), so its not a huge leap to assume that some genes might have been selected for in some environments but not others despite a slight negative effect on intellectual capacities because they conveyed better resistance to germs.

Let's hypothetically assign peoples to A, B, C and D.

A: Makua people of Mozambique
B: Sakalava people of Madagascar
C: Cebuano people of the Philippines
D: Yolngu people of Australia

You predict that there could be more markers shared between A and C, or between A and D, or between B and C, than such markers shared between A and B or between C and D. You predict that you can make an equally-reasonable cluster analysis that shows such a thing, using about 1327 genetic markers like Tishkoff et al did. Would you stand behind that claim? It seems to be not just a claim at odds with existing data but also at odds with the fundamentals of biogeography.

 

[One]

You would have to completely overturn evolutionary theory.

Yes. And this is precisely what will happen.
I am not so limited in my comprehension of this topic that I cannot conceive of research overturning all of it within 100 years or less. We simply do not understand enough to state definitively that our notions of race or intellectual capacity are objective or even accurate.

Races are as important as random mutation or natural selection.

Race has been imporant as a social construct, which we credit with an entire assortment of ramifications for our species.
These IQ tests are an extention of this same social construct. For this reasson, they have not been accurate in their creation, implentation or execution.

Good Will Hunting is a good metaphor of reality for minorities and those deemed "poor white trash." It is more common to come across someone with genuis level comprehenion in a menial job or criminal profession due to their own internal beliefs about themselves or external social pressures towards the same. The same can be said of those that do not test well in a formal setting. These people are not counted in this so-called "gap." I assure you. My experiences being a parental advocate have been quite eye-opening in this regard.

I was told my oldest son has average intelligence based on this testing. The intersting thing is that he has been researching black holes since age 3 and reads Popular Science and Scientific American for fun at 12. I had to take him to Weill-Cornell University where it was determined that his logicistical capacity is a college student. He did not get a single question wrong until the questions reached second year college. Yet this test was adminstered orally rather than via a written test. Suddenly, I am raising a genuis just by altering the method of administering the test - a feat most professionals will not even attempt with any test subject. They kept my son an additional hour because he asked such thorough questions about genetics they simply enjoyed talking to him.

And after this I still faced the same resistence echoed by other minorities and poor whites I have encountered over the last decade: Even after being shown the results of the University, the schools would not change these numbers.

Therefore, my conclusion after years of experiencing and helping others with the bias surrounding IQ and gifted testing - particularly in children - is that it is not objective whatsoever. Not even close. By keeping those scores average or below average it also keeps the funding for programs down alongside a whole host of other societal ills.

The real gaps are all the people falling between the cracks due to our outdated notions on race relations.

 

[ApostateAbe]

One, the only seeming alternative to races within evolutionary theory is that species suddenly come into existence, without gradual changes in gene frequencies among populations over time. This is vastly unlikely. If you need to depend on such speculation that would overturn both established scientific theory and observed patterns of data to keep the ideology coherent, then the problem is likely to be the ideology, not the scientific theory.

 

[Jokodo]

1. The fact that you can calculate clusters doesn't make it so that races as commonly are a useful concept. Saying that populations A and B form a cluster with C and D as the outgroup just means that individuals from A and B on average share more markers with each other than with individuals of C and D. It could still be that there are almost as many markers that are frequent among A and C, or A and D, or B and C but not the rest - but when you're done counting, you're free to discard them if they're ever so slightly outnumbered by the other type.

2. Those studies focus on inert genetic material. If your goal is to trace ancient migrations, population splits and mergers, you want to actively avoid genes that might be positively selected for - because those are the ones that will easily jump from one population to the other and take the whole old world in a blitzkrieg in the presence of even just very moderate gene flow between subpopulations.

3. Because of 1., it is anywhere from utterly stupid (if you actually believe it) to intellectually dishonest (if you use it as an argument to lend a veneer of scientific credibility to your preformed conclusions) to have a strong a priori expectation that any trait for which we don't understand the genetic basis in sufficient detail (such as intelligence) to pattern with the clusters found by population geneticists. Because of 2., it's arguably even stupid to expect such differences in the first place unless you can convincingly show that higher intelligence is more advantageous in some environments than others, which you can't.

You can't show that because in order to do so, you'd need to know a whole lot more about not only the physical environments of ancestral populations, but also their social structures. Of course you can say that an environment with seasonally scarce resources (which are more typical of higher latitudes) requires higher intelligence - but you can just as easily claim that an environment with plentiful venomous creatures (more typical of the tropics) does. Or you could argue that a more demanding physical environment leads to smaller group sizes and thus a less demanding social environment and by consequence a less intellectually demanding environment overall (along the lines of Dunbar et al.'s conjecture that brain size in primates is best predicted by group size). If you can explain anything and its polar opposite using a comprable amount of additional assumptions, you're better off admitting that you can't explain the data.

If you really want to argue for (a) a genetic basis for the difference in performance, and (b) a selectionist account thereof, your best bet is probably pathogen load and not differences in how intellectually demanding different environments were. We know that pathogen load is higher in the tropics than in temperate climates, and we know that many genes have effects in seemingly unrelated domains (one gene for one trait is the exception, not the rule), so its not a huge leap to assume that some genes might have been selected for in some environments but not others despite a slight negative effect on intellectual capacities because they conveyed better resistance to germs.

Let's hypothetically assign peoples to A, B, C and D.

A: Makua people of Mozambique
B: Sakalava people of Madagascar
C: Cebuano people of the Philippines
D: Yolngu people of Australia

You predict that there could be more markers shared between A and C, or between A and D, or between B and C, than such markers shared between A and B or between C and D. You predict that you can make an equally-reasonable cluster analysis that shows such a thing, using about 1327 genetic markers like Tishkoff et al did. Would you stand behind that claim? It seems to be not just a claim at odds with existing data but also at odds with the fundamentals of biogeography.

No, that's not what I'm claiming, if you care to read my post. What I'm saying instead is that cluster analysis is a valid methods to derive clusters, and is useful for reconstructing past migrations and population splits and mergers, but it is meaningless for predicting the geographical distribution of traits for which we don't understand the genetic basis. The validity of cluster analysis (for its limited purposes) notwithstanding, talking about racial IQ remains gibberish even if you try to equate "races" with "clusters as found by population genetic studies".

Also, I have to ask how much you actually know about "the fundamentals of biogeography" with respect to, e.g., Madagascar. Do you know that Madagascar was settled very late (1st millenium CE) from South-East Asia? That the Malagasy language's closest relatives are spoken on Kalimantan/Borneo, Indonesia, and that Malagasy, just as Cebuano, is part of the Malayo-Polynesian language family within the Austronesian phylum? That, despite ample admixture of East Africans, genetic studies show the Malagasy to be of about 50% or more South-East Asian ancestry, with maximum likelihood analyses again pointing to Borneo? If you actually did a cluster analysis with the four groups you suggested, my best guess is that you'd get a tree of the shape ((A(BC))D) or (A((BC)D), anything but the ((AB)(CD)) you seem to be assuming. So, yes, I, like anyone who knows about the history of human settlement in Madagascar, predict to find more markers shared between B and C. But that doesn't imply that Malagasys intellectual potential should more closely match that of the Cebuano. It really doesn't imply anything about any group's intellectual potential. That's the fucking point!

 

[One]

One, the only seeming alternative to races within evolutionary theory is that species suddenly come into existence, without gradual changes in gene frequencies among populations over time. This is vastly unlikely. If you need to depend on such speculation that would overturn both established scientific theory and observed patterns of data to keep the ideology coherent, then the problem is likely to be the ideology, not the scientific theory.

The point you are stuck on is that races are valid constructs. They are not. They are social paradigms, outdated methods of understanding that continue to cause needless problems.

This is why they are unrelable indicators of intellectual potentional. The question of your OP is how to raise IQ in a designated population, but you do not acknowledge that these groups are poorly tested to begin with. Today's professionals continue to move away from these classifications. Reading your posts, you have sidestepped this fact when it has been pointed out to you many times.

This isn't about finding alternatives to race. My issue is with the implication of your views in the real world. Brestfeeding will make no difference in the IQ gap if the tests themselves are faulty. And people will continue to perceive a gap where there isn't one for the same reason: they see what they want to see.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Let's hypothetically assign peoples to A, B, C and D.

A: Makua people of Mozambique
B: Sakalava people of Madagascar
C: Cebuano people of the Philippines
D: Yolngu people of Australia

You predict that there could be more markers shared between A and C, or between A and D, or between B and C, than such markers shared between A and B or between C and D. You predict that you can make an equally-reasonable cluster analysis that shows such a thing, using about 1327 genetic markers like Tishkoff et al did. Would you stand behind that claim? It seems to be not just a claim at odds with existing data but also at odds with the fundamentals of biogeography.

No, that's not what I'm claiming, if you care to read my post. What I'm saying instead is that cluster analysis is a valid methods to derive clusters, and is useful for reconstructing past migrations and population splits and mergers, but it is meaningless for predicting the geographical distribution of traits for which we don't understand the genetic basis. The validity of cluster analysis (for its limited purposes) notwithstanding, talking about racial IQ remains gibberish even if you try to equate "races" with "clusters as found by population genetic studies".

Also, I have to ask how much you actually know about "the fundamentals of biogeography" with respect to, e.g., Madagascar. Do you know that Madagascar was settled very late (1st millenium CE) from South-East Asia? That the Malagasy language's closest relatives are spoken on Kalimantan/Borneo, Indonesia, and that Malagasy, just as Cebuano, is part of the Malayo-Polynesian language family within the Austronesian phylum? That, despite ample admixture of East Africans, genetic studies show the Malagasy to be of about 50% or more South-East Asian ancestry, with maximum likelihood analyses again pointing to Borneo? If you actually did a cluster analysis with the four groups you suggested, my best guess is that you'd get a tree of the shape ((A(BC))D) or (A((BC)D), anything but the ((AB)(CD)) you seem to be assuming. So, yes, I, like anyone who knows about the history of human settlement in Madagascar, predict to find more markers shared between B and C. But that doesn't imply that Malagasys intellectual potential should more closely match that of the Cebuano. It really doesn't imply anything about any group's intellectual potential. That's the fucking point!

Thanks for the clarification. You seemed to argue as though the arrangements of A, B, C and D are arbitrary and could be anything, and I am still uncertain of what you meant to claim. No, I had no idea about the migration history from Southeast Asia to Madagascar. Good to know!

 

[ApostateAbe]

One, the only seeming alternative to races within evolutionary theory is that species suddenly come into existence, without gradual changes in gene frequencies among populations over time. This is vastly unlikely. If you need to depend on such speculation that would overturn both established scientific theory and observed patterns of data to keep the ideology coherent, then the problem is likely to be the ideology, not the scientific theory.

The point you are stuck on is that races are valid constructs. They are not. They are social paradigms, outdated methods of understanding that continue to cause needless problems.

This is why they are unrelable indicators of intellectual potentional. The question of your OP is how to raise IQ in a designated population, but you do not acknowledge that these groups are poorly tested to begin with. Today's professionals continue to move away from these classifications. Reading your posts, you have sidestepped this fact when it has been pointed out to you many times.

This isn't about finding alternatives to race. My issue is with the implication of your views in the real world. Brestfeeding will make no difference in the IQ gap if the tests themselves are faulty. And people will continue to perceive a gap where there isn't one for the same reason: they see what they want to see.

For me the science comes first, politics next. There are plenty of people in the world who see themselves that way, but they let their politics guide their science. If races are mere social paradigms, then what do you call populations with varying gene frequencies due to ancestral geography, if not the word used among biologists for 150 years? You talked as though even the concept of race as I define it does not exist and the problem is evolutionary theory. When I say "race," I don't mean social paradigms. I mean populations with varying gene frequencies due to ancestral geography. Is this the same as a social paradigm, to you?

 

[Jokodo]

Madagascar really is a fascinating place, biogeography-wise. It's actually a continent in its own right in those terms. It split off from Africa so long ago that its fauna is more distant from mainland Africa than e.g. that of South East Asia. There were no monkeys proper when Madagascar split off, but it has its own endemic clade of prosimians, the lemurs. Some lemurs actually reached gorilla size, but the larger species went extinct soon after humans arrived 1500 years ago, along with the elephant bird (think: a 500kg ostrich) and many other endemic species. Apart from the Malay connection, the island was also visited by Arab traders before Europeans arrived.

When talking about humans, though, there's of course been a lot of admixture and it's utterly unlikely that you'll find a single Malagasy who's "pure" Malay or "pure" Bantu, but you do find a broad variety from people who look very close to mainland Africans to ones who look very close to South East Asians. Yet I don't think anyone on the island would even think of classifying the population into "yellows" and "blacks". It doesn't make sense to them, and it shouldn't to us.

 

[Jokodo]

Another thing about Madagascar, even if it were true, which it isn't, that Madagascar was settled many millennia ago from present day Mozambique with little outside interaction since, we wouldn't expect a particularly close match between today's Malagasy and today's Mozambicans. As is, the African component in Madagascar is a pretty close match to modern South-East Africans - but not to the South-East Africans of a mere 2000 years ago. Today's Mozambicans (and the Mozambicans of 600 CE who joined the South East Asians in populating Madagascar) are predominantly the descendants of Bantu-speaking farmers who colonised Southern Africa over the course of several millennia, starting out around the border of modern-day Nigeria and Cameroon and reaching Mozambique in the first century CE. There is an indigenous substratum with links to the remnant Khoisan populations of Southern Africa, but it accounts for less than 10% of the Mozambican gene pool, or the African component in the Malagasy one - but that is the heritage we would expect to find in Madagascar if it had been settled from the mainland substantially earlier.

You're probably not aware of it, but you seem to be assuming that everyone was just sitting in their place until Europeans came along with multi-tonnage cargo ships and airplanes. This is not true in general, and it's particularly untrue for Southern Africa. You may not know this, but history happens even when there are no white men around to write it down in the Latin alphabet.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Thanks for cluing me into the ancient migration from Southeast Asia to Madagascar. I was a victim of the assumption that Europeans were the only significant seafarers, and, yeah, plainly not true.