Herrnstein and Murray on "Intelligence Besieged"

[ApostateAbe]

The question that you think is moot, by the best indications, does not seem to be moot among the relevant researchers.

I'm curious:

What is your measured IQ and by what test/tests? What are your qualifications, academic and otherwise, to evaluate and make pronouncements on the research you have uncovered?

None of the claims I am making will I ask you to believe because of my authority on the matter. I have no authority on the matter. It would be better to ask me for the evidence that leads me to know the facts I claim, and I will happily provide. I am not so happy to talk about my IQ or anything like that. Be my IQ high or low, nothing productive can come of making it a topic of discussion.

 

[ApostateAbe]

The question that you think is moot, by the best indications, does not seem to be moot among the relevant researchers.

Look, intelligence is an actual subject, the concept itself is problematic at best, multiple factors incide on intelligence test outcomes, and all of that renders you ethnic-based argumentation moot. Lost, perdido, dead.

Your insistence on it raises an eyebrow to say the least. I am curious about your insistence on taking one factor and crowning it as god of the subject on intelligence. And even intelligence itself, what's this incredible insistence you have? It's not that intelligence is the objective of life nor a gurantee of success or happiness or worthiness.

If you want someone to confess that genetics has something to do with intelligence test outcomes, rest assured hardly anyone here will deny it. It's not even close to being a division of opinions like the Neoliberal-Keynsian one or Hawkish-pacifist one. You can bet on there being quite a consensus here in favor of genetics having a role among such a hellbent band of Darwinians that has congregated on TFT. Happy? What you won't find is extremes in opinion of the eugenics-racism-ohmygodkeepoutthebrowns! kind.

OK, interesting thoughts.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Why would an intelligent person waste time on something which has been discredited so many times. Is it any difference than interpreting geological data as evidence of the flood of Genesis?

Yeah. The difference is that the theories of the science of human intelligence powerfully fulfill predictions and elegantly fit the evidence,

Not the ones you keep touting. Plenty of evidence including their own suggests the conclusions are unwarranted (not necessarily wrong), for reasons you don't seem to get.

and the theory of the Noachian flood plainly does not. That, and the science of intelligence is just plain interesting. I think it is natural for an intelligent person to be curious about why a science with claims that are highly taboo among the ideological public are taken so seriously by so many highly-qualified academics.

Yeah, the daft persecution complex doesn't help either. Hardly anyone thinks intelligence is entirely environmental. Large swathes of the public (who've never heard of Lynn et al) believe in conflicting racial hierarchies of intelligence and are happy to say so. Yer average reader here knows that genetic explanations of inter-group IQ test score differences remain speculative.

 

[Duke Leto]

Jesus fucking christ. How many threads are you going to make about this topic?

The racist demogoguing will continue until morale improves.

 

[Duke Leto]

I don't know, but I suggest you learn from them, not merely react against them.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48XreePDi8k[/YOUTUBE]

This video has no bearing on the educational value of your thread.

Oh wait it does.

 

[Bronzeage]

Why would an intelligent person waste time on something which has been discredited so many times. Is it any difference than interpreting geological data as evidence of the flood of Genesis?

Yeah. The difference is that the theories of the science of human intelligence powerfully fulfill predictions and elegantly fit the evidence, and the theory of the Noachian flood plainly does not. That, and the science of intelligence is just plain interesting. I think it is natural for an intelligent person to be curious about why a science with claims that are highly taboo among the ideological public are taken so seriously by so many highly-qualified academics.

It is easy to declare something taboo, which gives it an air of "dangerous knowledge", something they don't want you to know. We'll gather in the corner and after checking to see if we are not observed, spread the suppressed truths.

That definition of taboo comes from bad movies where the white man(always accompanied by a white woman) is warned not to go into the Valley of Wizzywhat, because it is taboo. Of course he does, and takes the girl with him, where they find wondrous things.

It's an irresistible image, which is why the metaphorical taboo is invoked for this kind of nonsense.

The creationist wants to prove the Flood of Noah, so he goes in search of the right shaped rock. The modern eugenist wants to prove the hierarchy of races, so he goes in search of the right shaped head. His evidence will always support his case and comfort those who are susceptible to this kind of nonsense.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Yeah. The difference is that the theories of the science of human intelligence powerfully fulfill predictions and elegantly fit the evidence, and the theory of the Noachian flood plainly does not. That, and the science of intelligence is just plain interesting. I think it is natural for an intelligent person to be curious about why a science with claims that are highly taboo among the ideological public are taken so seriously by so many highly-qualified academics.

It is easy to declare something taboo, which gives it an air of "dangerous knowledge", something they don't want you to know. We'll gather in the corner and after checking to see if we are not observed, spread the suppressed truths.

That definition of taboo comes from bad movies where the white man(always accompanied by a white woman) is warned not to go into the Valley of Wizzywhat, because it is taboo. Of course he does, and takes the girl with him, where they find wondrous things.

It's an irresistible image, which is why the metaphorical taboo is invoked for this kind of nonsense.

The creationist wants to prove the Flood of Noah, so he goes in search of the right shaped rock. The modern eugenist wants to prove the hierarchy of races, so he goes in search of the right shaped head. His evidence will always support his case and comfort those who are susceptible to this kind of nonsense.

The extreme taboo is part of what led me to the topic. The scientific arguments used against the taboo knowledge seemed on the face weak, conflicting, and unexpected from evolutionary theory. They seemed designed merely for politics, as the moral arguments were so often shamelessly woven into the scientific arguments, even among those who I would expect would know better. I have seen it even in many papers published in scientific journals. Where there are zealous crowds of firefighters, there is fire, so maybe there is something to that fire, and, yep, the scientific racist case actually made complete plausible unified sense of racial inequalities of all sorts. It was like discovering an accurate depiction of the theory of evolution for the first time. It seems ridiculous to many others because all they know of it are the many hateful strawmen learned in churches.

 

[Togo]

Yes, IQ research is subject to political pressure when it makes statements about public policy. Just like everyone else is subject to political pressure when they make statements about public policy. No doubt that has led some IQ researchers deciding that they're not being given a fair shake. But scientists who do understand what they're doing, who do understand the methods, and the statistics, and the evidence, do not tend to support these claims. Which is why they are limited to a subset of IQ researchers, rather than accepted across the discipline as a whole.

There is a set of claims made by the MAJORITY of intelligence researchers but not the majority of other psychologists, i.e. that intelligence as measured by intelligence tests are central to making sense of human economic inequality and that the racial differences in average intelligence scores are mainly genetic.

Those are not claims made by a majority of intelligence researchers.

Look, the majority of intelligence researchers, by sheer numbers, are working in industry trying to fit IQ and other forms of psychometric testing to management and HR policy, either internally or as consultants. They're not in the business of making sweeping claims, they're in the business of filtering job applicants.

There is a noisy subsection of intelligence researchers, as there is in any subject, who want to push the case that their work is not just of interest to a niche subsection of psychology department, but is key to understanding the world. This is why Dawkins describes the theory of evolution as the pinnacle of human achievement, why physicists keep trying to make out that all other forms of science are simply variations on physics, why historians claim that you without understanding the past it is impossible to understand the present, and why the National institute of Actuaries claims that 'understanding insurable risk is the key to navigating the economic hazards of the 21st century'.

Those are politically controversial points that do not so directly follow from a narrow range of data but only from a broad comprehension of a diversity of data and a sound theoretical understanding unique to intelligence researchers.

But that's just it - it isn't unique to intelligence researchers. Why would it be? Why wouldn't any psychologist, including those who disagree with intelligence researchers, understand it just as well?

If you really believe that only an expert in a subject can ever understand it, then we have to assume that public policy pronouncements by intelligence researchers are false, because they aren't experts in public policy, and thus can never understand it. Or you can believe that other people can understand the subject, in which case the notable lack of support of those noisy intelligence researchers by mainstream psychology because a very significant problem. Because here are scientists who understand the measures, understand the statistics, understand the methods the evidence and the reasoning, and think they're talking rubbish. You can't just hand wave that away.

But, there are other conclusions that follow directly from a narrow range of data, they are accepted broadly among psychologists of all disciplines, and they are still at odds with the common thinking of the public, such as the points that intelligence score variations within groups are mostly heritable and that racial and class gaps in average intelligence scores exist.

But not that much at odds. Heritable doesn't mean genetic. Income is extremely heritable. Class gaps aren't much of a problem for the public. And while race gaps are there in the measurements, they're not nearly as much of a problem as the idea that your children are way smarter than you are. The gulf between one generation and another makes the race gap look trivial. Anyone in favour of limiting the voting age to a maximum of 35?

Really the main gap between the public and the narrow realities of IQ testing is the thorny problem of understanding what statistics do and do not mean.

All the points listed in the article "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" are of that nature (http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstream.pdf).

No, they aren't. The points listed in the article include many of the points of difference between a subset of intelligence researchers, and mainstream psychology.

I don't think it is right to be inclined to dismiss the whole field of intelligence research the same way you would dismiss the consensus of opinions of a political party,

People who express political opinions should get treated like political parties. The opinions being expressed by these people are political opinions loosely based on a particular interpretation of the science. If there was evidence for their interpretation above any other, I'd be more inclined to listen to them.

because intelligence researchers really do know the most about what they are talking about, they are credentialed professors of state-accredited universities, they publish mainly in reputable peer-reviewed journals (really not so much in the popular media), and they really are well-respected by their colleagues in related fields.

So why are their claims being published in op-ed articles in the newspapers rather than in those same peer-reviewed journals? The answer, I suspect, is because you can't make many of those claims in a peer-reviewed journal, because your peers will want to know how you are proving these sweeping and inaccurate statements. Researchers found that, in a particular study, poor white respondents scored similarly in tests to rich black respondents. Fine. Peers will want it made clear that rich and poor were fairly arbitrary measures, they'll want to see the details of how the subject pools were put together, and what statistical tests were used, and they'll be able to conclude for themselves whether the study really allows you to generalise about an entire phenotype of society that aren't even a genetically coherent group. But in a book or newspaper article, you can push whatever agenda you want. Want to claim that your special research allows you to pre-select winning lottery tickets - go right ahead! Want to claim that IQ researchers are better in bed - build that harem! Want to claim that you and your colleagues alone understand how to rate people's mental potential? Go right ahead!

This problem is not unique to intelligence research. This is why we get AI researchers talking about the world being overtaken by robots within 10 years, at least every 10 years. Why we had that horrible and damaging public slanging match about the efficacy of drug treatments for incurable mental conditions, why we had Skinner trying to claim that operant conditioning was key to turning society into a utopia. and so on and so forth.

They tend to claim that there is a widespread culture (not a conspiracy) that silences, distorts, misrepresents, misunderstands, discredits and dismisses their opinions, I think it needs to be taken a little more seriously.

It's probably true. Since I don't get my opinions of their work from the media, though, but rather from the studies and fellow scientists, I'm not sure why it matters. Why not just look at the studies and reason through the problem yourself? If you understand the criticisms made, maybe you won't be so quick to dismiss them?

 

[Bronzeage]

It is easy to declare something taboo, which gives it an air of "dangerous knowledge", something they don't want you to know. We'll gather in the corner and after checking to see if we are not observed, spread the suppressed truths.

That definition of taboo comes from bad movies where the white man(always accompanied by a white woman) is warned not to go into the Valley of Wizzywhat, because it is taboo. Of course he does, and takes the girl with him, where they find wondrous things.

It's an irresistible image, which is why the metaphorical taboo is invoked for this kind of nonsense.

The creationist wants to prove the Flood of Noah, so he goes in search of the right shaped rock. The modern eugenist wants to prove the hierarchy of races, so he goes in search of the right shaped head. His evidence will always support his case and comfort those who are susceptible to this kind of nonsense.

The extreme taboo is part of what led me to the topic. The scientific arguments used against the taboo knowledge seemed on the face weak, conflicting, and unexpected from evolutionary theory. They seemed designed merely for politics, as the moral arguments were so often shamelessly woven into the scientific arguments, even among those who I would expect would know better. I have seen it even in many papers published in scientific journals. Where there are zealous crowds of firefighters, there is fire, so maybe there is something to that fire, and, yep, the scientific racist case actually made complete plausible unified sense of racial inequalities of all sorts. It was like discovering an accurate depiction of the theory of evolution for the first time. It seems ridiculous to many others because all they know of it are the many hateful strawmen learned in churches.

This always reminds me of the story about Groucho Marx, when his application to join a country club was rejected because he was Jewish. He said, "My son is only half Jewish. Can he go into the pool just up to his waist?"

What the fuck is a "plausible unified sense of racial inequalities of all sorts."?

I don't think "plausible" means what you think it means.

 

[ApostateAbe]

The extreme taboo is part of what led me to the topic. The scientific arguments used against the taboo knowledge seemed on the face weak, conflicting, and unexpected from evolutionary theory. They seemed designed merely for politics, as the moral arguments were so often shamelessly woven into the scientific arguments, even among those who I would expect would know better. I have seen it even in many papers published in scientific journals. Where there are zealous crowds of firefighters, there is fire, so maybe there is something to that fire, and, yep, the scientific racist case actually made complete plausible unified sense of racial inequalities of all sorts. It was like discovering an accurate depiction of the theory of evolution for the first time. It seems ridiculous to many others because all they know of it are the many hateful strawmen learned in churches.

This always reminds me of the story about Groucho Marx, when his application to join a country club was rejected because he was Jewish. He said, "My son is only half Jewish. Can he go into the pool just up to his waist?"

What the fuck is a "plausible unified sense of racial inequalities of all sorts."?

I don't think "plausible" means what you think it means.

"Plausible" means that the claims follow significantly from a diverse range of widely-accepted background knowledge. For example, without knowing any of the direct data, the claim of the biological existence of human races with significant genetic variations is plausible because it follows from evolutionary theory and because analogous phenomena are seen in many other wild and domestic species descended from varying geography.

 

[Bronzeage]

This always reminds me of the story about Groucho Marx, when his application to join a country club was rejected because he was Jewish. He said, "My son is only half Jewish. Can he go into the pool just up to his waist?"

What the fuck is a "plausible unified sense of racial inequalities of all sorts."?

I don't think "plausible" means what you think it means.

"Plausible" means that the claims follow significantly from a diverse range of widely-accepted background knowledge. For example, without knowing any of the direct data, the claim of the biological existence of human races with significant genetic variations is plausible because it follows from evolutionary theory and because analogous phenomena are seen in many other wild and domestic species descended from varying geography.

Nice leap, but wide of the mark and still not plausible, except when you set the criteria for proof and then cherry pick your evidence.

 

[ApostateAbe]

"Plausible" means that the claims follow significantly from a diverse range of widely-accepted background knowledge. For example, without knowing any of the direct data, the claim of the biological existence of human races with significant genetic variations is plausible because it follows from evolutionary theory and because analogous phenomena are seen in many other wild and domestic species descended from varying geography.

Nice leap, but wide of the mark and still not plausible, except when you set the criteria for proof and then cherry pick your evidence.

The "proof" (i.e. direct evidence) is a different class of evidence from what is "plausible," though the dividing line can be fuzzy. All philosophical methods for judging probabilities make such a distinction (i.e C. Behan McCullagh's Justifying Historical Descriptions, 1984). Bayes' theorem is most mathematical, it likewise separates the two, and the criterion of plausibility would correspond to prior probability, or P(A). The posterior probability (or final calculated probability) P(A|B) can be low even if the conditional probability (related to direct evidence) P(B|A) is high given that P(A) is low. And the converse is true: the posterior probability P(A|B) can be high even if the conditional probability P(B|A) is low given that P(A) is high. I think the prior probability is commonly undervalued among the public, and in fact it seems to be habitual (see Example 1 of this page: http://stattrek.com/probability/bayes-theorem.aspx). It is mainly what makes the difference between the two probabilities of a UFO being an outer-space alien spacecraft and being a streetlight. If you have a favored improbable theory, then you can pretend that P(A) is 50%, and the improbable claim can be given the illusion of probability.

The principle applies to the claim that races vary in gene frequencies for intelligence and its converse claim, because, given that intelligence scores are confirmed to be highly heritable within races, and given that genotypes are confirmed to vary between races for every other genotype confirmed to vary within races, the prior probability is very high in favor of the scientific racists. The scientific Marxists need extremely strong arguments in favor of their theory before it overcomes their own extremely low P(A). But, lacking that, they instead tend to focus on tearing down the direct evidence of scientific racists, as though prior probability is completely irrelevant.

 

[Togo]

The "proof" (i.e. direct evidence) is a different class of evidence from what is "plausible," though the dividing line can be fuzzy. All philosophical methods for judging probabilities make such a distinction (i.e C. Behan McCullagh's Justifying Historical Descriptions, 1984). Bayes' theorem is most mathematical, it likewise separates the two, and the criterion of plausibility would correspond to prior probability, or P(A). The posterior probability (or final calculated probability) P(A|B) can be low even if the conditional probability (related to direct evidence) P(B|A) is high given that P(A) is low. And the converse is true: the posterior probability P(A|B) can be high even if the conditional probability P(B|A) is low given that P(A) is high. I think the prior probability is commonly undervalued among the public, and in fact it seems to be habitual (see Example 1 of this page: http://stattrek.com/probability/bayes-theorem.aspx). It is mainly what makes the difference between the two probabilities of a UFO being an outer-space alien spacecraft and being a streetlight. If you have a favored improbable theory, then you can pretend that P(A) is 50%, and the improbable claim can be given the illusion of probability.

That's a very wordy way of saying that if you really want to believe something, you don't need evidence. Science is about evidence. It's not about decorating your pre-existing beliefs with data.

The principle applies to the claim that races vary in gene frequencies for intelligence and its converse claim, because, given that intelligence scores are confirmed to be highly heritable within races,

Heritable just means that if it occurs in one generation, it is more likely to occur in the next. Most environmental factors are highly heritable.

and given that genotypes are confirmed to vary between races for every other genotype confirmed to vary within races, the prior probability is very high in favor of the scientific racists.

This is nonsense. Look at what you're saying. Every factor that varies within races also varies between races. You've just described random allocation of traits.

The scientific Marxists

And here we come to it - this is a political argument masquerading as science.

instead tend to focus on tearing down the direct evidence of scientific racists, as though prior probability is completely irrelevant.

In science, judgements of prior probability, that is, what you strongly believe to be the case, is completely irrelevant.

Given that this discussion has ended up as an argument about political beliefs, and a dismissal of the role of evidence, I would ask that the thread be moved to the pseudoscience forum.

 

[ApostateAbe]

That's a very wordy way of saying that if you really want to believe something, you don't need evidence. Science is about evidence. It's not about decorating your pre-existing beliefs with data.

The principle applies to the claim that races vary in gene frequencies for intelligence and its converse claim, because, given that intelligence scores are confirmed to be highly heritable within races,

Heritable just means that if it occurs in one generation, it is more likely to occur in the next. Most environmental factors are highly heritable.

and given that genotypes are confirmed to vary between races for every other genotype confirmed to vary within races, the prior probability is very high in favor of the scientific racists.

This is nonsense. Look at what you're saying. Every factor that varies within races also varies between races. You've just described random allocation of traits.

The scientific Marxists

And here we come to it - this is a political argument masquerading as science.

instead tend to focus on tearing down the direct evidence of scientific racists, as though prior probability is completely irrelevant.

In science, judgements of prior probability, that is, what you strongly believe to be the case, is completely irrelevant.

Given that this discussion has ended up as an argument about political beliefs, and a dismissal of the role of evidence, I would ask that the thread be moved to the pseudoscience forum.

Togo, plausibility matters, not just a little, but a lot. Per Bayes' theorem, the background knowledge that underlies prior probability has equal importance to the most direct evidence. They both count. Don't ignore background knowledge.

"Heritable just means that if it occurs in one generation, it is more likely to occur in the next. Most environmental factors are highly heritable." -- Not quite. Heritability studies control between the genetic (or other heritable *biological* influences) and the purely cultural influences. That is what the twin studies are all about, i.e. comparing dizygotic twins reared together to monozygotic twins reared apart. When I say that intelligence score variations are highly heritable, that is what I mean: the variations have a higher relationship to genetic variations than immediate environmental variations.

"This is nonsense. Look at what you're saying. Every factor that varies within races also varies between races. You've just described random allocation of traits." -- Maybe I was unclear, but, no, because two large *random* selections of people within any race will tend to NOT vary in their averages of genotypes. Any two separate races, however, ALWAYS vary in the genotypes.

"And here we come to it - this is a political argument masquerading as science." -- Evolutionary biologists, climatologists, and epidemiologists have often accused the opponents who have launched campaigns against their science of being politically motivated. This does not necessarily make the evolutionary biologists, etc., themselves politically motivated (though it can be). If the opponents really are politically motivated, then it may be simply speaking the truth in defense of their own science. "Scientific Marxists" sounds like a slur, but Marxist really is, highly disproportionately, the explicit and shameless identity of the most high-profile opponents of scientific racism. This includes Richard Lewontin, Stephen J. Gould, and James Flynn. There is a reason for this: scientific racism would make Marxism absurd, as the heritably-more-productive people and their descendants would be permanent slaves to the heritably-less-productive people. Marxism is the ideology that has made economic equality the very common ideal, even among those who do not identify as Marxists or socialists. That is why moral and political arguments are shamelessly integrated into the arguments against scientific racism, even in articles published in reputable peer-reviewed journals, in violation of otherwise-universal scientific tenets. See, for example, Andrew M Colman, "Scientific Racism and the Evidence on Race and Intelligence," 1972, pages 151-152: "I nevertheless feel fully justified in applying the term 'scientific' racism to their writings, because they contain pseudo-scientific dogmas which can be used, and have been used, to legitimate racially oppressive policies, notably in South Africa, and to perpetuate dangerous prejudices elsewhere; they are therefore racist in their social consequences, whatever the motives of their perpetrators." Also, Earl Hunt and Robert Sternberg, "Sorry, wrong numbers: An analysis of a study of a correlation between skin color and IQ," 2006, pages 135-136: "The Templer and Arikawa paper is about racial differences in intelligence. It would be naive to ignore the social and political ramifications of assertions like theirs, and the assertions that may be made about their findings in the secondary literature... Because of the social ramifications, such research should be done, but should be done carefully. People who wrap themselves in the mantle of Galileo, claiming that those who urge caution are trying to hide truth, miss the point. Bad research on this topic should be discouraged much more strongly than bad research on other, less charged topics." In other words, research like this must meet a much higher bar before it is published, because of the perceived potential political consequences. This paper criticized the certainty of the data. Years later, Earl Hunt published another paper that accepted the validity of the data and criticized only the genetic theory (Earl Hunt, "What Makes Nations Intelligent," 2012). Because of politics, the scientific Marxists want to drastically raise the bar for the science they don't like. It would permanently hinder the science, because nearly all general explanations, right or wrong, start as mere uncertain propositions or hypotheses, until further data and arguments either increase or decrease their probability. But, permanently hindering the science is really their seeming goal. If it turned out to be truth that there are genetic racial variations in intelligence, would you want it to be commonly known?

 

[fromderinside]

I don't know, but I suggest you learn from them, not merely react against them.

Why would an intelligent person waste time on something which has been discredited so many times. Is it any difference than interpreting geological data as evidence of the flood of Genesis?

Looks like this is becoming the basis for a study in unreasonable  Perseveration.

 

[Bronzeage]

Why would an intelligent person waste time on something which has been discredited so many times. Is it any difference than interpreting geological data as evidence of the flood of Genesis?

Looks like this is becoming the basis for a study in unreasonable  Perseveration.

What puzzles me is the end game of all these eugenistic diatribes is to force the world to acknowledge the intellectual superiority of white people, but is is always white people who present this nonsense. It seems, if other races are intellectually inferior to whites, it should be the inferior races who buy into this kind of thing.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Looks like this is becoming the basis for a study in unreasonable  Perseveration.

What puzzles me is the end game of all these eugenistic diatribes is to force the world to acknowledge the intellectual superiority of white people, but is is always white people who present this nonsense. It seems, if other races are intellectually inferior to whites, it should be the inferior races who buy into this kind of thing.

Part of the reason it is a puzzler is that it is not actually the end game to cause anyone to acknowledge the intellectual superiority of white people. That would actually be a step backward, as white people are NOT the most intelligent race. Part of my own end game is to keep the white supremacists from laying sole claim to this science.

 

[Bronzeage]

What puzzles me is the end game of all these eugenistic diatribes is to force the world to acknowledge the intellectual superiority of white people, but is is always white people who present this nonsense. It seems, if other races are intellectually inferior to whites, it should be the inferior races who buy into this kind of thing.

Part of the reason it is a puzzler is that it is not actually the end game to cause anyone to acknowledge the intellectual superiority of white people. That would actually be a step backward, as white people are NOT the most intelligent race. Part of my own end game is to keep the white supremacists from laying sole claim to this science.

Well, God bless you for the work you do.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Part of the reason it is a puzzler is that it is not actually the end game to cause anyone to acknowledge the intellectual superiority of white people. That would actually be a step backward, as white people are NOT the most intelligent race. Part of my own end game is to keep the white supremacists from laying sole claim to this science.

Well, God bless you for the work you do.

Thanks. You don't need to sympathize with it or agree with the theory, but I would appreciate the assumption of good will. Too many people think they can read my mind, and they see nothing but evil. I know my own mind and it is merely MOSTLY evil.

 

[Togo]

That's a very wordy way of saying that if you really want to believe something, you don't need evidence. Science is about evidence. It's not about decorating your pre-existing beliefs with data.

Togo, plausibility matters, not just a little, but a lot. Per Bayes' theorem, the background knowledge that underlies prior probability has equal importance to the most direct evidence. They both count. Don't ignore background knowledge.

It does yes, but not in the way you're trying to use it.

Bayes' theorem is not about background knowledge, it's about the changing probability of a chain of events as they occur and become known. So if you're tossing a coin multiple times, the chances of getting heads every time is very small, but rises if the first coin toss in the sequences comes up heads, and again as the second, and so on.

It is nothing about skewing experimental results towards conclusions you already believe to be true.

In science, judgements of prior probability, that is, what you strongly believe to be the case, are completely irrelevant.

"Heritable just means that if it occurs in one generation, it is more likely to occur in the next. Most environmental factors are highly heritable." -- Not quite.

Yes, quite. That is what the word means. Look it up if you don't believe me.

The point is that heritable does not in any way imply genetic. That's why they use the term in genetic studies - to show that they are not assuming their conclusions in advance.

Heritability studies control between the genetic (or other heritable *biological* influences) and the purely cultural influences.

No, they try to control for them. Whether they succeed or not is another matter, and depends on the study and what conclusions they are trying to draw from the results.

That is what the twin studies are all about, i.e. comparing dizygotic twins reared together to monozygotic twins reared apart.

Yes, they're an attempt to control for environmental factors. However, they don't entirely succeed, because such clear twin examples are rare. As a result every one of those twins has been involved in so many IQ studies over the years that they often are more familiar with them than the researchers. A few studies try to avoid using the same old subject pool as all the previous studies, but it's very hard to verify, and extremely expensive.

And that's the point I'm making. The intention of using twins is to control for environmental differences, but the effect is to replace one set of factors for another. How important those factors are depends on what conclusions the study is trying to reach, and the study is peer-reviewed on that basis. What you can't do is wade into a twin study and blithely assume that the experimental set up will support a far broader conclusion than the researchers were testing.

When I say that intelligence score variations are highly heritable, that is what I mean: the variations have a higher relationship to genetic variations than immediate environmental variations.

Yes, and that is the point I'm making. A heritability study tests heritability, not genetic relationship. The conclusion you are drawing is in excess of the evidence.

Maybe I was unclear, but, no, because two large *random* selections of people within any race will tend to NOT vary in their averages of genotypes.

I disagree. Cite please.

(Earl Hunt, "What Makes Nations Intelligent," 2012). Because of politics, the scientific Marxists want to drastically raise the bar for the science they don't like.

Just as you want to lower the bar, for science you feel matches your existing biases and beliefs.

Ok, so obviously artificially tampering with the usual standards of science is not the answer. Why not actually follow the science? I mean, here you are posting on a science forum, about a science subject. But you're telling people that because of your prior background knowledge the usual scientific standards of evidence shouldn't apply, and that the only disagreements come from Marxists. Why not acknowledge that the science doesn't support your position and address some of the criticisms raised, not by the media, not by a cherry-picked handful of Marxists or politicos or whatever, but by scientists who understand what they're talking about?

If it turned out to be truth that there are genetic racial variations in intelligence, would you want it to be commonly known?

I'm not sure it would be all that meaningful. We already know that there are huge effects on IQ measures from environment, health, diet, affluence, education, and individual differences. A genetic link is not enough, it is only useful if it is consistent, heritable, and follows an observable pattern, such as racial identity tropes within US culture. And the scientific arguments against this are much stronger than the arguments for. Which is precisely why you've ended up going on about media conspiracy, lowering the bar of evidence, and political opposition to Marxism.