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

[One]

I think the question itself is irrelevant.

It is akin asking if God exists.
And is just as pointless.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I think the question itself is irrelevant.

It is akin asking if God exists.
And is just as pointless.

Do you think it would at least make a difference if we wanted to fully or partly explain wealth inequalities between human groups? Not everyone has such an interest, but it probably should be of interest to social scientists, for example.

 

[exodiasrightleg]

I think the question itself is irrelevant.

It is akin asking if God exists.
And is just as pointless.

Do you think it would at least make a difference if we wanted to fully or partly explain wealth inequalities between human groups? Not everyone has such an interest, but it probably should be of interest to social scientists, for example.

But it doesn't, so why bother?

 

[One]

I think the question itself is irrelevant.

It is akin asking if God exists.
And is just as pointless.

First, thank you for not calling me on my typo. I will likely make quite a few of those. That said:

Do you think it would at least make a difference if we wanted to fully or partly explain wealth inequalities between human groups?

No, I do not. I am of the belief that the notion of IQ and its subsequent disparities are not explanations. They are merely justifications for preconceived societal memes that have plagued humanity masquerading in various forms for eons.

Not everyone has such an interest, but it probably should be of interest to social scientists, for example.

Of course. I have been told my research field is equally pointless: comparative religion. So I do not begrudge others in their chosen pursuits. Just expressing my opinion.

 

[ApostateAbe]

First, thank you for not calling me on my typo. I will likely make quite a few of those. That said:

Do you think it would at least make a difference if we wanted to fully or partly explain wealth inequalities between human groups?

No, I do not. I am of the belief that the notion of IQ and its subsequent disparities are not explanations. They are merely justifications for preconceived societal memes that have plagued humanity masquerading in various forms for eons.

Not everyone has such an interest, but it probably should be of interest to social scientists, for example.

Of course. I have been told my research field is equally pointless: comparative religion. So I do not begrudge others in their chosen pursuits. Just expressing my opinion.

OK, but you seem to be conflating two objections: (1) the hypothesis is disagreeable, and (2) the hypothesis is irrelevant. It is not required that you accept the hypothesis before recognizing the relevance of the hypothesis for anyone who cares about social inequalities, as IQ variations have a 50% relationship to income variations, whether we like it or not. Let's assume that the black-white IQ differences are 0% genetically heritable and 100% environmental. What environmental component could it be? We don't know, but the lines of evidence that inform the heritability arguments probably ought to be considered relevant for narrowing down what those environmental components could be. IQ variations have a 40% correlation to brain size variations, there are corresponding race gaps in brain size, and this should have central relevance for anyone who tries to make sense of the gaps. It means, if the racial IQ gaps are not genetically heritable, they are still likely to be strongly biological. For example, lead poisoning or lack of breast-feeding. Whoever discovers the primary environmental causes of the racial IQ gaps would vastly improve the world.

 

[bilby]

First, thank you for not calling me on my typo. I will likely make quite a few of those. That said:

Do you think it would at least make a difference if we wanted to fully or partly explain wealth inequalities between human groups?

No, I do not. I am of the belief that the notion of IQ and its subsequent disparities are not explanations. They are merely justifications for preconceived societal memes that have plagued humanity masquerading in various forms for eons.

Not everyone has such an interest, but it probably should be of interest to social scientists, for example.

Of course. I have been told my research field is equally pointless: comparative religion. So I do not begrudge others in their chosen pursuits. Just expressing my opinion.

OK, but you seem to be conflating two objections: (1) the hypothesis is disagreeable, and (2) the hypothesis is irrelevant. ...

These are not mutually exclusive. The hypothesis is both.

 

[ApostateAbe]

First, thank you for not calling me on my typo. I will likely make quite a few of those. That said:

Do you think it would at least make a difference if we wanted to fully or partly explain wealth inequalities between human groups?

No, I do not. I am of the belief that the notion of IQ and its subsequent disparities are not explanations. They are merely justifications for preconceived societal memes that have plagued humanity masquerading in various forms for eons.

Not everyone has such an interest, but it probably should be of interest to social scientists, for example.

Of course. I have been told my research field is equally pointless: comparative religion. So I do not begrudge others in their chosen pursuits. Just expressing my opinion.

OK, but you seem to be conflating two objections: (1) the hypothesis is disagreeable, and (2) the hypothesis is irrelevant. ...

These are not mutually exclusive. The hypothesis is both.

The hypothesis would be irrelevant if it would have no importance even if it were true. As differences in intelligence plainly make a big difference between individuals, the hypothesis plainly has relevance, even if you disagree with it.

 

[bilby]

First, thank you for not calling me on my typo. I will likely make quite a few of those. That said:

Do you think it would at least make a difference if we wanted to fully or partly explain wealth inequalities between human groups?

No, I do not. I am of the belief that the notion of IQ and its subsequent disparities are not explanations. They are merely justifications for preconceived societal memes that have plagued humanity masquerading in various forms for eons.

Not everyone has such an interest, but it probably should be of interest to social scientists, for example.

Of course. I have been told my research field is equally pointless: comparative religion. So I do not begrudge others in their chosen pursuits. Just expressing my opinion.

OK, but you seem to be conflating two objections: (1) the hypothesis is disagreeable, and (2) the hypothesis is irrelevant. ...

These are not mutually exclusive. The hypothesis is both.

The hypothesis would be irrelevant if it would have no importance even if it were true. As differences in intelligence plainly make a big difference between individuals, the hypothesis plainly has relevance, even if you disagree with it.

The hypothesis would also be irrelevant if it were untrue. Which it is.

It is also disagreeable.

Which is why it is so unpopular. Something you seem surprised about. Probably because you are under the mistaken impression that the hypothesis has not been shown to be untrue.

 

[ApostateAbe]

First, thank you for not calling me on my typo. I will likely make quite a few of those. That said:

Do you think it would at least make a difference if we wanted to fully or partly explain wealth inequalities between human groups?

No, I do not. I am of the belief that the notion of IQ and its subsequent disparities are not explanations. They are merely justifications for preconceived societal memes that have plagued humanity masquerading in various forms for eons.

Not everyone has such an interest, but it probably should be of interest to social scientists, for example.

Of course. I have been told my research field is equally pointless: comparative religion. So I do not begrudge others in their chosen pursuits. Just expressing my opinion.

OK, but you seem to be conflating two objections: (1) the hypothesis is disagreeable, and (2) the hypothesis is irrelevant. ...

These are not mutually exclusive. The hypothesis is both.

The hypothesis would be irrelevant if it would have no importance even if it were true. As differences in intelligence plainly make a big difference between individuals, the hypothesis plainly has relevance, even if you disagree with it.

The hypothesis would also be irrelevant if it were untrue. Which it is.

It is also disagreeable.

Which is why it is so unpopular. Something you seem surprised about. Probably because you are under the mistaken impression that the hypothesis has not been shown to be untrue.

Arguments intended to prove the environmentalist position seem to be lacking, which is why I was grateful for the speculative argument given by Underseer, and maybe you know something I don't? Or maybe I forgot about it and you can remind me of it. What do you think is the best argument that effectively positively shows the hypothesis to be untrue? I am not talking about mere counterarguments against the arguments of the hypothesis, but arguments that show the genetic contributions of the racial IQ gaps is 0% or close to 0%. In 1996, in response to the The Bell Curve and the public myths about intelligence it stirred up, an article was written by a committee of intelligence researchers titled, "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns." The racial IQ gap was a known and the CAUSE of the racial IQ gap was counted as an unknown. The article "Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial With 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography," in 1994, was similar. They claimed, "There is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves differ across racial-ethnic groups... Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too."

 

[One]

OK, but you seem to be conflating two objections: (1) the hypothesis is disagreeable, and (2) the hypothesis is irrelevant. It is not required that you accept the hypothesis before recognizing the relevance of the hypothesis for anyone who cares about social inequalities, as IQ variations have a 50% relationship to income variations, whether we like it or not.

To my mind, Humanity has not evolved enough to view this topic objectively. Further, we have yet to fully define concepts like consciousness, intelligence, morality or cognition even as we attempt to pass these traits onto machines. What we know is vast. What we don't know is immeasurable. And for this reason, IQ and its disparities are used as justifiations rather than explanations. These tests have never been adequately developed or implimented and are often presented alongside elitist agendas.

Let's assume that the black-white IQ differences are 0% genetically heritable and 100% environmental. What environmental component could it be?

First tell me: Where do these hoardes of people exist that are 100% a part of any single racial group?

Whoever discovers the primary environmental causes of the racial IQ gaps would vastly improve the world.

In the case of American race relations: Racial disparity has one solution: Time. It took over 400 years to construct these racial paradigms. It will take longer than the years since Emancipation to dismantle them. The same can be said of the situation in Africa with colonialism.

 

[ApostateAbe]

One, you asked "Where do these hoardes of people exist that are 100% a part of any single racial group."

There are no such hordes of people. If there were, they would be in direct conflict with the theory of evolution. People very often think of races as necessarily discrete non-overlapping groups. We need to correct our thinking in light of both data and theory. Think of races as instead like colors on a rainbow or a flat well-used color palette. They are spectral, with fuzzy boundaries, but they still have objective meaning (each color being a combination of varying wavelengths of electromagnetic signals, each wavelength being spectral). Races of any species are populations with genetic frequencies different from the genetic frequencies of other populations within the same species due to a difference of in geography of the tending ancestors. There may be a few members of the race who are "pure," but they would be at the extreme ends of the spectra, not necessarily representing all nor even most other members of the same race. This is the way race has been commonly understood by evolutionary biologists ever since Darwin. Without this model of race, evolution would be impossible--speciation would never happen. But, unfortunately, those who deny that races exist have assumed the wrong definition of race strictly for the purpose of denying that races biologically exist. Anthropologists in the spirit of Ashley Montagu have signed statements to that effect. Races are populations with discrete genotypes, therefore races do not exist. For populations merely with differing frequencies of genes, it used to be "race," but now they use different words, like ancestral group or cline or haplogroup or ethnic group. So, there is now a bizarre vocabulary in population genetics where "race" is not biological but "ethnic group" is biological, reverse from how the public commonly understands it. Scientific vocabulary is supposed to be clearer than the public, but the public actually has it right.

 

[One]

People very often think of races as necessarily discrete non-overlapping groups.

There is too much genetic variation within the spectrum of a single "racial" group for me to justify further belief in their respective designations.

We need to correct our thinking in light of both data and theory.

And you would be the instructor?

Think of races as instead like colors on a rainbow or a flat well-used color palette. They are spectral, with fuzzy boundaries, but they still have objective meaning (each color being a combination of varying wavelengths of electromagnetic signals, each wavelength being spectral).

They have a meaning within our limited capacity to understand these concepts. It does not make our current comprehension of them objective nor all-encompassing.

So, there is now a bizarre vocabulary in population genetics where "race" is not biological but "ethnic group" is biological, reverse from how the public commonly understands it. Scientific vocabulary is supposed to be clearer than the public, but the public actually has it right.

Race is an outdated concept. It's primary usage today is continuing the longevity of prejudical paradigms created during culture clashes, regardless of whether it is dressed up with scientific rationale or emotive rehetoric. In 100 years, we will look at the discussion in this thread with the same kind of horror we have today reading scientific opinion from the 1800s - narrow in scope, biased in fact, and limited in possibilities.

 

[ApostateAbe]

One, as races are an essential component of the theory of evolution, why would you expect that the concept would decrease in importance with time? The prediction was presented in the seventies, and we have moved in the opposite direction. You can get your DNA tested and they won't tell you your race. They will instead tell your specific percentage share of each race! If you always suspected that you are 10% Naive American, 15% Polynesian and 75% white European, they will let you know the true values for sure just with a spit sample, and the method is scientifically verified. They use many genetic markers in combination. Not only do the genetic markers vary by race, but so do the phenotypes. If you are white, you are much more likely to have type 1 diabetes, cystic fibrosis amd celiac disease, just from genetics more common among whites. It matters.

 

[One]

One, as races are an essential component of the theory of evolution, why would you expect that the concept would decrease in importance with time?

Because our understanding of evolutionary theory will increase.
A question: Secondly, do you believe that we know and have documented every racial designation that exists? If so, why?

The prediction was presented in the seventies, and we have moved in the opposite direction. You can get your DNA tested and they won't tell you your race. They will instead tell your specific percentage share of each race! If you always suspected that you are 10% Naive American, 15% Polynesian and 75% white European, they will let you know the true values for sure just with a spit sample, and the method is scientifically verified. They use many genetic markers in combination. Not only do the genetic markers vary by race, but so do the phenotypes. If you are white, you are much more likely to have type 1 diabetes, cystic fibrosis amd celiac disease, just from genetics more common among whites. It matters.

I am aware of this. My response would not be in keeping to this OP. Therefore, I will simply say:

This is not the same thing as assessing levels of intellectual capacity.
Can we provide a spit sample to test how smart we are?
Or do we rely on subjective testing methods that are more of an indicator of how well a person is at taking tests?

 

[ApostateAbe]

One, in order for the biology of races to have little scientific importance, it would not be a simple matter of enhancing our understanding of evolutionary theory. You would have to completely overturn evolutionary theory. Races are as important as random mutation or natural selection. When Darwin put "races" in the subtitle of his book, it was actually for a very good reason. You can't have evolutionary divergence without races. When speciation happens, it is never a single sudden event. It is the gradual divergence of genetic frequencies between populations.Before the existence of two different species ("species" likewise having an ambiguous definition for this reason), the two populations would be two different races. This has not become less certain with further biological data over the last 150 years. It has only become more established.

"Secondly, do you believe that we know and have documented every racial designation that exists?"

No, definitely not! The significant racial differences are likely in the thousands, at least. We have only recently mapped the human genome, but we would need to also completely map the varying genomes among races (i.e. 1000 Genomes Project), and we would need to reverse engineer them to find the phenotype that each coding gene relates to. The science is only beginning. For that reason, no, we cannot take a genetic test to determine how smart we are. But, as intelligence is mostly genetically heritable (60% plus or minus 20%), as we know from heritability studies (i.e. comparing identical twins reared apart to non-identical twins reared together), a genetic test after we know everything about genes really would give you an accurate IQ score, albeit probably with a large standard deviation (environment still counts for 40% plus or minus 20%).

 

[Duke Leto]

...

 

[bilby]

One, as races are an essential component of the theory of evolution, why would you expect that the concept would decrease in importance with time? The prediction was presented in the seventies, and we have moved in the opposite direction. You can get your DNA tested and they won't tell you your race. They will instead tell your specific percentage share of each race! If you always suspected that you are 10% Naive American, 15% Polynesian and 75% white European, they will let you know the true values for sure just with a spit sample, and the method is scientifically verified. They use many genetic markers in combination. Not only do the genetic markers vary by race, but so do the phenotypes. If you are white, you are much more likely to have type 1 diabetes, cystic fibrosis amd celiac disease, just from genetics more common among whites. It matters.

Those DNA tests don't tell you about race; they tell you about the likely geographical distribution of your ancestors.

That you think these are the same thing shows how badly you have misunderstood the sheer level of inter-mixing of humanity since the industrial revolution. Race was needless as a concept when people rarely moved far, because it was just a poor proxy for geography. Now that there have been several generations of high mobility, race is no longer even a good proxy for geography, and is completely useless for any purpose - whatever you use race to do, you could have done better using something else.

Geographical divisions are less and less relevant, as transportation becomes more and more efficient; race was never particularly relevant, and becomes even less so as geographical divisions dissolve.

 

[ApostateAbe]

One, as races are an essential component of the theory of evolution, why would you expect that the concept would decrease in importance with time? The prediction was presented in the seventies, and we have moved in the opposite direction. You can get your DNA tested and they won't tell you your race. They will instead tell your specific percentage share of each race! If you always suspected that you are 10% Naive American, 15% Polynesian and 75% white European, they will let you know the true values for sure just with a spit sample, and the method is scientifically verified. They use many genetic markers in combination. Not only do the genetic markers vary by race, but so do the phenotypes. If you are white, you are much more likely to have type 1 diabetes, cystic fibrosis amd celiac disease, just from genetics more common among whites. It matters.

Those DNA tests don't tell you about race; they tell you about the likely geographical distribution of your ancestors.

That you think these are the same thing shows how badly you have misunderstood the sheer level of inter-mixing of humanity since the industrial revolution. Race was needless as a concept when people rarely moved far, because it was just a poor proxy for geography. Now that there have been several generations of high mobility, race is no longer even a good proxy for geography, and is completely useless for any purpose - whatever you use race to do, you could have done better using something else.

Geographical divisions are less and less relevant, as transportation becomes more and more efficient; race was never particularly relevant, and becomes even less so as geographical divisions dissolve.

"Those DNA tests don't tell you about race; they tell you about the likely geographical distribution of your ancestors."

The geographical distribution of your ancestors really is your racial composition, and it really is about race by any evolutionary definition of "race." It is not the political definition used by anthropologists who followed after Ashley Montagu, but the political definition is what I am trying to correct. If you think you have a better definition of "race," then please present it and defend it.

 

[bilby]

Those DNA tests don't tell you about race; they tell you about the likely geographical distribution of your ancestors.

That you think these are the same thing shows how badly you have misunderstood the sheer level of inter-mixing of humanity since the industrial revolution. Race was needless as a concept when people rarely moved far, because it was just a poor proxy for geography. Now that there have been several generations of high mobility, race is no longer even a good proxy for geography, and is completely useless for any purpose - whatever you use race to do, you could have done better using something else.

Geographical divisions are less and less relevant, as transportation becomes more and more efficient; race was never particularly relevant, and becomes even less so as geographical divisions dissolve.

"Those DNA tests don't tell you about race; they tell you about the likely geographical distribution of your ancestors."

The geographical distribution of your ancestors really is your racial composition, and it really is about race by any evolutionary definition of "race." It is not the political definition used by anthropologists who followed after Ashley Montagu, but the political definition is what I am trying to correct. If you think you have a better definition of "race," then please present it and defend it.

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?

 

[ApostateAbe]

"Those DNA tests don't tell you about race; they tell you about the likely geographical distribution of your ancestors."

The geographical distribution of your ancestors really is your racial composition, and it really is about race by any evolutionary definition of "race." It is not the political definition used by anthropologists who followed after Ashley Montagu, but the political definition is what I am trying to correct. If you think you have a better definition of "race," then please present it and defend it.

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.

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.

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?