Population of Blacks/Whites in US by IQ

[untermensche]

People do not have IQ's. They have scores on a test. And the score can change a lot if a person cares enough to do the work to change it, just like SAT scores.

People do have an inherent skill.

No they don't. They have resultant skills that are a combination of inherent abilities and exposure.

Research has shown that mere exposure to words in childhood can make a person more likely to go to college.

It is novel problem solving. "How good are you at solving new and different problems" is what is being measured today as g-factor. SAT scores attempt to predict scholastic aptitude. And surely someone who takes the time to practice SAT problems has a higher scholastic aptitude than someone who does not.

"Scholastic aptitude" means nothing but scores on tests.

Scores on tests predicts scores on tests, nothing more. Not interesting or significant.

Are the people who score highest on the MCAT the best doctors?

And please give me an example. Give me a completely novel question.

And this is a statistic pulled from thin air.

I admit to not quoting any particular expert. It is an estimate gleaned from personal research.

You mean published research?

But statistically what does a difference between a score of 90 and a score of 100 mean?

If a child is tested the ratio to mental age is the meaning. If the average age 13 8th grader scores 100 an 8th grader who scores 90 has a mental age 90% of the average or .9x13 = 11.7, scoring the same as the average 7th grader.
Adult IQ scores are based on percentile and not mental age. The scores are "graded on a curve." Actual mental acuity peaks at at 20-24 and declines. At 18 it is almost at peak. An 18-yr-old with an IQ of 70 has the mental age of a 12 1/2 year old with 100 IQ. An 18-yr-old with an IQ of 85 has the mental age of a 15 year old with 100 IQ.

I'll try again.

You have 2 people (the same age). One person scores 90 and one person scores 100.

What does this mean in terms of "intelligence"?

Not what does it mean in terms of test scores.

Who is more intelligent?

The person who can score high on a test or a person who can fix a car?

A person who can learn to repeat an activity they have learned to do -- doing the actual fixing of a car -- does not require much problem solving ability. Those who can analyze a new and unknown problem they've never seen before in any car have an advantage at the car-repair business than those who cannot. Many intelligent people use their abilities in other fields and hire mechanics to fix their cars. Who is more intelligent? Someone who does all their own work or someone who pays experts?

Intelligent people pursue their interests.

Many intelligent people have no interest in what is called education and tests.

Being able to score high on tests is not any kind of practical intelligence.

 

[untermensche]

Is their visual system different? Is their auditory system different? Is their immune system different?

Not much. A little. A lot. (respectively)
The biological systems are different enough so that organs transplanted across race have a higher likelihood of being rejected by the immune system than same-race transplants.

That is a difference in proteins on cells.

Not any kind of difference in system.

Are their sensations different?

Probably a little.

So anything you pull from thin air counts as knowledge to you?

Humans differ only in superficial ways. Height, hair color, skin color, shape of nose.

But there is no reason to think they have different cognitive systems.

Well, testing indicates there is reason to think they have different cognitive abilities. Perhaps this is because of different underlying cognitive systems?

They don't test abilities. They test genetic expression due to exposure.

You can't just test abilities. You can't ask anything that is truly novel.

And as far as skulls, people who self identify as white have thicker skulls in the frontal bone. What does that mean?

It means that skulls have evolved along with skin color. Blacks have thicker skulls. I know. I was an x-ray tech in the army. The technique chart had different columns labelled "black skull" and "other skull." More KvP (penetration power) required. If the container for the brain can evolve in so short a time, brains can, too.

The frontal bone is thicker in the white male than in the black, and the parieto-occipital thicker in the blacks than in the whites.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.1330430105/abstract

So much for your "knowledge" learned in the Army. Maybe an example of selective memory.

But skull thickness is a superficial trait. Only significant if we want to x-ray the skull.

 

[Bomb#20]

Is their visual system different? Is their auditory system different? Is their immune system different?

Yes, as a matter of fact, their immune system is different. Remember what I said earlier about how I could do the test myself? I could reliably identify your race with no difficulty even if all you sent me were the SNPs from your immune system. Among the myriad subtle statistical differences in different races' genomes, a remarkably high percentage are in the immune system. It's probably because being immune to different diseases from other people is an evolutionary advantage.

 

[untermensche]

Is their visual system different? Is their auditory system different? Is their immune system different?

Yes, as a matter of fact, their immune system is different. Remember what I said earlier about how I could do the test myself? I could reliably identify your race with no difficulty even if all you sent me were the SNPs from your immune system. Among the myriad subtle statistical differences in different races' genomes, a remarkably high percentage are in the immune system. It's probably because being immune to different diseases from other people is an evolutionary advantage.

You haven't provided evidence of a different immune system.

A different immune system would be a system that used different kinds of cells or had cells arise in different places or ways.

You are merely describing superficial differences, like a difference in bumps on the skull.

I think we all know how meaningless those differences turned out to be.

 

[Trausti]

Yes, as a matter of fact, their immune system is different. Remember what I said earlier about how I could do the test myself? I could reliably identify your race with no difficulty even if all you sent me were the SNPs from your immune system. Among the myriad subtle statistical differences in different races' genomes, a remarkably high percentage are in the immune system. It's probably because being immune to different diseases from other people is an evolutionary advantage.

You haven't provided evidence of a different immune system.

A different immune system would be a system that used different kinds of cells or had cells arise in different places or ways.

You are merely describing superficial differences, like a difference in bumps on the skull.

I think we all know how meaningless those differences turned out to be.

Oh, well.

http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/smd/103133.html

But I think the religious belief that since anatomical humans appeared ~200K years ago a supernatural power has made us impervious to natural selection is preferable. Who needs science, right? Just ruins the mystery.

 

[untermensche]

You haven't provided evidence of a different immune system.

A different immune system would be a system that used different kinds of cells or had cells arise in different places or ways.

You are merely describing superficial differences, like a difference in bumps on the skull.

I think we all know how meaningless those differences turned out to be.

Oh, well.

http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/smd/103133.html

But I think the religious belief that since anatomical humans appeared ~200K years ago a supernatural power has made us impervious to natural selection is preferable. Who needs science, right? Just ruins the mystery.

A different response to proteins is not a different system. People have allergies to different proteins. It doesn't mean they have different systems.

A different system would be different kinds of cells responding. Or cells arising in different places or ways.

And you keep repeating this nonsense.

You simply don't understand evolution.

The mammalian visual system has not changed significantly in millions of years.

That is why we have been able to learn about the human visual system by looking at mice.

Not all things can easily changed. Some things, like skin color, can.

All humans have the same ability to learn language. A child can be born anywhere and "learn" any language.

This is evidence the human language ability has not changed in 100,000 to 200,000 years. Whenever humans left Africa.

There is no difference in human language abilities between groups. There are only individual differences.

There is no reason to think the cognitive system is any different. Individual differences, not group differences.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nuclear DNA, except for the Y chromosome in men, is a random combination of genes from both parents.

To make it simple for you.

It is random pieces of two diverse lineages. But which piece belongs to which lineage is not always clear.

Mitochondrial DNA only comes from the mother. So we know that all the genes are part of the same lineage.

And of course it really is only a very small picture of the lineage and can only provide limited information. Obviously it cannot tell you about prior movement of ancestors just a very general idea of where some of them might have lived.

Making it simple doesn't do anything to show the relevance. It's quite obvious he understands what you are trying to explain--what he's saying is that it isn't relevant to the issue.

 

[Trausti]

Oh, well.

http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/smd/103133.html

But I think the religious belief that since anatomical humans appeared ~200K years ago a supernatural power has made us impervious to natural selection is preferable. Who needs science, right? Just ruins the mystery.

A different response to proteins is not a different system. People have allergies to different proteins. It doesn't mean they have different systems.

A different system would be different kinds of cells responding. Or cells arising in different places or ways.

And you keep repeating this nonsense.

You simply don't understand evolution.

The mammalian visual system has not changed significantly in millions of years.

That is why we have been able to learn about the human visual system by looking at mice.

Not all things can easily changed. Some things, like skin color, can.

All humans have the same ability to learn language. A child can be born anywhere and "learn" any language.

This is evidence the human language ability has not changed in 100,000 to 200,000 years. Whenever humans left Africa.

There is no difference in human language abilities between groups. There are only individual differences.

There is no reason to think the cognitive system is any different. Individual differences, not group differences.

You seem obsessed with "systems." Exactly how do imagine that speciation works? Everything all at once; or gradual change over time. Or are you just a creationist?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

IQ tests look at prior exposure at critical stages to concepts tested on an IQ test and the language used on IQ tests.

If children are impoverished they will test lower.

It has everything to do with systemic racism and oppression for hundreds of years by very ignorant people who self identify as "white" and nothing to do with genes.

If I cover a cats eyes during critical stages of development the cat will never be able to see. No matter what the genes are.

Does it not occur to you that being impoverished during development likely does harm?

I have gotten a very dramatic illustration of the effect of nutrition from looking at China over the years. When we first went there all the adults had grown up under Mao's system. The result was they were short--I stood up above the crowd enough that eye level for me was above the top of the hair of everyone else. It was quite convenient being able to see distant objects despite being in a dense crowd.

However, that state did not last. Soon the first people of the more liberal economic times were coming of age--and heads began intruding on my line of sight. By now I can no more see over the crowd there than I can here. That is less than 20 years--not time for evolution to change genes to any great degree. Thus it was purely an effect of their living conditions.


Or consider an experiment out of Mexico. They took a traditional village that was living at it was before the Spanish came. Half the kids got vitamin pills for the first 10 years of their life. The results were dramatic--the kids grew taller and brighter than the control group.

 

[ronburgundy]

Well, the IQ/intelligence differences among human population groups is one of those things we all know but don't like to talk about. Take for example, PISA scores from 2012.

Asian-Americans tend to do as well as, Asians.

White Americans tend to do as well as, Europeans.

And Black Americans tend to as well as, . . . perhaps better than any black majority country.

Anyway, though this indicates a relationship between population groups and IQ - after all, your population group is really just your hyper-extended genetic family - ultimately what matters is the population group of two, your parents.

I am not among the ideologues who blindly dismiss general intelligence or the reality of stable differences in IQ between racial groups that have not been well accounted for simply by SES factors. However, those PISA results have nothing to say about IQ.


First, PISA is not an IQ test, but rather a test of how well students have acquired particular math, science, and reading knowledge and skills that are and need to be taught. IOW, it is more a measure of the quality of education received than student ability.

Second, those national averages are not based upon random samples from the people in those countries, but from selected schools, and therefore are non-representative of the national averages. It is a lot like the issue with SAT scores from state to state in the US.
Alabama has a pretty high SAT average of 1617 compared to Connecticut's low score of 1525. Are Alabama kids smarter and/or better educated than kids in Connecticut. No, just the opposite. By every valid measure of either cognitive ability or education quality Connecticut kicks Alabama's ass, just as would be expected by looking at their election results. The problem is that only the top 7% of students in Alabama even bother to take the SAT, whereas it is essentially required in Connecticut, so 88% of their kids take it. The PISA is not as extreme as the SAT in this regard, but it is still not comparable random samples from each country.

 

[untermensche]

A different response to proteins is not a different system. People have allergies to different proteins. It doesn't mean they have different systems.

A different system would be different kinds of cells responding. Or cells arising in different places or ways.

And you keep repeating this nonsense.

You simply don't understand evolution.

The mammalian visual system has not changed significantly in millions of years.

That is why we have been able to learn about the human visual system by looking at mice.

Not all things can easily changed. Some things, like skin color, can.

All humans have the same ability to learn language. A child can be born anywhere and "learn" any language.

This is evidence the human language ability has not changed in 100,000 to 200,000 years. Whenever humans left Africa.

There is no difference in human language abilities between groups. There are only individual differences.

There is no reason to think the cognitive system is any different. Individual differences, not group differences.

You seem obsessed with "systems." Exactly how do imagine that speciation works? Everything all at once; or gradual change over time. Or are you just a creationist?

Punctuated equilibrium

Before Eldredge and Gould alerted their colleagues to the prominence of stasis in the fossil record, most evolutionists considered stasis to be rare or unimportant.[7][22][23] George Gaylord Simpson, for example, believed that phyletic gradual evolution (called horotely in his terminology) comprised 90% of evolution.[24] However one meta-analysis examining 58 published studies on speciation patterns in the fossil record showed that 71% exhibited stasis, 63% of which were also associated with punctuated patterns of evolutionary change.[25] According to Michael Benton, "it seems clear then that stasis is common, and that had not been predicted from modern genetic studies."[26]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium

Darwinian Fundamentalism

As my conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition of this work, and subsequently, I placed in a most conspicuous position—namely at the close of the Introduction—the following words: “I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification.” This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misrepresentation. (quote from Charles Darwin)

Since the ultras are fundamentalists at heart, and since fundamentalists generally try to stigmatize their opponents by depicting them as apostates from the one true way, may I state for the record that I (along with all other Darwinian pluralists) do not deny either the existence and central importance of adaptation, or the production of adaptation by natural selection. Yes, eyes are for seeing and feet are for moving. And, yes again, I know of no scientific mechanism other than natural selection with the proven power to build structures of such eminently workable design.

But does all the rest of evolution—all the phenomena of organic diversity, embryological architecture, and genetic structure, for example—flow by simple extrapolation from selection’s power to create the good design of organisms? Does the force that makes a functional eye also explain why the world houses more than five hundred thousand species of beetles and fewer than fifty species of priapulid worms? Or why most nucleotides—the linked groups of molecules that build DNA and RNA—in multicellular creatures do not code for any enzyme or protein involved in the construction of an organism? Or why ruling dinosaurs died and subordinate mammals survived to flourish and, along one oddly contingent pathway, to evolve a creature capable of building cities and understanding natural selection?

I do not deny that natural selection has helped us to explain phenomena at scales very distant from individual organisms, from the behavior of an ant colony to the survival of a redwood forest. But selection cannot suffice as a full explanation for many aspects of evolution; for other types and styles of causes become relevant, or even prevalent, in domains both far above and far below the traditional Darwinian locus of the organism. These other causes are not, as the ultras often claim, the product of thinly veiled attempts to smuggle purpose back into biology. These additional principles are as directionless, nonteleological, and materialistic as natural selection itself—but they operate differently from Darwin’s central mechanism. In other words, I agree with Darwin that natural selection is “not the exclusive means of modification.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/06/12/darwinian-fundamentalism/

The notion of pure adaptationism is easily refuted by the mathematical ability in humans.

All "normal" humans have the mathematical ability. They can be taught and understand basic mathematics.

But this could not have arisen by natural selection. Humans didn't have mathematics for tens of thousands of years. In Gould's terms it is a spandrel. Something that exists as a consequence of other things existing.

The ideas that all things arise because of gradual change is a religious, not a scientific belief.

As we see Darwin didn't even believe it.

 

[untermensche]

IQ tests look at prior exposure at critical stages to concepts tested on an IQ test and the language used on IQ tests.

If children are impoverished they will test lower.

It has everything to do with systemic racism and oppression for hundreds of years by very ignorant people who self identify as "white" and nothing to do with genes.

If I cover a cats eyes during critical stages of development the cat will never be able to see. No matter what the genes are.

Does it not occur to you that being impoverished during development likely does harm?

I have gotten a very dramatic illustration of the effect of nutrition from looking at China over the years. When we first went there all the adults had grown up under Mao's system. The result was they were short--I stood up above the crowd enough that eye level for me was above the top of the hair of everyone else. It was quite convenient being able to see distant objects despite being in a dense crowd.

However, that state did not last. Soon the first people of the more liberal economic times were coming of age--and heads began intruding on my line of sight. By now I can no more see over the crowd there than I can here. That is less than 20 years--not time for evolution to change genes to any great degree. Thus it was purely an effect of their living conditions.


Or consider an experiment out of Mexico. They took a traditional village that was living at it was before the Spanish came. Half the kids got vitamin pills for the first 10 years of their life. The results were dramatic--the kids grew taller and brighter than the control group.

You are agreeing with me.

Yet for some reason don't seem to comprehend that.

Nutrition is just one factor. Mere exposure to words and concepts is another.

The biggest after nutrition may be parental expectations and training to meet those expectations.

 

[ronburgundy]

There is no reason to think the cognitive system is any different. Individual differences, not group differences.

You keep repeating this irrelevant strawman nonsense about "systems".

The claim that 2 groups differ in average IQ, due to genetic factors does not in any way require that they have different cognitive systems any moreso than 2 individuals differing in IQ does, or than 2 individuals differing in running speed requires they have different "systems" (respiratory, musculatory, etc.) that produce the movement we call running. All that is required is small differences in any aspect of the system, including neural transmission speed that is affected by many minor variables, including myelination which is highly variable and itself impacted by many factors, and one of which could have genetic determinates that therefore ultimately created genetic differences in general performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks that we call IQ.

Also, your comments show ignorance of the most basic realities of population genetics and evolution. There is no need for any aspect of either groups cognitive system to have actually changed and acquired new features. First, the groups that migrated different places were not massive completely random samples of the human population when they first split. So, countless differences between the sub-groups the left place A and those that stayed were not only likely but guaranteed. Plus, we know different sub-groups face countless variations in environmental pressures and selection forces, not merely due to different environments but differences in how often a group migrated to novel environment after environment, requiring repeatedly recreating whole new strategies of survival and producing changes in which members of the subgroup survived. So, the groups that were different non-random subgroups of the human population to start with, then underwent highly different non-random "weeding out" processes guaranteed to make the groups more and more different over time up until relatively recently when the began to intermix again and modernization made the selection factors more similar regardless of local environment.

There need not be a single trait or feature in either sub population that was not there in some members of all groups long before they initially split from the same physical location. All that need happen is that the odds of the people with feature X (where X is just one variable in a complex system) were more likely to stay or leave from place A, or more or less likely to be impacted by the environment A than the environments encountered by those who left. It is beyond reasonable doubt that this was the case for countless genetically influenced traits, it is an open question but perfectly plausible that any of the countless tiny biological variables that impact cognitive performance were among those countless traits.

 

[untermensche]

There is no reason to think the cognitive system is any different. Individual differences, not group differences.

You keep repeating this irrelevant strawman nonsense about "systems".

We use mice, and other animals, to study human systems, like the visual system. Because systems resist change.

If your conception of evolution had any validity it would be impossible to use something as distant to a human as a mouse to learn much about a human.

Clearly this is as false as your claims.

The claim that 2 groups differ in average IQ, due to genetic factors does not in any way require that they have different cognitive systems any moreso than 2 individuals differing in IQ does, or than 2 individuals differing in running speed requires they have different "systems" (respiratory, musculatory, etc.) that produce the movement we call running. All that is required is small differences in any aspect of the system, including neural transmission speed that is affected by many minor variables, including myelination which is highly variable and itself impacted by many factors, and one of which could have genetic determinates that therefore ultimately created genetic differences in general performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks that we call IQ.

You are making my point.

Running is a mechanical process. It is dependent on basic physics. But it uses a structural system that has not changed in about 200,000 years.

A person with different bone length and different properties of muscle in terms of a percentage of fast and slow twitch, and different levels of hemoglobin, etc. IS using a system with different mechanical properties to run. The difference is just a side consequence of mechanics and the laws of physics and does not represent a different structural system.

Because systems resist change while superficial properties like bone length can change more easily.

In response to the question from junegudmundsdottir@yahoo.com about why it is that humans have evolved physically and not in terms of intelligence:

The answer is quite simple, June. As I explain in a lot of detail in my book ‘Black Brain, White Brain’ you are not comparing like with like. Examples of physical evolution (like Tai Sachs, Sickle Cell Anaemia, skin colour, lactose tolerance, single lid eyelids, etc) are usually the result of single gene mutations, and are often the result of genetic drift and not natural selection (for example the Ashkenazi Jewish ethnic diseases are all the result of genetic drift). Intelligence, in contrast – even the very limited IQ variant – involves the combination of thousands of genes. Despite exhaustive attempts, no single gene has been found that has a significant role in superior intelligence. It is highly likely that human intelligence has not advanced for 100,000 years and perhaps far longer – all the way back to the evolution of the first modern humans about 200,000 years ago.

In response to Rob Smith’s racist comments: I strongly suggests he reads my book ‘Black Brain, White Brain’ because it answers all his points.

He writes: ‘Blacks are also the only race without the derived form of MCPH1 microcephalin called haplogroup D which produces increased brain volume and density’. This research has been utterly discredited, and withdrawn by the Chinese academic, Bruce Lahn, who proposed it. MCPH1 has no relation to brain size or intelligence, and black people are not the only ones without it. Lahn himself suggested he did not have it.

He produces figures on SATS scores and relates them to IQ scores. As I explain in Black Brain, White Brain, the IQ scores are hugely influenced by environment, which is why IQ continues to rise (but faster in some societies, like Kenya, than others). The gap between black American and White American IQs is closing. Early in the 20th century Ashkenazi Jewish IQs in the US were below average; not they are above average. In the 1960s Asian American IQs were below average, now they are above average. Almost all serious IQ theorists acknowledge there is no point in comparing IQ scores of different populations because these differences are entirely the result of environmental differences. As Jim Flynn, the most important IQ theorist of the past half century has explained, the reason for different IQ scores among different populations relates mainly to exposure to abstract logic and the scientific way of viewing the world. If tested on today’s IQ tests, Americans of 100 years ago would have average IQs of below 70. They haven’t changed genetically in a century. The reason relates to exposure to abstraction.

https://africacheck.org/2015/03/12/analysis-black-brain-white-brain-the-new-wave-of-racist-science/

One wonders why all you are doing is rehashing discredited racist ideas?

What are your feelings towards "blacks"? Are they an inferior variation of the human?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Does it not occur to you that being impoverished during development likely does harm?

I have gotten a very dramatic illustration of the effect of nutrition from looking at China over the years. When we first went there all the adults had grown up under Mao's system. The result was they were short--I stood up above the crowd enough that eye level for me was above the top of the hair of everyone else. It was quite convenient being able to see distant objects despite being in a dense crowd.

However, that state did not last. Soon the first people of the more liberal economic times were coming of age--and heads began intruding on my line of sight. By now I can no more see over the crowd there than I can here. That is less than 20 years--not time for evolution to change genes to any great degree. Thus it was purely an effect of their living conditions.


Or consider an experiment out of Mexico. They took a traditional village that was living at it was before the Spanish came. Half the kids got vitamin pills for the first 10 years of their life. The results were dramatic--the kids grew taller and brighter than the control group.

You are agreeing with me.

Yet for some reason don't seem to comprehend that.

Nutrition is just one factor. Mere exposure to words and concepts is another.

The biggest after nutrition may be parental expectations and training to meet those expectations.

I read your message as saying impoverished children score lower due to less education.

I'm pointing out a very real physical effect from poor nutrition.

- - - Updated - - -

You keep repeating this irrelevant strawman nonsense about "systems".

We use mice, and other animals, to study human systems, like the visual system. Because systems resist change.

If your conception of evolution had any validity it would be impossible to use something as distant to a human as a mouse to learn much about a human.

Even a mouse has a great deal of genetic similarity with humans. Thus you can learn a lot about humans from studying them.

 

[Bomb#20]

Yes, as a matter of fact, their immune system is different. ... Among the myriad subtle statistical differences in different races' genomes, a remarkably high percentage are in the immune system. ...

You haven't provided evidence of a different immune system.

A different immune system would be a system that used different kinds of cells or had cells arise in different places or ways.

You are merely describing superficial differences, like a difference in bumps on the skull.

I think we all know how meaningless those differences turned out to be.

Good god, man, you prattle "system" the way creationists prattle "macroevolution", as though macroevolution were anything other than an accumulation of lots and lots of microevolution. Yes, different races' immune systems do use different kinds of cells and have cells arise in different places and ways. Not very different kinds, places and ways, but different. The sort of slightly different kinds, places and ways that you'd undoubtedly dismiss as "superficial" if you knew what they were, as though "superficial" were a scientific term. The way organisms end up with whole new systems totally different from their remote ancestors' is by lots and lots of microevolution.

...

As my conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition of this work, and subsequently, I placed in a most conspicuous position—namely at the close of the Introduction—the following words: “I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification.” This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misrepresentation. (quote from Charles Darwin)

...
The ideas that all things arise because of gradual change is a religious, not a scientific belief.

As we see Darwin didn't even believe it.

No, we don't see that. Quote him.

Oh, wait, apparently you think you already quoted him. So let's try that again. Quote Darwin saying he didn't believe new systems in organisms always arise by gradual change.

You have quite a track record of trying to back up your assertions using quotes that don't actually say what you claim they mean. FYI, "gradual change" does not equal "natural selection". The circumstance that something arose by drift or spandrel or whatever other alternative to natural selection you can come up with in no way implies that it didn't arise gradually. Duh!

 

[untermensche]

Good god, man, you prattle "system" the way creationists prattle "macroevolution", as though macroevolution were anything other than an accumulation of lots and lots of microevolution. Yes, different races' immune systems do use different kinds of cells and have cells arise in different places and ways. Not very different kinds, places and ways, but different. The sort of slightly different kinds, places and ways that you'd undoubtedly dismiss as "superficial" if you knew what they were, as though "superficial" were a scientific term. The way organisms end up with whole new systems totally different from their remote ancestors' is by lots and lots of microevolution.

You ignore the arguments like a religious fundamentalist.

And saying systems resist change is just saying we can learn a lot about the human visual system from the visual system of a mouse.

If the system did not greatly resist change how would this be possible?

Be careful you actually have to say something here and not just wave your arms like a hysteric.

You have quite a track record of trying to back up your assertions using quotes that don't actually say what you claim they mean. FYI, "gradual change" does not equal "natural selection".

You have no track record that I am aware of because you have never said anything that I took note of. Including your handwaving hysterical nonsense here.

And it was Gould who claimed that Darwin was speaking against the notion that gradual change was the only way evolution works.

You obviously are incredibly ignorant of Gould's work.

 

[ronburgundy]

You keep repeating this irrelevant strawman nonsense about "systems".

We use mice, and other animals, to study human systems, like the visual system. Because systems resist change.

If your conception of evolution had any validity it would be impossible to use something as distant to a human as a mouse to learn much about a human.

Clearly this is as false as your claims.

IOW, you believe that mice are the same as humans in all cognitive and emotional abilities and tendencies. Wow, that is a whole new level of scientific ignorance. Not one of the scientists that actually conduct the animal based research your are referring to believe such an absurdity. They use animals because its unethical to use humans, and while the animal brains vary in massive and meaningful ways that greatly limit how much they can tell us about the kinds of abstract reasoning processes entailed in concepts like "intelligence", they are better than nothing.

Also, whether a system at its most fundamental structural levels is unchanged has absolutely zero relevance to the question of whether groups differ in the average level of efficiency with which that system operates, because different levels of efficiency depend only on slight variations in minor properties of parts of the systems, not different systems. If anyone was claiming that groups differ not merely in average IQ but qualitatively differ in the way their brains respond to incoming stimuli and what type of stimuli it respond to, then your ramblings about stable systems might have relevance. But no one is claiming that, so your ramblings are completely irrelevant.

In fact, it is studies on other animals that has given us much of the evidence about how such tiny variations in physical components of the neural system can produce notable differences in cognitive functioning, and that much of that variation in those components in inherited.

The claim that 2 groups differ in average IQ, due to genetic factors does not in any way require that they have different cognitive systems any moreso than 2 individuals differing in IQ does, or than 2 individuals differing in running speed requires they have different "systems" (respiratory, musculatory, etc.) that produce the movement we call running. All that is required is small differences in any aspect of the system, including neural transmission speed that is affected by many minor variables, including myelination which is highly variable and itself impacted by many factors, and one of which could have genetic determinates that therefore ultimately created genetic differences in general performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks that we call IQ.

You are making my point.

Running is a mechanical process. It is dependent on basic physics. But it uses a structural system that has not changed in about 200,000 years.

A person with different bone length and different properties of muscle in terms of a percentage of fast and slow twitch, and different levels of hemoglobin, etc. IS using a system with different mechanical properties to run. The difference is just a side consequence of mechanics and the laws of physics and does not represent a different structural system.

Because systems resist change while superficial properties like bone length can change more easily.

The system that produces all human cognition is also a mechanical and bio-chemical process operating on the same physics and the "running system". There is nothing magical about it. Differences in intelligence, whether between individuals or in the distributions of groups, do not require different structural systems but merely differences in one dimension of one small component, like the amount of lipids and proteins that form the myelination on neurons, that then, due to laws of physics determine how fast neural signals can be sent, which would impact how well a person could process multiple streams of information at once, which is often critical to reasoning.

So, it sounds like you do grasp the fact that the stability of a structural system overall has little bearing on whether their is variation in particular physical attributes of parts of the system that produce notable differences in various outcomes of the system. It just seems you have some perverse magical-thinking religious notions about the human brain and the cognition it produces and that somehow what is true of everything else doesn't apply. IOW, you believe in special creation.

 

[untermensche]

We use mice, and other animals, to study human systems, like the visual system. Because systems resist change.

If your conception of evolution had any validity it would be impossible to use something as distant to a human as a mouse to learn much about a human.

Clearly this is as false as your claims.

IOW, you believe that mice are the same as humans in all cognitive and emotional abilities and tendencies. Wow, that is a whole new level of scientific ignorance. Not one of the scientists that actually conduct the animal based research your are referring to believe such an absurdity. They use animals because its unethical to use humans, and while the animal brains vary in massive and meaningful ways that greatly limit how much they can tell us about the kinds of abstract reasoning processes entailed in concepts like "intelligence", they are better than nothing.

How does talking about vision become twisted into talking about cognitive abilities?

It takes a twisted mind to do it.

We know about the human visual system by looking at the visual system of mice and other mammals.

Because the mammalian visual system has not changed in millions of years.

Because systems resist change.

And I gave you another explanation above.

The answer is quite simple, June. As I explain in a lot of detail in my book ‘Black Brain, White Brain’ you are not comparing like with like. Examples of physical evolution (like Tai Sachs, Sickle Cell Anaemia, skin colour, lactose tolerance, single lid eyelids, etc) are usually the result of single gene mutations, and are often the result of genetic drift and not natural selection (for example the Ashkenazi Jewish ethnic diseases are all the result of genetic drift). Intelligence, in contrast – even the very limited IQ variant – involves the combination of thousands of genes. Despite exhaustive attempts, no single gene has been found that has a significant role in superior intelligence. It is highly likely that human intelligence has not advanced for 100,000 years and perhaps far longer – all the way back to the evolution of the first modern humans about 200,000 years ago.

But I have a feeling no matter how many explanations you get they will never get past your prejudices.

The system that produces all human cognition is also a mechanical and bio-chemical process operating on the same physics and the "running system". There is nothing magical about it. Differences in intelligence, whether between individuals or in the distributions of groups, do not require different structural systems but merely differences in one dimension of one small component, like the amount of lipids and proteins that form the myelination on neurons, that then, due to laws of physics determine how fast neural signals can be sent, which would impact how well a person could process multiple streams of information at once, which is often critical to reasoning.

Pulling nonsense from your ass is not an argument.

There is no evidence brains differ in the ways you mention by groups.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

/mod