Racial diffrences matter.

[Trodon]

The different races did not only evolve in response to different climatic conditions, but different selection pressures in different societies.

In a paleolithic and in a neolithic society all men fight in the wars. The best warriors have more than one wife, and consequently more sons who inherit their violent inclinations and capabilities.

With the advent of civilization the military becomes one of several professional specialties in the division of labor. Frequently it is difficult for a military man to raise a family. Military men of course have lower life expectancies than other men.

Most men go through their lives without ever participating in war.

The men who are most prolific are those men who have the intelligence to become merchants, government officials, scribes, money lenders and so on.

In addition, criminal justice systems execute criminals.

Civilization breeds aggressiveness out of a population. It breeds intelligence into the population. This is why races that have practiced civilization for thousands of years generally have higher IQ averages and lower crime rates than races that have been recently introduced.

There are apparent exceptions. Civilization began in Egypt and in what is now Iraq. In Europe the Germanic peoples were the last to develop urban civilizations. Nevertheless, according to Intelligence and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen the average IQ of people in Germanic nations is 100. In Egypt it is 83. In Iraq it is 87.

http://www.sq.4mg.com/NationIQ.htm

Nevertheless, the pattern generally holds true. Living in a cold climate requires more intelligence than living in a warm climate. The Negro slave trade introduced Negro genes into the Arab genome. In ancient times Egypt had more access to negro slaves than the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Babylon. When explaining racial differences one does not need to explain everything in order to explain anything.

 

[Bronzeage]

This is silly stuff.

 

[rousseau]

I don't get the obsession with race and racial differences. It's always seemed to me that social and environmental factors have played a far more significant role in any phenotypic variation amongst races.

Popular theories will tell you that white Europeans came to dominate society, not because of their race, but because they happened to live in an area with geographic and environmental conditions that lent themselves to technological progress. Once power accumulates amongst a particular race of people, that by default puts other races in a more socially difficult position. To the human eye they might appear less advanced because of this, but their position is almost always because they're being oppressed.

Even if we were to go as far as saying there's slight innate differences in ability, it's pretty likely that these differences would be inconsequential enough that they'd never be predictive at an individual level. In other words, pick out a random black as well as white man and you have absolutely no way of knowing, based on the colour of their skin, which of the two is more intelligent. So in other words.. racial differences don't matter, outside of the fact that minorities more often than not need a hand up.

On top of all that, directly comparing one attribute between races and using it as a metric to gauge superiority, is not actually a valid way of gauging superiority. If races are actually different, then it follows that different races each have a set of unique attributes, giving them different characteristics. If the only way a race can be successful is to create a modern society while destroying the planet.. then yea.. white Europeans were pretty successful. But other races, based on different characteristics, have lived much different.. and possibly even more successful lives. The running narrative, though, is that the direction the world has gone is a positive one, which I don't think is actually conclusive yet.

 

[fromderinside]

I don't get the obsession with race and racial differences. It's always seemed to me that social and environmental factors have played a far more significant role in any phenotypic variation amongst races.

Popular theories will tell you that white Europeans came to dominate society, not because of their race, but because they happened to live in an area with geographic and environmental conditions that lent themselves to technological progress. Once power accumulates amongst a particular race of people, that by default puts other races in a more socially difficult position. To the human eye they might appear less advanced because of this, but their position is almost always because they're being oppressed.

Even if we were to go as far as saying there's slight innate differences in ability, it's pretty likely that these differences would be inconsequential enough that they'd never be predictive at an individual level. In other words, pick out a random black as well as white man and you have absolutely no way of knowing, based on the colour of their skin, which of the two is more intelligent. So in other words.. racial differences don't matter, outside of the fact that minorities more often than not need a hand up.

On top of all that, directly comparing one attribute between races and using it as a metric to gauge superiority, is not actually a valid way of gauging superiority. If races are actually different, then it follows that different races each have a set of unique attributes, giving them different characteristics. If the only way a race can be successful is to create a modern society while destroying the planet.. then yea.. white Europeans were pretty successful. But other races, based on different characteristics, have lived much different.. and possibly even more successful lives. The running narrative, though, is that the direction the world has gone is a positive one, which I don't think is actually conclusive yet.

Since even Neanderthal genes are part of our modern genome it appears even with 10s to 100s of thousands of years of isolation races hadn't had time to form among humans. We're browning now so race formation is not a concern for at least 400,000 years.

 

[Trodon]

This is silly stuff.

Racial differences have legitimate policy implications. Because members of some races tend to be more intelligent than members of other races, different success levels of different races are not the result of racial discrimination; they are the result of the fact that members of some races tend to be better competitors than members of other races. Consequently affirmative action is unjust. It discriminates against members of the more capable races while elevating members of less capable races to positions where they cannot perform adequately.

Because some races have higher crime rates than other races, much higher crime rates in fact, racial profiling is a legitimate way to proactively reduce crime.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This is silly stuff.

Racial differences have legitimate policy implications. Because members of some races tend to be more intelligent than members of other races...

You seem to be bucking that trend.

 

[Trodon]

I don't get the obsession with race and racial differences. It's always seemed to me that social and environmental factors have played a far more significant role in any phenotypic variation amongst races.

Popular theories will tell you that white Europeans came to dominate society, not because of their race, but because they happened to live in an area with geographic and environmental conditions that lent themselves to technological progress. Once power accumulates amongst a particular race of people, that by default puts other races in a more socially difficult position. To the human eye they might appear less advanced because of this, but their position is almost always because they're being oppressed.

You are expressing the thesis of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond. In this book Professor Diamond explains that civilization began in the Mid East, rather than in some place else because it just so happened that in the Mid East there were plants and animals that were useful to humans and easy to domesticate. Plants included wheat, barley, figs, olives, chick peas, broad beans, and grapes. Paleolithic people in the area harvested these for thousands of years when they were wild. Eventually, they leaned that by planting seeds from these plants, and by excluding competing plants they could increase their harvests. This was the beginning of agriculture. It began in the Mid East over ten thousand years ago. It began later and independently in other parts of the world, especially in the Indus River Valley, the Yellow River Valley, and in Mesoamerica.

Once agriculture began farmers learned to improve their crops through selective breeding.

In a similar manner, paleolithic people learned to domesticate animals. First they would follow herds of animals they preyed on. Then they would protect these animals from rival predators like wolves. Finally they would take ownership of the animals and begin to breed them too.

It just so happened that in the Mid East there were useful animals that were easy to domesticate. These included sheep, goats, donkeys, and eventually camels. By contrast, in sub Saharan Africa the animals are not easy to domesticate. Wild donkey's and wild horses can be domesticated in a few days. Wild Zebras cannot be domesticated. Asian elephants can be domesticated. African elephants cannot be domesticated. So it goes.

What Professor Diamond overlooked was that just as farmers breed plants and animals to be more useful to them, farming breeds humans to be better farmers. Individuals who are better able to plan ahead for the next growing season tend to be more prolific than individuals who are less able to do this. Paleolithic hunters only need to be able to plan ahead to the next hunt. Farmers who are more able to defer gratification tend to be more prolific than farmers who are less able to defer gratification. Farmers cannot eat all of the grain they harvest. They need to save some for the next planting season. They benefit it they are intelligent enough to know to select the best grain. Farmers cannot butcher all of their farm animals. Again, they need to preserve the most useful animals to generate more animals.

These new skills require more intelligence than hunting and gathering.

Civilization, which began in the Mid East five thousand years ago, places even more evolutionary pressure on intelligence. Men with the intelligence to become merchants, land lords, government officials, scribes, money lenders and so on tend to be more prosperous than men without the necessary intelligence. They tend to have more children who survive and reproduce.

On the other hand, criminals are prevented from having any children who survive because they are usually executed.

This is why races that have practiced agriculture and civilization the longest have higher IQ averages and lower crime rates than races that have been more recently introduced to these.

Factors ignored in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies are aptly explained in The 10,000 Year Explosion:How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution by Professors Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, and in A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History by former New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade.

Cochran, Harpending, and Wade cover much the same ground as does Diamond, but with a much better understanding of the ways evolution has bred the races to have different average ability levels and behavior. These biological differences explain different racial success levels in modern civilizations.

Non cosmetic differences in ability and behavior overlap, but average differences are significant.

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Racial differences have legitimate policy implications. Because members of some races tend to be more intelligent than members of other races...

You seem to be bucking that trend.

How so?

 

[rousseau]

I don't get the obsession with race and racial differences. It's always seemed to me that social and environmental factors have played a far more significant role in any phenotypic variation amongst races.

Popular theories will tell you that white Europeans came to dominate society, not because of their race, but because they happened to live in an area with geographic and environmental conditions that lent themselves to technological progress. Once power accumulates amongst a particular race of people, that by default puts other races in a more socially difficult position. To the human eye they might appear less advanced because of this, but their position is almost always because they're being oppressed.

Even if we were to go as far as saying there's slight innate differences in ability, it's pretty likely that these differences would be inconsequential enough that they'd never be predictive at an individual level. In other words, pick out a random black as well as white man and you have absolutely no way of knowing, based on the colour of their skin, which of the two is more intelligent. So in other words.. racial differences don't matter, outside of the fact that minorities more often than not need a hand up.

On top of all that, directly comparing one attribute between races and using it as a metric to gauge superiority, is not actually a valid way of gauging superiority. If races are actually different, then it follows that different races each have a set of unique attributes, giving them different characteristics. If the only way a race can be successful is to create a modern society while destroying the planet.. then yea.. white Europeans were pretty successful. But other races, based on different characteristics, have lived much different.. and possibly even more successful lives. The running narrative, though, is that the direction the world has gone is a positive one, which I don't think is actually conclusive yet.

Since even Neanderthal genes are part of our modern genome it appears even with 10s to 100s of thousands of years of isolation races hadn't had time to form among humans. We're browning now so race formation is not a concern for at least 400,000 years.

Looked up the definition, here it is:

race - a group of persons related by common descent or heredity

You could say racial differences matter so far as they cause tribalism.