Suppose scientific racism is correct. How will you react? How will society?

[ApostateAbe]

It follows from the fact that geneticists are always concerned with phenotypic differences that we need not be afraid of postulating genes with indefinitely complex phenotypic effects, and with phenotypic effects that show themselves only in highly complex developmental conditions. Together with Professor John Maynard Smith, I recently took part in a public debate with two radical critics of "sociobiology", before an audience of students. At one time in the discussion we were trying to establish that to talk of a gene "for X" is to make no outlandish claim, even where X is a complex, learned behaviour pattern. Maynard Smith reached for a hypothetical example and came up with a "gene for skill in tying shoelaces". Pandemonium broke loose at this rampant genetic determinism! The air was thick with the unmistakable sound of worst suspicions being gleefully confirmed. Delightedly sceptical cries drowned the quiet and patient explanation of just what a modest claim is being made whenever one postulates a gene for, say, skill in tying shoelaces. Let me explain the point with the aid of an even more radical-sounding yet truly innocuous thought experiment (Dawkins 1981).

Reading is a learned skill of prodigious complexity, but this provides no reason in itself for scepticism about the possible existence of a gene for reading. All we would need in order to establish the existence of a gene for reading is to discover a gene for not reading, say a gene which induced a brain lesion causing specific dyslexia. Such a dyslexic person might be normal and intelligent in all respects except that he could not read. No geneticist would be particularly surprised if this type of dyslexia turned out to breed true in some Mendelian fashion. Obviously, in this event, the gene would only exhibit its effect in an environment which included normal education. In a prehistoric environment it might have had no detectable effect, or it might have had some different effect and have been known to cave-dwelling geneticists as, say, a gene for inability to read animal footprints. In our educated environment it would properly be called a gene "for" dyslexia, since dyslexia would be its most salient consequence. Similarly, a gene which caused total blindness would also prevent reading, but it would not usefully be regarded as a gene for not reading. This is simply because preventing reading would not be its most obvious or debilitating phenotypic effect.

Returning to our gene for specific dyslexia, it follows from the ordinary conventions of genetic terminology that the wild-type gene at the same locus, the gene that the rest of the population has in double dose, would properly be called a gene "for reading". If you object to that, you must also object to our speaking of a gene for tallness in Mendel's peas, because the logic of the terminology is identical in the two cases. In both cases the character of interest is a difference, and in both cases the difference only shows itself in some specified environment. The reason why something so simple as a one gene difference can have such a complex effect as to determine whether or not a person can learn to read, or how good he is at tying shoelaces, is basically as follows. However complex a given state of the world may be, the difference between that state of the world and some alternative state of the world may be caused by something extremely simple.​

~~Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection, 1982, pages 22-23

 

[AthenaAwakened]

And what leads to these "cultural problems?"

Also, why has the black culture become more dysfunctional since the civil rights legislation was signed?

Consider the music blacks have composed. Soul music was about love, even unrequited love. Rap music is about sex and lust.

A point I keep making is that as the black alibi of "white racism" for black social pathology becomes less justified, it becomes more necessary.

Civil rights aren't the problem. The welfare system that traps people and makes it more sensible to be a single parent is the real problem.

The anti-discrimination movement is part of the problem--keep telling blacks that their problems are due to whites and there isn't the incentive to look for the hard answer: the problems are internal.

Because black people are too stupid to see where their problems come from? you feel we have to be told? we can't see our own reality? Is this your contention? That black folk have nothing on which to base assertions of discrimination?

 

[ksen]

Athena you have no idea how heavy is the white man's burden.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Civil rights aren't the problem. The welfare system that traps people and makes it more sensible to be a single parent is the real problem.

The anti-discrimination movement is part of the problem--keep telling blacks that their problems are due to whites and there isn't the incentive to look for the hard answer: the problems are internal.

Because black people are too stupid to see where their problems come from? you feel we have to be told? we can't see our own reality? Is this your contention? That black folk have nothing on which to base assertions of discrimination?

You're the one singling out black people here, not me.

It's just with blacks the supposed cause is racial. The basic pattern applies to everyone, though--when you are provided with an apparently reasonable argument that your problems are externally caused it's very hard to see they are actually internally caused.

It's a standard means of recruiting into hate groups of all sorts, skin color has nothing to do with it.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I think you are right about Africans having higher educational qualifications in the UK, and I give you credit for that, in spite of your personal hostility.

They aren't "the lowest," which was your claim. "Higher" could be misinterpreted (and there are always people looking for things to misinterpret). I'm apathetic about you personally and don't particularly care about the topic. I have a problem with b/s argumentation like I have a problem with crookedly hung pictures.

I downloaded the 2011 census data from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/censu...vellers-in-england-and-wales-/rft-table-5.xls and I calculated the percentages. Lynn's data on educational achievement by race was from 1990, and I expect the main change was increasing income and educational thresholds for all immigrants from outside Europe (selecting mainly the most intelligent immigrants). Whatever the cause, it does seem to be an exception to the general pattern, and I can no longer assert universals.

Which is the least of your problems.

Your main problem is characteristics covarying indepenently of the correlations you're obsessed with by the same amounts or more, and over far too short a time for innate genetic differences to have evolved. That doesn't rule out innate genetic differences, but ruling them in for inter-group correlations because they correspond to your preconceptions isn't "scientific" anything. It's plain old racism.

A lesser problem is that when others examine the evidence of your supposed authorities, they find that it either doesn't support their conclusions on its face, or that correlations disappear (or even reverse!) when they compensate for normalisation effects and environmental differences in samples. Yer "scientific racists" appear to have been actively looking for the effects they tout rather than checking for them. Doesn't make them wrong, but it does mean they're not to be trusted.

It's by no means certain that gene science will be able to either confirm or deny your claims. If the environment acts as a multiplier of tiny genetic differences and/or switches groups of genes on or off during an individual's lifetime, it'll be impossible to determine whether anyone's intelligence is n% genetic, therefore 100-n% environmental. The problem is compounded with differences between races as population genetics increasingly finds that race isn't even a properly biological categorisation.

And drop the persecution complex. The idea that scientific racism should be assessed in contradistinction to some oppressive "scientific Marxism" just sets peoples' crank alarms off. The idea that the general public are devout blank-slaters, afraid to even raise the subject, is patent rubbish. The average London cabbie makes Richard Lynn sound like Steven Jay Gould.

I cannot speak to the tendencies of London cab drivers. But I know what happened to Bruce Lahn (pushed out of the field), James Watson (fired from his leadership position), Arthur Jensen (bomb threats from Communists), J. Philippe Rushton (provoked an angry destructive mob and an investigation by the police for hate speech), and myself (continued violation of every rule of civil debate in every medium, including defamation, personal invasion, harassment, censorship and violent threats). I will stop the persecution complex when the persecution decreases to a tolerable level. I think anyone concerned about scientific freedom should be highly concerned about the culture of hatred that surrounds and effectively deters the expressions of the science, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with such science. Supposing scientific racism becomes predominant, it would be highly troubling to me if scientific Marxism became the target of the same sort of widespread abuse. It would mean that rational decision making about the topic is nearly impossible, as decision-making depends on the information on the table. When one lawyer has a shock collar around his neck in case he says the wrong thing the wrong way or presents the wrong evidence, the other lawyer tends to win the case.

You have been personally hostile, but maybe you deserve credit for being less hostile on average, and in fact I appreciate the good points you have brought up. I don't want to make claims that conflict with the evidence, and I want to make full sense of the evidence available, especially the evidence that conflicts with my general position. I more fully analyzed the data in the Excel file from Office for National Statistics UK, Census 2011, Highest Level of Qualification by Ethnic Group by Age, 2011.

The list is sorted by a weighted ranking of educational achievement (Level 4 gets four times as much weight as Level 1, etc.). This puts African immigrants at the very top and Roma at the very bottom, effectively conflicting with Lynn's claimed pattern. I would love to effectively explain it. As of now I have only speculation that only the most highly-qualified African migrants are allowed permanent visas into the UK, but this is based on a few news reports, I could not find the relevant data, and I am not sure if the requirements were any less in 1990 (the year of Lynn's data). I would like to know if Lynn's data was accurate in 1990 or if Lynn was dishonest with the data.

 

[bilby]

Abe, you have repeatedly implied that racism and Marxism are opposites in your posts, and even that any person who opposes one is therefore the other.

Is this really your contention?

Perhaps you should consider that there are plenty of people who think that both racism and Marxism are unsupported by reality; it is just as stupidly wrong to base decisions on the idea that all people are genetically equal as it is to base decisions on the idea that people can be divided into useful genetic classes based on visual cues (or on the region from which their ancestors hail).

Just because a bunch of idiots make a gross error, that does not imply that a polar opposite view is not just as erroneous.

Scientific Racism is bunk. So is Scientific Marxism - if by that term you mean what I think you mean. The data supports neither - or with sufficient cherry picking, supports both.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Abe, you have repeatedly implied that racism and Marxism are opposites in your posts, and even that any person who opposes one is therefore the other.

Is this really your contention?

Perhaps you should consider that there are plenty of people who think that both racism and Marxism are unsupported by reality; it is just as stupidly wrong to base decisions on the idea that all people are genetically equal as it is to base decisions on the idea that people can be divided into useful genetic classes based on visual cues (or on the region from which their ancestors hail).

Just because a bunch of idiots make a gross error, that does not imply that a polar opposite view is not just as erroneous.

Scientific Racism is bunk. So is Scientific Marxism - if by that term you mean what I think you mean. The data supports neither - or with sufficient cherry picking, supports both.

Yes, you have good points. I don't mean to imply that all people with opinions on the matter can be pigeonholed into one of the two extremes, and in fact most of the members of the debate have intermediate and nuanced positions. Even the most extreme scientific racists have moderate positions compared to the common strawmen (i.e. that races and genes are everything and that environment counts for nothing). The extreme scientific Marxists who believe that genetic variations count for nothing really are common among the public, but not among the more informed members of the debate. "Scientific Marxism" seems like a slur, and I wouldn't be using the term if I didn't think that Marxism did not play a very big role in turning the mainstream science into a hated taboo among all the other academic fields outside of intelligence research and among the public.

 

[NobleSavage]

If it were true, I figure there is so much cross racial fucking that it really won't matter down the road when we are all brown.

 

[ApostateAbe]

If it were true, I figure there is so much cross racial fucking that it really won't matter down the road when we are all brown.

Yes. Given the truth of scientific racism, the encouragement of interracial mating may be a respectable solution to the race gaps, to finally dissolve all differences between the races. I wouldn't depend on the prediction that it would happen naturally, as people tend to mate within their own race, and, as long as within-race mating exceeds interracial mating, the existence of races will continue. If we hope a little higher but not unreasonably high, then some races will dissolve together but not others. White men and Asian women are more likely to breed together (white men are the most popularly-attractive race of men and Asian women are the most popularly-attractive race of women according to OKCupid statistics), which, if such mating accelerates, may result in a Caucasoid-Mongoloid megarace, but Negroids would remain a separate race.

 

[Jokodo]

They aren't "the lowest," which was your claim. "Higher" could be misinterpreted (and there are always people looking for things to misinterpret). I'm apathetic about you personally and don't particularly care about the topic. I have a problem with b/s argumentation like I have a problem with crookedly hung pictures.

I downloaded the 2011 census data from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/censu...vellers-in-england-and-wales-/rft-table-5.xls and I calculated the percentages. Lynn's data on educational achievement by race was from 1990, and I expect the main change was increasing income and educational thresholds for all immigrants from outside Europe (selecting mainly the most intelligent immigrants). Whatever the cause, it does seem to be an exception to the general pattern, and I can no longer assert universals.

Which is the least of your problems.

Your main problem is characteristics covarying indepenently of the correlations you're obsessed with by the same amounts or more, and over far too short a time for innate genetic differences to have evolved. That doesn't rule out innate genetic differences, but ruling them in for inter-group correlations because they correspond to your preconceptions isn't "scientific" anything. It's plain old racism.

A lesser problem is that when others examine the evidence of your supposed authorities, they find that it either doesn't support their conclusions on its face, or that correlations disappear (or even reverse!) when they compensate for normalisation effects and environmental differences in samples. Yer "scientific racists" appear to have been actively looking for the effects they tout rather than checking for them. Doesn't make them wrong, but it does mean they're not to be trusted.

It's by no means certain that gene science will be able to either confirm or deny your claims. If the environment acts as a multiplier of tiny genetic differences and/or switches groups of genes on or off during an individual's lifetime, it'll be impossible to determine whether anyone's intelligence is n% genetic, therefore 100-n% environmental. The problem is compounded with differences between races as population genetics increasingly finds that race isn't even a properly biological categorisation.

And drop the persecution complex. The idea that scientific racism should be assessed in contradistinction to some oppressive "scientific Marxism" just sets peoples' crank alarms off. The idea that the general public are devout blank-slaters, afraid to even raise the subject, is patent rubbish. The average London cabbie makes Richard Lynn sound like Steven Jay Gould.

I cannot speak to the tendencies of London cab drivers. But I know what happened to Bruce Lahn (pushed out of the field)

Is that by any chance the Bruce Lahn, professor of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago? How does that qualify as being pushed out of the field. Maybe because he didn't become head of department at Harvard? Most people don't, and that doesn't mean they're being persecuted.

, James Watson (fired from his leadership position),

Not a research position, more of a manager and figurehead. Figureheads as figureheads are generally well advised not to make themselves unpopular. That's not persecution.

Arthur Jensen (bomb threats from Communists),

citation needed

J. Philippe Rushton (provoked an angry destructive mob and an investigation by the police for hate speech),

citation needed

and myself (continued violation of every rule of civil debate in every medium, including defamation, personal invasion, harassment, censorship and violent threats).

citation needed. And, no, moving a pseudoscientific thread into the pseudoscience subforum does not count as "censorship".

I will stop the persecution complex when the persecution decreases to a tolerable level. I think anyone concerned about scientific freedom should be highly concerned about the culture of hatred that surrounds and effectively deters the expressions of the science, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with such science.

These people have a tendency to cry persecution whenever someone show's they're doing sloppy statistics. You can't have science without the possibility to criticise other researchers' methods. By treating any and all disagreement as political, they're doing a bigger disservice to science than their critics could ever do.

Supposing scientific racism becomes predominant, it would be highly troubling to me if scientific Marxism became the target of the same sort of widespread abuse.

I doubt it. As is, you seem to have no problem with calling anyone who criticises your favoured brand of genetic research on whatever grounds a "scientific Marxist", clearly intended as an otherwise content-free defamatory label.

It would mean that rational decision making about the topic is nearly impossible, as decision-making depends on the information on the table.

It also depends on the possibility to question the validity of the information on the table.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Jokodo, I invite you to read J. Philippe Rushton's full account on these matters, republished here (interesting and informative reading):

http://www.eugenics.net/papers/nolib.html

 

[Jokodo]

Jokodo, I invite you to read J. Philippe Rushton's full account on these matters, republished here (interesting and informative reading):

http://www.eugenics.net/papers/nolib.html

He doesn't make it make it clear whether he's referring the unabridged "academic" version of the book, or the pamphlet style short version with which he literally spammed academic colleagues. Even if his book was partly based on sound science, his marketing methods were certainly those of a demagogue and he has mostly himself to blame if he's consequently mistaken for such. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race,_Evolution,_and_Behavior#Mailing_controversy

And that wasn't the only citation lacking.

 

[Canard DuJour]

They aren't "the lowest," which was your claim. "Higher" could be misinterpreted (and there are always people looking for things to misinterpret). I'm apathetic about you personally and don't particularly care about the topic. I have a problem with b/s argumentation like I have a problem with crookedly hung pictures.

I downloaded the 2011 census data from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/censu...vellers-in-england-and-wales-/rft-table-5.xls and I calculated the percentages. Lynn's data on educational achievement by race was from 1990, and I expect the main change was increasing income and educational thresholds for all immigrants from outside Europe (selecting mainly the most intelligent immigrants). Whatever the cause, it does seem to be an exception to the general pattern, and I can no longer assert universals.

Which is the least of your problems.

Your main problem is characteristics covarying indepenently of the correlations you're obsessed with by the same amounts or more, and over far too short a time for innate genetic differences to have evolved. That doesn't rule out innate genetic differences, but ruling them in for inter-group correlations because they correspond to your preconceptions isn't "scientific" anything. It's plain old racism.

A lesser problem is that when others examine the evidence of your supposed authorities, they find that it either doesn't support their conclusions on its face, or that correlations disappear (or even reverse!) when they compensate for normalisation effects and environmental differences in samples. Yer "scientific racists" appear to have been actively looking for the effects they tout rather than checking for them. Doesn't make them wrong, but it does mean they're not to be trusted.

It's by no means certain that gene science will be able to either confirm or deny your claims. If the environment acts as a multiplier of tiny genetic differences and/or switches groups of genes on or off during an individual's lifetime, it'll be impossible to determine whether anyone's intelligence is n% genetic, therefore 100-n% environmental. The problem is compounded with differences between races as population genetics increasingly finds that race isn't even a properly biological categorisation.

And drop the persecution complex. The idea that scientific racism should be assessed in contradistinction to some oppressive "scientific Marxism" just sets peoples' crank alarms off. The idea that the general public are devout blank-slaters, afraid to even raise the subject, is patent rubbish. The average London cabbie makes Richard Lynn sound like Steven Jay Gould.

I cannot speak to the tendencies of London cab drivers. But I know what happened to Bruce Lahn (pushed out of the field), James Watson (fired from his leadership position), Arthur Jensen (bomb threats from Communists), J. Philippe Rushton (provoked an angry destructive mob and an investigation by the police for hate speech), and myself (continued violation of every rule of civil debate in every medium, including defamation, personal invasion, harassment, censorship and violent threats). I will stop the persecution complex when the persecution decreases to a tolerable level. I think anyone concerned about scientific freedom should be highly concerned about the culture of hatred that surrounds and effectively deters the expressions of the science, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with such science. Supposing scientific racism becomes predominant, it would be highly troubling to me if scientific Marxism became the target of the same sort of widespread abuse. It would mean that rational decision making about the topic is nearly impossible, as decision-making depends on the information on the table. When one lawyer has a shock collar around his neck in case he says the wrong thing the wrong way or presents the wrong evidence, the other lawyer tends to win the case.

You have been personally hostile, but maybe you deserve credit for being less hostile on average, and in fact I appreciate the good points you have brought up. I don't want to make claims that conflict with the evidence, and I want to make full sense of the evidence available, especially the evidence that conflicts with my general position. I more fully analyzed the data in the Excel file from Office for National Statistics UK, Census 2011, Highest Level of Qualification by Ethnic Group by Age, 2011.

The list is sorted by a weighted ranking of educational achievement (Level 4 gets four times as much weight as Level 1, etc.). This puts African immigrants at the very top and Roma at the very bottom, effectively conflicting with Lynn's claimed pattern. I would love to effectively explain it. As of now I have only speculation that only the most highly-qualified African migrants are allowed permanent visas into the UK, but this is based on a few news reports, I could not find the relevant data, and I am not sure if the requirements were any less in 1990 (the year of Lynn's data). I would like to know if Lynn's data was accurate in 1990 or if Lynn was dishonest with the data.

Abe, that's the least of yer problems. You, like Lynn et al, are so myopically focused on rank orderings by race, you can't see what the meta-analysis is screaming : We must reserve scientific judgement over the extent to which differences are genetic, environmental, exogenetically heritable or what. Characteristics like educational attainment covary intra-group by the same margins over times as short as a single generation. Selectively insisting on genetic explanations for inter-group differences is just racist. That's what draws the hostility - not the scientific racism, the racism. People have been pointing this stuff out to the "scientific racists" ever since anyone else looked at their evidence, yet they blithely continue trotting out the same selection of factoids by race. That's what draws the hostility.

This puts African immigrants at the very top and Roma at the very bottom, effectively conflicting with Lynn's claimed pattern. I would love to effectively explain it

You pretty obviously would not since there's already a screaming obvious explanation found by the education dep't enquiry : working class white families who value education less and Roma who don't even send their kids to school. What you'd love to find is a genetic explanation which preserves the racial hierarchy. That's why you've had to try concocting a ridiculous just-so story. That's what draws the ridicule. That's why these threads end up in Pseudoscience.

You're obviously determined to stick to the whole "Scientific Marxist" persecution narrative. Fine by me, I inform you that it makes you sound a crank in the same spirit I'd inform a friend that his toupée had slipped.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Jokodo, I invite you to read J. Philippe Rushton's full account on these matters, republished here (interesting and informative reading):

http://www.eugenics.net/papers/nolib.html

He doesn't make it make it clear whether he's referring the unabridged "academic" version of the book, or the pamphlet style short version with which he literally spammed academic colleagues. Even if his book was partly based on sound science, his marketing methods were certainly those of a demagogue and he has mostly himself to blame if he's consequently mistaken for such. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race,_Evolution,_and_Behavior#Mailing_controversy

And that wasn't the only citation lacking.

I think there is a principle here that can help you be more conscious of the social reality here. The level of disgust and hatred you feel reacting against the scientific (or pseudoscientific) case for racial differences is normal. The hateful ridicule and expressing the assumptions of the very worst of my intentions and the very lowest of my critical thinking and intelligence as a way to retaliate is moderate, because you are a normal peaceful person who does what most people do. It means that some people go much further and they really do feel angry enough to do much worse to deter the expression of such opinions. When the heretic is not just a normal person like me but a respected scientific authority figure, it means violent threats, violent attacks, bomb threats, angry violent mobs, and every sort of retaliation imaginable. I know the lesser retaliations are true from my own direct experiences. No, not so much in this forum, where there are bad reactions but they remain relatively moderate. I have no complaints about this forum. Outside this forum, on the web, I get bannings, personal invasion, and violent threats (I can give you a screen shot of a violent threat but maybe just take my word for it). It is madness. More depressingly, the most hateful people willing to break all the rules of civil debate for the sake of opposing these scientific opinions are liberal atheists, the people I identify with the most. When the persecution is real, to lack a persecution complex would be delusional, and I am not delusional. The people who really believe as I do feel enormous pressure to keep silent about it, because they are interested in preserving their jobs, their businesses, their relationships, and their safety. It is NOT like believing something weird about physics or whatever. You can freely express a weird theory about gravity and not get violent threats. You can send your colleagues books about your weird theory without their permission and not need a nearly-empty office for fear that someone hid a bomb in it. And that is the way it should be. If the weird theory is convincing to rational people, they may eventually accept it as true. But, if there is a culture that broadly encourages any means of keeping such expressions silent, then rational thought is impossible. Please see this as a problem.

 

[Jokodo]

He doesn't make it make it clear whether he's referring the unabridged "academic" version of the book, or the pamphlet style short version with which he literally spammed academic colleagues. Even if his book was partly based on sound science, his marketing methods were certainly those of a demagogue and he has mostly himself to blame if he's consequently mistaken for such. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race,_Evolution,_and_Behavior#Mailing_controversy

And that wasn't the only citation lacking.

I think there is a principle here that can help you be more conscious of the social reality here. The level of disgust and hatred you feel reacting against the scientific (or pseudoscientific) case for racial differences is normal.

I don't feel disgust and hatred. I feel contempt. Contempt at the pathetic attempts to pass off one's lack of understanding for the most basic principles of science, such as distinguishing between causation and correlation and discussing alternative hypotheses, as an argument for a position that remains at best speculative.

You still haven't backed up your other claims, or even just admitted that you were mistaken to claim that Bruce Lahn was pushed out of the field.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I think there is a principle here that can help you be more conscious of the social reality here. The level of disgust and hatred you feel reacting against the scientific (or pseudoscientific) case for racial differences is normal.

I don't feel disgust and hatred. I feel contempt. Contempt at the pathetic attempts to pass off one's lack of understanding for the most basic principles of science, such as distinguishing between causation and correlation and discussing alternative hypotheses, as an argument for a position that remains at best speculative.

You still haven't backed up your other claims, or even just admitted that you were mistaken to claim that Bruce Lahn was pushed out of the field.

Information about Bruce Lahn is here:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB115040765329081636

Let me know if you cannot read the full article. Sometimes when I click on the link, I get the full text and other times I get a login restriction. It is another article that accurately depicts the bound and gagged state of the science. Bruce Lahn was driven out of the field of intelligence research because "it's getting too controversial," per that article, but he still works in other fields of human genetics.

 

[Duke Leto]

I for one, just feel sorry for all the pigs with sore assholes.

 

[ApostateAbe]

A few years ago, Bruce Lahn co-authored an article in the journal Nature titled, "Let’s Celebrate Human Genetic Diversity," that was an editorial intended to encourage a more open-minded and less reactionary perspective with respect to the science of human population genetic diversity.

The point of the article that speaks the loudest is an omission: the word "race."

https://web.archive.org/web/2012011...alascent.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/lhan.pdf

 

[ApostateAbe]

They aren't "the lowest," which was your claim. "Higher" could be misinterpreted (and there are always people looking for things to misinterpret). I'm apathetic about you personally and don't particularly care about the topic. I have a problem with b/s argumentation like I have a problem with crookedly hung pictures.

I downloaded the 2011 census data from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/censu...vellers-in-england-and-wales-/rft-table-5.xls and I calculated the percentages. Lynn's data on educational achievement by race was from 1990, and I expect the main change was increasing income and educational thresholds for all immigrants from outside Europe (selecting mainly the most intelligent immigrants). Whatever the cause, it does seem to be an exception to the general pattern, and I can no longer assert universals.

Which is the least of your problems.

Your main problem is characteristics covarying indepenently of the correlations you're obsessed with by the same amounts or more, and over far too short a time for innate genetic differences to have evolved. That doesn't rule out innate genetic differences, but ruling them in for inter-group correlations because they correspond to your preconceptions isn't "scientific" anything. It's plain old racism.

A lesser problem is that when others examine the evidence of your supposed authorities, they find that it either doesn't support their conclusions on its face, or that correlations disappear (or even reverse!) when they compensate for normalisation effects and environmental differences in samples. Yer "scientific racists" appear to have been actively looking for the effects they tout rather than checking for them. Doesn't make them wrong, but it does mean they're not to be trusted.

It's by no means certain that gene science will be able to either confirm or deny your claims. If the environment acts as a multiplier of tiny genetic differences and/or switches groups of genes on or off during an individual's lifetime, it'll be impossible to determine whether anyone's intelligence is n% genetic, therefore 100-n% environmental. The problem is compounded with differences between races as population genetics increasingly finds that race isn't even a properly biological categorisation.

And drop the persecution complex. The idea that scientific racism should be assessed in contradistinction to some oppressive "scientific Marxism" just sets peoples' crank alarms off. The idea that the general public are devout blank-slaters, afraid to even raise the subject, is patent rubbish. The average London cabbie makes Richard Lynn sound like Steven Jay Gould.

I cannot speak to the tendencies of London cab drivers. But I know what happened to Bruce Lahn (pushed out of the field), James Watson (fired from his leadership position), Arthur Jensen (bomb threats from Communists), J. Philippe Rushton (provoked an angry destructive mob and an investigation by the police for hate speech), and myself (continued violation of every rule of civil debate in every medium, including defamation, personal invasion, harassment, censorship and violent threats). I will stop the persecution complex when the persecution decreases to a tolerable level. I think anyone concerned about scientific freedom should be highly concerned about the culture of hatred that surrounds and effectively deters the expressions of the science, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with such science. Supposing scientific racism becomes predominant, it would be highly troubling to me if scientific Marxism became the target of the same sort of widespread abuse. It would mean that rational decision making about the topic is nearly impossible, as decision-making depends on the information on the table. When one lawyer has a shock collar around his neck in case he says the wrong thing the wrong way or presents the wrong evidence, the other lawyer tends to win the case.

You have been personally hostile, but maybe you deserve credit for being less hostile on average, and in fact I appreciate the good points you have brought up. I don't want to make claims that conflict with the evidence, and I want to make full sense of the evidence available, especially the evidence that conflicts with my general position. I more fully analyzed the data in the Excel file from Office for National Statistics UK, Census 2011, Highest Level of Qualification by Ethnic Group by Age, 2011.

Show

The list is sorted by a weighted ranking of educational achievement (Level 4 gets four times as much weight as Level 1, etc.). This puts African immigrants at the very top and Roma at the very bottom, effectively conflicting with Lynn's claimed pattern. I would love to effectively explain it. As of now I have only speculation that only the most highly-qualified African migrants are allowed permanent visas into the UK, but this is based on a few news reports, I could not find the relevant data, and I am not sure if the requirements were any less in 1990 (the year of Lynn's data). I would like to know if Lynn's data was accurate in 1990 or if Lynn was dishonest with the data.

Abe, that's the least of yer problems. You, like Lynn et al, are so myopically focused on rank orderings by race, you can't see what the meta-analysis is screaming : We must reserve scientific judgement over the extent to which differences are genetic, environmental, exogenetically heritable or what. Characteristics like educational attainment covary intra-group by the same margins over times as short as a single generation. Selectively insisting on genetic explanations for inter-group differences is just racist. That's what draws the hostility - not the scientific racism, the racism. People have been pointing this stuff out to the "scientific racists" ever since anyone else looked at their evidence, yet they blithely continue trotting out the same selection of factoids by race. That's what draws the hostility.

This puts African immigrants at the very top and Roma at the very bottom, effectively conflicting with Lynn's claimed pattern. I would love to effectively explain it

You pretty obviously would not since there's already a screaming obvious explanation found by the education dep't enquiry : working class white families who value education less and Roma who don't even send their kids to school. What you'd love to find is a genetic explanation which preserves the racial hierarchy. That's why you've had to try concocting a ridiculous just-so story. That's what draws the ridicule. That's why these threads end up in Pseudoscience.

You're obviously determined to stick to the whole "Scientific Marxist" persecution narrative. Fine by me, I inform you that it makes you sound a crank in the same spirit I'd inform a friend that his toupée had slipped.

Very well. Again, I thank you for your contributions.

 

[Jokodo]

I don't feel disgust and hatred. I feel contempt. Contempt at the pathetic attempts to pass off one's lack of understanding for the most basic principles of science, such as distinguishing between causation and correlation and discussing alternative hypotheses, as an argument for a position that remains at best speculative.

You still haven't backed up your other claims, or even just admitted that you were mistaken to claim that Bruce Lahn was pushed out of the field.

Information about Bruce Lahn is here:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB115040765329081636

Let me know if you cannot read the full article. Sometimes when I click on the link, I get the full text and other times I get a login restriction. It is another article that accurately depicts the bound and gagged state of the science. Bruce Lahn was driven out of the field of intelligence research because "it's getting too controversial," per that article, but he still works in other fields of human genetics.

Per that article, he chose to work on other topics, apparently because he couldn't handle legitimate criticism of the way he jumped to conclusions that other research showed to be unwarranted. He wasn't driven out - in fact he got tenure, unanimously, while he was still working on it.

Maybe you meant to link a different article? That, or reading comprehension failure.