The Community
General Category => Matters of Life and The Universe => Topic started by: Typhon on June 21, 2020, 03:46:46 PM
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In case anyone was interested, here is just one example of some research testing that was done on the subject. The test questions used were entirely generic in an effort to be completely fair to everyone.
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Good to see you cranking out some posts (like I'm one to talk)!
Here's my first reaction to what you posted: Rushton? AMREN?!? WTF man?!
My second reaction is a question: Out of all of the research that has been done in this area (racialist framework and genetic functional trait inheritance) what prompts you to give validity to Rushton, et al.'s research above others, or do you? Maybe you're just trying to make a point?
Shit, dinner bell rang. More later.
>>> EDITED - Back from chow - <<<
My wife was sick most of the day, but wheeled herself (she now has a motorized chair) into the kitchen and whipped up some home-made tacos for fathers day. She's awesome! One daughter came by with one grandkid, the other apparently got plastered last night and was in bed all day lol.
Anyway, the question I asked above, before the edit, is what I'm interested in knowing. Following facts is a solid rudder, but it has to be evident that not all facts are created equal. And my analysis of Rushton's claims leave me scratching my head. Maybe I'm in the 70 IQ range?
You've heard that perception is reality, right? When you post a video of a guy who led the Frontier Foundation (a hate group), took their money to fund research efforts that showed Africans have lower IQs than any other group and that their sexual conduct is tied to that, and is speaking at an amren (hate group) event, how do you think that appears to any random person who sees it? Speaking non-PC truth, or promoting a racialist ideology?
I'm not saying that you are a racist, or someone who is using racialist ideology to foster (whether knowingly or unknowingly) racism. And not that I amount to anything, but I am really interested in knowing what about Rushton's work you find compelling? I have an open mind, and I'm capable of looking at facts and making decisions accordingly. I'm just not seeing anything in Rushton's that is convincing.
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^^^^^^
I was not ranking some results above others. I selected this video because a few of the actual questions used in the testing were shown. Some others just show test results without revealing questions from the test, and then are accused of designing the test to favor one side or another. He also goes on the describe the testing conditions in detail, all in an effort to show fairness to everybody. These points were covered in the second half of the video. Did you have some objection to anything specific about the fairness of the test questions or the testing conditions?
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His connection of race and sexuality goes back to canards that are centuries old. Both his research methods and conclusions have been called into question by large numbers of reputable scientists and research institutions. Than man is, in a word, wrong.
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Did you have some objection to anything specific about the fairness of the test questions or the testing conditions?
I don't doubt that the testing methodology he employed was the same (i.e. fair) for all participants.
Thanks for explaining why you posted the video!
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If there is one thing I know it's that you can't judge a person by their race.
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Agree, there is the very intelligent to the very dumb in all races.
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Agree, there is the very intelligent to the very dumb in all races.
That's the fact, Jack!
Sorry, it just rolled off my keyboard like that :)
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I don't see anything false about that test or about the result. All scientists have some kind of prejudice or another, you can't fault the result based on that or you'd have to fault every single test and every single scientist in the world. Science on the other hand doesn't have prejudice of any kind. Science is as neutral as anything can ever be.
However I do not fully believe in these iq tests to begin with. I've been tested having an iq of 142 and 135 which I know is false. I am not that smart. So there is some room for error in all these tests.
Also high iq doesn't automatically mean that you're "smart" nor does a lower iq mean you're automatically dumb. There are different kinds of smarts and dumbs. I tend to believe that "book smart" isn't something that you'd find in abundance in Africa. After all they were living very simple lives for hundreds of years more than lets say majority of Europeans or Asians. So naturally that shows as well. But throw in a highly educated european in the bush and they'll be dead in matter of days. So there is that.
I strongly believe that where you live and what kind of possibility for education you and your ancestors had counts towards iq more than ethnicity. And I believe that is the reason behind the smaller iq in africans...again not race, as (like Billy would like to point out) there is no different "race" we're all homo sapiens.
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Agree, there is the very intelligent to the very dumb in all races.
Agreed, nobody was saying otherwise. The objective here was to find the averages.
For hundreds if not thousands of years various groups of human beings lived in different parts of the world. They experienced different climates, ate different foods, lived different life styles, etc. Then it is no surprise that these groups evolved somewhat differently. It seems to me that it would be very strange to think that the average intelligence of each group would be the same.
But why is this important? Well, it is a known fact that the more intelligent you are, the more likely you will do better in life no matter what your background, and in the age of high technology, an individual's intelligence has become more important than ever before.
As it stands now, there are certain fields of study that are dominated by Asians and Whites. It is automatically assumed that the low representation of other races in those fields is because of some type of systemic racism. Personally I believe this assumption to be ridiculous and unfair. But what if the real reason for this imbalance is because the average intelligence among races is different? Would not society be better served to figure this out in order to find the best solutions to solve the problem?
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If a guy as smart as Charger says he's dumb, then he's got to be right, right? :)
I'll make a comment on science being neutral... good science, yes, it's neutral. It's asking a question, collecting data, checking the accuracy of the data, checking to see if the question wasn't flawed to begin with, and then if the data don't support current theory, trying to make sense of all that.
At the same time, we have people involved, so we get some variable outcomes that lead to bad science.
One set of bad science comes from paper-writing mills where scientists are generating random works with highly specialized and obscure titles just to get published in journals that were created to publish marginal works like those. Why? So the scientist can put another publication on their CV. This happens A LOT in China, but other communities can fall victim to bogus padding like this.
Related to that is a professor with tenure, and that tenure is based on that professor's key work in a field. And if new data come forward that basically set that professor's work on its head, the professor is in very real danger of being let go, especially if there's a question about the quality of the professor's data or methods. If the professor is involved in the research, maybe it's not so bad and he can save face by updating his theory. If not, there's a danger he looks the fool if he can't tear down the findings. If there are enough professors in a field with enough reputation to block a new idea, it gets blocked. A classic example is the Clovis / Pre-Clovis argument in American archaeology about what is the earliest date for human migration to the Americas. There's also the argument about whether or not it was one period of land-based migration or if there were multiple land-based waves or if there were also sea-based migrations.
It gets crazier in the field of pre-Columbian contacts between the Americas and Asia. There are numerous plants that have American or Old World origins that have established transoceanic presences well in advance of Columbus' 1492 voyage. Animals and diseases show similar pre-Columbian exchanges. Part of this issue has to do with Eurocentric views in history that simply ruled out non-European sources of innovation because those non-Europeans were viewed as too primitive to be capable of such things - a very big assumption, and that has led to quite a few errors in the sciences.
One of those errors impacted West African agriculture. In the colonial and immediate post-colonial period, European and US agricultural advisors to West African countries advocated methods and crops that were most effective in the US and Europe... but they didn't have the same efficacy in Africa. Much later, someone familiar with SE Asian/Indonesian multi-level small tool-based agriculture approached West African farms with the methods and crops that worked well over there and had much better success as local crops were supplemented with multi-level crops.
There's more bad science/research based on bad assumptions. If one assumes that all of France was Christian by 1650, no exceptions, then one won't even bother to ask the question about whether or not the persistence of pre-Christian belief systems impacted the spread of Protestanism in Brittany. As it turns out, France wasn't actually all Christian by 1650 and yes, those beliefs were as resistant to Protestantism as they were to Catholicism. But someone had to break down the assumption that everyone was Catholic in order to find that out in the historical records.
There have been scientists who have faked data in order to make a big claim that they hoped to parlay into fame and fortune - or at least tenure. Those guys, however, get found out through the peer review process, and especially so if their experiments are repeated but the results are not. Cold fusion comes to mind... And the difference between faked data and honest errors is a fine line, to be sure.
But there are then the people who dress up as scientists, but who have no intention of letting the data change their minds. They go out to find the data that supports their views and then damn all the rest. They have agendas, be they political, religious, social, whatever, and they will bend the data to fit their agenda. In the 20th Century, various political ideologies have been most forceful in this category and we are still dealing with their consequences.
One of the worst ideologues in my view was Lysenko. He worked under Stalin and basically said that Communism was true, so therefore Communist ideas could be applied to biology. Using Communist ideals would improve crop hardiness and yields and Communist science would be better than any other science. Because of him, millions in Russia and China, tens of millions, really, starved to death in state-created famines. Farmers were told to abandon the old ways and to implement Lysenko's ways. When crops failed, the farmers were blamed for not being Communist enough. Lysenko's pseudoscience "proved" it.
In the USA, there's the Fundamentalist view that has impacted science. In the late 19th Century, both evolutionary biology / gradualist geology and critical textual analysis threatened a literal interpretation of the Bible. Evolutionary biology and gradualist geology basically said that it would take more than 144 hours to bang out a planet with sedimentary rocks and a complex ecosystem. Critical textual analysis stipulated that other Bronze Age records existed that influenced the ones in the current Bible and that there were different iterations of the documents, showing development over time. To a person who believed that every word of the Bible was literal, these challenges were existential. Fundamentalism approaches the problem with the assumption that only a literal interpretation of the Bible is correct and that anything that contradicts such a view is wrong. Its impact on science was to create a movement of people that would cherry-pick and bend data to support a view that such a literal interpretation was correct, and then to ignore or shout down any other interpretation.
There are Fundamentalist-run peer review journals that serve as their own echo chambers, where they reject the legitimacy of the journals and studies of the outside world and rely completely on their own views. Flat earthers have a similar setup. Pretty much every ideology will have something like this where they say that everyone else is wrong and they've got the science to prove it.
That's why I'm fascinated with the bowl-earth movement. They tear down the flat-earth arguments, one by one, systematically and relentlessly, but only to "prove" that the earth is actually bowl-shaped.
Maybe science as an idea is without prejudice, but the humans with prejudiced views can and do produce material that looks like science, but is actually propaganda to advance their agenda, be that agenda personal glory or ideological glory, it's the same flawed science that they cling to because it's the lie that makes them comfortable with their prejudices.
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Agree, there is the very intelligent to the very dumb in all races.
Agreed, nobody was saying otherwise. The objective here was to find the averages.
For hundreds if not thousands of years various groups of human beings lived in different parts of the world. They experienced different climates, ate different foods, lived different life styles, etc. Then it is no surprise that these groups evolved somewhat differently. It seems to me that it would be very strange to think that the average intelligence of each group would be the same.
But why is this important? Well, it is a known fact that the more intelligent you are, the more likely you will do better in life no matter what your background, and in the age of high technology, an individual's intelligence has become more important than ever before.
As it stands now, there are certain fields of study that are dominated by Asians and Whites. It is automatically assumed that the low representation of other races in those fields is because of some type of systemic racism. Personally I believe this assumption to be ridiculous and unfair. But what if the real reason for this imbalance is because the average intelligence among races is different? Would not society be better served to figure this out in order to find the best solutions to solve the problem?
One counter to the argument that there are intellectual differences between races came from slave holders who gave complicated engineering tasks to their slaves. Local white mechanists would complain that such work should go to them and the slave owners said that their slaves were perfectly capable of doing the work.
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Agree, there is the very intelligent to the very dumb in all races.
Agreed, nobody was saying otherwise. The objective here was to find the averages.
For hundreds if not thousands of years various groups of human beings lived in different parts of the world. They experienced different climates, ate different foods, lived different life styles, etc. Then it is no surprise that these groups evolved somewhat differently. It seems to me that it would be very strange to think that the average intelligence of each group would be the same.
But why is this important? Well, it is a known fact that the more intelligent you are, the more likely you will do better in life no matter what your background, and in the age of high technology, an individual's intelligence has become more important than ever before.
As it stands now, there are certain fields of study that are dominated by Asians and Whites. It is automatically assumed that the low representation of other races in those fields is because of some type of systemic racism. Personally I believe this assumption to be ridiculous and unfair. But what if the real reason for this imbalance is because the average intelligence among races is different? Would not society be better served to figure this out in order to find the best solutions to solve the problem?
One counter to the argument that there are intellectual differences between races came from slave holders who gave complicated engineering tasks to their slaves. Local white mechanists would complain that such work should go to them and the slave owners said that their slaves were perfectly capable of doing the work.
Again, no one said that all of a race are dumb or all of a race are smart. It is an average. :wall:
As far as "bad" scientists go, sure, they exist. But when various studies are done by people that have no connection to one another, and the results from these various studies are consistent, then this cannot be ignored.
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But it can still be debunked... and the idea that there are different averages for different populations divided along racial lines rather than other criteria is an idea that has been roundly and soundly debunked.
I spent 16 years teaching kids, and I got to see lots and lots of studies on intelligence and performance both in theory and in practice. One of the strongest determinants of performance is environmental, not genetic. Expressing confidence in students and their abilities leads to their improving on standardized tests. Expressing doubt will decrease their performance on the same tests. Teachers allowing racial bias to impact their classroom management set their kids up for failure. I was constantly getting more out of my students relative to those teachers because I was believing in them and, in turn, they would do solid work. It's a repeatable experiment.
I have seen many reputable studies that show no variance of intelligence along racial lines. I have seen many disreputable studies that show such variance, and the reputable responses showing the errors of said studies. It is easy to find said reputable responses; they are legion, they are well-documented, and they are well-researched. Put your trust in those.
There's a reason that man's research was heavily funded by racist groups and his readiest audience had been racist groups. It's not because he is right - he is most assuredly wrong - but he perpetuates the lies necessary for those groups to thrive upon. Drop that guy's reasoning like a hot potato if you don't want to be in that kind of company.
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I spent 16 years teaching kids, and I got to see lots and lots of studies on intelligence and performance both in theory and in practice. One of the strongest determinants of performance is environmental, not genetic. Expressing confidence in students and their abilities leads to their improving on standardized tests. Expressing doubt will decrease their performance on the same tests. Teachers allowing racial bias to impact their classroom management set their kids up for failure. I was constantly getting more out of my students relative to those teachers because I was believing in them and, in turn, they would do solid work. It's a repeatable experiment.
But how many of your kids were Africans?
See the study made in that video makes no reference to "race" but it is only about people in South Africa period. Again like I stated before this isn't about "race" it can't really be. It's about measured iq in Africa vs Asia vs Europe vs US.
I find it very difficult to make this a racial issue...and even more difficult to make this a racists issue.
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I taught pretty much an across-the-board mix. I had recent immigrants, first generation born here, second generation, and third+ generation. I had students from Denmark, Germany, UK, Canada, Spain, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Poland, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Tanzania, DR Congo, Liberia, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal, Cameroon, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, China, South Korea, Russia, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. Either direct immigrants or descendents thereof.
I taught AP Economics and had students of all backrounds take the test. It was scored on a 5-point scale, with 1 as worst and 5 as best. I had kids of all backgrounds ace it and kids of all backgrounds pretty much blow their $35 registration fee. The distribution of scores did usually have a high correlation to the student's PSAT score, but diligent students with lower PSAT scores could still do well on the exam. English language fluency was another determinant of success, but again, diligent students could do well.
When I helped with special education classes for students with learning disabilities, those were spread evenly across racial groups. My high school was 90+% white when I was a student there in 1986, but when I taught there 2002-2013, it was roughly 20% Asian, 25% Hispanic, 25% Black, and 30% White. Almost an even split across the major groups, but then we have to consider that kids were not always assigned to classifications that were a good fit.
My favorite case was Omar M., who got classified as Hispanic in an adjoining school district. He was Palestinian. He objected at first and then figured, what the hell? Who cares? He left it that way, didn't bother with the paperwork, and had fun applying for Hispanic scholarships. He's a businessman in Dubai now.
When kids had mixed race heritage, they hated picking one or the other, usually. They wanted to just say "mixed" and be done with it. There were the first-generation and recent Africans that had little culturally in common with African-Americans whose families had been in the USA for over 200 years. Yet, they were all "African-Americans." I had both a white kid from Zimbabwe and a black kid from Zimbabwe and they had fun demonstrating that they were both equally African and, therefore, equally African-American since both were on a path to naturalization at age 18.
For my Egyptian students, they were bemused at a classification system that had no idea what to do with them. They weren't sub-Saharan Africans, so they didn't get classed as African-Americans. Other Arabs were from Asia, so they got to be Asian. So why not Arabs from non-sub-Saharan Africa? They wound up in the "other" group.
I had a student from Spain who refused to be classified as Hispanic. He insisted that he was white, and that his student information reflect that.
Back to the descendents of slaves and freed slaves in the USA, nearly all of them have European genetic markers and there are more than a few whites with African genetic markers they had no clue about. Skin color does not necessarily reveal genetic makeup, even if it does lead to prejudicial treatment.
When Italians first immigrated to the USA, they were frequently classified as "Negroes" or "Colored" populations and treated accordingly under laws that meted out different classes of treatment based upon racial distinction.
Basically, it's all a mess and I don't see the point in trying to draw lines, unless you want to start a fight. Most of the minority kids at my school spoke 2 or more languages fluently. Often, it would be English, birth language, and one or more lingua franca languages from their region. Gujaratis, for example, tended to speak English, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, and more than a smattering of Arabic. I had the student from Senegal who spoke English, French, Senegalese, and Brazilian Portuguese because her boyfriend was from Brazil. More than a few kids from Mexico spoke English, Spanish, and a variant of Nahuatl. I wound up learning Hindi and Urdu while I was there. :)
We had a country-western dance team. At first, it was all a bunch of redneck kids that started it, but they opened up auditions to anyone interested. Within a year, the club looked like our student body, but with cowboy hats and boots on. Visitors would do a double-take when they saw a Vietnamese dude do a do-si-do with a Mexican girl. The Latin dance club had all kinds, as well. As long as you wanted to dance the merengue, you were in. When I showed Bollywood in my classroom, we all were equal when we reached for the tissue. Our tears had no color, whether or not we needed subtitles.
And while kids would be proud of the nation or region of their family's heritage, I do remember a lot of them bristling at the way they got lumped together on the basis of continents. West and East Africa are very different places. Mexico and El Salvador are different, and even regions of Mexico show their unique nature. "Asian" was the most ridiculous: one student said it was like people just gave up on half the world's population. "You're all Asian! Now shut up and leave me alone!" To think that people from Syria, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka share the same overall genetic makeup is as ludicrous as thinking an Inuit from Alaska is genetically equivalent to a Mapuche from Chile. Or any other lumping together of people.
It makes reason stare to think that skin color has something to do with intelligence. And it makes reason stare equally to try to make a transitive connection between skin color, genetics, and then intelligence without first doing a detailed workup of the DNA of the persons involved, determining genetic markers that influence intelligence, and then examining the prevalence of said markers in a population.
And even then, there are over 500 genes now known to be connected to intelligence. With those genes, however, there is ample study to show that environment plays a massive role in the development of intelligence, particularly prenatal and early childhood environments. A racial study of intelligence may in fact be an accidental study on the impact of poor prenatal/early childhood environments, typically the product of laws and practices that make second-class citizens out of a particular population.
Case in point was when we took in a number of refugees from Hurricane Katrina. The kids from New Orleans weren't necessarily dumber than students at my school. They had to deal with a terrible elementary and junior high school system that left them very unprepared in terms of mathematical, linguistic, and reasoning development. That stuff could still be taught, but there was a gap to overcome. Same for students that were refugees from war zones, where their schooling had been interrupted for years. Kids that had survived the Bosnian Civil War were just as scarred as those who came out of Liberia or Congo. Trauma in life produces mental damage. That note on trauma circles back to environment as a massive factor, one which I believes trumps genetics.
Why do I believe that? Because when I gave a classroom environment that didn't have the traumas of other classrooms, but instead supported and encouraged - "There is always hope in this room!" was my battle-cry - then kids that had gone through some true horrors were able to rest their minds, enjoy the class, and do very well in the subject taught. I had counselors sending kids to take AP Economics instead of regular Economics because they saw my class as therapeutic. I felt very honored and humbled because of that. And I was glad to be a shelter from the thoughts that haunted many of my students. I was glad to be part of their journey of healing. And I was glad to provide an environment that would nurture intelligence.
I had zero difference in my strategy or tactics based on racial or cultural differences. Any variation in my methods was to reach people who had different learning styles, and those were also evenly distributed across all my different groups.
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I had zero difference in my strategy or tactics based on racial or cultural differences.
Same can be said of these tests, plus, the number of students you have taught is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the number of subjects evaluated in this research over the years.
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It makes reason stare to think that skin color has something to do with intelligence. And it makes reason stare equally to try to make a transitive connection between skin color, genetics, and then intelligence without first doing a detailed workup of the DNA of the persons involved, determining genetic markers that influence intelligence, and then examining the prevalence of said markers in a population.
That was quite the long post there buddy! Lots of good points indeed but in the end you are talking about something completely different than what this study was all about...as you did NOT teach children in Africa...
This raises an interesting point though. Is high intellect genetic or not? We all do know that children born from highly intelligent parents tend to have higher intelligence as well. And the same does occur with mental retardness. So some of it is genetics for sure. I am sure there are studies made from this topic as well...
Then another thing which I think matters more...education. Proper education (like the one you provided for your students) would nurture and grow intelligence I am sure. But children in Africa have very poor education on most parts which naturally leads to less intelligence in university students as was found in this study.
So again. I think it's more of a compilation of things that would lead to the lesser iq average. I doubt there is any one single underlying reason for it.
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I had zero difference in my strategy or tactics based on racial or cultural differences.
Same can be said of these tests, plus, the number of students you have taught is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the number of subjects evaluated in this research over the years.
No, it's not. His survey of sexual activity involved 50 students from three different racial groups, not done according to his institution's standards, and there were large numbers of variables that he didn't control for. The results just so happened to jive nicely with racist tropes about hypersexualized Blacks and hyposexual Asians. And if you want drops in the bucket, compare this guy's research to legitimate intelligence studies. His paper gets buried under the legitimate work being done.
Charger is dead on target in saying that there's a compilation of things. A compilation of a LOT of things, and if one is going to work in the education system anywhere in the world, dropping any race-based baggage at the door is a great way to start. Next step is to look at special needs populations and develop programs for them, including gifted programs as well as developmental ones. And "gifted" programs are not just extra homework or accelerated courses. There are developmental challenges in working with gifted students that are frequently overlooked because they're assumed to not need help.
Once the edges are dealt with, the programs that will succeed for that meaty middle are straightforward and do not require a racial difference, as the more impactful genetics are ones that determine learning styles. Just knowing the difference between visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning and adapting for those three broad areas will make a major difference for nearly all the students in that middle group. There will be exceptions - students with behavior patterns that don't work in a standard classroom need adjustments, for example - but by and large, that's the biggest battle to win, how one daily presents material.
There are also issues specific to testing. Test anxiety is a big one - I know of cases where a teacher shouted at students during a basic skills assessment and wound up with a large number of kids identified for developmental learning. When their parents objected and the students were retested in a calm environment, most were reclassified as normal and two were identified as gifted and talented. Eliminating test anxiety is not the only step towards better testing. We also have to teach students attack strategies on answering questions. Essentially, every test is a reading test, and the language is English with specialized terms. Showing students how to read and interpret those terms is part of successful testing, especially if they're in the instructions.
When I wrote test items for a TOEFL study guide, I recall that the style sheet specified that any use of words like not in instructions be bolded, italicized, and capitalized so as to call out attention to that often-overlooked word. "Which of the following is not a true statement" is unfair. "Which of the following is NOT a true statement" is fair. There were other considerations on wording, including syllables per sentence, sentences per question, length of answers, proper distractors in the responses, and so on.
Ultimately, Rushton's work is criticized and retracted not because of popular outrage, but because it is wrong. Faulty methods, misappropriation of data, lack of controls, and other criticisms have all been rightly leveled at his work. If you're a numbers guy, then look at the preponderance of the numbers of the studies and papers that either directly answer Rushton's faulty conclusions or which indirectly show them to be false because of the preponderance of the evidence.
Go far enough back in racist science literature, and you'll find other spurious race-based findings. There's the one that classified slaves wanting to escape as being mentally unwell, who could be cured of such desires through counseling. Never mind that all humans want to be free, the blacks had a problem in their thinking if they wanted to escape... Francois Bernier said that the Lapps were a horrible, degenerate race, separate and distinct of the proper European types... Henri de Boulainvilliers said that the French nobility were one race (Frankish) and the peasantry were another (Gallo-Roman) and that the Franks, being the superior of the two, had a right to rule over the other.
There was the polygenesis vs monogenesis argument... Linnaeus' four races, each "governed" by a different thing, with Europeans at the pinnacle of his chart and everyone else beneath them... the argument over whether or not climate would "whiten" a population... Meiners' work that "proved" the Celts were the best race and the Slavs one of the worst possible... Cuvier's equating racial superiority to the "beauty" of skulls...
I could go on, but this is mostly science-like activity to justify a Eurocentric attitude toward the world. Within that Eurocentrism, there would be further gradations to justify those in power over those not in power, be that power internal or in regards to economic success relative to another nation. All modern racist science emerges from this background.
The false conclusions also invariably lead to discussions of assimilation - make the supposedly inferior races better through breeding with supposedly superior populations - or eugenics - prevent the dilution of the supposedly superior population. Either way, it's justification for policies that hold one group of people to be superior through assumed inherited traits consistent with skin tone, skull shape, hair color and style, and so forth.
With everything we've learned in the last several decades when we really started to come to grips with the fallacies of race, we know that there is no justification for systems that hold one group to be superior to another.
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It makes reason stare to think that skin color has something to do with intelligence. And it makes reason stare equally to try to make a transitive connection between skin color, genetics, and then intelligence without first doing a detailed workup of the DNA of the persons involved, determining genetic markers that influence intelligence, and then examining the prevalence of said markers in a population.
That was quite the long post there buddy! Lots of good points indeed but in the end you are talking about something completely different than what this study was all about...as you did NOT teach children in Africa...
No, I did not. But I did teach children that were recently from Africa, including those that were refugees from civil wars in Liberia, Sudan, and DR Congo.
That does make me reflect on the mental damage done to them by the armed conflict. Some were forced to be soldiers or to work in soldiers' camps. Many had been raped and beaten. Many had lost close family members. I never asked about it to the students directly, but I knew their English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) teachers, and they were very familiar with their students' histories. They would not tell me names, but they would tell me each year which classes I had war survivors in and to be ready for odd or extreme behaviors.
If I saw a student become very angry or upset, I'd have the student go to a counselor to take a break from things. They were putting pieces back together and needed peace for that sort of thing.
There were also odd dynamics because of my being a man... that could lead to some extreme reactions from abused children, either strongly seeking attention and approval, strongly seeking attention and disapproval, or strongly seeking distancing. They could have the total opposite situation or no situation with a female teacher. Likewise, there were kids that had those reactions with female teachers but not with male teachers. We were constantly juggling those emotions, trying to keep them all in the air and not let anyone come crashing down. Often, I could handle attention-seeking situations with humor, allowing the student a face-saving way out and the development of an appropriate, friendly, but arm's-length relationship with that student. I knew that I had to model a "good" adult male and show that in a world with good rules and standards, there is peace. I didn't want to be a father-figure, ever. But an uncle-figure suited me quite well.
So, no, I didn't teach children in Africa. But I did teach the refugees and did all I could to help them leave the war behind them.
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I had zero difference in my strategy or tactics based on racial or cultural differences.
Same can be said of these tests, plus, the number of students you have taught is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the number of subjects evaluated in this research over the years.
No, it's not. His survey of sexual activity involved 50 students from three different racial groups, not done according to his institution's standards, and there were large numbers of variables that he didn't control for. The results just so happened to jive nicely with racist tropes about hypersexualized Blacks and hyposexual Asians. And if you want drops in the bucket, compare this guy's research to legitimate intelligence studies. His paper gets buried under the legitimate work being done.
It seemed pretty clear when I said "research over the years" that I meant research by everyone, not just one man. This encompassed hundreds of thousands of subjects tested. So the personal experiences of 1 teaching career is irrelevant and virtually meaningless.
Furthermore, the subject of sexual activity was never mentioned in the video and has nothing to do with this thread. Yet, when I simply tried to clarify a statement elsewhere, I was accused of having an agenda, derailing a thread, and had the book thrown at me. Should I use the phrase the pot called the kettle black?
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Rushton's research includes connections between intelligence, race, and sexuality. His findings repeat tropes on those topics, tropes which have been proven wrong from much larger numbers of people doing legitimate research in those fields. His and his fellows' hundreds of thousands are met by their critics' tens of millions.
My personal experience - I brought that up to show that it's not just guys in an ivory tower that don't find differences along racial lines. My first hand experience supports those findings and does not support race-based findings. I also brought it up to illustrate that there are volumes of environmental factors that we can wrongly associate with race if we assume that those factors are themselves exclusive to a race and not able to present themselves in other groups.
And I truly and honestly hope that you understand that the researchers you cite - Rushton by the video in the OP, others not specifically - are a small group of voices compared to those who dispute and disprove their findings. To me it's cut and dried: there is no statistically significant determinant of intelligence inherent in a generally-defined construct of "race". There are those who argue that there is a statistically significant factor based on race, but they are overwhelmingly disproven by those who have demonstrated that no, there is no statistically significant factor in determining intelligence based on race.
I've closed the book on that as surely as I've closed the book on whether or not the earth is a solid sphere, with us on the exterior of the planet's surface. The answer is as plain as the nose on my face. Rushton and other persons that have argued for a racial component in determining intelligence have done so with bad science. They're wrong. They're just as wrong as the people arguing that the earth is flat, hollow, or bowl-shaped.
I admit, it took me a process of inquisition when Rushton published his research, right around the time The Bell Curve got published. I had to figure out if that was right or wrong, and after a lot of reading, both sides of the debate, it was clear that Rushton and The Bell Curve were not accurate in their controls, and that impacted the soundness of their findings. I was never satisfied with Rushton/Bell Curve's response to their critics.
That was 25 years ago and since then, I've been unpacking a lot of stuff that people made me think over the years. There's a lot of garbage information going around between kids, adults, everybody. And while it's easy to say "I'm not a racist" because nobody ever wants to *be* a racist, saying that doesn't require any action or self-inspection. But saying instead, "I'm an anti-racist" means having to take action and engage in personal reflection. Being an anti-racist means identifying where one has racist ideas, admitting it, and then consciously making an effort to replace them with truth. Being an anti-racist means coming to terms with the process of cleaning out the mind, accepting that it will be a life-long process, and that there can be hard surprises along the way. I admit that I need to change and I accept that the change will come.
I've heard too many people say, "I'm not a racist, but..." and then proceed to spout off some racist ideas that they hold to be true. True, there's a spectrum of ideas. I'd much rather engage with someone still grappling with the idea of blacks as head coaches than with someone advocating starting a civil war to kill off all the blacks in the country. I put little stock in that phrase. But saying "I'm an anti-racist" doesn't allow for any "but" or "however" to permit justification of a racist idea. It means confronting one's ideas and being open to the possibility one needs to change one's thinking in order to be in harmony with truth.
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What’s the purpose behind this thread and why was it posted?
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Not going to answer for Typhon, but here's a cool video from back in the day:
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I've heard too many people say, "I'm not a racist, but..."
Nowadays though sadly too often REALISM is confused with RACISM....and that's not cool. But that's another issue altogether.
I gotta say reading about your teaching life makes me think you were one heck of a nice teacher. Which ofcourse is no surprise. :)
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I've heard too many people say, "I'm not a racist, but..."
Nowadays though sadly too often REALISM is confused with RACISM....and that's not cool. But that's another issue altogether.
I gotta say reading about your teaching life makes me think you were one heck of a nice teacher. Which ofcourse is no surprise. :)
:cheers:
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What’s the purpose behind this thread and why was it posted?
In another thread I made a comment in an effort to clarify a point that the average intelligence among races is not equal and got ripped for it by Zzz. I started this thread in order to show some of the data that proves my comment was true. Naysayers have always attempted to find fault with this research, and continue to do so. They make foolish statements like "skin color does not determine intelligence" which is NOT what the data shows and NOT what I was saying. The data simply proves that the average IQ among races is not equal. Just like we know the average height among races in not equal and the average life expectancy among races is not equal. That's all.
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Sorry, no. A tall white person likely has more DNA in common with a tall Asian person than with a short white person. Life expectancy is highly dependent on environment.
You keep saying "the data simply proves" when it absolutely does not. This stuff you keep falling back on for support isn't science, it's pseudoscience. The data you show cannot prove your comment true if the data itself is false. Naysayers haven't just attempted to find fault with the research, they have continued to do so. There are so many of them that they're not naysayers, they're the actual scientific community that plays by the rules and which doesn't cut corners like the guy Rushton does.
Skin color is the most frequently-cited determinant of race, it's a shorthand. There's no connection between the other classical determinants of race like hair straightness, skull size and shape, eye shape, eye color, or any of that other stuff. Are there genetic determinants for human capabilities? Yes. Is there a group of people with a higher prevalence of *all* the genes needed for a trait, or at least enough of such to make a statistically significant difference and another group of people with a lack of such? Not as far as we can tell. Are there genetic markers in populations? Yes. But not to the point where they provide a distinctive bonus or penalty, relative to other groups, apart from body types particular to specific and extreme climates. As far as real science goes, we haven't seen any of these environmental specializations impact intelligence, life span, or other factors of the human experience. Again, it's the post-birth environment that has significant impact on development. Give everyone the same environment and we'll all look different, but we'll all have equal distribution of traits independent of factors used typically to define race.
Again, if guys like Rushton were on the level, they wouldn't have to take the majority of their funding from neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.
I went ahead and looked up another guy funded by the same group that backed Rushton, one Richard Lynn. Lynn actually does come out and say there's a correlation between skin color and intelligence, erroneously presuming skin lightness to be solely due to European genetics and failing to account for or control natural variation or genetic sources other than Europeans for lighter skin colorations. Lynn also failed to control for childhood environmental factors. Lynn also authored a study that concluded that IQs in Northern Italy were higher than in Southern Italy, but did not measure anyone for IQ or use any test data for such in his paper. When Lynn was measuring IQ for Equatorial Guinea, which he found to be lowest in the world, he was measuring exclusively children that were developmentally disabled. None of that is real science, but it's typical of the Pioneer Fund-funded academics.
The Pioneer Fund also backed Roger Pearson. His work has been widely rejected as being completely unsupported by modern anthropology. He's even been kicked from the Heritage Foundation for being too pro-Nazi. He's virulently antisemitic, pro-Nazi, pro-Fascist, and even pro-apartheid.
The Pioneer Fund backed Michael Levin, who is best known for his anti-homosexual "research"; R. Travis Osborne, opponent of school integration; Audrey M. Shuey, who found a 15-point difference between black and white IQ when she consulted segregation-era studies that had some deep methodological flaws, to say the least; pro-eugenics William Shockley... that's six, so far. It's like as soon as a researcher does bad science that can be used to justify white supremacist or other far-right views, Pioneer Fund is there, ready to pay for that bad science. I would think that being offered funds by Pioneer Fund is a flashing red warning sign that one's research work has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
And if these guys all quote and source each other, they're just in an echo chamber, not doing actual bona-fide scientific work.
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What’s the purpose behind this thread and why was it posted?
In another thread I made a comment in an effort to clarify a point that the average intelligence among races is not equal and got ripped for it by Zzz. I started this thread in order to show some of the data that proves my comment was true. Naysayers have always attempted to find fault with this research, and continue to do so. They make foolish statements like "skin color does not determine intelligence" which is NOT what the data shows and NOT what I was saying. The data simply proves that the average IQ among races is not equal. Just like we know the average height among races in not equal and the average life expectancy among races is not equal. That's all.
Ok thanks for answering that. So basically you’re trying to prove a point that one particular race is superior to another when it comes to intelligence?
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What’s the purpose behind this thread and why was it posted?
In another thread I made a comment in an effort to clarify a point that the average intelligence among races is not equal and got ripped for it by Zzz. I started this thread in order to show some of the data that proves my comment was true. Naysayers have always attempted to find fault with this research, and continue to do so. They make foolish statements like "skin color does not determine intelligence" which is NOT what the data shows and NOT what I was saying. The data simply proves that the average IQ among races is not equal. Just like we know the average height among races in not equal and the average life expectancy among races is not equal. That's all.
Ok thanks for answering that. So basically you’re trying to prove a point that one particular race is superior to another when it comes to intelligence?
No, for that to be true, you would have to have everyone in one race have a higher IQ than everyone in another race. This in not the case. All races contain a full range of IQs, from dummies to geniuses and everything in between. My original statement was referring to the average IQ not being equal. An example of a group being superior to another when it comes to intelligence would be if you were to compare humans to mice. Every human would be smarter than every mouse.
Here is an informative clip of Professor Jordan Peterson speaking on the subject. Even he is very careful with his words when asked about the IQ differences with respect to race. Yet, he does not deny the validity of the research, and instead, elaborates on its meaning.
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And I'm sure you can trot out a dozen other academics who have expressed concurring views, in whole or in part, with the notion that average IQs for one group are greater or less than average IQs for another.
And I'm equally ready to point out that the overwhelming body of research does not support such a view. Like China vs. Luxembourg overwhelming. USA vs. Belize overwhelming. AND that such overwhelmed views are clung to by right-wing advocates of separatism, eugenics, or ethnic cleansing. It's bad science that supports extremist positions.
The research is bunk. Some cling to it because it supports their views, some because those views pay the bills. But it's bunk.
And it's not that the research that "finds" one group to have a higher average IQ than whites is treated as a good thing. It's frequently used as a call to action to hamstring that group in some way or to ban it from society. Suppositions of Jews being, on average, smarter than Aryans was used as justification for policies to target and then eliminate them by the Nazi government. In the modern racist movement, there was a schism at an American Renaissance meeting between the antisemitic racists and the racists that classified Jews as whites. Those same IQ "findings" used by the Nazis are the same ones used by antisemites to justify their views. There will always be ways to further subdivide and bad science will always be at the ready to provide the tools needed to justify those divisions. The idea of "whites" or "Europeans" is so broad... the temptation is always there to say that, among Europeans, such and such a group is more fit for leadership because it's in their genes/heritage/culture, and that others need to die off / make room / convert and assimilate because they're not part of that "dominant" group.
It's fruit from a poisonous tree.
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^^^^^^
You have made your position crystal clear, so there is no need to keep on repeating it.
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Now, moving on: A couple of things to ponder.
The idea of diversity has become a huge talking point in today's society. "There should be diversity in every aspect of life," they say. This idea is fine, but one shouldn't lower the requirements for a job in order to achieve this goal. Nor should capable applicants be moved aside in order to meet a quota. Lets say you needed a heart operation. Would it be more important to have the staff in the operating room be racially diverse, or that they be the best qualified? Clearly the latter. Yet, in nearly every line of work, the opposite seems to be the way it goes.
Did you know, that in the U.S., it is illegal for a company to give an IQ test to someone applying for a job at that company? I'm not sure what the rule on this is in other countries. As Professor Peterson said in the previous video, "IQ claims are more psychometrically rigorous than any other phenomena that's been discovered by social scientists." So here we have an incredibly accurate predictor of a person's performance that is not being utilized. This has to change.
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Now, moving on: A couple of things to ponder.
The idea of diversity has become a huge talking point in today's society. "There should be diversity in every aspect of life," they say. This idea is fine, but one shouldn't lower the requirements for a job in order to achieve this goal. Nor should capable applicants be moved aside in order to meet a quota. Lets say you needed a heart operation. Would it be more important to have the staff in the operating room be racially diverse, or that they be the best qualified? Clearly the latter. Yet, in nearly every line of work, the opposite seems to be the way it goes.
I am a firm believer that companies, governments should ALWAYS hire the most competent and qualified person for the job. Gender and ethnicity should NEVER be a deciding factor. But ofcourse in today's world that does not happen...and sadly then we get completely unqualified people in many positions...
Did you know, that in the U.S., it is illegal for a company to give an IQ test to someone applying for a job at that company? I'm not sure what the rule on this is in other countries. As Professor Peterson said in the previous video, "IQ claims are more psychometrically rigorous than any other phenomena that's been discovered by social scientists." So here we have an incredibly accurate predictor of a person's performance that is not being utilized. This has to change.
Well I can understand why IQ tests are forbidden...they are somewhat subjective. Like I stated earlier IQ test is NOT a 100% certain indicator of intelligence.
But for it to be illegal...that's just ridiculous though.
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So here we have an incredibly accurate predictor of a person's performance that is not being utilized. This has to change.
It's not. Honestly, even if it was OK to administer, I wouldn't, as IQ says nothing about work ethic, ability to work with others, willingness to work extended shifts, things like that which normally come out in the interview process.
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I.Q. is not an incredibly accurate predictor of performance. In the video, Peterson states it's about a .3 or .4, leaving 60 - 70 percent of performance up to other variables.
He did say I.Q. tests are very rigorous pyschometrics, and that it is the best we currently have.
And consider this: the standard deviation for I.Q. is about 15, as indicated by Peterson, and in Rushton's video. That is a massive ledge on such a small scale.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I.Q. is worthless. Merely pointing out that is is not incredibly accurate, there are more influences on performance that I.Q., and that using it as the scale by which to measure performance potential in an individual is fraught with peril.
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I.Q. is not an incredibly accurate predictor of performance. In the video, Peterson states it's about a .3 or .4, leaving 60 - 70 percent of performance up to other variables.
He did say I.Q. tests are very rigorous pyschometrics, and that it is the best we currently have.
Well, if it's the best we currently have, then we should certainly be using it in the application process. Never was I saying that it is the only thing that should be used.
I am a firm believer that companies, governments should ALWAYS hire the most competent and qualified person for the job. Gender and ethnicity should NEVER be a deciding factor. But ofcourse in today's world that does not happen...and sadly then we get completely unqualified people in many positions...
True, true, true. With the results being inferior products, inefficient governing, and so on.
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So here we have an incredibly accurate predictor of a person's performance that is not being utilized. This has to change.
It's not. Honestly, even if it was OK to administer, I wouldn't, as IQ says nothing about work ethic, ability to work with others, willingness to work extended shifts, things like that which normally come out in the interview process.
I.Q. is not an incredibly accurate predictor of performance.
I was talking about intellectual performance. I should have been more specific.
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No, they shouldn't be used... Makes me ask, how many people have you been involved in hiring? How many people have you been involved in firing? Because I've never needed a test to tell me if someone is suited for a troubleshooting role or more of a break/fix operational role. Likewise, IQ has no bearing on work ethic or capability to handle job stresses or ability to succeed in interpersonal relationships.
And heaven forfend we see the day where there's a preferred IQ range defined for a job and someone "too smart" gets turned down as "overqualified". We already see that overqualification nonsense for other reasons, no need to extend it.
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Likewise, IQ has no bearing on work ethic or capability to handle job stresses or ability to succeed in interpersonal relationships.
As I already clarified, I was talking specifically about intellectual performance, not overall job performance.
And if a private business feels it necessary to test applicants in a certain way, what right does the government or you or anyone have to tell them that they can't? It is silly.