Cognitive Ablility

[Typhon]

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.

[Vyn]

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. 

[Typhon]

^^^^^^
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?

[Zzzptm]

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.

[Vyn]

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!

[Thelemech]

If there is one thing I know it's that you can't judge a person by their race.

[Jack the Stripper]

^
Agree, there is the very intelligent to the very dumb in all races.

[Vyn]

^
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

[Charger]

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.

[Typhon]

^
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?

[Zzzptm]

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.

[Zzzptm]

^
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.

[Typhon]

^
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.   

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.

[Zzzptm]

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.

[Charger]

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.