This is tiring. I'm debating a racist metalhead on genetics, citing source after source. Someone please help me debunk him further.

Summarization: He says intelligence is based on genetics, there is such a thing as an intelligence gene, or rather a group thereof ( :rolleyes: ), and blacks have lower IQs than whites because of nature, not nuture. Everything in a quote is what I said in a previous post. If anything is confusing, ask me to clerify. This is the middle of a debate. I think you should understand what's going on easily enough, though.

(Anything emphasized in bold was his doing, not mine)





Indeed, but the chances of that are unlikely. Tell me: why would two individuals from the same gene pool be less similar than two individuals from different gene pools? That is against any and all ecological common sense; anything stating otherwise is quite simply false. If you like, I can show you a sensible ecological model that states so.



In nature there is no real difference between "ill" and "not ill." In other words, a mutation late in the sequence of a gene that codes for something that eventually determines intellect would simply be detrimental to the person's intellect. However, a mutation early in the sequence could mentally handicap him.



This is false.



I'll go through this article in my next post.



Where do you think this "natural inclination" comes from? ;)



Even simple online IQ tests are based on pattern detection that requires no previous learning to pick up on.



Small amounts of evolution (such as differences noted among the races) can easily develop in somewhat isolated populations over merely a few thousand years.

Does that mean that whites are inferior to asians (since we ARE stereotypically smart and nerdy :P)

Excellent. I should have brought that up earlier.

Occam++

If I knew what that meant, I probably wouldn't have made the thread.

I dont think theres an intelligence gene(s). In fact, we still dont know what most genes even do in human genome. We have a ton of "scrap" genes which seem to be doing nothing but they are nevertheless not discarded by evolution. We also have adjusting genes on top of genes that define our phenotype (ie. our bodies) which control the function of our genome.

To claim that intelligence is dependent on a single gene or genes is pathetic. First you'd have to define intelligence, since there are atlest 7 generally accepted types of it. Then you'd have to disprove that pregnancy period, nutrition and environment have no affect on your intellect. Then you'd have to show that why and how is intelligence dependent one gene or genes. In other words, since evolution works to amplify the features that are advantageous to us, how would it be possible that the environment would amplify the intellect of caucasian populations but not negroid populations especially, since evolution doesnt affect human genome noticeably under such short period of time as say 12,000 years.

Then theres the obsolete term of race. He'd have to demostrate how skin color and intellect are connected and then he'd have to define the racial spectrum where intelligence in lower. In other words, how is the amount of melanine in your skin related to your brain functions, especially since one can these days have white skin yet be genetically linked to the negroid ancestral line OR one can be darkskinned yet be of caucasian heritage.

In other words, Lithfo, your fellow debator is a moron who doesnt knwo what he's talking about.

Inhumanity>>



You see, thats the kind of thinking that managed to get like 70% of the human genome patented :angry:
The so called junk is not junk at all. It has many complex effects on how our body functions which were documented eveh while they were called "Junk" DNA. Of course noone bothered to correct this until some company in the US(?) patented our junk DNA - yes thats right, the DNA in you and me - for "discovering" that it in fact actually did something. So basically the various medical advances that already made use of this junk DNA now have to pay up to that company (whos name I forget), and those that dont face litigation. Think I'm dreaming? Its already happened.


It is an established medical fact that there are differences between races. Eg, negroid people tend to have better lower body peformance - why do you think that just about all the elite sprinters you see competing are negroid? There are other differences as well - If I remember correctly caucasians tend to have better upper body strength though I'm slightly less sure on this. The only think I can remember for asians is that we are more likely to be lactose intolerant ;)
The point is that genes can influence your development and potential to a degree, and do have an effect. However they are far from a be all and end all - being negroid does not automatically mean that you can run faster than a caucasian.
Conclusion: Proving or disproving environmental factors influencing intelligence has nothing to do with proving or disproving whether genes affect intelligence.


Who says that the genes that determine skin colour have to be connected with any hypothetical genes that influence intelligence? It could be that theyre completely seperate, and one group also happened to develop other characteristics independent of the other group.

Note that I'm not aware there is any evidence about genes relating to intelligence (although the right person to ask would probably be DT) and I dont believe in racial superiority. Im just commenting on your arguments because well..... I see lots of holes in them.

Why do i have a feeling that this guy thinks that the gene that equates "intelligence" is the same one that controls skin colour.

Anyway, as i've brought up in philosophy, if i share the same skin colour as a moron, but both he and I happen to have white skin, why should you be able to treat me and him in the one case? If there are 500 other people with white skin, all who are morons, why should i suffer because i am smart, but they have the same skin colour?

What the hell is this obsession with judging individual characteristics based on groups or other people?

And, i think you should consequently ask him this question. Would he be willing to support a smart black, over a dumb white? And why?



Its very hard to be an established medical fact that there are differences between "races", when there is no medical definition for what a race is. i take it by race, you mean skin pigmentation? Because although we (and the neonazi's) like to call them "blacks", putting in australian aborigines with an african american is laughable.

Its also established statistical fact that there are differences between races. Of course, the problem is, there's no standard held definition of race, and curiously, our very own concept of race, blacks, whites, asians, etc, was only created recently if i recall correctly. Things like "irish" have been considered a race in the past. difference between races can often, if not always, be prescribed to think of a person as having the a characteristic "race".

The beauty of this is that you can take an individual, lump him with a group of "sub-par" individuals, and by the fact that he is being measured with a group of sub-par individuals, you "deduce" that he is inferior to you.

What i believe HAS been established is that geographical location is the thing that strongly correlates medically etc. This will statistically sway any random selection based on skin colour, because a large portion of people from certain geographical areas tend towards one skin type. However, if you take another set of members of the "black" race, but who are not from that particualr region, you will find that they do not carry the same genetic markers/characteristics. Perhaps more importantly, areas where diseases and the like transcend skin colour, ie parts of africa and south asia where diseases are transferred by mosquitos, and where people of different "race" live in close proximity, you will find the same genetic similarities appear in members of different "races".

(if i'm wrong, someone can correct me, cause i'm typing this all from memory).



Absolute bullshit. They test for intelligence based on whether the test taker sees the same subjective "pattern" in a group of meaningless scribbles on a page which are usually culturally ingrained, as the person consciously made that pattern.
Half of them have many possible answers which are also "patterns" but only one of which will be accepted by the test taker.

Furthermore, point out IQ scores have been impossibly increasing generation to generation (the flynn effect, a search on it should turn things up no problem). Point out to him the implications of this fact and what implications it has about IQ tests, what they measure, our ideas of "genetic intelligence" and the charming fact that a black man in his twenties is likely to be superior to the white guy's father.

True, race is an ill-defined concept however I'm sure you got the gist of what I said. For the sake of better accuracy, I stand corrected.

Nalvaros, Im aware of junk genome not being junk at all: Im sorry if that part was unclear in my post.

Im also aware that for example certain east-african populations have better inclination to long distance running (namely their foot is a tad lighter thus consuming less oxygen and thus making it more energy-efficient for them to run). However, and this was the core of my point, intelligence is manifold attribute and its developement consists of multitude of factors. Therefore it can hardly be compared to the size of ones foot.

In fact it would be more akin to comparing intelligence with general health which also consists of numerous things. For example, theres this lethal genetic condition called "blood cell anemia" or "sickle cell anemia" (Im not exactly sure what it is in english) which is found among black people originating from African malaria regions but is almos non-existant among other populations. It results from a gene that is benificial against malaria but if both parents have this gene the disease may become active. This is clearly a "race-based" disease but note that in fact it has nothing to do with race in terms of skin color but is dependent on a single gene that has become common as a result of an outside influence. However, in other ways these populations are no sicker than the rest of us.

Now, one might argue that there are certain populational variations in say eye-hand coordination or in perception of space and structure that would make certain groups more "intelligent" than others. I've yet to see such a study though and I doubt it exists because these things are more a result of random coupling of parental genome and environment. There is a phenomena called normalisation of genome in evolution meaning that once the species has adapted to its environment it tends to weed out any unncessary anomalies in the phenotype. In english it means that the evolution of Homo Sapiens Sapiens has found it unnecessary to try and pursue sub-par or above-par intelligence resulting in more or less average IQ for the whole of mankind. Its suitable to be intelligent enough to survive in a social group but any drastic extra brain capacity is just a waste of energy from the evolutionary point of view. Finally, one must acknowledge that the modern man is just as dumb or smart as his neolithic brother. We are merely taught to adapt into our complex techonology and society where as we would seem like idiots in a stone age environment without our hig-tech tools.

This is all swell and whatnot - I'm sure I'll use a lot of what was said here - but I'm looking for someone to specifically reply to his posts.

Again, what I said is in quotes. What he said is not.

OK well I've read through your original post, and concluded that I have no idea why you brought up certain points (like your first one) - I have yet to see any evidence either way, and intuitively youre incorrect. Mind, I'm not exactly well studied in this field so I'm far from qualified to speak.

With your point with menal illnesses, I again fail to see the point of bringing it up. Sure they can be passed down, or influence the chances of decendants getting it, but I want to see a genetic link between these diseases that say, cause some function of the brain to deterioate and any so called "intelligence" gene. Until that is shown, who is to say that genes affecting mental illness arn't completely seperate from "intelligence" genes? As far as I know, we dont know. Its speculation either way.

As for natural inclination, I dont believe there is any evidence that genes have anything to do with it (your interests/inclinations). If your friend is going to claim that natural inclination comes from genes, I'd like to see the proof.

As for the IQ tests, there are certainly more than one component to an IQ test, and not all of them - infact most of them dont have anything to do with pattern recognition. Because of this, educated people will fare better than uneducated ones, since it follows that in areas like language, the educated participants will have a better vocabularly and better grasp of the language.

Additionally, I'm sure youre aware that the average IQ of the population has been rising a phenomenol rates that simply cannot be attributed to genetics. This is a telling indicator that intelligence (If you take IQ as a measure of intelligence) has very little if anythign to do with genetics.

I think he's assuming that the genetic 'connections', the algorithmns that are inherint in the genome, that makes the genome the genome, basically allows so that the subconnections, due to its structure, place certain attributes from the 'junk' that help determine the creation of the nervous system/brain brain system creation without outside influences, end up being at a 'higher' state of activity in whites, then it is in blacks.

if you um... compare the brain genetic makeup as to that of a coin sorter, you get these 'holes' that only allow certain coins to go through, the smaller the hole, the less coins will, on average be able to continue to the next layer of holes. So, he's making the assumption that being white, your first layer can let anything from pennies, to twoonies (canadian 2$ coin, goes dime, penny, nickel, quarter, loonie(1$), twoonie(2$)) while blacks can only allow maybe loonies(if lucky). Now the more coins that can get through, the more 'IQ' you can have.. in other words, the white population has a higher possiblity for the right type of brain activities so that they are smarter...

I would MOST definately agree though that he would be one of the purist considerations.


on this consideration, you could possibly conclude it via chemical differences that are associated with skin and brain.. and how because those chemical differences are present, there may be a limitation placed upon the cells that limit the brain to certain lines of relation.

don't know enough about genetics, but I would surmise, that the relation between the outer limitations brought on by the lmiiting factors that are the result of 'skin' and that of what are limiting factors of brain matter, for the most part, fall on different bounderies of dna, or at least I think it might.

teach started talking, cya. :P

I believe he is making a reference to Occam's Razor. I'm not all to familar with it, but i believe it is soemthing like: "The simpliest route is usually the best answer"

Again. I don't know for sure and it is late. I desire sleep.

Occam's Razor: Unless I'm mistaken, it just says that where there are multiple explainations for a particular phenomenon, the simplest one is usually correct.

I'm not sure if I believe it myself, but I do know that I've seen it used to justify anything and everything by people who evidently have no clue what theyre on about.

Ockham's Razor or the principle of parsimony states that, given equal explanatory power, a less complex hypothesis (in terms of output in function of input) is more probable.


As for the topic, intelligence researchers no longer doubt that intelligence has a genetic component. The 'camps' that disagree are the 'more than 50%' and 'less than 50%' camps. Most will agree that the explained variance through genetics is somewhere between 30 and 80%. Of course, all that is 'inside' the human species. Our genetic differences with molluscs quite manifestly influence our intelligence. As for races, what are those anyway?

Thank you Zaragosa!

Sigh.

Yes, intelligence has a genetic component with variable expressivity. It is entirely possible that various aspects of what we call "intelligence" (an ill-defined term) are controlled and regulated by a variety of different genes.

The odds of one of them being linked to skin color is kind of remote, but there is a high probability of some kind of genetic component. To quote iGenetics, by Peter J. Russell:

Incidentally, there are several multiallelic traits where the phenotype depends on on the alleles present in two-or-more genes. There are also things like epistasis--where one gene in a particular location can control the expression of another gene in another location.

An example of such is height, which IIRC is controlled by 2 genes with two alleles (so someone can be TTTT, TtTt, TTtt, ttTT, or tttt).

So I am not sure why you rolled your eyes at the suggestion that intelligence is controlled by a group of genes. Such is entirely plausible.

This post has been edited by Llywelyn: Aug 15 2004, 10:13 PM

There has been a .5 linear correlation found between the IQ of Children and their parents.

This statistic is too high to be discounted as a random factor.

As such, genes do play a pivotal role in cognitive functions, which, of course, makes perfect logical sense.

Smart parents tend to have smarter kids, but the result is not concrete.

Now the argument being made is that there are differences between races in terms of intellect. The term of race itself is debatable. Race is too nebulous a definition for a determination to be made.

However, when one looks at the composition of minorities in higher education, some disturbing trends appear. Blacks and Hispanics in America tend to have much lower average scores than other groups. In addition to this, those that are let in on affirmative action that would not make it otherwise tend to fail at a disproportionately higher rate.

So there would seem to be differences between race or culture or however you want to define it.

My theory is quite simple if not politically correct. At first, slavery allowed for the importation of slaves almost continously from Africa. The international trade was put to a stop by law in the early 19th century. Hence, slavery thereafter was completely internal to the US. It is recorded that white owners often did sire children with their female slaves, often to an amazingly high degree. These children for all extents and purposes were regarded as black and bartered as normal slaves. Considering the small close-knit communities of slaves and plantations, one would expect excessive inbreeding to occur. Inbreeding as most people who study genetics know leads to the promulgation of undesirable recessive alleles expressing themselves and to a weaker genetic disposition for survival.

This would apply both to intelligence and resistance to disease among other things. As its widely known, africans-americans are less immune to certain diseases, so why can't they be slightly dumber? Slavery only ended in the 1860's after several centuries and blacks have continually been exluded from reproducing outside their "race" until recently, not allowing for the genetic exchange necessary to remove the disastrous effects of inbreeding.

As such, a case could be made, quite convincingly, for the case that the African-American population in general is dumber than the rest of the population.

This of course, is a politically untenable position so we never hear about it.

This post has been edited by Dukhat: Aug 27 2004, 02:11 AM

Is there also by chance a .5 correlation between a parent's level of income/education and their child's?

Cause although there is quite clearly SOME level of genetic relevence to intelligence (ie. Down syndrome children, retards, idiot savants would show this beyond a doubt), you can just as easily point out that it is social forces which make a parent's financial and educational standings *shock horror* have a correlation with the child's. And since IQ tests don't measure intelligence, but education, a .5 correlation doesn't seem too extreme or unreasonable.

Plus this explination would explain IQ's and correlation as a social phenomenon, and easily take into account the rising IQ's of the population in the flynn effect, which cannot be explained genetically as all parents on average somehow give birth to smarter children at a rate far exceeding any apparent genetic possibilities.



Yes, but a far BETTER case can be made the the problem is social and economic, not genetic (at least to any significant degree, because as i said, take any two populations, and one WILL be higher on average).

Of course genes play a pivotal role, but if this is true, it is also saying environmental factors play a pivotal role as well.

In other words: no duh.

A correlation coefficiant of .5 is pretty fucking low. That gives an r^2 of 25%. And that's without commenting on the obvious fallacy in claiming that that number comes from genes

That is not "pretty fucking low," that means that 25% of the variance can be accounted for by the IQ of the parents, which is a very scientifically significant when dealing with biological systems such as this one. Actually it is roughly the same correlation coefficient as the one found between major depression and alcoholism.

In short, it is "pretty fucking high" considering what is being evaluated.

I'm going to get hit for this but....

Does that mean that whites are inferior to asians (since we ARE stereotypically smart and nerdy)?
At least on an average/statistical scale that is.

C'mon. I want to hear it.

*prepares to duck any objects hurled at him*

Not really. As an asian person, I see the chocies asians make to make good grades. They pick easy classes. They cheat. They are pressured much more by their parents and thus its more socially acceptable to stay home and study.

Only about half of the asians I know that go to good schools, I actually respect. The others are GPA whores. Wheras, almost all of the white people I know at good schools that aren't legacy are pretty damn brilliant. Its anecdoctal for sure, but it seems to reflect the general trend.

And anyways, statistically, asians do not do better by as large a margin as blacks and hispanics do worst. than whites.

The problem with that information is that it doesn't provide any particular support for either paradigm, as it can be explained by both nature (intelligence genes) and nurture (smart people know how to raise smart children). You would need to take the biological children of stupid people and give them to smart parents and vice versa to have a more viable, although unethical, experiment.

Where exactly do you live? At least when I was in highschool, of the 30-40 asian students in my year, I can think of 2 who *might* be seen as slackers. The rest ranged from 65% ish type people, right up to the dux of the school. In the 3 years preceding mine, and include my own year, there has always been at least 1 asian in my school's year to achieve a perfect TER of 99.95 (note though that this does not necessarily correspond to a 100% score in their subject. An average of approx 95% across at least 4 subjects will get you a perfect TER.)
Additionally, of those students, I'm pretty sure one of them won multiple subject exhibitions and a general exhibition.

I would also like to point out that not one of those students took "easy" subjects. Just about all of us, with few exceptions took the "top 6" subjects for our final year, with the exceptions being in the humanities - some take English/ESL instead of English Literature due to language issues, and some people take Music instead of Economics - and I can tell you, Music is considerably harder and more time consuming than economics.

Statistically, it would be quite safe to say that as a group asians here in Perth (the trend is the same in other schools here) are more likely to take the "top 6" subjects compared to other groups, and academically outpeform other groups.

In short, I have no idea where *you* are, but the asians I know basically conform to the stereotype, and live up to it.

This is not to say that non-asians dont do well - I'll be the first to say that there were lots of smart caucasians in my school. However it is a long shot indeed to say that "almost all" of them are brilliant. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that in any school, a majority of the "dominant group" are brillient. I think you will only find this in a artificial environment - ie where you have a school where all the "smart" people are educated as one group. Even amongst the asians in my year, we may be scoring higher statistically, but this is a long shot from saying all of us were "brillient". Yes, we had a higher percent of "brillient" people than the rest of the school population, but we certainly had a number of people who might be considered averagish, and people inbetween.

As for your final remark, I fail to see the relevance of it.

Finally, I think you need to read my post again. Carefully. You evidently missed the hints I placed there indicating it was in jest.

i dont think asians are smarter then whites i think asians know what they want more then whites. Its an immigrant thing.

This is what is done in adoption studies. Apparently, the IQ of adopted children correlates with that of their adoptive parents at a young age, but not later in life and vice versa for biological parents. All things considered, heritability is thought to explain an IQ-variance of 7 or 8 points in the population (i.e. half of the difference is due to 'nature').

Anecdoctal evidence is of course subjective. What you stated seems to reflect the experience at someone at a private school. Your population is obviously slanted towards the high-end if that is the case.

I went to a large public school with every major minority group represented in large numbers. Asians and Whites were segmented from Hispanics and African Americans. One group took harder classes and did better and were from better families. One weren't. I'll let you guess which is which.

As such, I met a LOT of asians that were of average intellect but had very high-pressure parents. As such, they ended up cheating more since their natural ability was weak.

Asians are not really smarter. Maybe you think thats the case here, but remember, there are 1 billion chinese people. If only a few thousand can make it to the US every year and those that do are typically the ones that are best able to (and are the smartest) than they will seem to "average" out to be very intelligent. Many times though, they are just immigrants who work harder; they may not necessarily be smarter (usually a good way to tell is by what their grand kids and great grand kids are like; smart breeds smart typically). And many are in fact brilliant.

I don't really like asian culture; it breeds a very, very greedy creed that stymies innovation.

The Protestant ethic is something worth emulating though. Service instead of Greed; High standards, not jsut in academics but in service and involvement in the community as well. It creates more balanced people.

On intelligence again. I attribute ALL of it to genetics. I believe Environment can only HURT intelligence, not increase it. If you have a smart kid and have him raised up by stupid people, he will turn out dumber than he would have because his training early on was so weak. If you have a normal kid and raise him in a smart home, he won't be any smarter. He will focus more of his abilities on doing "smart" things like reading and such, but on balance he will be average.