Human evolution, Females vs. Males

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Well, your analysis shows the consequences of only spending 30 seconds at it!

I've skimmed through the first paper and it seems to argue for an environmental influence on IQ, but that doesn't mean there's not a genetically related one. In fact, the paper acknowledges that there is. It's just one paper, though, but interesting, nonetheless.

The second one appears to be related to a site with some kind of ulterior motive, and it doesn't give references; so I don't think it should be given much weight.

The fact is that it's quite rational to speculate that different races have different cognitive abilities. What's totally irrational is the manner in which people go out of their way to discredit and insult anyone who dare talk about it....


What makes you think I'm Asian or Jewish?

Ok, genetics undoubtedly have an influence. Rocks lack the genes needed to engage in higher level thought. Down's syndrome limits intelligence as we define it.

But isn't the inter-family variation much higher than inter-race variation (however you construct race)? Aren't we weakening the human race by allowing young, foolish people to choose their own mates based on emotions? Shouldn't we have the parents more involved, so that they can do their genetico-genealogical studies and help people find the right Mr. Right?

And what about F1 Hybrid vigor? Shouldn't we encourage inter-racial breeding for that reason? All this marry your own kind has amplified bad genes, while out-crossing could help us improve human breeding stock.

You've taken things to an extreme there, but it does illustrate a point: that any argument against a genetic influence (in other words most of those from leftist politicians) is flawed.


It may be, but that doesn't mean the race-related difference is not measurable, and significant, in a large sample, does it?


That's a different argument, and the fact you've raised it indicates how your thought processes have been influenced to believe that any opinion connecting race and genetics is linked to eugenics.

One thing about this subject that I find interesting is how the opinions of the mainstream society changes over time.

This is from wikipedia.org search: American civil war

The Supreme Court decision of 1857 in Dred Scott v. Sandford added to the controversy. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's decision said that slaves were "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect" [24]


To me it seems like societys opinions changes, but the reality stays the same? Thats kinda scary. And Im not a racist.

Where's your evidence that that's what they found? What you are actually relaying to us is known as Lewontin's fallacy, and it dates back to 1972. This particular meme has travelled far and wide. I don’t think most people who repeat it know where it came from or how it was calculated. Nor would most of them understand why it is a fallacy. But LKL, since you have studied biology and statistics, you should understand the link I post below debunking this fallacy. (And I freely admit I am very rusty on statistics and frequently need my old textbooks to help me.)

In non-mathematical language, it’s like this. If you take a DNA sample from an individual and then check one gene at a single locus, and from that try to ascertain the individual’s race, there is a fair chance you’ll get it wrong. But if you check say 100 genes at 100 suitable loci, and try to ascertain the individual’s race from that there is a vanishingly small chance you’ll get it wrong (provided you know what you’re doing).

This is how the scientist in the article I posted above was able to ascertain a criminal suspect’s race from their DNA sample. Here is the link again: http://www.wired.com/science/discoverie ... 0/dnaprint
Can you explain how he did it, if race is such a meaningless concept?

Richard Lewontin, in his 1972 study, only considered single loci. He studied blood groups among other things. He basically found that if you tried to predict a person’s race based on their bloodgroup, there was a fair chance you’d get it wrong. On this basis he proclaimed that race was a meaningless concept. Isn’t that kind of remarkable? You might almost think his motivations were political. Perish the thought!

Here is a link to a pdf document that provides a more detailed debunking of Lewontin’s fallacy. Click here and then click on the link marked “Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin’s Fallacy”.
Alternatively, just click here.

Last edited by codarac on 07 Nov 2007, 12:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

it's ret*d to study one single loci, given genes can and do take independant evolutionary pathways within interbreeding populations.... which is exactly why you cant look at just one.

Ascan-
I never said that genetics does not influence intelligence; in fact, I allowed quite clearly that it did. What I said was that environmental influences are more important.

You also question my citations - given, however, that neither you nor Koi have cited ANYTHING to back up your claims, I think mine are still superior to yours.

regarding the human genome project: the first draft was published in 2001, not the 1970s. The fact that the study you cited was statistically flawed does not apply to the human genome project, which describes the entire genome.


press release for the human genome project

quote:"...they generated a composite genome made up of three females and two males identifying themselves as African-American, Asian, Caucasian and Hispanic. From these data, Celera scientists concluded that, "the concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis"

quote:"Despite our visual perception of the variation between races, studies have shown that as much as 85% of all human variation occurs between individuals of the same population while less than 10% of the variation was between the major races - represented in the broadest sense by Africans, Asians and Europeans. This pattern of diversity is largely accounted for by human evolutionary history. Studies of human DNA from populations around the world suggests a common African ancestry living some 200,000 years ago. Modern theories of human evolution suggest that expansion of populations from Africa began 100,000 years ago - giving nearly twice as much time for variation to accumulate in sub-Saharan Africa as in the rest of the world, writes Disotell.

The release states that the project is not entirely complete in that they would like more samples from sub-Saharan Africa, and given the diversity there that makes sense.

I do not doubt that a person't genes will reveal what 'race' they belong to; we can usually tell that by a visual examination of phenotype, and phenotype is based on genotype. What I doubt is that the differences between races are as significant as you are making them out to be.

Perhaps, but not the bad Eugenics. The prefix "Eu" means good or true. I have no problem with eugenics programs that seek to reduce diseases or improve the human condition. The problem is, that most previous eugenics programs were based on racism and involved nasty, inhumane methods.

So, you basically agree with me then: that all other things being equal, race-related cognitive differences could put certain ethnic groups at a disadvantage in a multicultural society.


Indeed I did, as you would of done of mine should I have decided to include them. I could see little point, though, as it's possible to drag all sorts from the depths of the net to substantiate just about anything. If you want to find something you could try googling "Ashkenazi Jews IQ genetics" or some such combination. It seems high IQ in some groups is more politically acceptable than low IQ in others!

I have to say that I do find this subject particularly captivating, but unfortunately don't have the time at present to read about it in more depth. It's on my things-to-do list.

I apologise if I sounded abrasive.

I can easily understand many people finding the subject matter of this thread offensive.
You know, even when I held liberal opinions on everything else, I was never quite able to agree with the liberal consensus on race. And yet, when I went on the internet and found people agreeing with me, I still found it shocking.

As for Koi’s opinion that males are more evolved than females, and whites more evolved than blacks, I can easily see how people might feel offended by that. I don’t really know enough to say what biologists would make of concepts such as “more / less evolved”. I suspect many of the other posters are correct on this point: you can talk about something evolving from something else, and you can talk about “complexity” (with mammals, for instance, being more complex than protozoa), but the idea of one group being more evolved than another is probably not a meaningful one.

But I maintain that the races are different, and I believe that race matters and racial differences matter. You might wonder why I can’t just keep quiet about it. Well, it is largely because I think when you build a society on a lie you are asking for trouble.
Imagine the resentment that must build up among certain ethnic groups when they are told it is only white racism that is holding them back – and then they find that years and decades later despite the best efforts of whites they are still suffering from the same problems.

Personally, I would like to see people awakening to the reality of race. IQ differences – though they might be part of the subject of this thread - are not my main motivation in this. The real issue for me is that the European peoples – a minority in world terms - are giving their homelands away to alien peoples, because they’ve been taught to believe that race doesn’t matter and that it’s evil to think that it does. As far as I'm concerned, the moral argument against what is happening has nothing to do with whether these alien peoples have high or low IQ's.



But then that is the same for any field of study that involves statistical techniques, like medical testing for instance. Statisticians can tell you what size of sample is big enough to give a meaningful result.

Well then, suppose there is some sort of difference between the races, and that there are some races that are smarter than others. Maybe it means something in terms of evolution, and maybe it doesn't, but why the hell does it matter? Does that suddenly mean we should start picking on blacks because they're not as smart as the rest of us? Do we stop having families with black people because they're "inferior" in terms of intelligence and don't further the human race more? In reality, this does not happen. There are plenty of people with disabilities, cancer, sickle cell anemia, and these genes still get passed on, not to mention other genetic diseases or disabilities--they still happen, and humanity does its best to keep these people alive--we have more or less defeated natural selection, so why does it matter that certain races are not as smart? Besides, even if there are racial differences, we are still the same species. There's no reason to treat people of other races differently, even if they might be not as smart (or smarter) than your own, and even if the majority of people in a race seem to be smarter or not as smart as the people of another race, that doesn't mean that every single person of that race is as stupid or as smart as the other people in that race, and you still can't judge or generalize people by their races. So even if the races were different, we all live together, and help each other, and I see no reason why they should be treated differently. Otherwise, if you suggest that someone with cancer who was most susceptible to it because of his genes should be helped and cured, but a black person should receive no respect because he's not as smart as the other races, then you are being a hypocrite.

Historically, society has been built on a lie. It has been built on the idea that some races are particularly suited for manual labor and abuse. And even when that worst of that pre-judicial attitude was discarded, most people still thought that good jobs should be reserved for the "smart races" and that there was no need to consider people with more pigment in their skin. Which of course, is fallacious, because you don't hire a race to fill a job, you hire an individual. Yet for hundreds of years, qualified people have been rejected for such superficial reasons.

Decades aren't really long enough for all people of a group to recover from several centuries of abuse and degradation. Sure, some people will spring back in a few years if given equal opportunity. But think about women that have been raped, children that have been abused, or soldiers that experience PSTD. It can change them in a way that affects them for life. It has a negative effect on their children. When such violence is institutionalized for centuries, it creates a long-lasting pattern. I would disagree with your statement about the "best efforts of whites" and your expectation that this would undo what has been done ... some whites have done a great deal to end injustice, but others have grudgingly done little or nothing, and persistent discrimination based on race continues - like in your mind!

This problem wont be solved until long after we start looking at the content of person's character (or intellect, or techincal ability), not the color of their skin. Maybe some day, white people will not belittle people that pronounce words like library and ask as 'lyeberry' and 'aks' - in the same way that they can elevate to the presidency a person that mispronounces the word nuclear as nook-ya-lur. Racism is still deeply embedded in this society, and is often invisible to the people that practice it.

There is still some degree of racism, however, not nearly as bad for blacks as it was 30 or 40 yrs ago, I think much of their struggle now days lies in their ability not to buy into BET trends that push a negative image of blacks.
The biggest victims of racism today are middle easterners, and I do not understand why their civil rights plight is not gaining more attention in public squares, as if anyone has the most right to complain about racism, it is the middle easterners. Sorry, but it is wrong to blame an entire race for something a small hand full of people did wrong.
Also, racism can and does happen to white people too, this is no better or no worse than any other type of racism. My ancestors and even some whites living today are guilty of unthinkable acts of prejudice, but that is not every white person, and it certainly is not me.
As for your statement that discrimination and intolerance often go unnoticed by those who push it as a society, I can agree with that because I have experienced it, living in an ableist society and being autistic. But why aren't disabilities getting more coverage in this liberal so-called "age of multi-culturalism"?.... Perhaps because in the minds of their followers, it's more about following a trend and supporting the "cool" minority groups, rather than legitimate understanding of the problem behind the underlying attitudes?

Also to Cadarac, according to your little theory your spouting, we'd be "inferior" too because we're "disabled".

Bill Cosby is a positive black leader, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are racist hypocrites who are more concerned about their pockets than representing their people. They have done more to poison race relations for their own financial and status-oriented gains.