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Why does it strike you as wildly implausible that different groups of people might differ in their (average) levels of creativity, and that the differences migh

Why does it strike you as wildly implausible that different groups of people might differ in their (average) levels of creativity, and that the differences might be partly heritable (a better word than inherent when referring to average differences)? We know that many group differences exist, e.g., men are taller than women, people of African ancestry are darker-skinned than people of European ancestry, etc. Given that sex differences and racial differences clearly exist, what reason is there to believe that they only occur along dimensions that society doesn’t place value on?

fwip 8y ago
Because most people saying that one race is smarter or otherwise better than another race are simply repeating debunked racist talking points. Variation within a group almost always overwhelms variance between groups - but many people saying something like "Asians are less creative" are trying to make sweeping statements about how white people are better. It is possible to lie only using truths, if you arrange them in a deliberately misleading way.
- eezurr 8y ago
  Here's a different way to look at it: In a culture where memorization and concrete thinking is used to compare $n people within that culture, creativity is inherently more risky, thus less utilized. Poverty in many Asian countries is worse than poverty in the US. With more to lose (and gain), it creates peace of mind to walk the smooth stone road to comfort. The US on the other hand has had a lot of money to play with for quite awhile. Most poor people have enough food (and a variety of it at that), a modern home, and basic health care. It is very doable to be comfortable on a $12/hr job in many places in the US. ($1,650 per month after tax) (of course, many people choose to live above their means due to societal pressure). The point is, we can/could be more risky (read: more creative) with less to lose, so it's utilized more.
  - gumby 8y ago
    > In a culture where memorization and concrete thinking is used to compare $n people within that culture, creativity is inherently more risky Yes, but the "culture where memorization.." is the culture of school. Says nothing about the culture of the larger society. Here's a different way to look at it: In a society where there is a lot of poverty, quite a bit of creativity is required to just get by. You can see this in poverty-stricken societies everywhere from rural China, India, Nigera, and poverty-stricken parts of the USA. Everything from crazy inventions/repairs to innovation in ways of living, getting some cash, stretching bills, toys and games, helping each other... Tontines and savings clubs have been re-invented all over the planet, yes, even in Brooklyn. Whereas in parts of the US, on the other hand, many people have a lot of money to play with for quite a while and are perfectly happy to have others do their cooking, singing, storytelling, and manufacturing. To discard something malfunctioning and simply buy another. The point is, people all over the world can afford to be less risk-taking (read: less creative) when they have more less to lose and can afford to throw assets at the problems.
    - eezurr 8y ago
      I think the culture of school has a meaningful impact on the culture as a whole, as does the culture as a whole have an impact on the culture of school. i.e., the two are not that separated from each other. The creativity I was talking about is different than what you're talking about. That creativity is used in survival, yes. But the path to success is controlled by gatekeepers. There is little cross over between the creativity used to survive on the lower tiers of Maslow's HoN and the path to the middle class, where there's expectations in place and paths to follow, where diverging from them creates risk.
- DATACOMMANDER 8y ago
  I’ve never understood the argument about variance. The difference between two samples’ means can be statistically significant regardless of their respective variances.
gumby 8y ago
> Why does it strike you as wildly implausible that different groups of people might differ in their (average) levels of creativity, and that the differences might be partly heritable (a better word than inherent when referring to average differences)? Yes, I can admit to the very low possibility that such a difference could exist, but indeed I would call it "wildly implausible." Here are some example reasons why: Nobody can even define creativity in any formal way, so any impartial analysis seems impossible. It's a "know it if I see it" issue. Certainly people from all "racial" backgrounds exhibit plenty of creativity ("know it if I see it"). Indeed, if you want to extend this to cultural practices, plenty of folks from (somewhat) "rote" school backgrounds have been quite creative, won various international awards, etc. Alleged biomarkers of cognitive issues are notoriously uninformative. For example Han people tend to have more white matter in their brain and some people in China consider that a sign of superior intellect. But it's more likely a side effect of the writing system as it is perhaps part of the visual pattern recognition process. But such beliefs are little different from 19th/20th century European/American phrenology which also produced whatever results the "scientist" wanted. Most sex and race differences get drowned out by cultural factors and fashions which themselves change over time.
marmada 8y ago
I wish there was a way to flag comments. Maybe there is a way and I just haven't found it. You are spouting racist pseudo-science. What evidence do you have that a particular group of people are genetically smarter than another group of people? The idea that one race/group of people is inherently smarter than another group of people has been debunked time and time and time again. Any "evidence" you find that "proves" one race is superior to another in terms of intelligence is probably 1]false/misleading 2]at worse, can be explained by differences in educational systems, history, and other socio-economic factors. I think the user gumby gave a more detailed explanation than me, I'm just here to say that you should stop propagating openly racist pseudo-science on HN.
- gumby 8y ago
  Since these comments are not dominant I think it's OK to have them on the site since they get responded to. Perhaps it could change their minds.
- DATACOMMANDER 8y ago
  It sounds like you have an irrational, faith-based belief in the absence of group differences. You’ve said that any evidence of their existence is probably bogus, which suggests that there isn’t any potential evidence that would change your mind. I started out not believing in the existence of group differences and changed my mind after looking at the evidence. Now I realize how silly it was for me to believe that groups with different ancestries differ only in superficial ways. That doesn’t mean I hate any particular groups, or that I’m incapable of treating people as individuals.
  - gumby 8y ago
    It is clear that there are specific variances (e.g. albedo) which have had survival benefit in specific environments, but given that humans can reshape their environments so extensively and that in specific a human is a combination of genes + social interaction + managed environment it's pretty hard to imagine gross performance differences among groups in any meaningful metric that might somehow be entirely genetic. I am saying that It's not like this issue hasn't been extensively studied either. It has been extremely difficult to find meaningful behavioural deltas that can be ascribed to genetics -- the other factors typically swamp them, so even if there were a signal always seems to be well below the noise floor. Of course, it's possible that such evidence exists and we just lack the science and process to find it. But from what we know today, and even more so the more we learn about genomics and personal genomics, it is even less likely than would have been believed 50 years ago. I've probably got another 50 years in my lifespan and I seriously doubt the situation will change in that period.
shanghaiaway 8y ago
American isn't a race

fwip 8y ago

Because most people saying that one race is smarter or otherwise better than another race are simply repeating debunked racist talking points. Variation within a group almost always overwhelms variance between groups - but many people saying something like "Asians are less creative" are trying to make sweeping statements about how white people are better. It is possible to lie only using truths, if you arrange them in a deliberately misleading way.

eezurr 8y ago
Here's a different way to look at it: In a culture where memorization and concrete thinking is used to compare $n people within that culture, creativity is inherently more risky, thus less utilized. Poverty in many Asian countries is worse than poverty in the US. With more to lose (and gain), it creates peace of mind to walk the smooth stone road to comfort. The US on the other hand has had a lot of money to play with for quite awhile. Most poor people have enough food (and a variety of it at that), a modern home, and basic health care. It is very doable to be comfortable on a $12/hr job in many places in the US. ($1,650 per month after tax) (of course, many people choose to live above their means due to societal pressure). The point is, we can/could be more risky (read: more creative) with less to lose, so it's utilized more.
- gumby 8y ago
  > In a culture where memorization and concrete thinking is used to compare $n people within that culture, creativity is inherently more risky Yes, but the "culture where memorization.." is the culture of school. Says nothing about the culture of the larger society. Here's a different way to look at it: In a society where there is a lot of poverty, quite a bit of creativity is required to just get by. You can see this in poverty-stricken societies everywhere from rural China, India, Nigera, and poverty-stricken parts of the USA. Everything from crazy inventions/repairs to innovation in ways of living, getting some cash, stretching bills, toys and games, helping each other... Tontines and savings clubs have been re-invented all over the planet, yes, even in Brooklyn. Whereas in parts of the US, on the other hand, many people have a lot of money to play with for quite a while and are perfectly happy to have others do their cooking, singing, storytelling, and manufacturing. To discard something malfunctioning and simply buy another. The point is, people all over the world can afford to be less risk-taking (read: less creative) when they have more less to lose and can afford to throw assets at the problems.
  - eezurr 8y ago
    I think the culture of school has a meaningful impact on the culture as a whole, as does the culture as a whole have an impact on the culture of school. i.e., the two are not that separated from each other. The creativity I was talking about is different than what you're talking about. That creativity is used in survival, yes. But the path to success is controlled by gatekeepers. There is little cross over between the creativity used to survive on the lower tiers of Maslow's HoN and the path to the middle class, where there's expectations in place and paths to follow, where diverging from them creates risk.
DATACOMMANDER 8y ago
I’ve never understood the argument about variance. The difference between two samples’ means can be statistically significant regardless of their respective variances.

gumby 8y ago

> Why does it strike you as wildly implausible that different groups of people might differ in their (average) levels of creativity, and that the differences might be partly heritable (a better word than inherent when referring to average differences)? Yes, I can admit to the very low possibility that such a difference could exist, but indeed I would call it "wildly implausible." Here are some example reasons why: Nobody can even define creativity in any formal way, so any impartial analysis seems impossible. It's a "know it if I see it" issue. Certainly people from all "racial" backgrounds exhibit plenty of creativity ("know it if I see it"). Indeed, if you want to extend this to cultural practices, plenty of folks from (somewhat) "rote" school backgrounds have been quite creative, won various international awards, etc. Alleged biomarkers of cognitive issues are notoriously uninformative. For example Han people tend to have more white matter in their brain and some people in China consider that a sign of superior intellect. But it's more likely a side effect of the writing system as it is perhaps part of the visual pattern recognition process. But such beliefs are little different from 19th/20th century European/American phrenology which also produced whatever results the "scientist" wanted. Most sex and race differences get drowned out by cultural factors and fashions which themselves change over time.

marmada 8y ago

I wish there was a way to flag comments. Maybe there is a way and I just haven't found it. You are spouting racist pseudo-science. What evidence do you have that a particular group of people are genetically smarter than another group of people? The idea that one race/group of people is inherently smarter than another group of people has been debunked time and time and time again. Any "evidence" you find that "proves" one race is superior to another in terms of intelligence is probably 1]false/misleading 2]at worse, can be explained by differences in educational systems, history, and other socio-economic factors. I think the user gumby gave a more detailed explanation than me, I'm just here to say that you should stop propagating openly racist pseudo-science on HN.

gumby 8y ago
Since these comments are not dominant I think it's OK to have them on the site since they get responded to. Perhaps it could change their minds.
DATACOMMANDER 8y ago
It sounds like you have an irrational, faith-based belief in the absence of group differences. You’ve said that any evidence of their existence is probably bogus, which suggests that there isn’t any potential evidence that would change your mind. I started out not believing in the existence of group differences and changed my mind after looking at the evidence. Now I realize how silly it was for me to believe that groups with different ancestries differ only in superficial ways. That doesn’t mean I hate any particular groups, or that I’m incapable of treating people as individuals.
- gumby 8y ago
  It is clear that there are specific variances (e.g. albedo) which have had survival benefit in specific environments, but given that humans can reshape their environments so extensively and that in specific a human is a combination of genes + social interaction + managed environment it's pretty hard to imagine gross performance differences among groups in any meaningful metric that might somehow be entirely genetic. I am saying that It's not like this issue hasn't been extensively studied either. It has been extremely difficult to find meaningful behavioural deltas that can be ascribed to genetics -- the other factors typically swamp them, so even if there were a signal always seems to be well below the noise floor. Of course, it's possible that such evidence exists and we just lack the science and process to find it. But from what we know today, and even more so the more we learn about genomics and personal genomics, it is even less likely than would have been believed 50 years ago. I've probably got another 50 years in my lifespan and I seriously doubt the situation will change in that period.

shanghaiaway 8y ago

American isn't a race