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That's racist nonsense and it has no place here.

• collyw 6y ago
  So pointing out differences in intelligence is now racist?
  • rscho 6y ago
    Well, you've got to admit that caucasian males (with or without blond aptly showered hair) aren't making the best impression, these days...
  • ralfd 6y ago
    I would say yes. But the more inconvenient question is if it is "nonsense".
  • concordDance 6y ago
    Pointing out differences in intelligence between individuals is considered highly questionable. Pointing at differences in average intelligences between identifiable groups of people is outright taboo. (Comments referring to average intelligence of "nazis" or "SJWs" are generally given a pass as they are not normally taken literally)
    • chii 6y ago
      it's taboo because there is no real scientific basis for one race being more superior. The differences can almost 100% be entirely traced to environmental factors like wealth, nutrition, nurture and community support.
      • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        >it's taboo because there is no real scientific basis for one race being more superior In which case it stands to reason that it's something that the things that make this or that race "superior" at this or that metric can be emulated by people regardless of race to everyone's benefit.
        • chii 6y ago
          > can be emulated yep, you just need money.
      • chosenbreed37 6y ago
        I think it's taboo because certain segments of society secretly think there might be an element of truth and are disturbed by the implications and potential ramifications if the theory was proven to be true.
      • twic 6y ago
        No, we don't make things taboo because they're wrong, we make them taboo because they're dangerous. Nobody is forbidding mention of modified Newtonian dynamics, just pointing out all the evidence against it. The idea of differences in intelligence between ethnic groups, regardless of whether it is true or not, is not one that our society is currently able to discuss in a productive way. So, we very sensibly keep quiet about it for now.
      • concordDance 6y ago
        I was not aware we had managed to prove the causation goes wealth -> IQ rather than IQ -> wealth in the developed world Do you know how we discovered that causation goes in that direction?
      • collyw 6y ago
        No one said superior. On your second point, I don't believe that is true. Not the 100% part. I am sure they play a big part, but a Kenyan Olympic runner doesn't win (only) because of environmental factors.
  • simonh 6y ago
    In the 1920s and 1930s Jewish Americans scored very poorly in IQ tests. Since WW2 they have rapidly risen up the ranks and now as a group score among the highest of any ethnicity. Economic and sociological factors make a massive difference to population IQ scores and are very difficult to control for because we don’t know what all the factors that influence it are.
    • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      To give benefit of the doubt, the comment that spawned this thread didn't make any claim as to why Asians are supposedly more intelligent. If it's from social and economic factors then that it stands to reason that it's something worth studying so that the knowledge gained can be used over time to make everyone more intelligent. I don't see why we should be blinding ourselves to any difference that happens to fall along racial lines. It seems like an overwhelming majority of the time once the issue is studied we find out it has nothing to do with genetics or race anyway and that it's something socioeconomic and cultural that applies to everybody and it happens to correlate with race for historical reasons. We have no problem studying mostly isolated cultures (e.g. the Amish, some tribe in the Amazon, etc) in a clinical manner without people getting their panties in a knot. Why is this not true for big groups?
      • nicoburns 6y ago
        Socioeconommic conditions are themselves not independent of race though. It's not so long ago that it was perfectly legal to discriminate who got a job on the basis of Race, and it was commonplace for people to do so.
        • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
          I intentionally used the phrase "happens to correlate with race for historical reasons" to cover this.
  • tsimionescu 6y ago
    Since all of the studies in this area have essentially been done by racists with obvious flawed methodology, yes. To the extent that IQ means anything at all (it doesn't, past about 100), there are much greater inter-personal differences than inter-group differences, except when one of the groups is explicitly disadvantaged by the test (e.g. the test is administered in the first language of one group and the second language of the other).
    • lopmotr 6y ago
      Really no. Ethnicity and IQ relationship is mainstream psychology. You're expressing a science-denial opinion which is popular but directly contradicted by the experts in the field and their evidence. You're misled about intra- vs inter- group differences and your claim is actually kind of meaningless. See James Damore for a clear explanation on the phenomenon with elite selection. The upshot of it is that even small differences in group average have a big impact on representation of each group at the extremes.
      • tsimionescu 6y ago
        Sure, one of the least reliable fields of science mostly believes this effect exists. They also have one of the worse reproducibility crises, and a history of fraudulent but widely believed studies (Stanford Prison Experiment, to name just one), and entire schools of thought defeated by a priori arguments (behaviorism as a theory of the human mind). Meanwhile you ahbe neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists arguing against the plausibility of differences in intelligence in large ancient groups a priori. You have people like Stephen Jay Gould arguing against the idea that IQ is a measure of general intelligence at all. And then, just to prove a point about how warped your perspective is, you cite James Damore as an argument for a basic statistical fact. You really should avoid citing beligerantly misogynistic and/or racist people when you're trying to claim that science is on your side. Not to mention that large scale aptitude tests (rather than 'general intelligence' tests) do NOT show a normal distribution of aptitudes, rendering Damore's claims statically correct but un applicable anyway.
        • 6y ago
  • chii 6y ago
    nutrition and environmental nurture account much more for intelligence than race. Genetics, at most, account for a tiny difference, and is only barely visible at the very top level of competencies - and even then, those differences are massively dwarfed by environmental factors.
    • jiscariot 6y ago
      I was under the impression that every year we discover more genes tied to "educational attainment" so the assumed heritable % for g increases. In another comment you mentioned 100% environmental--If you have a study, please link to it. Granted, you are correct at the other end, where if one grows up malnourished and lives in a war zone, this will have a oversized negative impact on intelligence potential, but the overall context of this discussion is admittance to Yale. Intelligence is just one small aspect out of many of what it means to be a human. It isn't special any more than having freckles is. We really need to dissolve the cult we have created around it.
    • bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
      Go watch "three identical strangers".
  • throwobviously1 6y ago
    It's interesting that it's not the considered least bit controversial to speak about certain ethnic groups being physically genetically gifted, or statistically over-represented in certain athletic endeavors. Perhaps the most obvious examples are black athletes who dominate popular American sports, or east Africans being superb long distance runners, but the same extends to free divers, mountain climbers, and more. Put simply, some populations have physical adaptations that make them better at certain things - be it lung capacity from ancestry in bolivia, lighter / skinnier legs from ancestry in kenya, or whatever. That's uncontroversial. Why do we all accept without question that population genetics play a somewhat key role in athletic pursuits, but insist that intelligence or mental acuity is distributed perfectly evenly across the entirety of humanity? It doesn't really pass the smell test to be honest.
    • UncleMeat 6y ago
      Lots of reasons. First, because minds are tremendously complex and much less well understood than things like fast and slow twitch muscles. That we see different distributions in one does not imply different distributions in another. Second, because we have tremendous evidence of clear bias, discrimination, and oppression of certain groups and a direct link to confounds that make claims about people of certain races just being genetically smarter amazingly messy. Third, because for physical characteristics we don’t use broad racial categories but instead use ethnicities. “Black people” don’t have the specific physical characteristics that enable the absolute peak of running capabilities. Specific subgroups do. Expanding to racial categories (that were invented by humans to justify slavery and colonialism) is fraught with peril. Fourth, because discussion of physical traits usually looks at the very very very peak while discussion of intelligence is usually a broad claim about all members of a race. This is not the same thing. And finally, because these arguments have been used for centuries to justify literal enslavement. To justify denying voting rights. To justify all manner of horrors because it was just obvious to eugenicists that black people were less developed. And we should be extra careful of claims that, if followed carelessly, lead to genocide.
      • legolas2412 6y ago
        The first one is indeed true. But i hope even acknowledging the theoretical possibility is not mistaken/admonished as racial supremacy and scientific inquiry gets hurt. The second one, I don't think anybody says that there is no nurture component. Acknowledging theoretical possibility of a nature component via genetics is not saying that there is no nurture component, and that it does not confound any test. We would need to design better tests. For third, that is just a definition issue. You're saying that it is wrong to investigate differences between races, but fine to do so for ethnicities. So, let us look if there are cognitive differences between different ethnicities? Fourth is just downright false. Subgroups living in Africa are generally darker, taller, and better runners. Subgroups in east Asia generally shorter. None of the statements about physical characteristics or intelligence are about extremes or broad strict inequalities about all members. They are always statistical distributions over the whole population. Fifth is the crux of the matter. Are we going to stop scientific inquiry because of that? Instead of trying to stop scientific inquiry, we should debate why our liberal values are useful and should hold even if there are genetic components that determine intelligence.
  • pc86 6y ago
    Saying "Asians are more intelligent" is absolutely, objectively racist, and also incorrect. It's the same as saying "Blacks are dumber than other races," the fact that it's a "good thing" is irrelevant. If you are precise, and nuanced, you can say something similar without being a racist shitbag about it. The following things are all true, and probably drove the GP to his statement: * We're largely talking about Asian-Americans, not Asians. * Most Asian-American families have a strong focus on academics and education, from a young age * Most Asian-American families have the socio-economic status and familial support that allows them to focus on academics and education in the first place * Because of the environmental and cultural aspects mentioned above, Asian-Americans, in aggregate, score disproportionately higher on standardized tests than other groups, in aggregate Nothing racist about any of the points above but they could absolutely drive someone to say "Asians are smarter" if they're willing to ignore the nuance.
    • bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
      I know it's deeply uncomfortable and might challenge your worldview and make you emotional... But that stuff has been studied and I'm afraid it's not very relevant and they are really smarter. "The bell curve" is the obvious book to recommend but so too would be the more recent "the case against education" or the documentary "three identical strangers".
    • vixen99 6y ago
      Like it or not there is a genetic architecture for intelligence. The paper https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3869.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3869.epdf identifies 22 'new loci and genes influencing human intelligence' and notes that 'we are beginning to understand the molecular neurobiological mechanisms underlying intelligence, one of the most investigated traits in humans’. Obviously the statement 'Asians are more intelligent' and analogous dog whistles are crass and deliberately provocative mis-interpretations of IQ studies but to state that the scores on standardized tests are only 'because of the environmental and cultural aspects' is simply wrong if that is what you're implying. All organisms on earth are subject to genetic influence on their ability to negotiate life's difficulties and humans are in it with the rest of life on this planet.