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> generations of segregated reproduction have selected for higher IQ in the higher castes There is no natural selection going on here. People are born into a c

> generations of segregated reproduction have selected for higher IQ in the higher castes There is no natural selection going on here. People are born into a caste and, for all intents and purposes, their caste identity is fixed for the rest of their lives. The idea that these people have somehow developed a "higher IQ" over "generations" simply by being born to a particular caste makes no sense. Furthermore, the arguments made in the article have nothing to do with poor performance, (possibly) correlating with a lower IQ. The article details specific examples of antisocial behavior by upper caste Indian workers against their lower caste peers.

zarkov99 6y ago
There is reproductive selection in that people from higher castes will tend to mate with people from higher castes and vice-versa.
- x3ro 6y ago
  This is a fairly terrible take for a number of reasons, but let's assume good faith and indulge this. * What makes you think that, at any point, lower caste people had an on-average lower IQ? The same has been said for plenty of minorities that have been historically discriminated against, such as people of color and women, because opressors are in control of the narrative and see themselves as superior * What does "segregated" (in your original comment) or "selective reproduction" even mean for you? There are more lower caste indians than total Amercians. Are americans lower IQ because of "segregated reproduction"?
  - zarkov99 6y ago
    I assure you I am in good faith, I understand the topic is sensitive, but I don't know what in my comment would suggest I am in bad faith. I think it is likely that there are differences in IQ between the castes, just as there are other physical differences, and that the higher caste would have on average higher IQ since IQ is a decent predictor of social economic success in most contexts. Perhaps people familiar with the Indian education system can chime in about standardized test scores broken down by caste - my recollection from years ago is that there are differences. By segregated reproduction I just mean that most likely mate selection is done within cast, so any difference in IQ between castes is likely to be slow changing as there is little gene exchange between groups. Something similar happens in US society where there is growing stratification along IQ lines.
    - edmundsauto 6y ago
      If your primary evidence is results-based, why do you assume it's genetics instead of situational? My assumption would be that higher caste students have more opportunities for proper nutrition, education, etc. Looking at babies adopted into another caste, or people marrying across castes, would help shed some light. But it doesn't seem reasonable that 5k years of caste systems would have such an impact on IQ.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      50-100 years ago there were huge differences between men and women's test scores, and many speculated that it was due to genetic differences. Fast forward to today where women get equivalent education (at least here in the UK), and those differences have disappeared with women actually doing slightly better than men on average. There's a very high chance that it's not genetic.
    - daniellarusso 6y ago
      Your comment reminds me of the ‘Jewish Problems’ math exam. https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556
  - bluGill 6y ago
    It is possible that higher casts selected for intelligence over the years. Since in India arranged marriage is the norm, parents can select for intelligence if that is a trait they care about. If there is a genetic portion of intelligence that can be selected for. Note the above uses words like "possible" and "if". I find it unlikely this is what was done. More likely - like every other society - they selected for politically powerful. Note too that it is highly likely that in the past rape of lower casts was accepted in some form, which would bring any selected IQ genes to the lower casts.
    - samatman 6y ago
      > Note too that it is highly likely that in the past rape of lower casts was accepted in some form, which would bring any selected IQ genes to the lower casts. There is preliminary evidence from genetic sequencing that Indian castes have been highly endogamous for at least 3000 years. India is a vast place with an enormous population, and there's resistance to continuing this research, for fairly obvious reasons. But continue it will, you can't un-sequence a genome after all. So we may yet see a robust answer to this sort of question.
    - tomp 6y ago
      This is just an argument for IQ selection; applies equally to each caste as to humanity as a whole. But why would higher castes be more IQ selective than lower castes? Edit: anyone mind telling me why this comment is flagged? Did I say anything controversial?
      - bluGill 6y ago
        As a rule all women breed (there are exceptions of course). In some societies high status males breed with multiple females and low status males have none. In most societies today marriage is 1:1, though there is lots of cheating but in general it means that some women will breed with low status males just for someone - thus all genes get carried on. As I said I assume the powerful selected politically powerful mates for their girls, which might or not be intelligent as well. However it is possible that high status was high intelligence. The lower castes not following that. Look, the above is all just barely possible. you will have to work with me here...
  - titanomachy 6y ago
    I appreciate that you presume good faith. I really believe the best way to address flawed racial arguments is by refuting in the open rather than downvoting to oblivion.
- xyhopguy 6y ago
  right but thats not the same as selecting for IQ. thats not even getting into the fact that genetics << environmental effects for predicting IQ..
  - zarkov99 6y ago
    From Wikipedia: Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%[6] with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%[7] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      And yet in the past 100 years or so IQ has increased across the board by 30 points, so culture can explain up to 98% of IQ variation. Therefore this might be the case that genetics is a proxy for the culture or mindset or environment that have a large effect on IQ. This is why such statements can be very misleading.
- rusticpenn 6y ago
  higher caste != intelligent (or high Iq)
- Loughla 6y ago
  The implication is that, inherently, higher caste individuals were more gifted than lower castes, and that breeding over the years selected for those traits. You're confusing inherent trait with sociologically applied traits. In other words, there is no reason to assume there would be selective reproduction for ANY single trait in any of the castes, because your birth into those castes is random and meaningless. Unless the first two people to make new babies in the highest castes were inherently better than everyone else. Which I firmly believe is false.
  - zarkov99 6y ago
    I am not an evolutionary biologist so please excuse and correct any mistakes if you can. Lets assume there are some physical differences between the castes. These differences would have been brought into existence because at some point the respective populations were isolated and living under different sets of evolutionary pressures. If, over time, you remove physical isolation but replace it with cultural taboos against inter-breeding then the effect of these ancestral pressures can be preserved. Does that make sense? It seems to me the real issue here is our inability to reckon with the fact that IQ is just another adaptation. If we were talking about a less central trait, say hair color, the down votes, insults and the flagging of the post would seem ridiculous, even though the exact same reasoning would apply,
    - geofft 6y ago
      The assumption you're making that you haven't substantiated is that higher (as in socially-more-powerful) castes have higher IQs. (There are a number of other unsubstantiated assumptions beyond that, including that the difference in IQ is enough to explain the observed effect, that the variance in the distribution of IQs in each population is pretty close to zero, that castes started out as physically-isolated populations with distinct IQs, etc., but let's start with that one.)
    - vbezhenar 6y ago
      It could work if smart people from lower casts were moved to higher casts and stupid people from higher casts were moved to lower casts. Ideally children would have to be cast-less and then at some age (before reproductive age) were promoted to one of the casts according to some intellectual test. And breeding would be allowed only between species of the same cast. If I'm not mistaken, Indian casts do not work this way, so I don't think that it's possible to select anything. I'm not even sure that intellect is affected by genes. Of course this is all eugenics and considered inappropriate even to discuss in west.
- tassl 6y ago
  And we know how that has worked in royal families across Europe. In any case, your analogy was not this one in the first post, unless you are saying that higher caste meant higher IQ from the beginning.

zarkov99 6y ago

There is reproductive selection in that people from higher castes will tend to mate with people from higher castes and vice-versa.

x3ro 6y ago
This is a fairly terrible take for a number of reasons, but let's assume good faith and indulge this. * What makes you think that, at any point, lower caste people had an on-average lower IQ? The same has been said for plenty of minorities that have been historically discriminated against, such as people of color and women, because opressors are in control of the narrative and see themselves as superior * What does "segregated" (in your original comment) or "selective reproduction" even mean for you? There are more lower caste indians than total Amercians. Are americans lower IQ because of "segregated reproduction"?
- zarkov99 6y ago
  I assure you I am in good faith, I understand the topic is sensitive, but I don't know what in my comment would suggest I am in bad faith. I think it is likely that there are differences in IQ between the castes, just as there are other physical differences, and that the higher caste would have on average higher IQ since IQ is a decent predictor of social economic success in most contexts. Perhaps people familiar with the Indian education system can chime in about standardized test scores broken down by caste - my recollection from years ago is that there are differences. By segregated reproduction I just mean that most likely mate selection is done within cast, so any difference in IQ between castes is likely to be slow changing as there is little gene exchange between groups. Something similar happens in US society where there is growing stratification along IQ lines.
  - edmundsauto 6y ago
    If your primary evidence is results-based, why do you assume it's genetics instead of situational? My assumption would be that higher caste students have more opportunities for proper nutrition, education, etc. Looking at babies adopted into another caste, or people marrying across castes, would help shed some light. But it doesn't seem reasonable that 5k years of caste systems would have such an impact on IQ.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    50-100 years ago there were huge differences between men and women's test scores, and many speculated that it was due to genetic differences. Fast forward to today where women get equivalent education (at least here in the UK), and those differences have disappeared with women actually doing slightly better than men on average. There's a very high chance that it's not genetic.
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    Your comment reminds me of the ‘Jewish Problems’ math exam. https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556
- bluGill 6y ago
  It is possible that higher casts selected for intelligence over the years. Since in India arranged marriage is the norm, parents can select for intelligence if that is a trait they care about. If there is a genetic portion of intelligence that can be selected for. Note the above uses words like "possible" and "if". I find it unlikely this is what was done. More likely - like every other society - they selected for politically powerful. Note too that it is highly likely that in the past rape of lower casts was accepted in some form, which would bring any selected IQ genes to the lower casts.
  - samatman 6y ago
    > Note too that it is highly likely that in the past rape of lower casts was accepted in some form, which would bring any selected IQ genes to the lower casts. There is preliminary evidence from genetic sequencing that Indian castes have been highly endogamous for at least 3000 years. India is a vast place with an enormous population, and there's resistance to continuing this research, for fairly obvious reasons. But continue it will, you can't un-sequence a genome after all. So we may yet see a robust answer to this sort of question.
  - tomp 6y ago
    This is just an argument for IQ selection; applies equally to each caste as to humanity as a whole. But why would higher castes be more IQ selective than lower castes? Edit: anyone mind telling me why this comment is flagged? Did I say anything controversial?
    - bluGill 6y ago
      As a rule all women breed (there are exceptions of course). In some societies high status males breed with multiple females and low status males have none. In most societies today marriage is 1:1, though there is lots of cheating but in general it means that some women will breed with low status males just for someone - thus all genes get carried on. As I said I assume the powerful selected politically powerful mates for their girls, which might or not be intelligent as well. However it is possible that high status was high intelligence. The lower castes not following that. Look, the above is all just barely possible. you will have to work with me here...
- titanomachy 6y ago
  I appreciate that you presume good faith. I really believe the best way to address flawed racial arguments is by refuting in the open rather than downvoting to oblivion.
xyhopguy 6y ago
right but thats not the same as selecting for IQ. thats not even getting into the fact that genetics << environmental effects for predicting IQ..
- zarkov99 6y ago
  From Wikipedia: Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%[6] with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%[7] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    And yet in the past 100 years or so IQ has increased across the board by 30 points, so culture can explain up to 98% of IQ variation. Therefore this might be the case that genetics is a proxy for the culture or mindset or environment that have a large effect on IQ. This is why such statements can be very misleading.
rusticpenn 6y ago
higher caste != intelligent (or high Iq)
Loughla 6y ago
The implication is that, inherently, higher caste individuals were more gifted than lower castes, and that breeding over the years selected for those traits. You're confusing inherent trait with sociologically applied traits. In other words, there is no reason to assume there would be selective reproduction for ANY single trait in any of the castes, because your birth into those castes is random and meaningless. Unless the first two people to make new babies in the highest castes were inherently better than everyone else. Which I firmly believe is false.
- zarkov99 6y ago
  I am not an evolutionary biologist so please excuse and correct any mistakes if you can. Lets assume there are some physical differences between the castes. These differences would have been brought into existence because at some point the respective populations were isolated and living under different sets of evolutionary pressures. If, over time, you remove physical isolation but replace it with cultural taboos against inter-breeding then the effect of these ancestral pressures can be preserved. Does that make sense? It seems to me the real issue here is our inability to reckon with the fact that IQ is just another adaptation. If we were talking about a less central trait, say hair color, the down votes, insults and the flagging of the post would seem ridiculous, even though the exact same reasoning would apply,
  - geofft 6y ago
    The assumption you're making that you haven't substantiated is that higher (as in socially-more-powerful) castes have higher IQs. (There are a number of other unsubstantiated assumptions beyond that, including that the difference in IQ is enough to explain the observed effect, that the variance in the distribution of IQs in each population is pretty close to zero, that castes started out as physically-isolated populations with distinct IQs, etc., but let's start with that one.)
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    It could work if smart people from lower casts were moved to higher casts and stupid people from higher casts were moved to lower casts. Ideally children would have to be cast-less and then at some age (before reproductive age) were promoted to one of the casts according to some intellectual test. And breeding would be allowed only between species of the same cast. If I'm not mistaken, Indian casts do not work this way, so I don't think that it's possible to select anything. I'm not even sure that intellect is affected by genes. Of course this is all eugenics and considered inappropriate even to discuss in west.
tassl 6y ago
And we know how that has worked in royal families across Europe. In any case, your analogy was not this one in the first post, unless you are saying that higher caste meant higher IQ from the beginning.