6 ms·

I think it would be kind of weird if we could correlate race with intelligence, if only because race doesn’t really exist biologically. Black people as a whole

I think it would be kind of weird if we could correlate race with intelligence, if only because race doesn’t really exist biologically. Black people as a whole have more genetic diversity within themselves than every other race.

garbagetime 4y ago
> Black people as a whole have more genetic diversity within themselves than every other race. Would you mind explaining this in more detail?
- orthoxerox 4y ago
  Black people are the "original" humans, all other races descend from much smaller groups of humans that moved out of Africa and colonized the rest of the globe (plus some admixture from extant Homo species). So a bunch of alleles have never left Africa in sufficient quantities to persist in non-Black populations. And this probably applies to ADoS Blacks, too, since their Black ancestors were bought from the same entrepots in Western Africa.
  - garbagetime 4y ago
    I doubt that any serious racists consider that there is some single "black race". Nonetheless, as far as I can tell, you're presenting the case that there are significant genetic differences between black races and other races, in which case: why can't some of those alleles code for intelligence, and why can't that result in a difference in average intelligence?
    - orthoxerox 4y ago
      There's no reason they can't. People that want to taboo HBD are afraid that the slope from "some difference in socioeconomic outcomes between races is inherent" to "all difference in socioeconomic outcomes between races is inherent" is too slippery, and the only safe way to ensure that the policy changes they want ever happen is to stabilize the consensus around "all difference in socioeconomic outcomes between races is due to systemic racism".
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      > I doubt that any serious racists consider that there is some single "black race". Except that HBDers are doing exactly that. Last I checked, Igbo immigrants from Nigeria were doing very well in the British and European education systems. And there's other subcultures in Africa with a historical focus on education, like the Ashanti of Ghana, etc. It's not racial genetics; it's all about culture, norm-setting and equitable access to the education system.
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        Ghana is also one of the most stable and democratic African nations today, and the Ashanti Empire was renowned for its advanced political administration, so there's that.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      What do you consider a “serious racist”?
      - calrissian 4y ago
        [flagged]
  - prawn 4y ago
    For anyone else unfamiliar with the term: ADoS appears to be "American Descendants of Slavery".
- tchaffee 4y ago
  It's trivial to find an African person with more genetic similarity to an Irish person than he has in common with a different African person. Genetic diversity in Africa is massive. Think of the various Pygmy people as just one example.
airgapstopgap 4y ago
This "Black people as a whole have more genetic diversity" is a technically correct but entirely irrelevant fact, a staple of popular disinformation on this topic. It is trotted out to lead laymen to a number of incorrect assumptions: a) that it's meaningless to speak of Africans (or specifically of members of the largest African populations) as belonging to a race; b) that raw Fst measures suggest some tribe X is "genetically more similar" to Europeans than it is to tribe Y and therefore is expected to be more phenotypically similar and c) that it's unproductive to discuss those Africans as having some specific average for some trait. It relies on equally irrelevant examples, like the difference in height between Pygmies and the Tutsi (although both sides of the debate are aware that Pygmies belong to a wholly separate "race"; the point of this maneuver is to make laymen assume that "racists" do not recognize this trite fact, and laugh at their lack of nuance). Genetic diversity is not the measure of non-belonging to a race, nor some quotient by which variance of every phenotypic trait is multiplied or something, and in this context it refers to neutral genetic variation, which is higher in Sub-Saharan Africans (and very high in a tiny, unrepresentative subgroup – Khoisan, not Bantu) than in other continental groups, due to their ancestors not having gone through some ancient bottlenecks. Interesting for anthropology and history – tracing of migrations and such; not very interesting for purposes of differential psychology, "scientific racism", quantifying effects of nature and nurture, whatever you call it. A group can be very genetically diverse but near-identical in all traits, or arbitrarily diverse in phenotypes yet highly inbred; and Khoisan from different tribes will still cluster together despite having "more diversity". It's neither here nor there. Most HBDers, including Scott, are not racists in the old-timey sense of normative preference for discrimination against some race or races. But sometimes, it's really hard to remain polite to people who know better yet knowingly spread disinformation to get laymen on their side. I fear that this rank dishonesty is enough to push some all the way over, beyond HBD and into the racist camp. We don't know nuthin' about these topics any more, we know a great deal. And it's not a coincidence that the anti-hereditarian camp trades in vague generalities and factoids, and has to block access to databases. Decades of enthusiastic, well-incentivized search have not yielded any evidence in favor of the blank slate view, of the "it's all culture and schooling" view, the optimistic view. Some related notes: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/african-variation/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/african-variation/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/economists-and-biology/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/economists-and-bio... > The whole argument is flawed. Overall genetic variation is mostly in neutral loci. By itself it tells you nothing about any particular trait. Europeans do have less overall genetic variation than sub-Saharan Africans (~20% less), but they show more variation in hair color and eye color than Africans. > Essentially every domesticated species has less genetic variation than its wild progenitor. Dogs have less genetic variation than wolves. So, does this mean that the tallest wolf is taller than any dog? No – the tallest Great Danes are taller than any wolf. The heaviest mastiffs are heavier than any wolf. Chihuahua are the smallest. Greyhounds are faster than wolves (by a little).

garbagetime 4y ago

> Black people as a whole have more genetic diversity within themselves than every other race. Would you mind explaining this in more detail?

orthoxerox 4y ago
Black people are the "original" humans, all other races descend from much smaller groups of humans that moved out of Africa and colonized the rest of the globe (plus some admixture from extant Homo species). So a bunch of alleles have never left Africa in sufficient quantities to persist in non-Black populations. And this probably applies to ADoS Blacks, too, since their Black ancestors were bought from the same entrepots in Western Africa.
- garbagetime 4y ago
  I doubt that any serious racists consider that there is some single "black race". Nonetheless, as far as I can tell, you're presenting the case that there are significant genetic differences between black races and other races, in which case: why can't some of those alleles code for intelligence, and why can't that result in a difference in average intelligence?
  - orthoxerox 4y ago
    There's no reason they can't. People that want to taboo HBD are afraid that the slope from "some difference in socioeconomic outcomes between races is inherent" to "all difference in socioeconomic outcomes between races is inherent" is too slippery, and the only safe way to ensure that the policy changes they want ever happen is to stabilize the consensus around "all difference in socioeconomic outcomes between races is due to systemic racism".
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    > I doubt that any serious racists consider that there is some single "black race". Except that HBDers are doing exactly that. Last I checked, Igbo immigrants from Nigeria were doing very well in the British and European education systems. And there's other subcultures in Africa with a historical focus on education, like the Ashanti of Ghana, etc. It's not racial genetics; it's all about culture, norm-setting and equitable access to the education system.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Ghana is also one of the most stable and democratic African nations today, and the Ashanti Empire was renowned for its advanced political administration, so there's that.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    What do you consider a “serious racist”?
    - calrissian 4y ago
      [flagged]
- prawn 4y ago
  For anyone else unfamiliar with the term: ADoS appears to be "American Descendants of Slavery".
tchaffee 4y ago
It's trivial to find an African person with more genetic similarity to an Irish person than he has in common with a different African person. Genetic diversity in Africa is massive. Think of the various Pygmy people as just one example.

airgapstopgap 4y ago

This "Black people as a whole have more genetic diversity" is a technically correct but entirely irrelevant fact, a staple of popular disinformation on this topic. It is trotted out to lead laymen to a number of incorrect assumptions: a) that it's meaningless to speak of Africans (or specifically of members of the largest African populations) as belonging to a race; b) that raw Fst measures suggest some tribe X is "genetically more similar" to Europeans than it is to tribe Y and therefore is expected to be more phenotypically similar and c) that it's unproductive to discuss those Africans as having some specific average for some trait. It relies on equally irrelevant examples, like the difference in height between Pygmies and the Tutsi (although both sides of the debate are aware that Pygmies belong to a wholly separate "race"; the point of this maneuver is to make laymen assume that "racists" do not recognize this trite fact, and laugh at their lack of nuance). Genetic diversity is not the measure of non-belonging to a race, nor some quotient by which variance of every phenotypic trait is multiplied or something, and in this context it refers to neutral genetic variation, which is higher in Sub-Saharan Africans (and very high in a tiny, unrepresentative subgroup – Khoisan, not Bantu) than in other continental groups, due to their ancestors not having gone through some ancient bottlenecks. Interesting for anthropology and history – tracing of migrations and such; not very interesting for purposes of differential psychology, "scientific racism", quantifying effects of nature and nurture, whatever you call it. A group can be very genetically diverse but near-identical in all traits, or arbitrarily diverse in phenotypes yet highly inbred; and Khoisan from different tribes will still cluster together despite having "more diversity". It's neither here nor there. Most HBDers, including Scott, are not racists in the old-timey sense of normative preference for discrimination against some race or races. But sometimes, it's really hard to remain polite to people who know better yet knowingly spread disinformation to get laymen on their side. I fear that this rank dishonesty is enough to push some all the way over, beyond HBD and into the racist camp. We don't know nuthin' about these topics any more, we know a great deal. And it's not a coincidence that the anti-hereditarian camp trades in vague generalities and factoids, and has to block access to databases. Decades of enthusiastic, well-incentivized search have not yielded any evidence in favor of the blank slate view, of the "it's all culture and schooling" view, the optimistic view. Some related notes: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/african-variation/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/african-variation/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/economists-and-biology/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/economists-and-bio... > The whole argument is flawed. Overall genetic variation is mostly in neutral loci. By itself it tells you nothing about any particular trait. Europeans do have less overall genetic variation than sub-Saharan Africans (~20% less), but they show more variation in hair color and eye color than Africans. > Essentially every domesticated species has less genetic variation than its wild progenitor. Dogs have less genetic variation than wolves. So, does this mean that the tallest wolf is taller than any dog? No – the tallest Great Danes are taller than any wolf. The heaviest mastiffs are heavier than any wolf. Chihuahua are the smallest. Greyhounds are faster than wolves (by a little).