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At the current state of research, nobody claims to know enough about how the brain works to conclude that the mind is "an empty plate of neuron waiting to be co

At the current state of research, nobody claims to know enough about how the brain works to conclude that the mind is "an empty plate of neuron waiting to be connected." Trisomy 21, or Down Syndrome, can be classified as mental retardation, and you might call it an abnormal lack of mental capacity. This is a completely genetic abnormality. Obviously, they go through the same stages of neonatal development, neuron pruning, etc., but their ability to form neuronal connections, like yours and mine, is limited, at birth. I picked a rather extreme example just to illustrate the point. I don't disagree with everything you wrote, but it is a mistake to believe early manifestations of genius have nothing, or even little, innate roots. Daniel Tammet is your living example. If his brain were a bit different, he'd be just another Kim Peek. It will be very hard to argue that this is due to rigorous practice from an early age. Kids with autism don't just gradually lose their aptitude to comprehend emotions by lack of practice. They are born with a dysfunctional empathy circuit. Kids with epilepsy don't just develop their symptoms. They are testable and predictable, and heritable. I'm not saying what you say is wrong -- it depends on what you mean by intelligence. But you're being unspecific about "intelligence" while being specific about how it is related to genetic, inborn traits. This opens the door wide to attacks like mine -- just pointing it out. One more thing. The statement "The theory of races after all started in Germany" evaluates to false. I assume you're referring to early 20th century Germany. It started with the European colonialists, which wasn't even such a German thing. That's also the Eurocentric interpretation of the word. I'm sure other cultures had their own ideas of race dating to much earlier. The Chinese always called the people outside their country borders barbarians. And Orthodox Jews consider themselves the chosen people. Take that interpretation, then I'm among the unchosen barbarians, or race, whatever.

politrix 19y ago
The genetic diseases you mentioned are significant mutations leading into strong dysfunctionalities in how the brain is supposed to function. Leading it not to function correctly. This is far from evolutionary path leading one population of people into some sort of mental retardation, especially when evolutionary selection would be against it. In addition most of the mentioned diseases are recessive which is the only reason they have survived, as any offspring with the disease won't survive to pass the genes on. Autism is a different case because it's not necessarily genetic (although I'm not sure if there are also genetic cases). In fact autism cases have exploded in recent history, so environmental factors are likely a contributor. One such theory is the vaccines containing mercury which is a strong neuro-toxin decaying neuron connections which would result into the observed behavior. I'm not going into that discussion however. I'm being unspecific about intelligence because it's inherently a very ambiguous concept, which is one of the fallacies of the IQ testing and the arguments given by the racists like in this thread. I can see short comings and non-objectiveness in almost every IQ test I have seen. And that without even taking into account the fact that they're "adjusted" periodically to reflect the norm which obviously means they're not perfectly objective to begin with. I was referring to 18th century Germany and for example theories created by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumenbach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumenbach
- whacked_new 19y ago
  There are lots of points to address in your post but I choose not to. Thanks for the Blumenbach post; it was very interesting (but nevertheless does not show Germany to be the origin of the concept of race). Anyhow, I saw this on reddit and found it related, and interesting in general: http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mit-corrects-inherited-retardation-autism-mice-15065.html http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mit-corrects-inherited-retard... "The MIT study found that FMRP and mGluR5 are at opposite ends of a kind of molecular seesaw." These kinds of "molecular seesaws" are everywhere in the body. When things are only slightly out of balance you _may_ get drastic effects. Emphasis on may, because at this point nobody knows exactly what and how much of it is required to achieve what effect. But there you have it -- once it is identified, it is manipulable. The more important point is, many symptoms are graded in severity, and as this study shows, autism could be found to be less disconnected from normal than you may think.

politrix 19y ago

The genetic diseases you mentioned are significant mutations leading into strong dysfunctionalities in how the brain is supposed to function. Leading it not to function correctly. This is far from evolutionary path leading one population of people into some sort of mental retardation, especially when evolutionary selection would be against it. In addition most of the mentioned diseases are recessive which is the only reason they have survived, as any offspring with the disease won't survive to pass the genes on. Autism is a different case because it's not necessarily genetic (although I'm not sure if there are also genetic cases). In fact autism cases have exploded in recent history, so environmental factors are likely a contributor. One such theory is the vaccines containing mercury which is a strong neuro-toxin decaying neuron connections which would result into the observed behavior. I'm not going into that discussion however. I'm being unspecific about intelligence because it's inherently a very ambiguous concept, which is one of the fallacies of the IQ testing and the arguments given by the racists like in this thread. I can see short comings and non-objectiveness in almost every IQ test I have seen. And that without even taking into account the fact that they're "adjusted" periodically to reflect the norm which obviously means they're not perfectly objective to begin with. I was referring to 18th century Germany and for example theories created by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumenbach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumenbach

whacked_new 19y ago
There are lots of points to address in your post but I choose not to. Thanks for the Blumenbach post; it was very interesting (but nevertheless does not show Germany to be the origin of the concept of race). Anyhow, I saw this on reddit and found it related, and interesting in general: http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mit-corrects-inherited-retardation-autism-mice-15065.html http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mit-corrects-inherited-retard... "The MIT study found that FMRP and mGluR5 are at opposite ends of a kind of molecular seesaw." These kinds of "molecular seesaws" are everywhere in the body. When things are only slightly out of balance you _may_ get drastic effects. Emphasis on may, because at this point nobody knows exactly what and how much of it is required to achieve what effect. But there you have it -- once it is identified, it is manipulable. The more important point is, many symptoms are graded in severity, and as this study shows, autism could be found to be less disconnected from normal than you may think.