Heinz 57, going..going..

Do I hear 58 anyone??

Gavel coming down....

I race against this;
life which does not know itself.
IT IS JUST US HERE.

May I say further that most of our mistakes come from our teachings (regarding this).

I've been meaning to get to this post, and I shall now do so, my apologizes for the delay.

Check.

I disagree, pretty much completely. Its been demonstrated by twin studies that phenotype has everything to do with intelligence. Identical twin studies prove it. Two identical twins raised in different families are almost identical in measured intelligence, FAR more so than fraternal twins raised by the same family (Bouchard, 1979). In fact it seems that intelligence no matter how you define it is almost completely defined by genetics. There is evidence with morals, values and abilities too. This is all phenotype as determined by the genotype. The order of importance for intelligence is Genetics > influences in womb > family.

Its politically troublesome. I am not here to argue the political ramifications of racial prejudices, just the scientific aspects of the genetic variation. How race has been misused is not important to the discussion, its like saying you are an atheist because religion has been misused. Its a poor reason.

Assuming there are no racial differences to various types of intelligence is foolhardy. I would be far more shocked if there weren't differences. Again, because someone wants to claim such differences make them superior is no matter to me in this. Intelligence is hard to measure, so no real conclusions can be made but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Lets take a completely different example of a racial difference to explain how it can exist but be difficult to measure. There is the concept that black males have larger penises then other races. This is true, they have larger penises then Asians and slightly larger then Caucasians on average, key word being average. What is different is they are twice as likely to have an 'exceptionally' large penis as a white male. So while the average racial difference is minor the extremes are definitely in their favor, its just that its still a small enough number that it gets lost. There may well be more of one race at the top of the intelligence spectrum as compared to another, but such would be lost and meaningless to the masses.

Why are you asking this? It should be abundantly clear I'm talking genetics and phenotype. What I think your problem is you dont' seem to understand just how deep genetics goes into ones personality. It is your basic assumption which is wrong here, and demonstrably. Now can I say its been shown that such a race is more moral than another or more intelligent? No, but I'm not going to pretend that genetics don't play a part in both of those things. Not everything is as clear cut as lactose tolerance when it comes to racial genetics.

I am not worried about what a random person thinks in this. This isn't a discussion for random people but people who have an understanding of genetics and heritable traits. I am painfully well aware of how politicians can misuse scientific data and twist it to their own ends due to a poorly educated public. What calling it something besides 'race' does is nothing but PC it, I am not doing a social crusade here.

Yes in that there should be MORE races than the basic ones, but saying Mongoloid does narrow it down quite a bit, and thats what language should do. Most of your substitutions are more complex then needed.

For the same reason I'm attached to the word green, or sun, or wolf. Its a descriptive word that has a lot of information in it. If you change the word you will either make it longer (inefficient) or just do what the blacks do ever few decades and make up a new less 'offensive' word which later becomes offensive. Nigger, colored, black, african american. Same thing. So if you want to call whites something else and asians something else be my guest but it doesn't' really CHANGE anything. Race doesn't tell ones true genetic heritage, but its a rounding off point. If you say 'he is Caucasian' it narrows down where his most likely migration out of africa came from and when. There are sub groups to track, and local differences (northern europeans are different than southern) etc, but its a start and a good start. How the public as a whole abuses this is irrelevant, they will abuse it regardless of the language as long as they perceive a difference, and nothing is easier to perceive than race among humans.

Sooo, can we live on the same planet?
OK, kick me, I surely deserve it.

I carry Daniel Goleman's book, 'Emotional Intelligence' as a cloaking device.
Please carry on.

Heritability estimates of intelligence range from 0.4 to 0.8 (on a scale from 0 to l). So, I wouldn't say "almost completely", but I do agree with your point generally. Intelligence as measured by an IQ test (probably the WAIS or WISC) is quite heritable, especially comparing it to measures of other psychological constructs. Intelligence as measured by an IQ test also predicts a great deal WITHIN western cultures.

What references are you using to support your argument about the heritabilities of morals and values?

The identical twin study in question was .86 raised together, and .76 raised apart, while fraternal twins raised together were a .57 (I think) and I have a thing for twin studies in this sort of thing. Interestingly a person taking the same test twice yielded a .87 on average.

As for morals and values, I don't think anyone has studied many moral traits specifically, what I think is that our moral codes and values are based on our genetically determined instincts.

I'd have to dig up the references but lets take incest. Incest between brother/sister or family as a whole is frowned upon in just about every culture. When it has happened it becomes a historical anomaly and is always associated with royalty not the commoners. There is an apparent developmental aversion to sex with children you grow up with in constant contact, and when people in modern society tend to break this 'taboo' they were almost always raised apart. This would indicate this is an instinct. I can go into this more if needed.

Posted today on Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178124/

ustwo, just to back up a bit, what do you mean by 'random people'

I am truly curious to understand.

another question for you ustwo:

do you see linkages between your views of the role of genetics in explaining whatever measures you deem important and your conservative politics? does one reinforce the other? how?

i could run out an interpretation, but it'd be more interesting to hear from you.

People without the educational background either self taught or otherwise to understand the continued emerging complexity of the human genome (or any genome for that matter).

Highschool biology or even college basic won't cut it, and you need to keep up, what I learned 15 years ago is no longer 100% valid with new information coming forth. Odds are what I know now is outdated a bit by a year or two.

This sounds arrogant, but you need to have the credentials to really follow it without just taking someones word for it.

can a self taught person still have credentiality in your perspective?

I do understand that information comes in almost daily.

maybe it could be compared to surfing a wave, how to read all the influences,
stay on top of it all, and still hold a sense of the waves you have known before, knowing the next one will be as different as we are told all snowflakes are.
The adrenaline rush of gaining more understanding is understandable.
I would put forth the idea that keeping it all in perspective is daunting yet exciting.

It depends on the person but I'd think so yes.

I'd recommend starting with a college level biology text to start if you don't have the background, focusing on the genetic sections so you understand the basic base pairs, groupings, and how that all works in the cell.

I've had so much both formal and informal its sort of hard to say what I learned on my own and what I've learned in a traditional class, but I'm a firm believer that you can become an expert in a lot of fields just by doing reading.

You won't know HOW to say run a PCR or an acrylamide gel (and you are not missing much) but you will know how both are used and what they are used for, which is whats important when talking about theory.

I used to work for Beckman Instruments back when they were associated with Smithkline..I need to brush up for sure, thanks for responding.

Well in order for intelligence to be “defined” by anything, it has to be defined. Since cognitive psychologists haven’t been able to come up with a definition that doesn't give at least a third of them a conniption (and not for lack of trying), I rather doubt that genes could do the job.

Perhaps you could give us a definition of “intelligence” in which variation in intelligence in any population is “almost completely” explained by genetics?

Not even performance on an IQ test is completely explained by genetics: heritability of this particular trait is anywhere from 30 to 80% depending on what study you want to believe, as sapiens pointed out.

And in any case, the heritability of test performance is irrelevant to the question of group differences, because the causes of within-group differences tell us absolutely nothing about the causes of between-group differences, in any trait. This is one of the most fundamental statistical truths about heritability, as pointed out by the originator of the concept, RA Fisher himself.

Intelligence is not even possible to measure. There is no yardstick. The concept itself is a cultural construct that varies from place to place and from time to time. We currently have an IQ test; a hundred years from now we might be attempting to test musical improvisational ability, or skill in real-time oral argument, or deftness at manipulating a person’s emotions, or talent in moving up a social hierarchy, or real-time situational problem solving, like the ability to survive a month in the Kalihari. None of these is even vaguely quantified by anything remotely resembling any IQ test. These tests are inherently circular anyway because they simultaneously define the construct in terms of the operation and the operation in terms of the construct.

Whatever test you claim shows that Group A has a higher intelligence than Group B, I guarantee I can construct a dozen different tests that show the exact opposite.

Or look at it from this angle: if a dentist can confidently pronounce the field of human evolutionary genetics “asinine” because it points out that there are no genetic races, then I think it’s time to throw up our hands and admit that the concept is irreducibly subjective.

Foolhardy? Since it’s impossible to even know why any particular person is more “intelligent” than any other particular person, going through life with an assumption of genetic equality can’t possibly hurt you in any way whatsoever.
I’d be more worried about drunk drivers, myself.

“Mongoloid” might narrow it down by a few percent, whereas knowing where a person’s parents were born narrows it down by about 80%. Numbers like that, by the way, are one of the values of scientific inquiry. They lead to conclusions like “the use of ethnicity alone will often be inadequate as a basis for medical treatment” (Manica, 2005).

Of course it is easy to “perceive”, that’s because people are compulsive classifiers, they can’t help it. Over the years we’ve seen the “Aryan race” the “German race” the “Jewish race” the “Italian race” the “French race” the “Irish race” the “English race” the “Scottish race” the “Puritan race” the “Hispanic race” the “black race” the “white race” the “red race” the “yellow race”, ….. you name it. Every culture and every generation has its own preferred list of races. In Brazil they “easily” recognize brancas, loras, morenas, mulatas, pretas, depending on subtle differences in the waviness of the hair, the width of the nose and lips, and the tint of the skin. You can have all 5 in one extended family. Hell you can probably have all 5 in one terribly confused person.

What any of this has to do with genetics, perhaps you can tell me, since “nothing is easier”?

And by the way, I see we now know the “value of scientific inquiry” for some folks: its value is to tell them what they already know. If it doesn’t, they simply toss it aside, call it “asinine,” and believe what they want.

Was that the answer you were shooting for in the OP?

Uh, those figures are correlations not heritabilities. Here’s the mean heritability calculated from these numbers: (0.86 - 0.57) x 2 = 0.58. However there is enormous spread in the correlations within each of Bouchard’s categories, so the mean doesn’t tell us much. If you take the spread into account, you get a range of calculated heritabilities from 0 to 1, which is the entire range possible. He, perhaps not surprisingly, didn’t point that out in his paper.

So in other words, your twin studies show a heritability muddling around somewhere in the middle, which is the same result as all the others.

And again, this is completely irrelevant to the subject of group differences in any trait whatsoever, let alone a trait that is inherently impossible to measure.

I agree with that, and would add that it helps to know how to calculate heritability.

This is why I like the term Heinz 57.
All sarcasm aside,
Raveneye person I think you summed it up in my head by saying"these tests are inherently circular because they simultaneously define the construct in terms of the opertion and the operation in terms of the construct"

How do we find all the threads of hereditary influence past the point of so many variables?

Your doubts don't concern me really. Spatial intelligence is definable and testable, verbal, deductive reasoning, its only the package together that gives people fits. Cleaving rabbits on this doesn't diminish anything.

Men are better at spatial tasks than women, very well documented. Are you saying thats due to upbringing?

And he also generally agreed with me. It actually doesn't matter if its 99% or 9%, genetics would play a role either way. Even at the lowest end, 30% of what you are intelligence wise was due to genetics. I think its far higher.

And?

So what I'm not arguing the validity of IQ tests. But I ask you, would you rather have your doctor have an IQ of 160 or 60? After all you can't measure it, according to you, so it shouldn't matter right?

If you want to measure various variables in intelligence do so, and maybe some will be different. They have looked for some intelligence genes and found some, but its obviously going to be a multi-loci aggregation. Did you know that even symmetry can be linked to intelligence? The reason should be obvious, but the genes we are looking for may have nothing directly to do with the brain but parasite resistance or the immune system.

No I said dismissing the concept of race was assine. You seem to be trying to belittle me because I'm a dentist and therefore unqualified to speak on this. I also graduated with a degree in Ethology, Ecology, and Evolution from the University of Illinois, I worked in a lab while there looking for DNA homologs of a brain expressed protein that seemed to cause neuron growth in adults and to look for the homologs in the animal kingdom as a whole. I spent a year doing prep work for a masters in ecology before deciding I had enough and went to dental school. No idea what your background is, but if I didn't bother to get a doctorate and another masters after I'd be officially a evolutionary biologist. So please, quit trying to belittle me on this, its a straw man, and you have no idea who you are dealing with.


Again, don't care. What you do with the data doesn't really matter.

Not the question, doesn't matter.

Which is why I say there are more races not none. Scandinavians are different than Greeks even if they are both 'white'.

ok enough

We are not arguing genetics anymore but the value of the inquiry, which this topic no longer is about. When I started this I didn't expect people to take the absurdest stance that race doesn't exist, or that genetics doesn't determine your intelligence. It does and it does.

Personally I think you are just arguing with me to argue, this shit is pretty basic.

I believe it is as simple as people having pre-conceived (ignorant,knee- jerk reactions to the word race itself.)

I am female and I would be the first to attest that my 'spacial relations'
have skewed my intelligence tests dramatically.

I am the progeny of two very well tested individuals.

Other genetic factors are there as well.

Exactly what is the disagreement here?

Testing methodology continues.. I will sit back and pay closer attention to you all.. that know more...

Agreed. (Though I do think that the low estimates are quite low. Most studies find higher heritabilities).

I agree that intelligence tests (and intelligence "the construct") are culturally specific. I also agree that IQ tests are a measure of intelligence, not intelligence itself. However, the WAIS and the WISC predict "real-world" outcomes in Western cultures. I doubt that musical improvisational ability would do the same.

Researchers have done this. Constructing an IQ test that eliminates group differences results in a test with low predictive validity. Somewhere I have references, but I'm nowhere near them right now.

You're not talking to me, but I'd have to say the same to you, buddy... your opinion is never going to change on this (and neither is mine, nor anyone else around here who disagrees with you), which makes further discussion of it pretty unproductive.

Please answer MY points then.

You say intelligence isn't heritable, do you have proof of this?

I think you made up your mind on race, and your own mixed race heritage seems to be your blind spot. Because you do not belong to a race does not mean there are not races.

Scientifically you have shown really nothing. Its all about feelings and perceptions and prejudice. The science is sadly for you on my side here. Quit trying to be political with science, it sucks, and its stupid for two intelligent people to do so.

Ustwo, I recognized in my last post that it would be futile and truly a waste of my time to respond to you on this subject. There is no point, unless I enjoy banging my head on a brick wall. You are not going to change your opinion, I am not going to change mine. Others here have far more education, experience, and knowledge than I do on this topic, and I cannot say anything better than what has already been said, particularly by raveneye... and if you are not even listening to them, then I'm done.

I will respond to this, however: I believed in race for a long time, because I didn't know any other way TO believe until I began to study social science. As a kid I marked "Asian," because growing up, that was my "minority" identity, and therefore advantageous... a very political thing, you must admit. Asking for people's race in a box, in order to decide how to dole out funds, IS a political question, far more than a scientific one (you don't see everyone in the US running to get their DNA analyzed before every census, at least not yet... if they do, now THAT would be very interesting).

I no longer mark Asian. I don't mark anything, because I am too many things. The fact is that ALL humans are "too many things;" if you get your DNA analyzed, you'll find that it's actually pretty difficult to mark one box, to the exclusion of all the other little pieces that make up your genetic code. There is no "cut point." There is no "pure" member of each "race." There are only different kinds of hybrids, mixed and mixed and mixed again.

I agree that IQ tests correlate with western culture outcomes, but am pointing out that outcomes are not the same as intelligence, by a very long shot. The I in IQ has always been a misnomer. We should change the name to something like “WCOT”, just another acronym like GRE, LSAT, MCAT etc.

And I certainly agree that musical ability won’t predict much in our culture, but that doesn’t mean an Art Tatum isn’t a genius, even if he can’t hold down a job and lives in poverty or has a low IQ.

I tend to think that there is no such thing as "Big g", no General Intelligence. I think that it is more likely that there are intelligences. People score differently on tests of different primary mental abilities, different primary mental abilities have different heritabilities, people exhibit very specific deficiencies in cognitive functioning, very specific strengths, etc. However, I do think that proponents of 'Big g" and the associated tests have a reasoned argument- many of the things we associate with intelligence are positively correlated with scores on the WAIS.

Regarding genius: I certainly don't think that genius is a score on an IQ test. Most individual differences researchers I know/know of would agree. (In support of your Art Tatum argument). There are plenty of people walking around with very high scores that aren't recognized by "society" as geniuses, and there are plenty of geniuses who probably would not score outrageously high on an IQ test.

I see, we can add the «Scandinavian race» and the «Greek race» to the lengthening list.

And of course the same argument can be applied to any two geographic regions, since their citizens will be «different» from each other, so we can add the «Denmark Race» the «Sweden Race» and the «Norway Race» too. And of course since genetic variation is clinal, we can't leave out the borders: we gotta distinguish the «Sweden/Norway Border Race» from the «Denmark/Sweden Border Race» too if we want to be scientifically accurate. And by the same logic any two cities will be different, giving us the «Stockholm Race» and the «Sverige Race». And within any of those cities we'll have gentically different families, so we then have the «Jagerskiold Race» and the «Filssunu Race». And within any family there will also be differences, so that we're now safe calling weird uncle Thorsten the sole member of his own personal, unique race, the «Weird Uncle Thorsten Race».

So how many intersecting races does that give us then, about 20 billion? My calculator conks out on me here.

Wow, so RA Fisher was wrong about heritability, and everybody else, too. Heritability is not a statistical property of a population, it's a developmental property of a single individual. Developmental biologists will be excited to find out that genes build half the brain, and the environment the other half.

You should write all these bold findings up and submit them to a journal, I guarantee the editor will frame the manuscript and hang it on his wall.

abaya, your posts are eloquent and authoritative. Thank you for taking the time and effort.

Y'all are freaking me out with your intelligence and your racism, and I'm not qualified to say that. IJUHP!

specists.. wordists... sapienists..unite.

Howard Gardner wrote Frames of Mind that described that there are many different forms of intelligence... so many I did not even bother reading about them all. If there was this hypothetical perfect intelligence test that examined all quantifiable aspects of different intelligences, by all means cross reference it with genetic traits of people and races. I still feel that this data would not incorporate the power of the human will. The great part about our brain is through determination and perseverance, we can train ourselves to learn the things we want to know. I thought I was just maybe some fool hearted optimist but I saw this from you, Ustwo:

I can become an expert just by doing the reading? Is that part of my original genetic makeup? For this test you would have to run a follow up test to look at the anomalies; and marvel at those that boldly went beyond their skills into places the test concluded they would not.

I'm not sure what you are asking here. Some people would not be able to become an expert by reading on a subject, others can, and part of that is their genetic makeup.

Most testing puts my mathematical skills as 'average' for someone of my education level. I can agree with this, for math is one of my weaknesses. That being said I worked my ass off and was able to get out of some very unpleasant math classes in college by testing out of them, while my more mathematically gifted peers were stuck doing calc 120 at 8am, 5 days a week. Still I doubt that I would ever been known as a great mathematician no matter how much effort I put into it. Its always 'work' for me.

On the other hand one of my strengths is being able to comprehend a new subject or idea very quickly, this too I believe is innate, as I had no additional training that others in my peer group have had. This means I need to spend less effort to understand new material, making learning new concepts easier.

So really yes you can make up for your deficiencies with effort, but how far is debatable. I think its safe to say that most geniuses are born not made.

My questions from before were rhetorical. I forget that others understand me better in person as I am an animated talker and exagerate the tone in my voice... things I rarely try to express with text, styles, and fonts.

Yes, genetics plays an important role, I can't be so arrogant/insolent/ignorant as to deny that fact. Some people have it really bad, others have it really good. I know people that have mental problems that work tirelessly to be able to do what they like. And then I see the others that do nothing more than flaunt their abilities with nothing constructive in mind. Personally, I worked hard to get where I am. I was poor in academics when I was young, and by high school and college some of my professors let me run the lectures.

I will always feel the human will is more powerful than any test could ever measure. This makes nothing beyond us, and human potential is infinite.

Off Topic- Yeah I could guess you are a motivated person that quickly gathers information. I have seen your posts throughout the forum and you present your arguments in precise and concise detail that presently I can only wish for. That said, I freely admit when I saw that your post had my response in it, I went, "Damnit! Why did I open my mouth?"

I'm not convinced that phenotype affects "intelligence". I do think that genetics does. Can anyone elaborate further or can discuss this idea in more detail?

Anyways, here is an interesting little article. Food for thought.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071128...e_071128185555

I'm thinking
We know each other
If we want

An editorial from today's NY Times that sheds a little more light on this discussion... answering the question, "Is there a genetic difference between blacks and whites that condemns blacks in perpetuity to be less intelligent?"

Interesting read but he highlights the flaws in other studies while accepting evidence on the other side without comment.

He also glosses over perhaps that which would be more controversial than genes. If what he was saying is true and the reason blacks do worse on IQ tests was 'environmental' then a fair hypothesis is that black parents are inferior parents, or that black culture is inferior to IQ development.

Its really a far more racially charged article than is apparent at first reading.

I was a conservative before I had anything beyond a basic understanding of genetics.

In the Eugenics heyday it was strongly embraced by both those who would be considered conservatives today and socialists alike.

Our thoughtforms
and wishes and goals
are the same.

I used to believe that intelligence was based on survival rather than the amount of knowledge one possesses. If you are alive then you are smart; however, as of... right now, I think it has more to do with HOW you survive in accordance with the universal laws that are set in motion. I don't think intelligence can be measured by some test or DNA sampling. One could have read all the books in the world, and traveled far and wide the information on the internet and not be able to put what's learned into practive. How well do you use your gifts and abilities for the better good of all? That's true wisdom. Knowledge in action.

I have to agree with you Ays, I think it comes back to the human will. We can overcome our faults through diligence and effort. My next question is, is there a gene that can be linked to human will? /Not really/

Well, surely, there is.
It just wants a little more.
"Knowledge in action".

There's only one race, the human race.