/sci/ - Science & Math

Actually, does anyone here mind if I delve into a bit of a technical discussion? I'm a bit tired so it might not be as astute as I usually am, but if I can go into the data (regarding IQ) would that help anyone? I am very tired so i might miss some stuff . . . I actually really studied up on this stuff. I felt that as I was biracial it gave me a niche to talk about this stuff free from accusations of racism, so I actually sort of know what I'm talking about.

>>4847527
IQ is actually largely independent of how you were educated. In fact, the best predictor of genius is actually having an identical twin who is also a genius, not where you matriculated. To my mind, twinning data really kills the social environment data, because of family relatedness. The typical early experiments showed that rich parents that sent their kids to rich schools tended to have smart kids. So it must be the money and the school causing the IQ. The problem is, as you state, correlation is not causation. It's the fact that rich parents who send their kids to good schools tend to be smart, and they tend to pass on smart genes. What really converted me was the twinning data, the fact that 5/6 of the variance magically disappeared when you only tested identical twins, and that correlation held regardless of those twins environment. To me, that absolutely demolishes the socioeconomic argument.

>>4847618
Sorry, it was meant to be a joke. Joseph Stalin was very left wing. Race and IQ deniers tend to be left wing. Hence if I was slightly to the left of Joseph Stalin I would be very much in denial of racial and IQ realities . . . get the joke now. Maybe it wasn't as funny as I thought.

>>4847541
My biggest claim to lack of bias is the fact that I started my undergrad career slightly to the left of Joseph Stalin on the subject of IQ and race. Over the years, looking into it and confronted with the data, I was forced to modify my world view radically, to the effect that today, I present to you a view which is, as abhorrent as it is, in line with the views of the racists (now I do use the term perjoratively). Unfortunately, I don't have a bigger claim to neutrality than the fact that I was converted by the data, and in becoming a scientist, the realisation, to quote Lawrence Krauss, that "The universe does not care what you believe". It just is the way it is. Humans show biogenetic diversity, and it affects cognitive performance. It sucks, but there it is. Now can we please get over the fact that life is unfair and move on?

>>4847494
Family is not a socially constructed term, it's a measure of how likely it is that two individuals will share an identical allele at a given locus. To my disbelief, people don't seem to realise that you can find the normal racial groups in the data by doing the same test and looking for more alleles.

>>4847494
KK, it's happened again, we're now in another deadlock or definitional argument. Your definition of race differs from mine, so we have nothing to argue about. However, I want to continue using the term race because my concept is related to 19th century thinking. People of all era's have noticed that traits tend to occur together, and is correlated with biogeographic ancestry. The early 19th century attempts to classify people this way were crude, to say the least, but like all human pursuits that definition was expanded and modified as we progressed. My definition is a synthesis of what we know today, based on Cavalli-Sforza's data. So i'll keep using the term. Also, if I discriminate against an asian, i would be called a racist, not a biogeographic ancestyist, regardless of how i define the term race.

>>4847497
Considering I was a scientist, I'd say I know more about the pursuit of science than you. Are you a researcher? I doubt it by your liberal use of the term arsehole . . . I would never have used such an ad hominem arguing with you before you resorted to terms of abuse. I will admit however, that most of the biologists I worked with disagreed with me; my views were not the norm, but they were also not uncommon.

>>4847501
Sort of. If you look at a single gene, say a gene for Sickle cell Anaemia, you can make a bet that the individual that carries it is African. If you look at another gene, say a melanin dehydrogenase gene, you can be even surer. As the number of loci increases, so too does the sureness of your bet, until when you've looked at enough, its virtually a certainty. It's the reason why a poster above denied that indians were closer to whites than they were with africans, the experiment he quotes doesn't look at enough loci.

>>4847476
This is actually a good argument. However what I meant when I say predict is kinda different from what you're suggesting. Say if I run an IQ test on a class of five year olds, and find that they all score 130. I can make the prediction that they will probably earn more money than average when they reach adulthood. This prediction will not be right in all instances, but on average it almost certainly will be. That's what I'm going with. Also, slow down guys, there is a lot of you to reply to.

>>4847459
Have you read anything I said? I don't even have a race, I'm fucking biracial melanesian you idiot. And yes, I don't believe that environment effects IQ in the sense that we traditionally mean, if thats what you wee getting at.

>>4847466

The map was created by genetic loci tests on 110 different genes done by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza. It's exactly the way I would look for races if I was in charge of finding them, which is to look at a large number of genes and then check the correlations. So your statement "indians are less dissimilar from europeans than north africans are" is directly incorrect, by the data he has presented. I was impressed by this research, and even more impressed by the authors attempts to bend over backward to still claim that race didnt exist. I have the book around here somewhere but cant find it unfortunately. Here's a link to amazon though.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691029059/o/qid=959105295/sr=8-3/ref=aps_sr_b_1_3/103-070280
5-3403066

>>4847455
No I am not referring to the existing body of literature generated in the 1800s. I am refering only to my own convenient new definition of race. You can't add to my definition to make your position easier. I have stated my technical definition and you must procede from there.
Moreover, my comment regarding genetic differences was a direct response to OP's assertion that I was overestimating the power of genetics to differentiate racial populations. OP probably thought I was lying when I said I was a molecular biologist . . .

As for demonstrating race in other species, you could say its a concept similar to domestic breeds. If race is a partially inbred extended family (bear with me, using Sailers definition) you can see the similarity; breeds are often deliberately created by inbreeding related animals with a trait of interest. In humans, a similar phenomenon would have occured in geographically isolated human population.

>>4847446
>>4847448
Generally yes, although I think that hard worker often correlates with bad person. I also wasn't going to play word games with good or bad. I hate that shit.

>>4847434
lol, define asian country? Technically yes, I live in Australia, and I have visited my ancestral home fiji, but I'm pretty sure no in the sense that you mean. I have a sneaking suspicion you're about to bring up parental pressure or some such (I had this argument a lot with my colleagues when I worked in biology).

>>4847421
That is absolutely not the argument anyone is making ITT. If it were true, whites would assign a lower IQ to all poor people that were non white, such as asians. In fact even poor asians tend to outperform middle class whites. Thats not the way IQ science and intelligence testing has proceded, AT ALL, regardless of what Stephen J Gould told you otherwise.

>>4847387
>>4847397

Yup, thanks for not reading the thread dude, if you had, you might realise we were already looking into Spearmans extension of the IQ concept, applying statistical factor analysis to it, and putting it on much firmer statistical footing. Also, strike one thing off the list, you've now met a guy who wasn't what you would call a racist before he was a researcher (I hate the term scientist) but was what you would call a racist after. I happen to be biracial white-melanesian, and I'm on the white racist side of the debate.
As for your socio-economic factors, it actually blows my mind that this is still debated. The heratibility of IQ is approximately 0.84 according to twinning data, and NO socioeconomic effect on IQ has ever been found when genetic differences are controlled for.

>>4847353
Forgot pic sorry. Rather looks like race suddenly exists though eh?

>>4847167
Ok, I have just found a source I was looking for. The map shown on this pic was from The History and Geography of Human Genes (think I got the name wrong elsewhere). The colours it shows are based on a set of recurring genotypes that are correlated and seem to be overlap with biogeographic ancestry. The map shows the results of the statistical number crunching of genetic testing of a large number of SNP's from different individuals around the world. It looks rather like genetic testing can differentiate human groups, when used correctly.

>>4847271

>Can we agree there?

No. Intelligence as I define it can be measured, and it can predict things like academic and career success. It's a useful concept that allows us to make testable predictions, and hence is the perview of science. Intelligence as you define it is not really useful in that sense, particularly and especially in the context of this argument. I have nothing against your definition, but it kinda confuses the issue. If we have to start dealing with multiple issues there is no end to how complex this argument could become, and no end to how many "intelligences" you could add. You could even add sporting prowess to the list of intelligences and then claim that Africans must be more intelligent than whites because they dominate the NBA and NFL. Obviously our definition has to have utility.

>>4847190
We are now in a deadlock. The fundamental problem here is that we define intelligence differently, and that in your definition, the skill of writing is "intelligent" whereas in mine its not, it's artistic. We can't continue to argue on this point, we'll just end up doing a dance and waste time. When two parties cant agree on a definition, there is no argument to be had. But I will ask that you write down your definition of the concept, to compare with my own that I placed above? >>4847135

>>4847167
>Secondly, I think you overestimate the power of genetics

Err, have you read the name I'm using? I was a molecular biologist. I could provide a photostat of my honors degree as proof, but I'm really not sure I want to do that on 4chan. Also the working definition of species that I use these days is a set of organisms that share a common gene pool, but the term species has never been defined adequately. The point of bringing up species was in response to

>Since it has been proven that human beings have a common ancestor, racial typologies are not only irrelevant, but fundamentally incorrect.

My point was that this could easily be replaced with

>Since it has been proven that all life has a common ancestor, species are not only irrelevant, but fundamentally incorrect.

See what I did there? Species are no less arbitrary than race. They are only real in the sense that the transitional links between them are all dead.
On the point of the (in)ability of genetics to differentiate between different racial populations, well yeah, thats true, if you're looking at one gene at a time. Thats what the guys in the human genome project meant when they said "there's no such thing as race". I have always found this line of thinking completely retarded, not to put to fine a point on it. It's akin to us putting all black skinned individuals into the same race; which would mean we put all the africans in with the indians. Thats clearly not what we mean when we say race. Racial genetic testing should be like how we notice race every day; we should look at a range of genotypes, that occur together. As the number of genetic loci we test for rises, the common races that we know and love magically pop out of the data. I do apologise for the length of time on this post OP, i'm trying to hunt down a reference.

>>4847133
>You can just call intelligence whatever you want.

Precisely, you can define it however you like for the purposes of the argument, to illuminate some important concept, etc etc. For example, our modern usage of the word intelligent refers to the observation by Spearman that people tend to perform similarly on a wide range of unrelated mental tests. So to answer your question, no I would never refer to good writers as being more intelligent than shit writers, because as a skill writing has nothing to do with intelligence. If it did, Stephen Hawking would be a great writer. Have you ever read "A Brief History of Time"? His insights are amazing. His writing was not.

>>4847107
Darwin, in the origin of the species, never defined what a species was. He did that deliberately, because under his new theory, a species was arbitrary; it just so happened that the transitional links between two species were all dead. So in a sense, species are arbitrary. In fact, all defined logical sets are arbitrary. Where we draw the line is basically how we define the set. So i'll make some definitions to make sure we're arguing on clear footing

Race: a population of humans who tend to share a set of genotypic and phenotypic characteristics that correlate with that populations biogeographic ancestry.

>Wouldn't mind some feedback on this definition, not sure if it's better than Sailer's "Partially inbred extended family".

Intelligence: The average performance of an individual over a wide range of unique an unrelated mental tests/puzzles.

>Also wouldn't mind feedback here. Was going to go with something akin to how we measure processor speeds, like clock cycles, etc, but people usually don't like equating biological machines with man made machines.

>>4847090
You should probably read the 1923 Spearman paper that was alluded to already ITT. The basic thrust of the paper was that performance on a number of different cognitive tests tend to be weakly correlated, and as such there is a general mathematical factor, called g, that underlies all of them, and is synonymous with the concept commonly called intelligence. For this reason I don't call being able to write well an "intelligence"; it's a talent, and a useful one, but not an intelligence. Intelligence is what the computer science major guys had, the writers have a different skill altogether. It's not that there are multiple intelligences, it's that the other abilities you describe as such are not "intelligences" at all.

>>4847086
Hmm, must have missed that post. Oh well then

>>4847076
I no longer work in biology, so I dont have online access to journals. I remember reading it just before I quit, so the paper would be quite recent. However, this from a quick google search seems to report on the same paper.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100506-science-neanderthals-humans-mated-interbred-d
na-gene/

Also I havent read the book, but from what I hear, clan of the cave bear is fucking stupid. Neanderthals were bow legged, short and overlymuscular. They were not sexy in the slightest.

Actually OP, why have you replied to none of my posts? Just curious, don't want to start a flamewar, we're not on /b/ afterall.