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Posted: 28-Oct-2009 11:23 by Chivalrousgent
"Just that, even if differences in IQ / genetics were proven, that no one race is any "better" than another" That's pretty much the most significant thing to bear in mind when discussing this subject. There are many who argue that there can be no difference between races, and implicitly state that this is because being less "intelligent" means that one has lower worth, and given that we live in such an egalitarian age, that wouldn't be acceptable. This is committing the "moralistic fallacy", however - what OUGHT to be is not always what IS. This sort of view dooms us to racist conclusions. If equality of people is predicated upon BIOLOGICAL equality, all it takes is for empirical evidence to show that there are biological differences (even small ones) and that pulls the rug out from racial equality. Instead, we should seek to base racial equality on more fundamental underlying rights to equality - that we grant them because they are self-evidently necessary and worthy, rather than because of some empirical fact.
Biologically-speaking, we are all fundamentally similar. There is greater variation within races than between races. That is not to say, however, despite the earnest desire of leftist scientists that there can be no slight difference on average between racial groups. If nothing else, there's clearly a difference in melanin content in the skin - that's what makes people darker in the first place. Is this particularly meaningful? Meh … not particularly, it's a wrinkle on the surface of human similarity. In every meaningful sense we are all much of a muchness.
Some argue that “race” is an invalid biological construct. I disagree, somewhat. Granted, skin colour per se is indicative of nothing. However, it is a proxy indicator for your genetic provenance – where your genes came from. In an increasingly globalised world where gene-flow is increasing massively between populations, this will become more and more irrelevant as the fact that humans were diverging genetically on a limited scale (the time-frames are pretty short in the grand scheme of things, hence why the differences between races are relatively shallow) in isolated groups for less than 100'000 years is negated by the fact that all the gene-pools which were once geographically isolated are now effectively the same pool. The chance of someone in Japan having kids with someone from Madagascar, previously, would've been almost unthinkable on a practical level. Nowadays the world is a lot “smaller” thanks to the information revolution and our massively improved travel infrastructure.
So, we had distinct groups largely geographically separated for tens of thousands of years – of course we expect to see some limited localised adaptation. Skin colour darkening over generations due to the level of sun exposure (remember that it's not that the sun exposure accumulates and you pass on your darkened skin to your kids, it's that over time those with naturally darker skin tend to be better adapted to their sunny environment, thus meaning they have a greater level of reproductive success so there's more of them about, and so on).
Might intelligence be in a similar league? Perhaps. Intelligence is certainly a function of the brain, but quite where it springs from is hard to pin down precisely. In principle though, given that the brain is an organ and subject to biological evolution, its emergent properties of intelligence, by extension, may well be subject to selective pressures. One of my old professors proffered a potential explanation for IQ differences across the races, though it is very much speculative and doesn't have a great deal of support. He posited that, perhaps, those who migrated out of Africa would've benefited from greater ability to solve novel problems (how to resolve the problem of cold, survive in new and strange environments etc.) and that this problem-solving is tied to intelligence – those who were “smarter” had greater reproductive success, ergo those who left Africa experienced an increase in “intelligence” in the population over time and on average.
The evidence for this is pretty tenuous, and I'm very much on the fence on this one, but it's a good example of the kind of explanations which may exist for an IQ gap if there is one.
Is there an intelligence gap? Well, it depends what we mean by “intelligence”. IQ tests have always been a somewhat controversial issue. It attempts to measure an “underlying intelligence factor”. There was a guy called Spearman who effectively found, after statistically analysing various competence test results, that those who did well in certain tests also did better in other ones. Without getting into all the statistics – he unearthed the fact that there was clearly some factor which underpinned all these tests results. He called this “general intelligence”, or what is commonly referred to now simply as g. IQ tests attempt to measure this.
Do they succeed? That's a topic which is so technical and complex that a forum post isn't going to do it justice …
Even assuming that IQ tests can properly identify this underlying g are they applicable across all situations? Are tests designed in Western Europe equally accurate and applicable in sub-Saharan Africa, China or Morocco? Are the tests truly objective or are they culturally-loaded/biased?
Some research suggested that success in such tests is dependent upon the questions being contextually relevant – by framing fundamentally the same question in different ways the researcher elicited totally different levels of response. Couching the question in a familiar context (haggling in a bazaar, for example) led to a far greater level of correct responses than the same question framed in a particularly abstract way.
In terms of IQ test results, there IS a marked difference between races, even when controlling for potential confounding factors like wealth, education etc. Whether this is a genuine correlation though, or whether there is some factor, like the aspirational ones Riz was talking about, which can explain it is hard to pin down at the moment.
The research being done is generally very interesting, but it's still a far from conclusively resolved field. I'm going to remain firmly sat on the fence, saying only that it there is certainly sufficient statistical evidence to suggest that there may be some average differences between race s in terms of “intelligence”, but that (1) this is largely irrelevant (except for better informing policy-making) (2) even if there is a difference, it will disappear over time as gene-flow increases and the world becomes more genetically homogenised (yay!) 