Dogfighting, Sports memorabilia and now genetics.

[andyfox]

My question was why should anyone take what he says on race seriously. He is positing his conclusions based on scientific evidence, yet his statements reveal him to be a bigot. His supposedly scientifically based conclusions are thus suspect. The quality of his facts cannot be good because he is predisposed to find what he wants to find.

It's not his reaction to his own findings that his statements reveal. It's that he was predisposed to finding those things. Put this together with the inadequacy of our methods of measuring intelligence and our concomitant inadequacy to assess the meaning of those measures and one cannot take Watson's "findings" seriously.

[Felix_Nietzsche]

....why 90% of blacks vote for the democrats.

[highlife]

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So tell me this, how does the "race" gene(s) correlate to the "intelligence" gene(s)?

Given the following:
One race has a higher average IQ than another race.
Race is genetically determined.
Intelligence is genetically determined (in part).

Don't those three facts have to be put together before there is any scientific basis for Watson's conclusion?

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All of those facts would be stipulated by anyone with even a minor knowledge of biology, right? Which of those three do you disagree with?

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You missed the question. I don't disagree with any of the 3 "facts" (discount the apparent lack of very accurate IQ tests).

How do you know genetics is the REASON why a race is testing at a higher IQ than another? That is, unless you can prove that genetics is 100% responsible for intelligence.

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I don't. Merely that if there is any genetic basis whatsoever, then it will have some impact on intelligence.

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This statement is wrong.

Assume:
Race is 100% genetic
Intelligence is 50% genetic
Intelligence is 50% environmental
Avg IQ of Caucasian 100
Avg IQ of African 90

How do you know that the difference in IQ is not achieved entirely by the 50% of intelligence that is environmentally determined? You would need to place babies of African racial genetics in the exact same environment as Caucasian babies and then test their intelligence to prove this. Since Watson makes no reference to IQ data being gathered in this way, and he also provides no proof that IQ is 100% genetic, his entire hypothesis is bunk.

EDIT: poorly worded major point! [img]/images/graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]

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So your point is that there are racial genetic differences, and there is some genetic component to intelligence, but there is no reason to assume that any of these racial genetic differences impact intelligence, right? I guess that makes sense. And thats sort of the point I was making earlier, that there wasnt much time where humans were isolated from each other for something relatively minor selection pressure like intelligence to have made much of a dent.

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Yes, it makes perfect sense. It also goes well beyond this discussion as a requirement to prove any scientific hypothesis loosely similar to the one Watson is posing here.

[highlife]

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....why 90% of blacks vote for the democrats.

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Just imagine if convicts could vote!

[Lottery Larry]

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Its still obviously imperfect, and that reminds me of my favorite rebuttal to people who argue that race is a real thing because "even a 5 year old can tell which people are black and which ones are white just by looking at them!" And that is: Nearly everyone thinks Tiger Woods is black, LOL. Dummies.

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Dummies indeed.

Not so much because they are wrong in regard to his ethnicity, as much as they are for feeling the need to define him by it. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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I have yet to meet a "black" person in my life, that wasn't set on fire. I've met a couple that were pretty close, being that darkly chocolate brown, but I wouldn't identify the ethnic group they come from as "black" by any stretch.

I know a few that are pretty close to "white"... who aren't dead. Kinda scary... but I work in software :P

Using color to describe/associate race is
a) stupid
b) (often) technically the wrong color

[Misfire]

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Using color to describe/associate race is
a) stupid
b) (often) technically the wrong color

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As is just about every other descriptive term we use. Caucasian (as if we all came from Russia), African American (which I've heard several times applied to blacks from Europe, while avoided for white Americans actually born in Africa), or Native American (how many generations do whites and blacks have to exist somewhere before they're also considered native?) They're all misnomers.

[Nonfiction]

I always find the term Caucasian funny because a large percentage of the Caucasus are not white... like Armenia for example.

[sards]

This is an interesting topic. I mostly agree with vhawk's posts in this thread. However, one of vhawk's main points was that while intelligence differences between races probably exist (and certainly theoretically could exist), it usually is a bad strategy to act racist in practice. But this is true only when dealing with individuals of a particular race. James Watson was not talking about dealing with individuals; he was talking about dealing with entire races, in which case I think the average racial differences could easily come into play. In particular, he criticized the social policies towards Africa. Now, if the average IQ of Africans is 85 (which I think is pretty close to accurate based on test results), and the average IQ of Americans is 100, Watson may have a good point that we may need to adjust our policies to account for this large (full standard deviation) difference in intelligence.

With that being said, IQ tests are not perfect (as evinced by the terrible question that AndyFox posted). And based on some of Watson's other quotes, he probably is a bigot. But I think his main point is probably a good one.