there are racial and ethnic differences in IQ

[moorobot]

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I find it plausable and that convinces me that we have little hope of successfully addressing many current social problems.

[/ QUOTE ] Please, read Gould's book Mismeasure of man which quite clearly shows it is not plausible.

and it is unlikely that if it were true it would mean social problems are unsolvable, it would just change how we would have to go about solving them.

[MrMon]

I don't think we need to go far to see that clearly some groups adapt and hyperdevelop certain traits in superiority to other groups. Let's take poker for example. Anyone ever notice how among pros, Jews are disproportionately represented? Anyone ever wonder why? Is there a poker gene? Do they teach poker in Hebrew school? Something cultural?

Here's my theory. For hundreds of years, European Jews were prohibited from owning land and entering many professions. The ones they could enter, like moneylending, were math intensive. Culturally isolated, they of course tended to breed within their group, those best at math tended to do best, had bigger families, etc. Over a period as short as 1000 years, this development of a math "brain" had a telling effect. When math suddenly became important to society in general, who dominated? Those who were math oriented, of course. Those traits are present in other groups, of course, but they are more prevalant in a population that's been forced to develop that skill for a long period. Poker comes along, also math oriented, and they are disproprtionately there as well.

Can't prove my theory other than through anecdotal evidence, and I'd love to see a study on it, but if the theory held, it would show that reardless of the skill or "intelligence", it is possible that certain groups do possess an advantage, and it can develop over a relatively short period of time.

[Copernicus]

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I don't think we need to go far to see that clearly some groups adapt and hyperdevelop certain traits in superiority to other groups. Let's take poker for example. Anyone ever notice how among pros, Jews are disproportionately represented? Anyone ever wonder why? Is there a poker gene? Do they teach poker in Hebrew school? Something cultural?

Here's my theory. For hundreds of years, European Jews were prohibited from owning land and entering many professions. The ones they could enter, like moneylending, were math intensive. Culturally isolated, they of course tended to breed within their group, those best at math tended to do best, had bigger families, etc . Over a period as short as 1000 years, this development of a math "brain" had a telling effect. When math suddenly became important to society in general, who dominated? Those who were math oriented, of course. Those traits are present in other groups, of course, but they are more prevalant in a population that's been forced to develop that skill for a long period. Poker comes along, also math oriented, and they are disproprtionately there as well.

Can't prove my theory other than through anecdotal evidence, and I'd love to see a study on it, but if the theory held, it would show that reardless of the skill or "intelligence", it is possible that certain groups do possess an advantage, and it can develop over a relatively short period of time.

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Cultural immersion is sufficient, without isolation and without breeding.

[FlFishOn]

"These studies were flawed:"

All studies are flawed. I can find a social 'scientist' to attest to anything. Used to be snake oil, today it's social science.

[FlFishOn]

"...it is possible that certain groups do possess an advantage, and it can develop over a relatively short period of time."

Now please explain Hip Hop.

Honestly, I'm with you on this. It's just non-PC dynamite and that will cause the students in the group to, at a minimum, squirm in their chairs. You can't say these things on campus today. You'd go straight to re-education camp or worse. Thinking them is also prohibited, a clear thought crime.

[MidGe]

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Cultural immersion is sufficient, without isolation and without breeding.

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Quite right! And more, to expect physiological evolution over a few hundred years within a species that has such a long generational period, is really believing in evolution, LOL. It borders on fanaticism. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[FlFishOn]

"and it is unlikely that if it were true (Bell Curve) it would mean social problems are unsolvable, it would just change how we would have to go about solving them. "

No, their solution is impossible given common (and likely wrong) assumptions built up over the past 40 years. Tell me how, as a politician, you could propose any social change predicated on the idea that maybe US Blacks don't have a fully developed view of the future and future consequences, as compared to US Whites. This is suicide. This will not be incorporated into any social policy.

[guesswest]

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RE: the race thing. There was a thread going on here a while ago about race and IQ - it does turn out that there are significant physiological differences in brain structures (both of which are indicators of IQ) throughout different parts of the world, notably Africa which records lower IQs, and in proportion to brain physiology (ie higher IQ's in the North). So whether IQ tests are racially biased in a cultural sense, of whether certain racial groups just have lower IQs due to hardwiring, I don't know. I was intuitively opposed to the idea that a particularly racial group could be inherently 'smarter' but it seems theres a lot of compelling evidence out there to that effect. And yes race is a continuum, so's aging, the fact that there's crossover doesn't mean it's non-existant.

[/ QUOTE ] These studies were flawed:

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Just read Stephen J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man.


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I did read Gould's book quite some time ago, and I agree it's got a lot to offer, but you should remember it was very controversial at the time - many of his peers accused him of inaccuracies and bad science, and of misrepresenting their own work to further his own political agenda. Not to mention the fact that a whole lot of new research has been done in this area since he wrote it.

I remember when this thread came up last time I instinctively and vocally argued that there were no physiological factors accounting for IQ differences between races (and that they differ in all societies is fact), and automatically jumped on the idea of cultural and other biases in the tests themselves. As a liberal I'm programmed to do that. But I sort of regretted doing so afterwards because the evidence for genetic explanations is actually quite considerable, it's not a few studies it's numerous studies. Many of them hypothesising and looking for the exact opposite.

And as for the consensus view of experts in that field, I couldn't find a consensus view on this issue, I didn't read of many people willing to take a stand on it either way. I guess primarily because so many would use that information for distasteful and bigoted purposes if it was validated. But truth-seeking should be independent, whether it's convenient to a social view or not, and I found such a wealth of information on this when I looked about that I'm hard pressed to say there's nothing to it.

A good starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

[Warren Whitmore]

The bell curve was a fun book to read. It costed $50 bucks when I bought it. You can get it on ebay these days for 50 cents. It had very little on race in it although oddly enough race issues became its biggest selling point.

The two most interesting things in it in my opinion where.

1) Men have an IQ of 100 with a standard deviation of 15 and woman have a mean IQ of 100 with a standard deviation of 13.

2) IQ and income correlate tightly.

[FlFishOn]

"2) IQ and income correlate tightly. "

It's a bit more than that. They detail many life outcomes that correlate with IQ, income being only one.

My favorite piece of research was the comparison of income between Whites and Blacks when you control for IQ. It was almost equal.