Out of curiosity (and I'm not trying to stir shit), if there is a study sometime in the future that does determine some disparity between races (whether it be intellectually or physically or whatever) and seems to be at least somewhat scientific... what would be the response?
It kinda depends on what the disparity is. For instance, it is widely recognized that black people have more melanin in their skin than white people and it doesn't really bother most folk.
"Black men are on average smarter than white men".
"Asian men are imbued with excess testosterone along with other key chemical markers that makes rape a predominant tendency amongst the Asian population".
Shit that could actually bother people, I mean.
Organichu on
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited July 2008
I'm going with shock then, followed by immediate skepticism and a desperate attempt to wikeducate myself on the subject so I could figure out if there was anything funny going on with the study.
I'm not really seeing the point in positing this hypothetical, though.
"Black men are on average smarter than white men".
"Asian men are imbued with excess testosterone along with other key chemical markers that makes rape a predominant tendency amongst the Asian population".
Shit that could actually bother people, I mean.
Again, such a study, to be found valid, would be utterly scrutinized.
I doubt there would be a policy response, but there would almost certainly be a social response, which, as I noted earlier, could be a lot worse (or better!)
I was posting the hypothetical out of curiosity. I see a lot of people attack The Bell Curve as bunk science (and it seems to be bunk science, so it's justified). I'm just unsure of how normal, decent people that don't hate other races would respond to a legitimate claim about disparities in capacities between races. Hopefully with "who gives a shit, we're all human"... but who knows?
Neverthelss, this is not a moral issue. It is a scientific issue.
This is a false dichotomy.
When anybody engages in scientific inquiry, that inquiry contains assumptions and involves context which very well be moral issues. If somebody studies the difference in intelligence between two groups, they make assumptions about why those two groups (say, black people and white people, or men and women) are relevant as opposed to another two groups (such as poor people and rich people, or people living in rural communities versus people living in cities). They make assumptions about what intelligence is and why it is relevant to life in general. They may draw inferences from their data, or others may draw inferences of their own, that carry moral weight.
In the instance of the Bell Curve, the moral issue is very, very clear. There are obvious reasons why poor people might score lower on intelligence tests than rich people - or why people who grew up poor, but are high-income now, might score lower than people who grew up rich. Differences in intelligence do not imply a direct genetic cause, because "intelligence" is such a poorly-defined concept and the human brain is so malleable.
These assumptions and inferences themselves are subject to critcism, including - but not limited to - criticism on moral grounds. The notion that scientific inquiry is free from bias is a good idea to strive to, but we can't pretend that simply because we expect to hold scientists (and science authors) to that ideal that they actually do.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I'm just unsure of how normal, decent people that don't hate other races would respond to a legitimate claim about disparities in capacities between races.
Did they properly control for socioeconomic factors?
- Does that include controlling for childhood and parental income?
Did they use intelligence tests that were properly designed to be as free from cultural bias as possible?
How were their cohorts structured?
How much variation was there within races, and how does that compare to the variation between races?
What statistical measures did they use to determine significance?
What possible explanations are there for the disparities?
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I'm just unsure of how normal, decent people that don't hate other races would respond to a legitimate claim about disparities in capacities between races.
Did they properly control for socioeconomic factors?
- Does that include controlling for childhood and parental income?
Did they use intelligence tests that were properly designed to be as free from cultural bias as possible?
How were their cohorts structured?
How much variation was there within races, and how does that compare to the variation between races?
What statistical measures did they use to determine significance?
What possible explanations are there for the disparities?
Hey cease your fancy words.
I'm asking about a really, really delineated and particular scenario: it's determined that there is a genetic gap along racial lines. That's the explanation, and people accept it.
How does that affect race relations in the contemporary world?
edit: I really should have placed this in the racism thread. I'm sorry. That died for a couple of hours and I'm lonely.
I'm asking about a really, really delineated and particular scenario: it's determined that there is a genetic gap along racial lines. That's the explanation, and people accept it.
How does that affect race relations in the contemporary world?
Does it matter that this hypothetical is about as likely as scientists discovering evidence for the existence of fairies?
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I'm asking about a really, really delineated and particular scenario: it's determined that there is a genetic gap along racial lines. That's the explanation, and people accept it.
How does that affect race relations in the contemporary world?
Does it matter that this hypothetical is about as likely as scientists discovering evidence for the existence of fairies?
Not really, no. I'm asking about the state of race relations in this country. I obviously am not looking for some backdoor to legitimize racial bigotry. Just curious about how this country would react to racial bigotry fueled by 'legitimate' science.
There was one, it was called the Bell Curve. Here's what happens: people refuse to accept it and convince themselves that the study was performed terribly and debunked, even though the methods and conclusions were all pretty sound.
Nooooooooo now people are going to disagree with you and there's gonna be a long debate about the Bell Curve and nobody will address my hypothetical GRAAAAAAAAAH
Damn you Yar. If you didn't remind me so much of the word 'gar', meaning the large flying monster from the Sword of Truth novels, I'd hate you.
Nooooooooo now people are going to disagree with you and there's gonna be a long debate about the Bell Curve and nobody will address my hypothetical GRAAAAAAAAAH
Damn you Yar. If you didn't remind me so much of the word 'gar', meaning the large flying monster from the Sword of Truth novels, I'd hate you.
That's because your hypothetical is kinda dumb. It's like asking "what if we discovered that They Live was actually a documentary?"
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited July 2008
We just spent a whole page shitting on the Bell Curve because, yes, it was performed terribly and debunked. It has no merit. This should not be up for debate. Scientific racism is just racism that doesn't include the phrase "you tell 'um Skeeter!"
And Organichu, your hypothetical is really fucking hard to answer. That's why people aren't posting about it.
If you remember a while back, FP magazine did an issue that included five essays about the five most dangerous ideas in the world. Fukuyama did one on Transhumanism, which dealt with the fact that the most sacred moral idea of our time is that "all men are created equal" and that some people becoming more than human totally throws our perception of human rights into question.
Spoiler'd for kinda irrelevant:
This is where the idea for my >H shirt came from.
I think a study that could actually show something like this would have similar implications. If not all men are created equally, then why shouldn't our laws reflect that? If a group of people is dumber than another on the whole, might that not justify a different school system?
Now we're getting back on topic. Let's say all men are not created equal; what does that say about a system of laws that treats them as though that were the case?
Sorry, I missed where we already debated it. Feel free to look up wikipedia on it. There were detractors, but the majority of peers supported it.
EDIT: So ok forget that work, my point stands: it would be declared "bad science" no matter how good the science might hypothetically be. As evidenced by the responses above, likening this possibility to the possibility of fairies or zombies, the concept is religiously disavowed and hence it would be like getting fundamentalists to believe a study on evolution.
Nooooooooo now people are going to disagree with you and there's gonna be a long debate about the Bell Curve and nobody will address my hypothetical GRAAAAAAAAAH
Damn you Yar. If you didn't remind me so much of the word 'gar', meaning the large flying monster from the Sword of Truth novels, I'd hate you.
That's because your hypothetical is kinda dumb. It's like asking "what if we discovered that They Live was actually a documentary?"
Apparently I'm having trouble expressing my thoughts, because this makes sense to me. I'm not positing it as a realistic scenario, I'm wondering about the human condition and the sensitivity of race issues in America.
Organichu - I think the general social response has been demonstrated in this thread. Even if it were truth, no one would believe it. We can't, it is insane.
Apparently I'm having trouble expressing my thoughts, because this makes sense to me. I'm not positing it as a realistic scenario, I'm wondering about the human condition and the sensitivity of race issues in America.
See my edit above. You are making yourself clear, the responses you are getting are accurate. Even when you state it as hypothetically true, even in your hypothetical everyone still says it isn't true. Were this actually to happen, the response would be "that's not true." No matter what the study did or said. That is the answer to your question about how race politics would handle it.
Apparently I'm having trouble expressing my thoughts, because this makes sense to me. I'm not positing it as a realistic scenario, I'm wondering about the human condition and the sensitivity of race issues in America.
See my edit above. You are making yourself clear, the responses you are getting are accurate. Even when you state it as hypothetically true, even in your hypothetical everyone still says it isn't true. Were this actually to happen, the response would be "that's not true." No matter what the study did or said. That is the answer to your question about how race politics would handle it.
Apparently I'm having trouble expressing my thoughts, because this makes sense to me. I'm not positing it as a realistic scenario, I'm wondering about the human condition and the sensitivity of race issues in America.
See my edit above. You are making yourself clear, the responses you are getting are accurate. Even when you state it as hypothetically true, even in your hypothetical everyone still says it isn't true. Were this actually to happen, the response would be "that's not true." No matter what the study did or said. That is the answer to your question about how race politics would handle it.
If there were multiple studies from unbiased authors that demonstrated a meaningful difference in cognitive abilities between races, and demonstrated that genetic differences were the best explanation for this disparity, I really don't know what the social effect would be. Shit would probably hit the fan, but I don't know.
So ok forget that work, my point stands: it would be declared "bad science" no matter how good the science might hypothetically be. As evidenced by the responses above, likening this possibility to the possibility of fairies or zombies, the concept is religiously disavowed and hence it would be like getting fundamentalists to believe a study on evolution.
Actually, your analogy is backwards. It would be like getting evolutionists to believe a study on a young earth.
Studies on race and IQ tests have all shown pretty much the same thing: the longer a family lives in a first world country, the better their kids score on intelligence tests. The IQ gap between blacks and whites has diminished drastically after civil rights, and is continuing to narrow.
As for the creationist analogy, I'll quote an article that said it a lot better than I could. This is Stephen Metcalf responding to a facepalm-worthy article on race and intelligence by William Saletan, where Saletan referred to racial equality as "liberal creationism."
The crux of Saletan's pieces was his Liberal Creationist analogy. The analogy is hopeless along several competing dimensions, but it reminded me of the Dilettante's First Law of Empirical Narcissism. In a moment of controversy, the temptation to proclaim yourself an avatar of truth, and your opponent a faith-based inquisitor, is natural enough. But Darwin is Darwin thanks to generations of independent corroboration. By definition, generations of independent corroboration do not stand behind a thesis that is still being hotly contested. In claiming Darwin (or Copernicus or Galileo) for his cause, a person is often by implication saying: There would be consensus here, but for you damned critics! This is an odd definition of consensus. Conversely, when one's angry reaction to an idea is being adduced as evidence in its favor, one should ask: What does my anger have to do with the truth-content of your idea? If you told me there was a genetic basis to Jewish avarice, I would be angry. So what? What does my anger have to do with your crappy research?
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Sorry, I missed where we already debated it. Feel free to look up wikipedia on it. There were detractors, but the majority of peers supported it.
EDIT: So ok forget that work, my point stands: it would be declared "bad science" no matter how good the science might hypothetically be. As evidenced by the responses above, likening this possibility to the possibility of fairies or zombies, the concept is religiously disavowed and hence it would be like getting fundamentalists to believe a study on evolution.
Translation: Feel free to check my claim.
After actually checking claim: I was completely wrong but there could theoretically be a situation where I was right.
Its not "religiously disavowed" is "scientifically" disproven/irrelevant. Race is not a scientific concept. You can no more accurately perform rigorous inquiry that would prove race X is smarter than race Y on average than you could prove that tDK is wicked totally more teh aweomse than Iron Man. Race is a social construct. Intelligence is not a well defined metric.
Race is not a scientific concept. You can no more accurately perform rigorous inquiry that would prove race X is smarter than race Y on average than you could prove that tDK is wicked totally more teh aweomse than Iron Man. Race is a social construct. Intelligence is not a well defined metric.
This kind of dovetails with something else I was going to say.
There are, obviously, genetic traits that appear more commonly in some races than in others. Black people are more likely than whites to have a gene that alters response to beta blockers. Southeast Asians are more likely to have alcohol dehydrogenase deficiency. Caucasians are more likely than other groups to have a gene that reduces production of certain key liver enzymes important to drug metabolism.
However, none of the genes correlate precisely to race. The beta-blocker gene appears in about 40% of blacks, for instance - so even any given black person is more likely to lack the gene than to have it. Less than 10% of Caucasians have the liver enzyme gene I mentioned.
So even if you found a particular gene that measurably altered intelligence - which, by the way, is itself a rather absurd concept considering how malleable intelligence is - and found that that gene was correlated to race, it is highly likely that the correlation with race would be weak enough that race alone would not be sufficient to determine if any one individual carried that gene.
The number of erroneous or highly unlikely assumptions that go into the hypothetical "what if intelligence and race were genetically connected" scenario is what makes it preposterous, not that it's some kind of lefty sacred cow.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
So even if you found a particular gene that measurably altered intelligence - which, by the way, is itself a rather preposterous concept considering how malleable intelligence is - and found that that gene was correlated to race, it is highly likely that the correlation with race would be weak enough that race alone would not be sufficient to determine if any one individual carried that gene.
Yeah, this, pretty much. An actual scientific discovery that genes governing someone's skin melanin levels were directly and inextricably linked to intelligence would be sort of like discovering how to turn lead into gold through a purely chemical process: it goes against everything we already know about the subject, so of course it would recieve a hell of a lot of scruitiny.
Oh, I think that was just the usual miscommunication stuff. Happens to everyone. Have to be careful to specify who you're talking about and so forth. I mean, we've all been there at one point or another.
Anyway, in one last probably futile attempt to get this thread back on track:
The subject of censorship came up a few pages ago. Now, I think most people agree with some level of censorship (at the very least stuff like child pornography should be censored, don't have the right to shout "theater" in a crowded fire, etc). So, where should the line be drawn and why?
Aren't there a few slight genetic differentiations outside of appearance amongst races? For example, that heart (maybe diabetes?) medication designed specifically for blacks?
I mean, you have groups that have been reproducing in mostly separate gene pools for maybe two or three thousand years (blacks mostly interbreeding behind the Sahara, Native Americans separated by the Bering land bridge, Chinese/Japanese/Koreans, etc. separated by the Himalayas (excluding the interbreeding occuring among tribes on the steppe)) and there are bound to be a few genetic variations. Nothing drastic, but they certainly do exist.
Edit: Oops, didn't refresh the page for a while. Sorry if it's off-track. Should we take this discussion to the race thread?
Working class people were better off back then because of a stronger labor movement. Moreover, the minimum wage, and unemployment compensation adjusted for inflation were worth more.
Do you REALLY want me to explain who fucked that up?
Working class people were better off back then because of a stronger labor movement. Moreover, the minimum wage, and unemployment compensation adjusted for inflation were worth more.
When comparing the 1950's with now, we must also consider the increase since then in black social pathology. There are taboos against discussing that. They are taboos I have criticized in this thread. Most whites blame the increase in black social pathology on the Democrat Party. This is the major reason most white workers vote Republican. I consider a white working class that is an enthusiastic Republican constituency to be a bizarre anamoly. The tendency of low income whites to vote Republican is what I would call "white social pathology." Unfortunately, it exists.
In an earlier comment I condemned McCarthyism. You seem to have trouble understanding the nuances of my thinking.
I think what Scribe is trying to say here is that he'd like to retain the bits about the 50s he likes and not the parts he doesn't like, having them perfectly balance and not affect anyone negatively.
However, none of the genes correlate precisely to race. The beta-blocker gene appears in about 40% of blacks, for instance - so even any given black person is more likely to lack the gene than to have it. Less than 10% of Caucasians have the liver enzyme gene I mentioned.
Kind of a related tangent: when we talk about "black people" and genetics, we need to be certain of who exactly we're talking about. When we talk about "black people" in the Western world, especially in America, we're usually talking about the descendants of the black African slave diaspora, and most members of that group aren't 100% genetically African. Going by admittedly limited sources, black Americans have, on average, 15-20% European ancestry. Talking about genetic tendencies for foo among "black people" is, IMHO, pretty meaningless if you're only looking at black Americans without comparing the same tendencies for foo among black sub-Saharan Africans.
Apparently I'm having trouble expressing my thoughts, because this makes sense to me. I'm not positing it as a realistic scenario, I'm wondering about the human condition and the sensitivity of race issues in America.
See my edit above. You are making yourself clear, the responses you are getting are accurate. Even when you state it as hypothetically true, even in your hypothetical everyone still says it isn't true. Were this actually to happen, the response would be "that's not true." No matter what the study did or said. That is the answer to your question about how race politics would handle it.
See my post above. It's not really that people would have a problem with it as a race issue (though that would certainly come up) it's that it would completely undermine all our notions of justice and morality. If humans are not all created equally, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible, to explain why we treat everyone equally. (or at least ostensibly try to) If a particular race of people is more intelligent than another, then segregation of schools makes perfect sense. That's what's odd about this discussion: it's not really been derailed that badly. The issue of whether one human is likely to be as good as the next is absolutely essential to answering the question of what is appropriate legislation. Obviously we need to start from a more fundamental level because we're making very different fundamental assumptions about law and we're clashing on really high-level policy issues without understanding why we disagree.
In a free market, capitalist society such as the USA is, it takes a lot of regulation to balance the interests of business to profit vs. public health and safety. For example, the near complete lack of damage from Tuesday's earthquake outside of LA is attributed to the fact that nearly all of the buildings close to the epicenter were built after 1995, when much stricter building codes were implemented. Without those codes the buildings in that area would have been built as cheaply as possible and would have come apart from just a 5.4 quake.
If the FDA didn't tell companies "No, you can't put that slightly cheaper substance in your food products because it kills people and causes cancer" then we'd be eating even worse food than we already are.
Capitalism is dandy, but it requires a lot of regulation and scrutiny.
So even if you found a particular gene that measurably altered intelligence - which, by the way, is itself a rather preposterous concept considering how malleable intelligence is - and found that that gene was correlated to race, it is highly likely that the correlation with race would be weak enough that race alone would not be sufficient to determine if any one individual carried that gene.
Yeah, this, pretty much. An actual scientific discovery that genes governing someone's skin melanin levels were directly and inextricably linked to intelligence would be sort of like discovering how to turn lead into gold through a purely chemical process: it goes against everything we already know about the subject, so of course it would recieve a hell of a lot of scruitiny.
I think the point Feral was making is that it would still be a useless piece of information. It's the question I love asking when people get up and on about how X type of people are statistically Y - what exactly do they think we should do about it (usually the answer they want is something like "see now we don't have to feel bad or do anything about Africa" or something like that).
When it comes to Y being intelligence or something similar it changes precisely dick fucking all in the long run.
Apparently I'm having trouble expressing my thoughts, because this makes sense to me. I'm not positing it as a realistic scenario, I'm wondering about the human condition and the sensitivity of race issues in America.
See my edit above. You are making yourself clear, the responses you are getting are accurate. Even when you state it as hypothetically true, even in your hypothetical everyone still says it isn't true. Were this actually to happen, the response would be "that's not true." No matter what the study did or said. That is the answer to your question about how race politics would handle it.
See my post above. It's not really that people would have a problem with it as a race issue (though that would certainly come up) it's that it would completely undermine all our notions of justice and morality. If humans are not all created equally, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible, to explain why we treat everyone equally. (or at least ostensibly try to) If a particular race of people is more intelligent than another, then segregation of schools makes perfect sense. That's what's odd about this discussion: it's not really been derailed that badly. The issue of whether one human is likely to be as good as the next is absolutely essential to answering the question of what is appropriate legislation. Obviously we need to start from a more fundamental level because we're making very different fundamental assumptions about law and we're clashing on really high-level policy issues without understanding why we disagree.
It really doesn't though - schools test by standardized testing, so obviously in any statistical distribution no matter which way its skewed there's going to be a subset of people who pass the tests. Any conceivable racial disparity in intelligence (a hazily defined concept) has no reasonable policy outcomes other then some bullshit like re-assessing the expected ratios for AA or the like.
Apparently I'm having trouble expressing my thoughts, because this makes sense to me. I'm not positing it as a realistic scenario, I'm wondering about the human condition and the sensitivity of race issues in America.
See my edit above. You are making yourself clear, the responses you are getting are accurate. Even when you state it as hypothetically true, even in your hypothetical everyone still says it isn't true. Were this actually to happen, the response would be "that's not true." No matter what the study did or said. That is the answer to your question about how race politics would handle it.
See my post above. It's not really that people would have a problem with it as a race issue (though that would certainly come up) it's that it would completely undermine all our notions of justice and morality. If humans are not all created equally, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible, to explain why we treat everyone equally. (or at least ostensibly try to) If a particular race of people is more intelligent than another, then segregation of schools makes perfect sense. That's what's odd about this discussion: it's not really been derailed that badly. The issue of whether one human is likely to be as good as the next is absolutely essential to answering the question of what is appropriate legislation. Obviously we need to start from a more fundamental level because we're making very different fundamental assumptions about law and we're clashing on really high-level policy issues without understanding why we disagree.
No, that still doesn't really follow. If you stipulate that black people have on average lower intelligence (a stupid idea for reasons we've already gone into but we'll run with it for now) then "hey, let's segregate blacks into remedial schools" does not follow because you'd still have below-average white people who belong in those schools and above-average black people who don't. Your argument only holds if everyone of a given race had the same IQ, which is demonstrably false.
but, again, this is a logical train of thought based on assumptions that don't hold in reality.
Posts
It kinda depends on what the disparity is. For instance, it is widely recognized that black people have more melanin in their skin than white people and it doesn't really bother most folk.
Like.
"Black men are on average smarter than white men".
"Asian men are imbued with excess testosterone along with other key chemical markers that makes rape a predominant tendency amongst the Asian population".
Shit that could actually bother people, I mean.
I'm not really seeing the point in positing this hypothetical, though.
Incidentally, folks, racism thread is >>
Again, such a study, to be found valid, would be utterly scrutinized.
Thanks for the PM. (Not sarcasm, PD really did send me a nice PM.) I didn't realize you were responding to Scribe, not me. Sorry about that.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This is a false dichotomy.
When anybody engages in scientific inquiry, that inquiry contains assumptions and involves context which very well be moral issues. If somebody studies the difference in intelligence between two groups, they make assumptions about why those two groups (say, black people and white people, or men and women) are relevant as opposed to another two groups (such as poor people and rich people, or people living in rural communities versus people living in cities). They make assumptions about what intelligence is and why it is relevant to life in general. They may draw inferences from their data, or others may draw inferences of their own, that carry moral weight.
In the instance of the Bell Curve, the moral issue is very, very clear. There are obvious reasons why poor people might score lower on intelligence tests than rich people - or why people who grew up poor, but are high-income now, might score lower than people who grew up rich. Differences in intelligence do not imply a direct genetic cause, because "intelligence" is such a poorly-defined concept and the human brain is so malleable.
These assumptions and inferences themselves are subject to critcism, including - but not limited to - criticism on moral grounds. The notion that scientific inquiry is free from bias is a good idea to strive to, but we can't pretend that simply because we expect to hold scientists (and science authors) to that ideal that they actually do.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Did they properly control for socioeconomic factors?
- Does that include controlling for childhood and parental income?
Did they use intelligence tests that were properly designed to be as free from cultural bias as possible?
How were their cohorts structured?
How much variation was there within races, and how does that compare to the variation between races?
What statistical measures did they use to determine significance?
What possible explanations are there for the disparities?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Hey cease your fancy words.
I'm asking about a really, really delineated and particular scenario: it's determined that there is a genetic gap along racial lines. That's the explanation, and people accept it.
How does that affect race relations in the contemporary world?
edit: I really should have placed this in the racism thread. I'm sorry. That died for a couple of hours and I'm lonely.
Does it matter that this hypothetical is about as likely as scientists discovering evidence for the existence of fairies?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Not really, no. I'm asking about the state of race relations in this country. I obviously am not looking for some backdoor to legitimize racial bigotry. Just curious about how this country would react to racial bigotry fueled by 'legitimate' science.
Damn you Yar. If you didn't remind me so much of the word 'gar', meaning the large flying monster from the Sword of Truth novels, I'd hate you.
And Organichu, your hypothetical is really fucking hard to answer. That's why people aren't posting about it.
If you remember a while back, FP magazine did an issue that included five essays about the five most dangerous ideas in the world. Fukuyama did one on Transhumanism, which dealt with the fact that the most sacred moral idea of our time is that "all men are created equal" and that some people becoming more than human totally throws our perception of human rights into question.
Spoiler'd for kinda irrelevant:
I think a study that could actually show something like this would have similar implications. If not all men are created equally, then why shouldn't our laws reflect that? If a group of people is dumber than another on the whole, might that not justify a different school system?
Now we're getting back on topic. Let's say all men are not created equal; what does that say about a system of laws that treats them as though that were the case?
EDIT: So ok forget that work, my point stands: it would be declared "bad science" no matter how good the science might hypothetically be. As evidenced by the responses above, likening this possibility to the possibility of fairies or zombies, the concept is religiously disavowed and hence it would be like getting fundamentalists to believe a study on evolution.
Apparently I'm having trouble expressing my thoughts, because this makes sense to me. I'm not positing it as a realistic scenario, I'm wondering about the human condition and the sensitivity of race issues in America.
Hey - you're alright.
If there were multiple studies from unbiased authors that demonstrated a meaningful difference in cognitive abilities between races, and demonstrated that genetic differences were the best explanation for this disparity, I really don't know what the social effect would be. Shit would probably hit the fan, but I don't know.
Actually, your analogy is backwards. It would be like getting evolutionists to believe a study on a young earth.
Studies on race and IQ tests have all shown pretty much the same thing: the longer a family lives in a first world country, the better their kids score on intelligence tests. The IQ gap between blacks and whites has diminished drastically after civil rights, and is continuing to narrow.
As for the creationist analogy, I'll quote an article that said it a lot better than I could. This is Stephen Metcalf responding to a facepalm-worthy article on race and intelligence by William Saletan, where Saletan referred to racial equality as "liberal creationism."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Translation: Feel free to check my claim.
After actually checking claim: I was completely wrong but there could theoretically be a situation where I was right.
Its not "religiously disavowed" is "scientifically" disproven/irrelevant. Race is not a scientific concept. You can no more accurately perform rigorous inquiry that would prove race X is smarter than race Y on average than you could prove that tDK is wicked totally more teh aweomse than Iron Man. Race is a social construct. Intelligence is not a well defined metric.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I thought it was a side digression when someone ironically named "The Scribe" started advocating censorship of ideas he didn't like.
This kind of dovetails with something else I was going to say.
There are, obviously, genetic traits that appear more commonly in some races than in others. Black people are more likely than whites to have a gene that alters response to beta blockers. Southeast Asians are more likely to have alcohol dehydrogenase deficiency. Caucasians are more likely than other groups to have a gene that reduces production of certain key liver enzymes important to drug metabolism.
However, none of the genes correlate precisely to race. The beta-blocker gene appears in about 40% of blacks, for instance - so even any given black person is more likely to lack the gene than to have it. Less than 10% of Caucasians have the liver enzyme gene I mentioned.
So even if you found a particular gene that measurably altered intelligence - which, by the way, is itself a rather absurd concept considering how malleable intelligence is - and found that that gene was correlated to race, it is highly likely that the correlation with race would be weak enough that race alone would not be sufficient to determine if any one individual carried that gene.
The number of erroneous or highly unlikely assumptions that go into the hypothetical "what if intelligence and race were genetically connected" scenario is what makes it preposterous, not that it's some kind of lefty sacred cow.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yeah, this, pretty much. An actual scientific discovery that genes governing someone's skin melanin levels were directly and inextricably linked to intelligence would be sort of like discovering how to turn lead into gold through a purely chemical process: it goes against everything we already know about the subject, so of course it would recieve a hell of a lot of scruitiny.
I was called a meany-head for scoffing at the evil he was espousing, so I stopped talking about it. Please, continue to attack him.
Anyway, in one last probably futile attempt to get this thread back on track:
The subject of censorship came up a few pages ago. Now, I think most people agree with some level of censorship (at the very least stuff like child pornography should be censored, don't have the right to shout "theater" in a crowded fire, etc). So, where should the line be drawn and why?
I mean, you have groups that have been reproducing in mostly separate gene pools for maybe two or three thousand years (blacks mostly interbreeding behind the Sahara, Native Americans separated by the Bering land bridge, Chinese/Japanese/Koreans, etc. separated by the Himalayas (excluding the interbreeding occuring among tribes on the steppe)) and there are bound to be a few genetic variations. Nothing drastic, but they certainly do exist.
Edit: Oops, didn't refresh the page for a while. Sorry if it's off-track. Should we take this discussion to the race thread?
Yes.
I too would like congress to legislate my will.
Kind of a related tangent: when we talk about "black people" and genetics, we need to be certain of who exactly we're talking about. When we talk about "black people" in the Western world, especially in America, we're usually talking about the descendants of the black African slave diaspora, and most members of that group aren't 100% genetically African. Going by admittedly limited sources, black Americans have, on average, 15-20% European ancestry. Talking about genetic tendencies for foo among "black people" is, IMHO, pretty meaningless if you're only looking at black Americans without comparing the same tendencies for foo among black sub-Saharan Africans.
:!:
See my post above. It's not really that people would have a problem with it as a race issue (though that would certainly come up) it's that it would completely undermine all our notions of justice and morality. If humans are not all created equally, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible, to explain why we treat everyone equally. (or at least ostensibly try to) If a particular race of people is more intelligent than another, then segregation of schools makes perfect sense. That's what's odd about this discussion: it's not really been derailed that badly. The issue of whether one human is likely to be as good as the next is absolutely essential to answering the question of what is appropriate legislation. Obviously we need to start from a more fundamental level because we're making very different fundamental assumptions about law and we're clashing on really high-level policy issues without understanding why we disagree.
If the FDA didn't tell companies "No, you can't put that slightly cheaper substance in your food products because it kills people and causes cancer" then we'd be eating even worse food than we already are.
Capitalism is dandy, but it requires a lot of regulation and scrutiny.
When it comes to Y being intelligence or something similar it changes precisely dick fucking all in the long run.
You would still in fact, need, AA however.
but, again, this is a logical train of thought based on assumptions that don't hold in reality.