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Huntsman on evolution, warming: 'Call me crazy'

It would seem you are no longer contesting my point after what you were really doing was exposed in my last.
Not that your Burden wasn't Already met by me in This string and last few posts.
ie MANY studies cited in the Wiki Link I gave, in addition to the now deleted data I posted... as well as my previosy Jensen/Rushton post in THIS string. I linked back to.


Alright! That's exactly what I was looking for! Jensen/Rushton is precisely the kind of study I was looking for, because it gives some SD data. You see, I like to operate within a 95% confidence interval, which is to a rough approximation 2 SD. Interestingly, that 95% confidence interval spans just about all the way from about 115 down to 85.

I can now rest, knowing that there is little statistical significance to the numbers I've been seeing. I can rest even better knowing that even the statistically significant differences between disparate groups (Ashkenazi Jews and African Americans for example) are a result of the 10-50+% of intelligence that is not heritable (i.e. environmental)

Thanks!
:lol:
 
IN a clear statement, what do you attribute to be the cause for the deviation?

Because intelligence has such a high degree of heritability I attribute most of the variance between groups to genetics. Let me put aside the Black-White issue and focus on what we know from Asian adoption studies. Korean children were adopted in America and an agency that was handling many of these adoptions implemented a peculiar practice for their own religious/sociological/philosophical reasons - they randomly assigned the babies to adoptive parents. For academics who stumbled onto this data set years later, this was fan-freaking-tastic. The parents who adopted these babies were from all socioeconomic levels - double-plus good stuff for academics.

Here's what they found: On the issue of child's income when adult, years of schooling, likelihood of going to college, height, obesity, overweight metrics, and BMI there was a far stronger correlation of biological child to parent than there was for adoptive child to parent. On issues like smoking and drinking, the now adult biological and adopted children had about the same level of correlation to parental behavior.

When you look at the Korean adoptees academic records then tend to fall in line with the Korean-American means. Remember, these children were placed in families across the socioeconomic spectrum, so if environment was central to life outcomes, then we'd expect to see biological and adopted children tracking together in relation to the environment that their parents created. That's not what we saw. We saw the Korean adoptees performing more like the children of other Korean parents.

We see the same phenomenon play out with Black children adopted into white households. After being raised alongside their white brothers and sisters, these black children are not performing on par with their siblings, they're performing at a level much closer to the African-American mean. This is a pretty clear sign that environment ain't all that.

Now, in situations where there is extreme deprivation and lack of nutrition, there is room to bring about improvement, but that improvement likely will not close the gap for the gap is seen in the transracial adoption studies and the gap is also seen in Upper Class black households, as the children of very successful and intelligent black parent regress towards the mean of the black population (we also see this very same phenomenon in all families, not just black families - super crazy smart parents very rarely have super crazy smart kids, the parents are a bit of an anomaly and hit the genetic jackpot, but they can't roll the genetic dice and keep hitting 7 every generation, and so the kids fall back. This also works in reverse - sometimes ordinary parents hit the jackpot and their little prince or princess turns out smarter than them, or taller, or heavier, etc)

So, I think that most of what we're seeing in America today is the result of genetics for I believe that most of the environmental factors that could be depressing outcomes are at the point where their marginal effects are minimal or non-existent. No one in the US is suffering from Iodine-deficiency, like they do in Africa and which is known to cause IQ depression. Everyone is going to school. Any additional support given on environmental factors will increase the comfort level of the children and make their lives easier and a bit more pleasant, but I don't believe that there will be much closing in the Gap as a result.

We are, after all, dealing with evolution and genetics. Nature doesn't deal the deck of cards so that everything comes out equal for everyone.
 
Because intelligence has such a high degree of heritability I attribute most of the variance between groups to genetics. Let me put aside the Black-White issue and focus on what we know from Asian adoption studies. Korean children were adopted in America and an agency that was handling many of these adoptions implemented a peculiar practice for their own religious/sociological/philosophical reasons - they randomly assigned the babies to adoptive parents. For academics who stumbled onto this data set years later, this was fan-freaking-tastic. The parents who adopted these babies were from all socioeconomic levels - double-plus good stuff for academics.

Here's what they found: On the issue of child's income when adult, years of schooling, likelihood of going to college, height, obesity, overweight metrics, and BMI there was a far stronger correlation of biological child to parent than there was for adoptive child to parent. On issues like smoking and drinking, the now adult biological and adopted children had about the same level of correlation to parental behavior.

When you look at the Korean adoptees academic records then tend to fall in line with the Korean-American means. Remember, these children were placed in families across the socioeconomic spectrum, so if environment was central to life outcomes, then we'd expect to see biological and adopted children tracking together in relation to the environment that their parents created. That's not what we saw. We saw the Korean adoptees performing more like the children of other Korean parents.

We see the same phenomenon play out with Black children adopted into white households. After being raised alongside their white brothers and sisters, these black children are not performing on par with their siblings, they're performing at a level much closer to the African-American mean. This is a pretty clear sign that environment ain't all that.

Now, in situations where there is extreme deprivation and lack of nutrition, there is room to bring about improvement, but that improvement likely will not close the gap for the gap is seen in the transracial adoption studies and the gap is also seen in Upper Class black households, as the children of very successful and intelligent black parent regress towards the mean of the black population (we also see this very same phenomenon in all families, not just black families - super crazy smart parents very rarely have super crazy smart kids, the parents are a bit of an anomaly and hit the genetic jackpot, but they can't roll the genetic dice and keep hitting 7 every generation, and so the kids fall back. This also works in reverse - sometimes ordinary parents hit the jackpot and their little prince or princess turns out smarter than them, or taller, or heavier, etc)

So, I think that most of what we're seeing in America today is the result of genetics for I believe that most of the environmental factors that could be depressing outcomes are at the point where their marginal effects are minimal or non-existent. No one in the US is suffering from Iodine-deficiency, like they do in Africa and which is known to cause IQ depression. Everyone is going to school. Any additional support given on environmental factors will increase the comfort level of the children and make their lives easier and a bit more pleasant, but I don't believe that there will be much closing in the Gap as a result.

We are, after all, dealing with evolution and genetics. Nature doesn't deal the deck of cards so that everything comes out equal for everyone.

Too often gentics is interpreted to mean race, which I would argue is not the same thing. Among white folk, there are gentic differences, in which one family has smarter kids than another. If we use these stats to suggest one race is smarter than another, a very worrisome proposition, I think you are misreading the numbers.

Intelligence is not something that can be limited to one factor. Test themselves can be less accurate than we like to believe. So, I disagree. If all things were equal, every race would have very similar distributions of of numbers in intelligence.
 
Any noted differences at any testing or study are meaningless without an explanation as to why the difference is there.

Any report of a house on fire is meaningless without an explanation as to why the house is on fire.

The differences are quite meaningful. They're real. They have everyday impact on millions of lives and on society. Knowing why the differences exist will give us more information, most assuredly, but knowing that something exists without knowing why is quite useful in itself. Knowing that your house is on fire gives you the information to call the fire department RIGHT NOW and then, later, you can look into why your house was ablaze.
 
Any report of a house on fire is meaningless without an explanation as to why the house is on fire.

The differences are quite meaningful. They're real. They have everyday impact on millions of lives and on society. Knowing why the differences exist will give us more information, most assuredly, but knowing that something exists without knowing why is quite useful in itself. Knowing that your house is on fire gives you the information to call the fire department RIGHT NOW and then, later, you can look into why your house was ablaze.

An apples to tree frogs comparison.

Real? Maybe, depending on the accuracy of the measurement, but why means more. Knowing a house is s danger, more the comparison here, and not knowing what to send, or do, as it could be a fire, a tornado, a vandal, a gas leak. You have to know what the numbers mean, otherwise, the information is incomplete and rather useless.
 
RD, A few points...

2. Your specific chart was identified . . . .

What specific chart?

3. It seems that if we accept a heritability of 0.5 to 0.9, there is MORE than adequate environmental influence to account for the deviations given (i.e. 1 SD black:white)

And here we come to the game of whack-a-mole which has stumped the creationists for the last 60-100 years. The environmental factors COULD account for the deviation but what are those factors? Nothing so far is going up roses for the creationist-side. Not schools, not teachers, not school resources, not nutrition, not neighborhood, not income, not wealth, not busing, not black-only schools, not blacks in mostly white schools, etc. Go for it. The troubling part of this framing of the problem is the supposition that evolution must have created a cognitively uniform species and that all variation must be due to environment. As I noted, the environment-only position is quite extreme compared to the genes-environment combination.
 
Any report of a house on fire is meaningless without an explanation as to why the house is on fire.

The differences are quite meaningful. They're real. They have everyday impact on millions of lives and on society. Knowing why the differences exist will give us more information, most assuredly, but knowing that something exists without knowing why is quite useful in itself. Knowing that your house is on fire gives you the information to call the fire department RIGHT NOW and then, later, you can look into why your house was ablaze.

Knowing that one house is on fire (which actually isn't that clear -- maybe it's just someone barbecuing out back) isn't much help if your goal is to prevent house fires across the country.
 
I think you also overstate the case that a link between IQ and race is generally accepted.

The controversy focuses on cause, not existence.

I should think that would be fairly obvious. If it proves out then we should invest more in early child education.

So, in this make-believe world, when children from all races and socioeconomic groups begin to attend early childhood education and all have their IQs boosted by 4 points, then what?
 
We see the same phenomenon play out with Black children adopted into white households. After being raised alongside their white brothers and sisters, these black children are not performing on par with their siblings, they're performing at a level much closer to the African-American mean. This is a pretty clear sign that environment ain't all that.

The only problem there is that it isn't actually true. These studies that you want to believe are so clear cut are in fact anything but.

"Both Lynn (1997, this issue) and Rushton (1997, this issue) dispute the task force's conclusion that there is no direct evidence for a genetic interpretation of the Black—White IQ difference. Lynn's succinct comment cites two lines of evidence that he finds particularly persuasive: (a) the Minnesota adoption study and its 10-year follow-up and (b) studies relating head or brain size to intelligence test scores. I respond to these two points in some detail and then comment briefly on other issues raised by Rushton.

The original Minnesota study ( Scarr & Weinberg, 1976 ) included both the adopted and the biological children of 101 middle-class families (each with two White parents), tested at an average age of about 7 years. The mean IQ of the adopted Black children was 106.3, well below the 111.5 of the adopted White children and the 116.7 of the biological children but a full standard deviation above the expected IQ mean of Blacks in Minnesota. Adoptees with one Black and one White birth parent scored higher than those with two Black birth parents, but even the latter averaged 96.8. These and other findings led Scarr and Weinberg to conclude that "the social environment plays a dominant role in determining the average IQ level of Black children" (p. 739). But follow-up testing when the children were about 17 years of age had quite a different result: The mean IQ of the retested Black adoptees was only 96.8, and those with two Black birth parents averaged 89.4 ( Weinberg, Scarr, & Waldman, 1992 ). That is why Lynn (1997) says, "Black babies adopted by White parents registered no IQ gains" (p. 73), a point he has elaborated elsewhere ( Lynn, 1994 ).

As Waldman, Weinberg, and Scarr (1994) made clear in their response to Lynn (1994) , this conclusion is misleading. Everyone involved in this debate is well-aware that such comparisons must be corrected for the Flynn effect: Mean scores on all standard IQ tests seem to rise steadily at about 0.3 points per year. In the Minnesota study, where the tests used in the follow-up were generally not the same as those that had been given the first time, these corrections are complex and must be made on an individual basis. Until they have been made–Waldman et al. reported that they are in progress–raw figures like those above are relatively meaningless.

A further complication is that race and preadoptive experience were strongly confounded in the Minnesota study ( Scarr & Weinberg, 1976 ). At the time they joined their new families, for example, the Black adoptees had had more prior placements, rated of poorer quality, than their White counterparts. This was especially the case for the children with two Black birth parents, who were not adopted until they were, on average, about 32 months old. Because any later IQ differences between these groups may have resulted from differences in preadoptive experience, the Minnesota data provide no clear evidence for the genetic hypothesis. But it is only fair to say that they do argue against certain versions of the environmental hypothesis (pending the necessary Flynn effect corrections): The mere fact of growing up in a middle-class home apparently does not, by itself, raise one's score on intelligence tests given at adolescence."

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~maccoun/PP279_Neisser2.html#c19

Notwithstanding your obviously strong wish that whites are genetically smarter than blacks, the science doesn't convince.
 
The controversy focuses on cause, not existence.

That is patently false. The existence of a statistically significant genetic difference, and the extent of any genetic difference, are very much open questions.

So, in this make-believe world, when children from all races and socioeconomic groups begin to attend early childhood education and all have their IQs boosted by 4 points, then what?

Whether IQ is boosted is immaterial. The significant finding was that many other metrics showed substantial improvement: less involvement in crime, higher rate of advanced education, much higher earning potential, etc. So the "then what" is that we may be able to improve people's lives. Terrible idea, right?
 
That is patently false. The existence of a statistically significant genetic difference, and the extent of any genetic difference, are very much open questions.

Really, you should look into a remedial reading comprehension class. You've done this numerous times now. Slow down and think about what you are reading on the screen in front of you. Wait until you understand what you've just read before you dash off a reply. Your inability to argue honestly by accurately engaging what I write is off-putting and leads me to conclude that you have no interest in honest dialog.

Whether IQ is boosted is immaterial. The significant finding was that many other metrics showed substantial improvement: less involvement in crime, higher rate of advanced education, much higher earning potential, etc. So the "then what" is that we may be able to improve people's lives. Terrible idea, right?

And what did I say when I summarized Heckman's findings? Huh?

Even on the non-intelligence metrics, the improvement that is seen is improvement that is characterized as improvement in relation to how others are doing, but what happens when every child gets the benefits of early childhood education. For instance, school completion rates increased due to intervention, but the rates increased against a population that didn't have the benefit of early childhood education. Do you believe that when "the tide lifts all boats" that these gains will still be achievable or will the be lost due to the rest of the population's movement up the ladder?
 
Really, you should look into a remedial reading comprehension class. You've done this numerous times now. Slow down and think about what you are reading on the screen in front of you. Wait until you understand what you've just read before you dash off a reply. Your inability to argue honestly by accurately engaging what I write is off-putting and leads me to conclude that you have no interest in honest dialog.

Translation: you have no argument, so you go off on a meaningless ad hominem rant. Your modus operandi.


And what did I say when I summarized Heckman's findings? Huh?

Even on the non-intelligence metrics, the improvement that is seen is improvement that is characterized as improvement in relation to how others are doing, but what happens when every child gets the benefits of early childhood education. For instance, school completion rates increased due to intervention, but the rates increased against a population that didn't have the benefit of early childhood education. Do you believe that when "the tide lifts all boats" that these gains will still be achievable or will the be lost due to the rest of the population's movement up the ladder?

Hmm, so your argument seems to be, who cares if we can improve the prospects of ALL these kids? It's only meaningful if we can improve some in relation to others? Like, it would a good think if we could raise half the classes test scores by 20%, but if you raise ALL the kid's test scores 20%, that's not worth doing? Seriously? That's your argument? :lol:
 
The only problem there is that it isn't actually true. These studies that you want to believe are so clear cut are in fact anything but.



http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~maccoun/PP279_Neisser2.html#c19
The only problem is, again (surprise) what you post not only isn't true....
it's Not on point
it's narrow, (Minnesota adoption)
it's Dated.
NOTHING post-1997.

While virtually all my wiki Studies Post-1997, are Far wider than the cited/disputed Minnesota Trans-racial adoption study.

You cite Lynn in 1997 re Minnesota..
Here was Lynn as I posted him on the Whole wide issue in 2006:
Richard Lynn, "Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis" 2006 Table 16.2 (indigenous populations)

Estimated average IQ

Arctic Peoples ---------------- ------------ 91
East Asians -------------------- ---------- 105
Europeans ------------------- - ---------- 100
Native Americans (north & south) ------ 86
Southern Asian & Northern Africans --- 84
Bushmen (southern Africa) -------------- 54
Africans (subsaharan) -------------------- 67
Native Australians (aboriginals) --------- 62
Southeast Asians ------------------------- 87
Pacific Islanders -------------------------- 85


Not to mention a whole host of other Info Unaddressed by your dated link that go as late as 2010 in my WIDE/CURRENT Wiki entry which cites numerous studies including use of 6¼ MILLION confirming IQ scores with SAT ones.
 
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I accept that the word "useless" was an overstatement on my part. You did however identify the point I was attempting to make - that it's purely probabilistic. My contention is that there are probably significant genetic differences that will become apparent from the lumping together of disparate groups based on any characteristic - even what letter their name begins with.
A couple of points:

1) "Purely probabilistic" is not a bad thing. Just about anything you study in psychology or any social science is "purely probabilistic." [One could go so far as to argue that most all knowledge is purely probabilistic, that we can be certain of almost nothing.] Probability allows us to derive meaningful knowledge from what is too complex to comprehend or is simply unknown.

2) I would certainly agree with you that "significant differences" could be found on just about any characteristic (assuming that by use of the term you're referring to statistical significance) - but that says more about the problem of making judgments on tests of significance alone than it does about making judgments based on racial distinctions. Current APA reporting recommendations (which guide most publishing of research on intelligence) ask for effect size, confidence intervals and power in addition to p values for significance. Any significant result based on "what letter their name begins with" would be so meaningless as to be unpublishible - save for an illustration on why it's poor science to gauge the practical significance of research findings on tests of statistical significance alone.

It should also be noted that if any community has been critical of overreliance on significance testing in the social sciences, it is psychometricians, who have a far better understanding of statistics than your everyday social science researcher.

Here's an example your post reminded me of: it would be correct but misleading to say that most marathon winners are of African heritage. It would be more useful to describe them as Kenyans.
It is only "misleading" (which implies a purposeful intent to deceive) if we know it is Kenyans and not Africans as a whole who tend to win marathons. In the absence of that knowledge, the simple racial distinction is quite useful, is it not?

I don't think there's any problem with the logic of using such distinctions. What can be misleading (and which occurs more often than not) are illogical generalizations based on these distinctions (e.g. thinking that white people as a group are smarter than black people as a group, or believing that the liklihood of a random white person off the street having a higher IQ than a random black person off the street is anything other than very slightly above chance).
 
When the results reported in one study stand part from the consistent results reported in the body of literature, then attention must be paid to WHY the results contradict the literature. The abecedarian project has generated quite a bit of back and forth on this issue.
I think you'll agree that there's been "quite a bit of back and forth" on every major research study relating to race and intelligence. Spitz's critique identifies an anomolous finding inconsistent with the author's conclusions. It adds uncertainty to the conclusion but doesn't altogether invalidate the findings. Such limitations have been found in every major study on race and intelligence, and will continue to be found for quite some time. We are far from being able to declare with any certainty whether observed differences can or can't be mediated through intervention, or whether, how, and to what degree genes might play a role.

On the latter topic - even if we were to accept on face value the results of twin and adoption studies, there are many alternative hypotheses still to be tested. Such studies have done little or nothing to control for potential prenatal confounds. What is assumed to be genetic could very well be the result of cultural differences in nutrition or some other variable - which may lead some researchers to conclude that the cause is largely environmental. Another researcher might challenge that finding, claiming that a key nutritional variable is not influenced by culture or upbringing, but by a genetic difference that causes certain cravings, etc.

Perhaps in the future we'll be seeing longitudinal studies that track the outcomes of children born of surrogate mothers, or from an egg donor, or who knows what else?
 
It is only "misleading" (which implies a purposeful intent to deceive) if we know it is Kenyans and not Africans as a whole who tend to win marathons. In the absence of that knowledge, the simple racial distinction is quite useful, is it not?
Reading this again, I should retract the bolded sentence - "misleading" doesn't necessarily connote "a purposeful intent to deceive." This however doesn't affect the larger point.

Yes, it is misleading, but there is no way to know that without further researching the topic. If we find that race is a meaningful and reliable predictor of intelligence, further research should attempt to reduce error in the prediction. We might control for nationality and come up with an even better predictive variable, "Kenyan."

I would add that "Kenyan" - like race - is also a social construct with no scientific basis that can nonetheless be a very useful predictor variable.
 
Reading this again, I should retract the bolded sentence - "misleading" doesn't necessarily connote "a purposeful intent to deceive." This however doesn't affect the larger point.

Yes, it is misleading, but there is no way to know that without further researching the topic. If we find that race is a meaningful and reliable predictor of intelligence, further research should attempt to reduce error in the prediction. We might control for nationality and come up with an even better predictive variable, "Kenyan."

I would add that "Kenyan" - like race - is also a social construct with no scientific basis that can nonetheless be a very useful predictor variable.
"Misleading", whether intentional or not, is where You find Yourself now.
Because It's Not just the political construct "Kenyans" you keep trying to pass off. It's Kenyans AND Ethiopeans. A possibly coherent East African racial subgroup.

East African Marathon Dominance By the Numbers « Toni Reavis
Of 149 sub-2:10 Marathons in 2010

Kenya – 79 (53%)
Ethiopia – 48 (32%)
USA - 2 (.013%)

Of 135 sub-2:30 Marathons in 2010, Women

Ethiopia– 60 (44%)
Kenya – 17 (12.5%)
Russia – 15 (11%)
Japan – 14 (10%)
USA - 4 (.03%)
 
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"Misleading", whether intentional or not, is where You find Yourself now.
Because It's Not just the political construct "Kenyans" you keep trying to pass off. It's Kenyans AND Ethiopeans. A possibly coherent East African racial subgroup.

East African Marathon Dominance By the Numbers « Toni Reavis
That was nijato's example, not mine. Regardless, it was only used as an example to convey a point, so whether its Kenyans or Kenyans & Ethiopians doesn't really matter - both examples would illustrate the same point.
 
On the latter topic - even if we were to accept on face value the results of twin and adoption studies, there are many alternative hypotheses still to be tested. Such studies have done little or nothing to control for potential prenatal confounds. What is assumed to be genetic could very well be the result of cultural differences in nutrition or some other variable - which may lead some researchers to conclude that the cause is largely environmental. Another researcher might challenge that finding, claiming that a key nutritional variable is not influenced by culture or upbringing, but by a genetic difference that causes certain cravings, etc.

If we're going to shift gears and talk about process, let's go to foundational levels. Recall that I'm criticizing liberal creationists and that includes those in the academy. Let me quote Matt Ridley in Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human (actually I'm going to make this an extensive quote so that the end of the quote is embedded in context)


From then on, even the assertion of heritable IQ led to vitriolic campaigns of denunciation, assaults on your reputation and demands for your dismissal. The first to suffer this treatment was Arthur Jensen in 1969, following his article in the Harvard Educational Review. By the 1990s, the argument that society was segregating itself by assortive mating along intellectual and therefore racial lines—asserted in The Bell Curve by Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray—provoked another wave of rage among academics and journalists.

Yet I suspect that if you took a poll of ordinary people, they would hardly have changed their views over a century. Most people believe in “intelligence”—a natural aptitude or lack of it for intellectual pursuits. The more children they have, the more they believe in it. This does not stop them from also believing in coaxing it out of the gifted and coaching it into the ungifted through education. But they think that there is something innate. . .

Brains are composed of white matter and gray matter. When, in 2001, brain scanners reached the stage that people could be compared for the amount of gray matter in their brains, two separate studies in Holland and Finland found a high correlation between g and volume of gray matter, especially in certain parts of the brain. Both also found a huge correlation between identical twins in volume of gray matter: 95 percent. Fraternal twins had only a 50 percent correlation. These figures indicate something that is under almost pure genetic control, leaving very little room for environmental influence. Gray matter volume must be “due completely to genetic factors and not to environmental factors” in the words of Danielle Posthuma, the Dutch researcher. . . . .

The opening words of Harris’s article were: Do parents have an important long-term effect on the development of their child’s personality? This article examines the evidence and concludes that the answer is no.

From about 1950 onward psychologists had studied what they called the socialization of children. Although they were initially disappointed to find few clear-cut correlations between parenting style and a child’s personality, they clung to the behaviorist assumption that parents were training their children’s characters by reward and punishment, and the Freudian assumption that many people’s psychological problems had been created by their parents. This assumption became so automatic that to this day no biography is complete without a passing reference to the parental causes of the subject’s quirks. (“It is probable that this wrenching separation from his mother was one of the prime sources of his mental instability,” says a recent author, referring to Isaac Newton.)

To be fair, socialization theory was more than an assumption. It did produce evidence, reams of it, all showing that children end up like their parents. Abusive parents produce abusive children, neurotic parents produce neurotic children, phlegmatic parents produce phlegmatic children, bookish parents produce bookish children, and so on.

All this proves precisely nothing, said Harris. Of course, children resemble their parents: they share many of the same genes.
Once the studies of twins raised apart started coming out, proving dramatically high heritability for personality, you could no longer ignore the possibility that parents had put their children’s character in place at the moment of conception, not during the long years of childhood. The similarity between parents and children could be nature, not nurture. Indeed, given that the twin studies could find almost no effect of shared environment on personality, the genetic hypothesis should actually be the null hypothesis: the burden of the proof was on nurture. If a socialization study did not control for genes, it proved nothing at all. Yet socialization researchers went on year after year publishing these correlations without even paying lip service to the alternative genetic theory.


Liberal creationism is the default position and when we look at the strength of the two competing world views - evolution versus liberal creationism, evolution is the stronger in terms of predictive power. Liberal creationists start off with the wrong null hypothesis. All of social science is predicated upon the notion that evolution doesn't exist and has no effect on the issue of study.

Here are Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh writing in The Nation (The Nation, for pete's sake, cannot be accused of being a right-wing creature):


When social psychologist Phoebe Ellsworth took the podium at a recent interdisciplinary seminar on emotions, she was already feeling rattled. Colleagues who'd presented earlier had warned her that the crowd was tough and had little patience for the reduction of human experience to numbers or bold generalizations about emotions across cultures. Ellsworth had a plan: She would pre-empt criticism by playing the critic, offering a social history of psychological approaches to the topic. But no sooner had the word "experiment" passed her lips than the hands shot up. Audience members pointed out that the experimental method is the brainchild of white Victorian males. Ellsworth agreed that white Victorian males had done their share of damage in the world but noted that, nonetheless, their efforts had led to the discovery of DNA. This short-lived dialogue between paradigms ground to a halt with the retort: "You believe in DNA?"

More grist for the academic right? No doubt, but this exchange reflects a tension in academia that goes far deeper than spats over "political correctness." Ellsworth's experience illustrates the trend -- in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and other departments across the nation -- to dismiss the possibility that there are any biologically based commonalities that cut across cultural differences. This aversion to biological or, as they are often branded, "reductionist" explanations commonly operates as an informal ethos limiting what can be said in seminars, asked at lectures or incorporated into social theory. Extreme anti-innatism has had formal institutional consequences as well: At some universities, like the University of California, Berkeley, the biological subdivision of the anthropology department has been relocated to another building -- a spatial metaphor for an epistemological gap.​
 
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Lets put "why" aside for the time being and focus on "how"

There are lots of very complex structures in humans, insects, animals, fish, etc. According to evolutionary theory, they evolved from less complex structures and survived in the species because they offered a survival advantage.

How can evolution be tested???? Some scientists think the ear evolved from a breathing tube that allowed ancient fish to take an occasional breath of air through the top of their head. First of all, at some point, the fish never had a breathing tube. How did it spontaneously develop? I can see an advantage to a shallow water fish to be able to breath air as well as water, but the fish couldn't decide it wanted to do that and spontaneously alter its structure to do so. Even if countless generations are struggling along breathing just water, how do they suddenly start growing a tube? Was there some spontaneous mutation of on fish and it had a freaking hole in its head that connected to lungs/gills and allowed it to breath air?

We've managed to observe evolution in action, that's how you test it. And we're not talking just bacteria either.

As for the gills -> lung transition, you're trying to think in leaps of transition developing entirely new structures instead of incremental steps in changing already-existing structure. Gills can breathe air for a short period if they stay wet. Way back then, there was no competition on land from other animals, so a fish able to spend longer periods of time on land because its gills were better adapted to air breathing had an advantage.
 
If we're going to shift gears and talk about process, let's go to foundational levels. Recall that I'm criticizing liberal creationists and that includes those in the academy. Let me quote Matt Ridley in Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human (actually I'm going to make this an extensive quote so that the end of the quote is embedded in context)

Well, there's your opinion, based on Matt Ridley's opinion. So what? There is a ton of opinion on both sides of the issue. Since when has science had a "burden of proof" requiring someone to disprove a default position? :roll:
 
Hey now. That's not helpful. Ignorance of something isn't proof of ignorance of everything.

I believe differences in intellect between INDIVIDUALS are far more significant than most people consciously realize.

I'd bet the farm that if you took a handful of upper 10%ers on an island with a group of lower 30%ers ten times larger, the former would completely dominate the latter.

I can't think of any other genetic variant that creates such a profound advantage. Nobody is faster or stronger than the slowest or weakest to the degree the most intelligent are equipped to compete with the least intelligent.

Make no mistake, I come at this issue from the perspective that it is not ok for the strong to prey upon the weak. Any strength, any weakness.

I don't think intellect confers "superiority". Any more than being able to run faster than everybody else can.

It does confer a significant competitive advantage. To an "unfair" degree, IMHO.

We DO need to be watched!

I disagree....somewhat

While intelligence is definitely conveys a strong competitive advantage, it is far from the only factor that increases genetic fitness. I'd also point out that in evolutionary terms, "success" is measured in terms of spreading ones' genes. I'm not sure you're using the same definition that I am
 
Um, the full quote you included adds nothing. It does not establish that each breed of dog is a separate species, as you speciously claimed. I think it's pretty apparent that I wasn't plagiarizing, as I didn't remove the footnote numbers. :roll:

[EDIT: my apologies. I misread your original post. I thought you were saying that every breed is a different species -- not all breeds are one species.]

I would add that the different breeds of dogs have been subject to selective breedings over the course of many generations, and that even with that selective breeding, the range of behaviors within one breed overlaps heavily with the range of behaviors of the other breeds.
 
I'd like to put in a closing statement of sorts about this thread...

First, it's been fun. We started talking about the Republican distaste for science, but what do you know, a discussion based in science broke out. I think my favorite part was answering some questions posed by ric27 about evolution. I had fun learning about the evolution of baleen whales, and I hope my responses have made you think. You seem to have a truly curious mind - as do I, and that's nothing but awesome.

However, this is the idea that took over my mind for a week or so:

Oh sure, they put on an act like they believe in evolution. They know jack squat about evolution. The just like to pretend that they're pro-science and more enlightened than those crude and simple religious folk. Claiming to believe in evolution is a cultural signaler, kind of like driving a Prius - liberals believe is tells others something important about them. It enhances their reputation. It's just a tool used in the game of reputational conspicuous consumption. Cheap to buy in because all you have to do is mouth the platitudes and you never have to apply your belief in real life, politics, or public policy - it's simply pulled out of the reputation grab-bag when it's time to do battle against the religious mouth-breathers and then it's used to elevate the liberal as the enlightened one and browbeat the religious as though they were superstitious cavemen sitting in a cave afraid of the real world.

Ask the liberal if he believes that evolution has been working on human intelligence and varies by race. Then, all of a sudden, evolution is evil and an appeal to mysticism is launched in that it is stated that evolution isn't operable in humans from the neck up. That's the equivalent of being a little bit pregnant.

The liberals and the religious are both creationists, the simply differ in which mystical source they appeal to.

So here I will paraphrase a hypothesis, as professed rather abrasively by RiverDad: It is NOT POSSIBLE to strictly adhere to evolution theory as currently understood without acknowledging SIGNIFICANT racial differences in general cognitive ability, produced by GENETIC factors.

Now let me be clear about the intellectual bar I will now attempt to hurdle unequivocally: I AM NOT trying to "disprove" a genetic, race-associated link with intelligence as measured by IQ tests. I will show only that it is POSSIBLE to COMPLETELY ADHERE to evolution theory and NOT ACCEPT a significant race-associated genetic link with cognitive ability.

1. The measurement of general cognitive ability is difficult. Though the IQ test makes a reasonable approximation, many socially valuable forms of intelligence are excluded. This leads to a fairly large degree of uncertainty in the measurement of our dependent variable.

2. Even having accepted standard IQ tests as a fair assessment of general cognitive ability, several sources (provided by mbig and RiverDad) of mean racial IQ data show a relatively small range of variance. For example, The highest performing group cited (Ashkanazi Jews) and lowest (black) differed by only about 2 standard deviations. While that is significant if true, it allows us only to say with certainty that Jews outperform African-Americans on IQ tests. Furthermore, the validity of the sources (notably Richard Lynn) is questionable and the subject of some tangential debate. So to summarize, the purported observed differences are statistically rather small, barely crossing the 95% certainty threshold even when comparing two disparate groups.

3. The heritability (degree to which the inheritance of a characteristic is strictly genetic) of intelligence is VERY difficult to measure. Reasonable estimates range from less than 50% to an upper limit of 90%. There are compelling reasons to believe that when all environmental effects are considered - including the prenatal environment - heritability is less than 50%, indicating that the MAJORITY of observed variance may be due to NON-GENETIC FACTORS.

It should be clear that the case for race-dependent genetic differences that affect general cognitive ability has not been conclusively made.

Therefore, all of you "liberals" painted by the broad brush of RiverDad can rest assured that adherence to evolution theory DOES NOT require belief in a race-associated genetic predisposition for high or low cognitive function. Although some would rather place blame for the struggles of disadvantaged social groups on an intrinsic genetic inferiority, the problem may instead spring from an unjust, unequal, and destructive imbalance of resources and opportunity in society. Blaming genetics is attractive only to those who wish to shirk the responsibilities of repairing the inequalities borne of centuries of oppression.

And yes, I love my Prius too. :peace
 
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Come to think of it, just what is IQ, anyway? Is it really just a measure of one ability?
 
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