 |
| |
|
|
Caligastia
|
|
Here is an interesting article I found. I wonder if its possible to discuss it with descending into hysteria?
quote:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/ColMenu.html
Race, Rushton, And Us
Getting Used To What We Can't Change
One marvels that a creed widely doubted in private, unsupported by evidence, and manifestly incorrect, can become compulsory in a society, shape its policy, and arouse furious support. Radical egalitarianism is such a creed -- the notion that people, both individually and in groups, are born equal and, preferably, identical. It would then follow that all differences arise from nurture.
What if they don't?
As a matter of daily experience we observe that some individuals are bigger, smarter, better athletes, superior artists, better singers. It isn't all nurture: Raise me as Michael Jordan was raised, and I would still be short and slow. We also observe that some groups consistently excel others. We pretend otherwise because the penalties for not pretending are severe. Most of us know we are pretending.
There is at the University of Ontario a scholar named J. Philippe Rushton, much in disrepute among the clergy of nurturism. He is a sociobiologist, a member of an outcast class holding that much of behavior is biologically shaped. His book, Race, Evolution, and Behavior, is intensely reviled among the keepers of proper thought.* It purports to describe and explain differences in intelligence and behavior among races. This we must never, ever do.
I don't give it blanket endorsement, but its central thrust is sufficiently in accord with daily experience as to be worth pondering. In outline:
The IQ of East Asians (Koreans, Chinese, Japanese) is about 106, of Eurowhites 100, "blacks" in America 85, blacks in Africa 70. He does not in the book deal with Jews, but Ashkenazi Jews average 115. The East Asians have a particular advantage in mathematics.
Why?
The moment one recites the statistics, frantic counterarguments arise. Race doesn't exist or, contradictorily, isn't important. Intelligence doesn't exist, can't be defined, or can't be measured. Tests are biased. In short, anything that gives an undesired answer undergoes summary rejection.
Now, readers may reach such conclusions as they think best. But allow me two questions and an assertion. The first question: Do you not know some people who are unquestionably smarter than some others? The second question: Given that races demonstrably differ in appearance, size, bodily proportions, biochemistry, brain size, and a thousand other things, is there any obvious reason why they should not vary in intelligence? In behavior?
The assertion: The people who devise tests of intelligence, as anyone may discover by reading, are neither fools, nor bigots, nor unaware of the problems of testing. Dismiss them only after much reading and careful thought.
The thesis of the sociobiologists is as follows: Men evolved about 200,000 years ago in Africa. Some migrated to Europe about 100,000 years ago and, then being in genetic isolation from Africa, evolved into the Caucasian race. Roughly 40,000 years ago some of the Caucasians migrated to Asia and, in genetic isolation, evolved into East Asians.
Life in northern Europe, runs the argument, was far more difficult than it had been in Africa because of, if nothing else, harsh winters. Survival required not just the intelligence to keep warm but also cooperation, forethought, planning, and cohesion. The people who would become East Asians, living in still more difficult conditions, needed more of these qualities. Those who survived had them.
This may be true. It may not. In evolutionary circles, plausibility trades as evidence. Yet it fits.
Says Rushton, on the basis of many years of research, there exists a clear gradient in many things from yellow to white to black. Asians have somewhat larger brains than whites who have substantially larger brains than blacks. Measured aggressiveness follows the same pattern of a small gap between yellow and white and a larger gap between white and black. The pattern applies for other characteristics: East Asians are lowest in testosterone levels, latest in entering puberty, lowest in size of genitals, degree of criminality, sex drive, rates of fertility, rates of divorce and promiscuity. Blacks are at the other extreme, with whites falling between.
Rushton is no fool. He knows that some of these things are influenced by variables other than the innate. He knows the pitfalls in cross-cultural measurement. Yet, he asserts, the pattern remains. In the United States, for example, crime is very low among East Asians, academic performance very high, divorce rare, families small.
In short, his thesis is that while environment obviously matters in determining outcomes, our capacities and behavior are very much influenced by genetics. The idea is not new, merely forbidden. Rushton et al however make a careful evidentiary case that is not easily ignored, unless you have determined in advance to ignore it.
Nurturists disagree with the sociobiologists. Behavior that seems racial, they argue, is in fact determined by culture. The question is tricky. Culture may itself be to a considerable extent the expression of biology. If East Asians are by nature less aggressive than whites, perhaps because of lower levels of testosterone, one would expect the lack of aggressiveness to be embodied in the culture. That is, naturally quiet people will raise their children to be quiet and be inclined to value courtesy. The nurturist can then say, "Aha! Just as I thought. Socially ingrained." Maybe. Maybe not.
A shift in the intellectual climate seems to be in the offing. Increasingly we see a clash between the compulsory view that we are all identical at birth, which would happily allow the eradication of various inequalities and of crime; and the quietly held but growing recognition that if we are inherently different, as seems to be the case, we will unavoidably have different results.
The question cannot easily be studied. The nurturists are politically in the saddle, and so research into racial differences is verboten. One may ask, of course: Why do the correct fear investigation, unless they know, or suspect, that they are wrong? It is assuredly true that, in the past, theories of racial superiority have often emanated from virulent nationalists who have sought to place their own stock at the top of the heap. The inevitable comparison is with Hitler, a dark squatty little thing convinced of the superiority of blonde Aryan supermen.
In Rushton's case we are dealing with something else. A white Canadian who believes in yellow supremacy is hardly aggrandizing himself. I am myself a purebred Euro-mongrel without known trace of Asian or Jewish ancestry. I'd like to regard Scots/English/Huguenot cocktails as the pinnacle of civilization, and those in cowboy hats as the better of the best. I don't see the evidence. Rushton's gradient accords with my observations whether I like it or not. Perhaps we had better get used to Chinese mathematicians. |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Rex Little
|
|
I don't think it's racist to study/discuss/speculate about innate differences among racial groups as long as you keep firmly in mind that group differences say nothing about individuals, and in fact are generally small compared to the differences among individuals of the same group.
One possibility that I didn't see mentioned in the article is that over time, differences in culture can create differences in inborn traits, due to evolutionary pressure. Let's say you have a culture that respects learning above all else. In that culture, those who are more intelligent and/or inclined to learn will have an advantage in the competition for mates, and therefore have more children. Over time, this will increase the average intelligence of the group. The same applies to characteristics such as size and strength, if that's what the culture values most. Likewise aggression or non-aggression.
I'm getting into the realm of conjecture here, but it seems to me that intelligence is more valuable (relative to physical attributes) in a civilized society than a non-civilized one. ("Civilized" here means that the society practices agriculture and/or other organized productive activities, and that it is governed at a higher level than tribes or clans.) The advent of civilization increases the evolutionary pressure in favor of intelligence vs. physical attributes.
Now consider the groups (races) discussed in the article. China and other parts of East Asia have been civilized quite a bit longer than Europe, while most of Africa was still in the hunter/gatherer/tribal stage just two centuries ago.
Like I said, this is mostly conjecture, but it makes sense to me.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ramo
|
 |
Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:18
|
|
quote:
One possibility that I didn't see mentioned in the article is that over time, differences in culture can create differences in inborn traits, due to evolutionary pressure. Let's say you have a culture that respects learning above all else. In that culture, those who are more intelligent and/or inclined to learn will have an advantage in the competition for mates, and therefore have more children. Over time, this will increase the average intelligence of the group. The same applies to characteristics such as size and strength, if that's what the culture values most. Likewise aggression or non-aggression. |
In most civilized societies, learning belonged the realm of the elite. And in many, the elite bred principally for politics.
If this phenomenon exists, I'd wager that it isn't significant.
quote:
I'm getting into the realm of conjecture here, but it seems to me that intelligence is more valuable (relative to physical attributes) in a civilized society than a non-civilized one. ("Civilized" here means that the society practices agriculture and/or other organized productive activities, and that it is governed at a higher level than tribes or clans.) The advent of civilization increases the evolutionary pressure in favor of intelligence vs. physical attributes. |
Quite the contrary, actually. In most civilized societies, social, political, and economic barriers prevented the intelligent from dominating the society (and getting laid a lot), whereas in hunter-gatherer societies no such barriers existed.
quote:
The IQ of East Asians (Koreans, Chinese, Japanese) is about 106, of Eurowhites 100, "blacks" in America 85, blacks in Africa 70. He does not in the book deal with Jews, but Ashkenazi Jews average 115. The East Asians have a particular advantage in mathematics. |
Have you ever thought that perhaps some groups are richer than others? That some groups are guided by different cultures? Nevermind, I don't want to strain your superior brain. 
I'd also like to see the methodology in deriving these statistics. How big a sample did he use? Where did he get his samples? And so forth.
quote:
The thesis of the sociobiologists is as follows: Men evolved about 200,000 years ago in Africa. Some migrated to Europe about 100,000 years ago and, then being in genetic isolation from Africa, evolved into the Caucasian race. Roughly 40,000 years ago some of the Caucasians migrated to Asia and, in genetic isolation, evolved into East Asians. |
Genetic isolation?
I'll remind you that the Sahara didn't exist 40,000 years ago.
Magical trips from one end of the continent to another without any interbreeding?
Bullcrap. Total bullcrap. I'd like to see the evidence and credentials of these "sociobiologists."
If East Asians and Jews are so much smarter than everyone else, why haven't they displaced the untermenschen like the African homo sapiens sapiens did to his European and Asian contemporaries?
quote:
Life in northern Europe, runs the argument, was far more difficult than it had been in Africa because of, if nothing else, harsh winters. Survival required not just the intelligence to keep warm but also cooperation, forethought, planning, and cohesion. The people who would become East Asians, living in still more difficult conditions, needed more of these qualities. Those who survived had them. |
I don't suppose that this guy has any evidence for this claim.
Why were the homo sapiens sapiens whose origin is in Africa superior to the homo sapiens neandertalensis and the homo erectus (from Europe and Asia, respectively)?
Why aren't the Inuit ruling the world?
I'd like to see Cali live in a tropical rainforest, so he can tell us how "easy" it is.
quote:
The moment one recites the statistics, frantic counterarguments arise. Race doesn't exist |
Yep, the genetic differences between so-called "races" are totally insignificant.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Carver
|
 |
reprocessing plutonium, Yongbyon, NK
Jan 2002
time: 23:18
|
|
Last edited by Carver on 09-04-2002 at 06:11
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Caligastia
|
|
As the author said, its difficult to prove anything either way, but many in society automatically dismiss any study of race and intelligence if the results dont favor what they already believe.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Caligastia
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by MrFun
1) Humans began evolving 2 million years ago in Africa. There never was such a thing as a pure racial group either. |
This is far from being a proven fact.
I could tell you what I think happened, but I doubt you would be interested.
quote:
2) There were a few civilizations that did not rely on agriculture -- one example being the complex city-based people of Amerindians in the Northwest coast on the Pacific. |
3) You cannot ignore the high poverty rate within Chinese ghettos and Chinatowns. It is too often overlooked, and so people often fail to see the poverty of Asian-Americans.
4) There are differences between races that are based on sociological and environmental factors -- not based on the race itself. One group of blacks that lives in one area of the world will be socio-economically and intellectually different than another group of blacks in another part of the world simply because of sociological and environmental factors. [/QUOTE]
True, but as reds4ever said: "Surely it's unrealistic to expect for the only result of 50,000+years of (largley) seperate evolution, to be different skin colour?"
Im not trying to prove my race to be superior, I just think that there are more differences between races than just skin color.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Genetics and race play a part in the potential for intellegence, but the environment has more to do with someone's IQ than anything else.
The statistics are flawed because they aren't spread out across income levels. I bet if you took a look at the IQ statistics across the board, the general IQ curve would be similar to the income curve.
Blacks living in the ghetto aren't any dumber than their white trash counterparts. The dumbest people I know are white. It just so happens there is a higher percentage of black people living in poverty than white people.
I also think that if you looked at immigrants, you would see an interesting trend. First-born children from immigrants living above the poverty line tend to be more intellegent than people who's ancestors have been in the US for over 100 years.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Tolls
|
 |
Hereford, UK
Jan 1970
time: 05:18
|
|
Oh well.
Ramo beat me to it on all the points i was going to raise!
ie, the problem with using IQ as a guage of intelligence, the complete nonsense about genetic isolation, and how hard life was in Northern Europe!
For the latter one, I will point out that hunter-gatherer societies take the same form wherever they are found (including archaeologically), and failure to organise, cooperate and plan by any such group spells disaster, wherever in the world they happen to be.
He clearly doesn't know what he's talking about on these three things, and since they seem to form the main props for his argument...well, let's just say it looks decidedly shaky from here.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ramo
|
|
Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:18
|
|
quote:
As the author said, its difficult to prove anything either way, but many in society automatically dismiss any study of race and intelligence if the results dont favor what they already believe. |
No, it's already been proven by the human genome project, and your thesis has obviously has lost. The differences between "races" are literally skin deep. Period. End of story. You lose. 
quote:
Surely it's unrealistic to expect for the only result of 50,000+years of (largley) seperate evolution, to be different skin colour? |
The idea that there's been 50,000 years of seperate evolution has no scientific basis, whatsoever.
quote:
and given the one racial difference we do feel comfortable recognizing (ie skin colour) is so obvious and pronounced, that it is virtually certain that there are many less outwardly obvious differences? |
There're only a few genes that control skin color. There are thousands and thousands that control brain functions. And 50,000 years wouldn't be long enough to significantly affect something as substancial as that.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Tingkai
|
|
To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:18
|
|
Rushton published his research years ago. His "proof" was easily discredited by scientists back then. Nothing in this article indicates that he has done any new research.
His whole theory is based on the size of a person's head, but the measurements for "white" skulls are based on 19th century measurements of British civil servants. The sample size is considered too small for scientific purposes and cannot be extrapolated to represent an average for the "white" race.
He cited research as backing his theories, but the people who did the original research say that he misrepresented their findings.
A bigger problem with his theory is that there is no scientific proof that a larger head means a person is smarter while there is ample proof that this is not the case.
Rushton's ideas are a joke. His research is extremely unscientific. He remains a professor at UWO (my alma mater), only because he has tenure.
Last edited by Tingkai on 09-04-2002 at 21:50
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Urban Ranger
|
|
Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
|
|
quote:
The IQ of East Asians (Koreans, Chinese, Japanese) is about 106, of Eurowhites 100, "blacks" in America 85, blacks in Africa 70. He does not in the book deal with Jews, but Ashkenazi Jews average 115. The East Asians have a particular advantage in mathematics. |
There are serious problems with using IQ tests as an accurate measurement of intelligence. First of all, what constitutes intelligence? Without a firm clear answer any sort of quantifying measurements will fail to produce reliable results.
Secondly, there are long existing criticisms of IQ tests. If you look at one, it is heavily biased towards urban middle class whites. Clearly, people from other cultural backgrounds will not fare as well.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Rex Little
|
|
quote:
No, it's already been proven by the human genome project |
quote:
The human genome project has proven nothing of the sort, despite what the liberal media may report. |
I've never seen anything like this about the HGP, in the "liberal media" or elsewhere. Can you provide a source?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Lazarus and the Gimp
|
 |
Whale-raping abomination
Aug 2000
time: 05:18
|
|
Oh great. Oh lovely. It's this one again..
I do a lot of lurking in white supremacist forums, and this article crops up a hell of a lot. Nearly as often as holocaust revisionism, in fact. The amount of words wasted on this piece of utter crap is staggering.
Look at that first paragraph. Doesn't that make you want to punch the author? Do you, for one second, get the impression that this is an objective commentary? Or, on the other hand, do you get the impression that you're dealing with a vicious little **** who's got an axe to grind?
The brutal fact is that this commentary has flaws so gaping that you could drive a truck through them. Study it for a while and you'll soon decide on what your favourite howler is. My personal favourite is the corrolation drawn between brain size and aggressiveness, leading the author to confidently declare that Asians are massively less aggressive than blacks. Hello! Earth calling Mr Author? Have you ever opened a history book in your entire life? Do the phrases "Rape of Nanking", "Oriental militaristic tradition" and "Banzai! Tora! Tora! Tora!" mean anything to you at all? For sheer wholescale and inventive viciousness the entire black world are mere amateurs in the presence of China, Japan and Mongolia, not to mention Afghanistan, Mughal India and Burma.
Then there's the sheer, bare-faced gormlessness involved with straight equations between brain size and intelligence. Does this prat think Einstein had to employ an army of menial helpers so support his stadium-sized head? Is he entertaining the delusion that Prof. Hawking is confined to a wheelchair due to the terrible, crushing mass of his hippocampus? I'm sorry, my boy, but your grasp of neuro-science appears to be as flakey as your grasp on history.
Then there's the basic, unshakeable flaw with Rushton, which even he acknowledges. "Yes, I know that IQ tests are basically a pile of unreliable crap, but look! Pretty pattern! Nice pattern!". The only possible response is "So what?". If something is a load of crap, it remains a load of crap even if patterns emerge in it. In fact it reamains a pile of crap even if a vision of the Turin Shroud appears in 500 foot high flames in it.
Rushton was a crank, and the author of this article is either a evil git, or far too stupid to be taken seriously on absolutely anything.
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:18.
Apolyton Time is 00:18. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
09-04-2002 03:22
|