quote:Originally posted by fugu13: The percent variance explained columns are either for the whole model (left column, with several variables for demographic information in addition to the treatments) or for all of the treatments combined (right column, none of the demographic variables), accumulating just those blocks.
Right, and my point is that the diversity variables whose effect they are interested in appear to explain very little of the variance. My understanding here is that overall, there is a correlation between diversity and the outcomes they study (which incidentally I still think are useless), but once you correct for the demographic variables, most of it goes away. In other words, what they're actually seeing is that richer (or perhaps it's poorer?) universities have more diverse student bodies and also better self-reported outcomes.
quote:They're just giving an idea of how noisy the data is versus how noisy the effect is, basically.
I must admit I do not understand how you get this from what I quoted above.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Ever notice Clive tends to stop posting in his own threads once the conversation actually turns into a discussion?
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Ever notice Clive tends to stop posting in his own threads once the conversation actually turns into a discussion?
Do you actually believe they are the same person or are you just trying to pick at KoM?
As far as I can tell the only evidence that they are the same person is that you don't like either of them.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
By that standard, most of Hatrack is one person.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
<snicker> I think of it as KoM usually is one of the few skeptics who doesn't take bs from people and calls them on their illogical arguments and will stay on your ass and wear you down until you either stop posting or admit defeat.
IP: Logged |
posted
No, I don't think Blayne was implying they were the same.
I would more easily buy Clive Candy and malanthrop being the same person, because they both follow this pattern: post until utterly stumped, then immediately post something essentially unchanged in a new thread.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: All human beings, every one of us, has a most recent common ancestor who lived only a few thousands years ago, possibly as late as the first millenium.
What do you mean by "few"?
The group of people who left Africa and whose descendants spread to Asia/Europe/Americas are estimated to have left Africa 50 thousand years ago.
50,000 years of divergent evolution could separate your average African and your average non-African.
Certainly enough time for biological differences to emerge.
Also, as mentioned previously, observe how lanky East Africans are always winning long distance running events, and West Africans can't succeed at those events. Isn't this a clear example of divergent evolution in action?
My younger brother is in track, and in one of his district meets I couldn't help but notice that all the kids who were representing their schools in sprinting events were African American, all of them strikingly of the same body type. The district is majority white.
If different populations can differ in this physical way than why can't they also differ in behavioral/psychological characteristics? Human bio-egalitarianism is just a hypothesis.
Posts: 532 | Registered: Feb 2009
| IP: Logged |
posted
Clive, modern humans emerged from Africa tens of thousands of years ago, however they continually intermarried and spread their genes back and forth during all that time. Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA show that all living humans have single common ancestors of more recent origin roughly according to what region they originate from. It is believed, for instance, that the Western and Central European common ancestor may have been as recent as 1,000 AD. That is, all people of western European decent share a common ancestor at a remove of 1,000 years. Globally, with a couple of major exceptions, the single common ancestor lived at some time between 2,000 BC and 0 AD. in order to cover all remote populations, that number would have to be scale back slightly, but the most recent common ancestor of the majority of the world's population is probably no less recent than 3,000 years. I don't want you to get confused here- there are still ancestors who are shared by some people, and not by others, however all humans today have been proven to be linked by common ancestors of both sexes, and those links are recent, meaning that intermarriage among disparate populations happened. If you push back into human history far enough, you arrive at a time in which all humans then living can be grouped as either common ancestors of all modern humans, or those have no living ancestors at all.
quote: Also, as mentioned previously, observe how lanky East Africans are always winning long distance running events, and West Africans can't succeed at those events. Isn't this a clear example of divergent evolution in action?
(note: I am an interested non-expert, so experts freely correct me on my information)
No, this is not clear at all. Research into such phenomena have not shown that genetics are responsible for these traits. However, research does show that populations living in different areas rapidly adapt to their environments, much faster than evolution could possibly account for. There are some theories, including some involving epigenetics, that try to account for these changes. Some theories suggest that the expression of genes is influenced by the environment in ways that cause the organism (such as a human being) to change without their DNA changing. There is some evidence to suggest that famine, disease, and climate can cause populations to alter the expression of their genes at a cellular level, and change their physiology, ostensibly to adapt to their environment. Research has shown that populations change in outward appearance when they are relocated to a new environment, even when they do not intermarry. These changes can be multi-generational, and occur outside the process of natural selection, effecting the whole population at once.
And this in its entirety ignores an even better and more demonstrable explanation, that West African society happens to strongly support the development of long distance runners because for many reasons, that is a popular sport in that region. Because West Africans can gain prestige and money by becoming great runners, the whole country will naturally have a larger pool of professional running candidates, the same way that the vast majority of American football players are Americans. Americans are not genetically superior at American football, we simply have a big system in place to select people with skills suitable to playing the game. That's why the world's best hockey players are Czechs, Russians, and Canadians, and why Europeans beat America at soccer despite our population being larger than any European country. Are you going to argue that Latin people are genetically superior soccer players? Because the supposition is just as ridiculous.
This is why you should not be idly speculating about anything in this subject area, you don't know enough to know how much you don't know.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
Also, AFAIK the models for the most recent common ancestor sometimes produce estimates of a few thousand years earlier than that. Still very recent, just not necessarily within recorded history.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Anyone who adheres to the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest should be able to come to quick conclusions about African Americans. A scientist couldn't have come up with a better control group. Only the strongest survived the journey and of them only the strongest survived slavery. The touchy area is suggesting the impact on the descendants in other areas, mental capacity and self discipline. Unlikely the strong willed, intelligent ones were preferred to pick cotton and treated as well as the complacent dim whits with strong backs. African Americans are unique among blacks around the world due to the genetic filter their ancestors passed through.
Posts: 1495 | Registered: Mar 2009
| IP: Logged |
quote:African Americans are unique among blacks around the world due to the genetic filter their ancestors passed through.
You are hopefully aware that African slavery is not a system that was unique to the US. The Caribbean and South America (primarily Brazil) had larger slave populations than the US.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Orincoro- to defend the info I posted that Clive alluded to- ACTN3 is a gene where one allele is found heavily in short distance runners, the other allele in long distance runners. The frequency of the alleles is different in different populations (though every population has some of both- like having a population with one allele as low as 20% would be lowest expected frequency). The fact that Olympic athletes very very strongly tend to have one allele if they run short bursts, and the other allele if they do endurance is fairly strongly supported. This is connected to the percentages of fast twitch/ slow twitch muscle fibers that they have.
This was not to say that only West Africans can win at certain races or that only East Africans others. The science shows that this specific gene (which is present in both population at different rates- but still present in both) seems to be an important indicator of success. So far, I believe the research shows training can change the ratio of slow/fast one way, but no evidence of it going the other way.
quote:Anyone who adheres to the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest should be able to come to quick conclusions about African Americans. A scientist couldn't have come up with a better control group. Only the strongest survived the journey and of them only the strongest survived slavery. The touchy area is suggesting the impact on the descendants in other areas, mental capacity and self discipline. Unlikely the strong willed, intelligent ones were preferred to pick cotton and treated as well as the complacent dim whits with strong backs. African Americans are unique among blacks around the world due to the genetic filter their ancestors passed through.
And provided we were willing to ignore:
- the African Americans who were smart enough to act dumb - the African Americans who were smart enough to escape to the North when that avenue became possible - the African American offspring from Caucasian slaveowners, who were presumably intelligent since they were all Caucasian and stuff.
You seem to be working up to the suggestion that American blacks -- or at least those of African descent -- are as a class going to be stupider, less disciplined, and stronger than American Caucasians and doing so by looking for evidence that supports this theory. It's clearly not their fault, by your reasoning, but now that that "genetic filter" has been applied we have to look at what has resulted, I think is what you're saying. Yes?
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
It seems to me that the selection pressure on so diffuse a quality as intelligence cannot have been large enough, over the few centuries of widespread slavery, to have produced much of an effect. Indeed I'm not convinced there was such a selection pressure at all; you might just as well argue that the smart ones were more likely to survive, in this as in other circumstances. Intelligence is correlated with longer time preferences, which might make for better escape plans, fewer outraged rebellions in hopeless circumstances, better yes-massa acting, and of course the classic advantage that the chicks dig it. But this is all just-so storytelling and with only a few centuries to work with, at that. Short of the slave owners deliberately breeding for stupid (or smart, as the case might be), I don't think you can get any such effect.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Anyone who adheres to the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest should be able to come to quick conclusions about African Americans.
what darwinian concept? "survival of the fittest" has nothing to do with darwin. It isn't even really part of evolutionary science.
Survival of the Fittest is a tautology coined by Herbert Spencer to justify his pseudoscientific culture war.
It says something of the quick conclusions one could come to.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:It seems to me that the selection pressure on so diffuse a quality as intelligence cannot have been large enough, over the few centuries of widespread slavery, to have produced much of an effect.
You also need to factor in the fact over those few centuries of slavery, there were very very few children born to multigenerational slaves. The demographics are very revealing. From the time of Columbus up to the official end of the transatlantic slave trade in the early 19th century, the slave population in all of the Americas grew at a rate that was significantly lower than the number of slaves imported each year (i.e the death rate among slaves was much higher than the birth rate).
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
That would actually increase the selection pressure, though, if there were few surviving children. Also, I'm not convinced "significantly lower" translates into "very very few children"; it presumably doesn't take much of a bump in the death rate to get this effect for pre-industrial subsistence-level populations.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:That would actually increase the selection pressure, though, if there were few surviving children.
But that would be offset somewhat by the fresh imports which would be pushing the gene pool back towards the baseline.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
Sure. The conclusion being, at this point you would have to do some sort of very careful analysis of what the selection pressures were and how large their effects were. The simplistic scenarios outlined by malanthrop, or by my post giving counter-stories, just don't hold up.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
No KoM, you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. In order for a population to evolve, selection pressure has to be present over multiple generations in the same isolated population. But this simply wasn't true not only because the time span was short, but because the population was being continuously replenished by new slaves from Africa that hadn't been subjected to the same selection pressures. There probably were lots of children, but there were very very few children, (of children)^n of slaves. Hence, one would not expect the population to have evolved due to the selective pressures of slavery.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Nu, I guess my objection is to your assertion
quote:there were very very few children, (of children)^n of slaves.
The birth/death rate statistic you quoted does not, it seems to me, of itself support this assertion. Even if it's true, though, what it does is shorten the timespan for the selection pressures to work; at some point between say 1800 and 1864 there's no more imported slaves, or not enough to be significant. Even if there were by then no descendants of slaves imported before 1700, you still have some amount of time and pressure to work with. But it does make mal's assertions even more simplistic, obviously.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Also, I'm not convinced "significantly lower" translates into "very very few children"; it presumably doesn't take much of a bump in the death rate to get this effect for pre-industrial subsistence-level populations.
Look at the data. The average life expectancy for an imported slave (after importation) was 7 years. The average life expectancy for native born slaves ranged between 20 - 30 years and was about half that of the non-slave population. (I'm basing this on Eric Williams "Capitalism and Slavery")
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Anyone who adheres to the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest should be able to come to quick conclusions about African Americans. A scientist couldn't have come up with a better control group. Only the strongest survived the journey and of them only the strongest survived slavery. The touchy area is suggesting the impact on the descendants in other areas, mental capacity and self discipline. Unlikely the strong willed, intelligent ones were preferred to pick cotton and treated as well as the complacent dim whits with strong backs. African Americans are unique among blacks around the world due to the genetic filter their ancestors passed through.
Slavery in the U.S. lasted for what, 10 generations? 'Nuff said.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Also, I'm not convinced "significantly lower" translates into "very very few children"; it presumably doesn't take much of a bump in the death rate to get this effect for pre-industrial subsistence-level populations.
Look at the data. The average life expectancy for an imported slave (after importation) was 7 years. The average life expectancy for native born slaves ranged between 20 - 30 years and was about half that of the non-slave population. (I'm basing this on Eric Williams "Capitalism and Slavery")
Is that consistent through the centuries? Averaging over many generations can give rise to all sorts of artifacts. Besides that, recall that life expectancies of 30 years at birth are very easily generated by high infant mortalities and life expectancies of 60 years at 5 years of age. Further, that 7 years seems to indicate that the proportion of imported slaves could not have been high at any given time, which does not jibe well with the lack of n-th generation slaves.
But really, I don't think we disagree on the fundamental point that there's just no time for any serious evolution to happen. The issue of exactly how short the time is seems to require some very careful analysis; I suggest it's not worth our time. Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes KoM, Its consistent through the centuries. I strongly recommend you read Eric Williams from Columbus to Castro. Its a bit dry but has excellent demographic data.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
btw, i know the conversation has evolved(pun intended) from the conversation about the original article specificaly, but I thought I'd post Jonathan Haidt's TED talk for anyone interested.
It's about the moral roots and differences of liberals and conservatives.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Let's say some scientist looked at this article, and after doing some super human scientific research isolated a group of genes in a configuration germane to the Maori people. Together these genes increase aggression while simultaneously reducing empathy for others. What now?
Don't allow Maori people to immigrate to the U.S? [/QB]
Just so everyone knows, this response by Clive Candy is essentially perfect. When you look at it very carefully, it tells you everything you need to know about what he is doing on this forum.
Think about it.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: All human beings, every one of us, has a most recent common ancestor who lived only a few thousands years ago, possibly as late as the first millenium.
What do you mean by "few"?
The group of people who left Africa and whose descendants spread to Asia/Europe/Americas are estimated to have left Africa 50 thousand years ago.
50,000 years of divergent evolution could separate your average African and your average non-African.
Certainly enough time for biological differences to emerge.
Also, as mentioned previously, observe how lanky East Africans are always winning long distance running events, and West Africans can't succeed at those events. Isn't this a clear example of divergent evolution in action?
My younger brother is in track, and in one of his district meets I couldn't help but notice that all the kids who were representing their schools in sprinting events were African American, all of them strikingly of the same body type. The district is majority white.
If different populations can differ in this physical way than why can't they also differ in behavioral/psychological characteristics? Human bio-egalitarianism is just a hypothesis.
Thank you for this wonderful example of non-scientific reasoning backed by no credible research.
Questions are a start, but a refusal to accept answers you don't like or that don't support your hypothesis is the OPPOSITE of the scientific method.
posted
I actually linked to some information on wikipedia in the "have we gone mental" thread that might bear on this conversation. To sum up, not that anybody needs me to, the links referred to the rapid increases in Asian-American and American Jewish IQ test scores over several decades, relative to American whites. Basically, if anyone wants to use IQ test scores as a way to disparage the intelligence of African-Americans, they're going to need something else, probably something I'm not aware of.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Let's say some scientist looked at this article, and after doing some super human scientific research isolated a group of genes in a configuration germane to the Maori people. Together these genes increase aggression while simultaneously reducing empathy for others. What now?
Don't allow Maori people to immigrate to the U.S?
Just so everyone knows, this response by Clive Candy is essentially perfect. When you look at it very carefully, it tells you everything you need to know about what he is doing on this forum.
Think about it. [/QB]
Still doesn't explain what in creation is the source of his thing with women, which is what I want to know more than anything.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by steven: ... Basically, if anyone wants to use IQ test scores as a way to disparage the intelligence of African-Americans, they're going to need something else, probably something I'm not aware of.
Only if you assume that they would have a problem with also disparaging the intelligence of European-Americans Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Anyone who adheres to the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest should be able to come to quick conclusions about African Americans.
:facepalm: Darwin's theory was about evolution by natural selection. *Natural,* underlined, selection. Artificial selection is not natural selection. And, as you will continue to ignore because it doesn't fit with your stupid assumptions and your blanket willful ignorance, but as everyone else responding to you has also pointed out, slavery did not in any way represent a focused or concerted evolutionary pressure, and occurred over such a short period of time, that an actual process of evolution in that very widespread and already genetically diverse population is impossible. Unfortunately you're one of those people who thinks his ignorance is a strength- who thinks the things he observes in his daily life are true representations of global phenomena, and who thinks for some unknown reasons that the napkin math he does about the things he thinks he can see is also, therefore, divine and unconquerable truth.
So far, every folk-wisdom theory you have shared with us has been wrong. Not "technically" wrong, or "not quite right," but the kind of wrong that anyone who has real knowledge of the subject is bored to death of encountering. The kind of wrong that gets entered in the beginning of textbooks in the form of "Many years ago, before the serious study of this subject began, people assumed...." It's sad that you don't know this. Your ignorance is sad.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Artificial selection is not natural selection.
I must say that I don't quite see what this has to do with anything. Selection pressure is selection pressure. There's plenty to criticise in mal's post; why are you hitting on what is at most a bad phrasing?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Anyone who adheres to the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest should be able to come to quick conclusions about African Americans.
:facepalm: Darwin's theory was about evolution by natural selection. *Natural,* underlined, selection. Artificial selection is not natural selection.
Care to cite for the board what the first chapter of Origin" is titled? It would be edifying, I assure you.
Here's a quote from it:
"No doubt the strawberry had always varied since it was cultivated, but the slight varieties had been neglected. As soon, however, as gardeners picked out individual plants with slightly larger, earlier, or better fruit, and raised seedlings from them, and again picked out the best seedlings and bred from them, then, there appeared (aided by some crossing with distinct species) those many admirable varieties of the strawberry which have been raised during the last thirty or forty years."
The problem with Mal's argument is that he has no evidence that the observed variation of behavior or psychology is significantly influenced by genetic factors, he's just asserting that it must be so.
Posts: 575 | Registered: Feb 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote:Is that consistent through the centuries? Averaging over many generations can give rise to all sorts of artifacts. Besides that, recall that life expectancies of 30 years at birth are very easily generated by high infant mortalities and life expectancies of 60 years at 5 years of age.
Yes but that wasn't the case. The mortality rate was high across the board. Slave owners typically budgeted that a slave would live 10 years after reaching adulthood.
quote:Further, that 7 years seems to indicate that the proportion of imported slaves could not have been high at any given time, which does not jibe well with the lack of n-th generation slaves.
You are making a number of assumption that are simply aren't true. Whether there were a high proportion of imported slaves is a function both of the life span of imported spades and the rate at which they were imported. Typically, 5% of the total slave population was imported from africa in any given year and the slave population grew at a little under 1% per year. Assuming a decreasing exponential with an average of 7 years, that results in a steady state population that is 30% first generation. Imported slaves were mostly adults, whereas native born slaves were about evenly split between children and adults so at any given time about half the adult population would have been first generation slaves from Africa.
quote:But really, I don't think we disagree on the fundamental point that there's just no time for any serious evolution to happen. The issue of exactly how short the time is seems to require some very careful analysis; I suggest it's not worth our time.
This much is valid. But what I think you are missing is that even if the African slave trade had had persisted for thousands of years, we still would expect it have result in any significant evolutionary effect because the slaves were never an isolated population. There was a continuous and significant influx of new genetic material that had not been subjected to the pressures of slavery.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Well, that doesn't seem too unreasonable. IQ is about 50% inheritable, IIRC.
The more closely you look at the data the more unreasonable it seems. When studying IQ, it is very difficult to separate genetic factors from environmental factors. The better job studies do of separating the two, the smaller the effect of genetics. When all possible environmental factors are considered including nurturing and education but also nutrition, intestinal flora, parasites, etc, the influence of genetics is likely far less than 50%.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Well, that doesn't seem too unreasonable. IQ is about 50% inheritable, IIRC.
If we could get to the point where we could totally quantify what percentage of IQ is heritable, I'd like to see the genetic models that come up with such a figure.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Artificial selection is not natural selection.
I must say that I don't quite see what this has to do with anything. Selection pressure is selection pressure. There's plenty to criticise in mal's post; why are you hitting on what is at most a bad phrasing?
Yes, but artificial selection over such a very short period produces unpredictable results. Mal's idea, as best I can see, is that somehow American slave owners compressed thousands of years of natural selection into two or three generations of slaves, and that there would actually be a comprehensively observable and consistent effect from this. I'm not denying that artificial selection has any effect on anything, I'm just suggesting that there is no way it has the effect he thinks it does, because his ideas about selection pressure are post-hoc justification for racial stereotypes. That's the problem with virtually any piece of positive genetic evidence of inherited traits of any kind- you ignore the zillion genes that aren't different, and zero in on the gene that is, and then you declare that gene as the Cause, of whatever you're studying. The same thing happens with Mal's argument. He sees that there are more pro black athletes in America than whites. He assumes prematurely that the reason is genes (not economics, which is the real reason), then scans through all the information he has about black Americans, alights on slavery, and presto, he has an ironclad theory that no one can convince him is, if not out and out *wrong*, then at least vastly overstated, premature, simplistic, and useless.
The fact that different subgroups of populations have a higher occurrence of certain genes is not proof positive that genetics is the cause of any larger phenomenon. For instance, if you transposed the eastern and western African populations in terms of genetics, changing all East Africans to West Africans and vice-versa, there is no significant evidence that west African long distance running dominance would diminish at all. Long distance running developed there for more reasons than that people were inherently skilled at it, just as it developed in other places where people don't carry many of the same genes as West Africans. The success of the sport in West Africa is dependent on West African society, not West African genes. You can look at any population in the world and isolate a gene that occurs often enough, and link that to something the population is known for, but in doing so you ignore every other vastly more important factor in that society's development. We are not defined by our genes, however much white guilt leads Mal and whomever else to explain away their societal advantages, or lack of them, as coming from their genes, rather than from a world that is simply too complex to understand fully.
(eta: As an interesting aside, look at the presence of African Americans in American sports according to the expense of participation in that sport during childhood. Running, basketball, boxing- cheap to do, highly scalable games, and dominated by black Americans. Hockey, Golf, Motorsports, mountain biking and x games, swimming, shooting, skiing, equestrian- more expensive, less scalable, and include higher proportions of whites. Football and baseball are two of the only sports in between, with expensive and non-scalable versions alongside cheap and scalable versions. Are you going to tell me that white people are genetically superior in shooting and golfing because there are more pro shooters who are white? And how were these white people selected genetically to develop these skills? By shooting at black people? Do you see how ridiculous this all is?)
posted
At least this is all completely amateur postulation of racial divergence. If any even partially well studied pseudo-phenotypologists were part of this discussion arguing about what happened to blacks over X generations of slavery, we would have spent 90% of our time arguing over ideas taken straight from Herrnstein and Murray's "The Bell Curve."
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:As an interesting aside, look at the presence of African Americans in American sports according to the expense of participation in that sport during childhood.
That is an excellent point.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: At least this is all completely amateur postulation of racial divergence. If any even partially well studied pseudo-phenotypologists were part of this discussion arguing about what happened to blacks over X generations of slavery, we would have spent 90% of our time arguing over ideas taken straight from Herrnstein and Murray's "The Bell Curve."
Nah. I'd just like to any one of 4-5 completely well researched refutations of their entire premise, as well as their methodology, and be done with it.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
If an Asian told me that whites weren't as good at math, I wouldn't be offended. It is a fact of common traits that does not negate the fact that there are some white's equal to or greater than Asians at math.
Ignore test scores if you want. I know many blacks who are smarter than me but it shouldn't be racist to point out on average they underperform. I suppose it's ok to say the Asians are good at math but not ok to say they are better than a different group. It's ok to say blacks are fast sprinters but not ok to say that they are faster than another group. I know stupid parents with smart kids and smart parents with stupid kids but the odds are, the kids will be like the parents: fast, slow, fat, white, black, strong, smart, stupid...pick your trait. Are we any different than horses or dogs when it comes to inherited traits? I think the mutt is superior, even human mutts. Posts: 1495 | Registered: Mar 2009
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: If an Asian told me that whites weren't as good at math, I wouldn't be offended.
Really? You would be justified in taken offense at such rudeness. Perhaps this is why you don't understand how offensive the things you say here are to everyone else.
quote: Ignore test scores if you want. I know many blacks who are smarter than me but it shouldn't be racist to point out on average they underperform.
You know, here's the crux of your problem Mal. Here's where you're not getting it. You make outrageous statements, *related* to such an observation, and then you tuck your tail between your legs and say: "well, jeez guys, I didn't know I couldn't bring up that subject or make that observation!"
It is not racism to "point out" as you say, that a certain portion of the population on average performs at a lower or higher level on certain tests than another group. It is not for that that I think you are a racist. I think you are racist because you have blundered ahead with your "theories" and your "logical reasoning," talking about how those things you have blithely "pointed out," are indicative of all these other things that "anybody could see," or that "is obvious from the data." I think you have done this because you, Mal, want to believe that you are superior to others inherently, and that is why the world functions in the way it does, and provides you with the opportunities you have had in life. I think whatever measure of success you have personally ever had, you are terribly jealous of the idea that others will think you don't deserve it, so you come up with ways of justifying yourself, as well as the reasons why other people don't have what you do. Since chance isn't good enough, you settle into things like "hard work," and "character," and "faith," and occasionally you dabble in the notion that you are simply superior to others as a natural characteristic. That wouldn't be their fault! That would just be nature, with you at the top of the pyramid, and the negros and orientals somewhere farther down the chain! After all, it's obvious that's the way things are! So perhaps that's the way things were meant to be! It's *nature* after all!
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I am just not politically correct. No group of people is superior, all exceptional in their own ways and full of variability that defies the norm. Pit bulls are dangerous and often violent but I owned one that slept with cats and was afraid of flying paper bags. My skipperke is tougher than my yorkie which is smarter than my beagle who has the best nose. From all that I've read, they are quite common examples of their breeding and I do not think any one is superior. With dogs you don't have to be PC so such things are easy to say. I bet you're afraid to state that the average black male has a higher vertical leap. You're gagged by your notions of political correctness and blinded from reality by your fear of offence.
Posts: 1495 | Registered: Mar 2009
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
