Do you believe certain races are superior to others in intellect?

[MechJinx]

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Is it safe to say that, on average, the minds of men and women are different and therefore, on average, men are typically better at learning certain things and women are better at learning certain things? Why can the same not be applicable to race?

We can't say the same about race because the PC police have drilled it into the public's head that it's a no-no topic. All the Bell Curve book did was to put those police on overtime and really give out the citations, so now nobody in the public will speak about it except to say that everyone is equal. I have little doubt that there are statistical differences in raw intelligence and capabilities of races. Really though it doesn't merit much attention I shouldn't think, since the races are more similar than not, and one's immediate genes (ie, their parents) is surely more important than their race, and their environment will bring the capabilities of their genes out more than their race will influence them. So, in conclusion even if one race is smarter than another, it's not worth a heck of a lot.

I agree with Skoorb, I believe there are differences, but it isn't worth the time to worry about it. The genes you inherited from your parents and behaviors and attitudes learned from your parents play a much stronger role than any racial differences might cause. I voted yes, BTW

 

[WobbleWobble]

Originally posted by: eigen
Are whites more intellegent due to race, no (gentetics over and over again has shown there is no scientific basis for race) . I think whites are more intellegent due to the overwhemling superiority of Western Culture since the 16th century.

I remember reading that Asians have the largest brain mass out of all the races. Then whites then blacks. The more a black with mixed with white blood, but bigger the brain mass. Wouldn't that mean that there can be a difference in intelligence based on race? But don't get me wrong, I realize that there's no way a human can use all their brain capacity.

But because the differences in races are so small, there will be plenty of overlap. You may see that the majority of one race has the most smart people out of all the races but the smartest person in the world might be from another race.

I don't think it's so much race as it is to culture though. Is a country white man going to be smarter than a higher-society black? Probably not. Inner-city kids don't get as high grades as the rest because of cultural differences. Throw in money and you'll have the inbalances.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: yukichigai
Y'know, the arguments in this thread really boil down to Nature vs. Nurture. Interesting.

I think it's a mistake to think that you can form an equation nature + nurture = 1. If humans didn't have many genetic adaptations for a large neocortex and specific language bearing structures, we would be much less amenable to nurturing, that is, learning.

However, an interesting fact about heritability is how much it increases as you age. While height only has a heritability of 0.30 in infancy, it gradually increases to 0.95 in adulthood. Perhaps surprisingly, the heritability of IQ doesn't decrease as we learn and gain experience, but instead increases in the same way as height and other physical traits do; the heritability of IQ rises from 0.40 in early childhood to 0.70 in adulthood to about 0.80 in older adults.

 

[DWW]

Originally posted by: homestarmy
What do you think about the people that respond about different ethnicities scoring lower on IQ tests with basically that it is created for white people etc etc etc.

What do they want to see on the IQ test... which is the correct size for an 8-ball? Or, if Leroy had 30 grams of cocaine and the cops busted him and he snorted 5 grams before they got it, how much did teh po po get? They're knocking themselves down by saying that there should be a different test.

haha yeah you pretty much said what I was thinking. The IQ test can't be "designed" for white people. It is just reasonable questions if you've ever taken one (a real one, not an online one).

 

[Doggiedog]

Originally posted by: gistech1978
no, phrenology does.

I'm sorry but if phrenology worked then my old boss would have been a super-genius but she was a dumb-@ss.

We didn't call her the dolphin or fivehead for nothing. 😉

 

[rh71]

Intellect is very much genetic... so it's just passed (or sometimes skips) from generation to generation (within the families) in my belief. So race comes into play only if there were more intellectual people to go around in a given family/race to begin with. I know this doesn't answer the original question, but in my belief, yes.

 

[ed21x]

absolutely not. the presence of society has done away with human evolution a long time agi. Now any idiot regardless of race will survive. Havn't you guys been watching Jerry Springer?

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: Strang
Wait, so Asia was technologically far behind Europe until just recently? Because Europeans fought a lot?

While the previous poster is wrong about war, the disunity of Europe aided scientific and technology progress in the last few centuries. When the Emperor declared an end to Queng Ho's voyages in the late 14th/early 15th century, they stopped and within a couple of generations, China lost the skills that built a fleet far more advanced than Columbus' ships. That's one of the major reasons European ships came to China instead of vice versa. In Europe, there was no one authority to make such decrees, so if one country fell behind, another would take its place at the forefront of development.

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: ed21x
absolutely not. the presence of society has done away with human evolution a long time agi. Now any idiot regardless of race will survive. Havn't you guys been watching Jerry Springer?

Ahh yes, Jerry Springer. A good example of the segment of the population degrading humanity as a whole.

 

[eigen]

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: eigen
Are whites more intellegent due to race, no (gentetics over and over again has shown there is no scientific basis for race) . I think whites are more intellegent due to the overwhemling superiority of Western Culture since the 16th century.

something that has always bothered me... if there is no biological basis for race, then why do black people have black children, white people have white children, etc?

You are missing the point race is a continium it is not discrete. At what point does someone become black what shade of skin lets you b white.You even make that assumption in your post Black parents don't have black kids. Dark skinned parents have dark skinned kids. You classify them as black. It is a human perception. Sure there are Dna test that allow you to sort people by race but a that point it becomes very muddled.

 

[MonkeyK]

Originally posted by: DWW

Originally posted by: homestarmy
What do you think about the people that respond about different ethnicities scoring lower on IQ tests with basically that it is created for white people etc etc etc.

What do they want to see on the IQ test... which is the correct size for an 8-ball? Or, if Leroy had 30 grams of cocaine and the cops busted him and he snorted 5 grams before they got it, how much did teh po po get? They're knocking themselves down by saying that there should be a different test.

haha yeah you pretty much said what I was thinking. The IQ test can't be "designed" for white people. It is just reasonable questions if you've ever taken one (a real one, not an online one).

Read up on the history of the IQ test.

I think I read it in "How Would You Move Mt. Fuji". The guy that came up with the concept created a bunch of questions and then changed them until they showed race and sex to indicate what he thought they should be.

How do you verify the accuracy of an IQ test?

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: cquark

Originally posted by: yukichigai
Y'know, the arguments in this thread really boil down to Nature vs. Nurture. Interesting.

I think it's a mistake to think that you can form an equation nature + nurture = 1. If humans didn't have many genetic adaptations for a large neocortex and specific language bearing structures, we would be much less amenable to nurturing, that is, learning.

However, an interesting fact about heritability is how much it increases as you age. While height only has a heritability of 0.30 in infancy, it gradually increases to 0.95 in adulthood. Perhaps surprisingly, the heritability of IQ doesn't decrease as we learn and gain experience, but instead increases in the same way as height and other physical traits do; the heritability of IQ rises from 0.40 in early childhood to 0.70 in adulthood to about 0.80 in older adults.

if nature + nurture != 1, then nature + nurture + x = 1, where x is some factor(s) other than nature or nurture. what do you think that would be?

 

[RgrPark]

Originally posted by: Strang

Originally posted by: RgrPark
When u look at regions of the world occupied by one race, you can pretty much see their potential.

U can look at Europe and see how they advanced through the years...the whites pretty much setting the standards. War being the major influence of technological advances, they moved pretty fast.

Asia is catching up; u can possibly give an excuse for being slow in the 1800-early 1900s due to their culture/religion influencing them. However, they have rapidly caught up and they are arguably on par in terms of technology.

Africa, well they had the biggest headstart and from what i know, war has been a common theme there throughout the ages. Don't know what they're doing though. If you transplanted a whole bunch of whites into Africa, would they end up the same? oops forgot South Africa.

I am just pointing out something a lot of people might have noticed but were too shy to say.

Wait, so Asia was technologically far behind Europe until just recently? Because Europeans fought a lot? And Africans fought a lot but didn't advance technologically?

I'm sure that everyone else was just too shy to say that.

Do you think if for some crazy reason, Asians or whites ended up in Africa in the first place, it would be in the same mess it is now? I don't mean the parts of Africa occupied by Egyptians and the likes...even though some blacks belive that the Egyptian culture was black.

Do u know that the rare .00001% of the blacks from Africa that get educated in foreign soil go back to try to change their homeland and leave in defeat and are ashamed of their race? I personally know a few.
This one guy I know actually told me that they NEED western occupation to get their head out of their ass.

 

[Red Dawn]

No but their are some who would like to believe there is.

 

[eigen]

Originally posted by: homestarmy
What do you think about the people that respond about different ethnicities scoring lower on IQ tests with basically that it is created for white people etc etc etc.

What do they want to see on the IQ test... which is the correct size for an 8-ball? Or, if Leroy had 30 grams of cocaine and the cops busted him and he snorted 5 grams before they got it, how much did teh po po get? They're knocking themselves down by saying that there should be a different test.

Thats bullsh!t as well as there are numerous iq test that are culturally un-biased. I am sorry if you can't tell that the circle is more like the square than the coffee cup, but you are dumb.

 

[Lizardman]

my species is much better than yours!

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: WobbleWobble
I remember reading that Asians have the largest brain mass out of all the races. Then whites then blacks. The more a black with mixed with white blood, but bigger the brain mass. Wouldn't that mean that there can be a difference in intelligence based on race? But don't get me wrong, I realize that there's no way a human can use all their brain capacity.

Humans do use their full brain capacity (that random small percentage figure is an urban legend), but brain mass by itself isn't an important determiner of intelligence. There is a noticeable brain size difference between men and women, but larger bodies require more neurons to manage. Whales have much larger brains than humans or dolphins for that matter, but the evidence indicates that they're less intelligent than either.

But because the differences in races are so small, there will be plenty of overlap.

True, there are biological differences between races, but race only accounts for about 15% of the genetic difference between people; individual differences account for the vast majority (85%) of differences.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: RgrPark
Do you think if for some crazy reason, Asians or whites ended up in Africa in the first place, it would be in the same mess it is now?

Yes, it would probably be the same. Africa has a miserable geography--poor transportation and communication due to small coastline and irregular flow in rivers, lots of communicable diseases, fewer domesticable plants and animals than Eurasia, and an irregular climate that causes the harvest to fail about one year in three.

 

[Atomicus]

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: eigen
Are whites more intellegent due to race, no (gentetics over and over again has shown there is no scientific basis for race) . I think whites are more intellegent due to the overwhemling superiority of Western Culture since the 16th century.

something that has always bothered me... if there is no biological basis for race, then why do black people have black children, white people have white children, etc?

You have no idea how hard Asian kids are pushed by their parents... unless you're Asian. Fists, sticks, belts, shoes, frying pans, you name it we've been hit with it.

Its all about the drive to succeed. Kwame Jackson from The Apprentice is a clear example of the drive to succeed. White = better? No. But I do believe in eugenics to rid the gene pool of genetic defects. :roll:

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: eigen
Thats bullsh!t as well as there are numerous iq test that are culturally un-biased. I am sorry if you can't tell that the circle is more like the square than the coffee cup, but you are dumb.

Many of the questions are based on both language skills and math skills. Certain math skills are not inherant unless learned in school -- which lowers most of the scores in Africa -- and others are based on language skills, like "what letters are missing from this word?" Because of both the counterculture with minorities here in the US ("don't talk good, y'all sound like whitey") and the fact that many people in Africa can't write -- as they don't need to -- that lowers the score for blacks even more.

It's a biased test. Some places use unbiased tests, but it's not uniform by any means.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Originally posted by: cquark

Originally posted by: WobbleWobble
I remember reading that Asians have the largest brain mass out of all the races. Then whites then blacks. The more a black with mixed with white blood, but bigger the brain mass. Wouldn't that mean that there can be a difference in intelligence based on race? But don't get me wrong, I realize that there's no way a human can use all their brain capacity.

Humans do use their full brain capacity (that random small percentage figure is an urban legend), but brain mass by itself isn't an important determiner of intelligence. There is a noticeable brain size difference between men and women, but larger bodies require more neurons to manage. Whales have much larger brains than humans or dolphins for that matter, but the evidence indicates that they're less intelligent than either.

But because the differences in races are so small, there will be plenty of overlap.

True, there are biological differences between races, but race only accounts for about 15% of the genetic difference between people; individual differences account for the vast majority (85%) of differences.

Do you have proof that we use our full brain capacity and that the small % figure is an urban legend?

 

[fredtam]

Well it looks like 51% of us are racist.

 

[eigen]

Originally posted by: RgrPark

Originally posted by: Strang

Originally posted by: RgrPark
When u look at regions of the world occupied by one race, you can pretty much see their potential.

U can look at Europe and see how they advanced through the years...the whites pretty much setting the standards. War being the major influence of technological advances, they moved pretty fast.

Asia is catching up; u can possibly give an excuse for being slow in the 1800-early 1900s due to their culture/religion influencing them. However, they have rapidly caught up and they are arguably on par in terms of technology.

Africa, well they had the biggest headstart and from what i know, war has been a common theme there throughout the ages. Don't know what they're doing though. If you transplanted a whole bunch of whites into Africa, would they end up the same? oops forgot South Africa.

I am just pointing out something a lot of people might have noticed but were too shy to say.

Wait, so Asia was technologically far behind Europe until just recently? Because Europeans fought a lot? And Africans fought a lot but didn't advance technologically?

I'm sure that everyone else was just too shy to say that.

Do you think if for some crazy reason, Asians or whites ended up in Africa in the first place, it would be in the same mess it is now? I don't mean the parts of Africa occupied by Egyptians and the likes...even though some blacks belive that the Egyptian culture was black.

Do u know that the rare .00001% of the blacks from Africa that get educated in foreign soil go back to try to change their homeland and leave in defeat and are ashamed of their race? I personally know a few.
This one guy I know actually told me that they NEED western occupation to get their head out of their ass.

I met a black professor here on campus who had similar views. He went to south africa to start a business post-arpatheid and said that it was unbearable. He shortly moved back as he was unable to keep people from stealing from him.He doesnt think that they need to be colonized only that africans need to realize that the Western capitalist ethic is the best hope for their countries.

 

[RgrPark]

Originally posted by: cquark

Originally posted by: RgrPark
Do you think if for some crazy reason, Asians or whites ended up in Africa in the first place, it would be in the same mess it is now?

Yes, it would probably be the same. Africa has a miserable geography--poor transportation and communication due to small coastline and irregular flow in rivers, lots of communicable diseases, fewer domesticable plants and animals than Eurasia, and an irregular climate that causes the harvest to fail about one year in three.

no wonder all the smart ones went to other regions.

 

[FuZoR]

Originally posted by: Sysadmin
I think there are both Exceptionally Intelligent people in all races and also incredibly stupid people in ALL races also...


Sysadmin