Dr Watson, racist? [Archive] - Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 02:05 AM

As to the OP, if Dr Watson did indeed, manage to study DNA and find Evidence that he believed suggests that african genes show less intelligence, this does not mean he is racist.

Albeit the comment sounds poitically incorrect and racist, if he were to subjectively view evidence of such, it would be statement of fact.

However, I personally find this to be a unscientific. In order to gather good hard evidence of such a claim I think we would need to gather an overwhelmingly large amount of data on a large part of populations, as well as on DNA (which is a lot of data in itself!).
I doubt we even have the technology today to isolate the "intelligence gene" in massive numbers of the population to study such.
I find it highly unlikely that race carries any weight on intelligence.
I cannot say at this time that it carries none.

But subjective, personal and observational evidence through-out my life shows no idication whatsoever that it does.

Native Americans might be assumed to carry less intelligence than Europeans simply because they lived a tribal, not technological lifestyle.
Yet many of the smartest people I ever knew were of native american descent and I often listen to native american music and read teachings of wisdom to calm my mind and gain insight on difficult issues.

I think Dr Watson made assumptions and was possibly swayed by petty urban beliefs- I cannot say that for certain.

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 02:16 AM

What "tests" was he referring to in his speech? Uneducated third worlders of any race probably don't do very good on standardized SAT's.

davidlpf

18-October-2007, 02:16 AM

Well a lot of the bias probably was more of product of the time Watson grow up in.

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 02:19 AM

What "tests" was he referring to in his speech? Uneducated third worlders of any race probably don't do very good on standardized SAT's.

Good question. I read the article thinking I would find a reference to him having done specific genetic testing ( riiiight...)

Found none. It does indeed, look like a comment motivated by ignorance.

publius

18-October-2007, 02:29 AM

The question here, which I won't even mention explicitly is a lit match and gasoline. There was a book, _The Bell Curve_ that came out in 1994 that lit off an inferno.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

The primary theme of that book was IQ, or "cognitive ability" was the biggest predictor of success and social pathology in modern society, more so than socioeconomic class or others. People with higher IQs do better than those with lower. And people with lower IQs are more likely to commit crimes.

In two chapters, they looked at how cognitive ability correlates with various subsets of the general population, and that set off the inferno.

And they didn't argue it was actually genetic, just that it was there in the data, but their critics said the implication was there even if they didn't say it outright. The Wiki article goes over that.

One big question is indeed is if what is being measured as "cognitive ability" is actually an absolute human quality, or just something that reflects what society's current way of thinking and doing things. That is not a trivial question.

Another theme of the book was modern society was becomming stratified according to this cognitive ability, and they argued that was a very bad thing.

For example, one thing I lament is how the "smart class" just doesn't want to get its hands dirty and doesn't learn little things like, how to change the oil in the car, fix a commode, etc, etc. They don't mix with the broader population and get very isolated from the "real world".

Anyway, the above subject is indeed explosive, and it's just not something anyone wants to touch. It can be misused, as well as getting innocent people destroyed for even looking at it.

-Richard

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 02:36 AM

People with high IQ's commit white-collar crimes. And get caught less.

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 02:38 AM

Hitler had a high IQ.
(Yeah, yeah, I know...Godwin law. But the point is valid...)

Delvo

18-October-2007, 04:48 AM

What do test prove? In what area did he test?Intelligence tests of various kinds have been conducted in many places, on many different kinds of people, under many different kinds of circumstances. Certain tendencies keep showing up in the scores between members of different races. All races have a wide distribution with more people around the average than at either extreme. But they don't have the same average, and the extremes aren't equally common. Essentially, if you make a curve graph showing any given race's distribution of test scores, the entire curve is shifted to the left or right between different races. Most of any graph still overlaps with most of any other graph (meaning there are plenty of people above and below their own races' averages who are also above or below another race's average or above/below most of some other race's graph), but the differences are still substantial.

So he's not talking about any one particular test; he's talking about a vast pattern that turns up in years of testing in large numbers. Generally, black people's averages on various tests in various places run about a standard deviation (the equivalent of 15 IQ points) lower than white people's on the same test. Sometimes it's less, and sometimes it's more, but it's always there. White people's average also often runs a few points lower than eastern Asian people's average. Sometimes that difference doesn't show up at all, and sometimes it's as high as the equivalent 6 IQ points, but 2-4 is more common. It also has the pattern of showing up more strongly in mathematical reasoning than in linguistic ability. (African races other than black and caucasian haven't been tested enough for such comparisons, and if any such data are available on Australian aborigines and their relatives, I haven't seen them.)

This is not a disputed question among psychometricians; it's a fact. The issue is how to explain it. These test score differences are not only ubiquitous but also very stubborn. The problem has been that every single offered explanation has failed. They can be checked for, and they've just not panned out.

For example, you could say it obviously must be because white Americans are rich and black Americans aren't, but the test score difference is still there even if you're only comparing white and black people of equal wealth and income. You could say it's due to educational differences, but the test score differences don't go away when you're comparing students at the same school. You could say it's due to test bias, but there are ways to confirm or refute test bias and its importance to an outcome, and that explanation doesn't work either. You could say it's due to a psychological effect from oppression or history of slavery, but the test score differences still show up in other countries with completely different histories, including countries where black people are the "ruling class". (In fact, it's bigger in some such countries, around a standard deviation and a half.) And some of the attempted explanations in terms of environmental disadvantages in present American society also would have applied to eastern Asians in the USA, so why are the results the opposite? (And why would the differences between people from eastern and western Eurasia also be about the same in all Occidental and Oriental countries, never more than a few points bigger or smaller anywhere?) Referring to African countries in particular, someone here said something about people in such a culture not being trained for written tests like we are in the USA, but the racial test score differences don't just show up between countries; they also show up among the scores of people from the same country who would be equally culturally unprepared.

So whatever the explanation is, it's either biological, or an environmental issue that nobody has yet guessed, or both, because the environmental explanations that have been tried so far just aren't it, no matter how many times they get repeated. And yes, that goes for the ones right here in this thread.

Also, in addition to the fact that it's been known for centuries that the races' skulls aren't shaped quite the same, it's now known from genetics that a few certain alleles for brain development & function have been strongly selected for, spreading throughout populations much too quickly for genetic drift to account for, which means the alleles must have real-world effects that natural selection could act on... and one such allele is found primarily in black people, while the others are found primarily or exclusively in Eurasians. So the existence of at least a few racial differences in brains is also, like the stubbornness of the test scores, not disputable; only the exact nature of those differences is unknown. (The alleles' functions are known in a general sense of "something about how the brain grows and works", but not with much specificity.)

There are also some reasons to doubt a biological explantion for the test scores, though, or at least to doubt that that's the ONLY reason, even if one can't imagine what environmental ones are still left to examine. For example, Latinos in the USA don't do as well as non-Latino whites, even after adjusting to eliminate the possibility of language being the explanation. But racially, American Latinos generally ARE either white or a mix of white and Amerind, the latter of which is just a splinter group from eastern Asia and doesn't have substantially lower scores overall than Latinos do, so a biological explanation can't fit these various facts at the same time. Also, white European Jews score higher than white European gentiles, even though other Jews elsewhere don't.

On Watson's idea that low intelligence is generally predictive of a bad future for Africa's various social problems, though... it doesn't really matter whether he's talking about just the black ones or everyone else in Africa too, or whether the low intelligence in those countries results from one cause or another. Its effect on African countries' ability to fix their problems is the same regardless of the low intelligence's cause and the distribution. The only real question for what he's talking about is how much of an effect a society's overall intelligence distribution has on its well-being and ability to overcome dire challenges.

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 05:36 AM

Considering the nature of Delvo's post,
I want to quickly remind what I said in an earlier one.

Stating evidence or simple facts is not something that is biased by judgement.

So anyone who feels compelled to call Delvo a racist for his post, should remember the rational scientist part of their brain instead of the lizard part. Aside that it would be an Ad Hom, I am saying that even if you think it, without posting it- it still may be incorrect.

Delvo, I would refute these tests right off the bat simply based on environment. How a person literally percieves certain problem solving angles from one environment, might be very different from another.

In India, they developed a math that is very different from Arabic mathemtics, yet I hear it is much better.

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 05:49 AM

I used to be a racist, but I wrecked the car and became a typist instead.

On a nice day I'll become a walkist but usually not a runnist. I can't afford to lose any weight.

3dknight

18-October-2007, 06:01 AM

This reminds me of the question "Why is the universe expanding?" We can try to figure it out all we want but we may never know.

Delvo

18-October-2007, 06:18 AM

this is madness! How can such an intelligent scientist believe this?Here's madness for you: how can someone who wants to be thought of as following science treat the concept as "of course obviously false beyond any doubt without question", without having any scientific basis for the idea that it is false? Even in the absence of evidence for his claim, basic logic has always dictated that it was at least a possibility.

I'm black and I know I'm not stupid and know many other smart black people. He must be racist because I don't think his evidence is enough to prove that he is smarter because he's "white".He hasn't said anything about you, your acquaintances, or himself, as individuals. The issue here is a population-wide trend. Anecdotes don't disprove statistics any more than statistics disprove anecdotes. To try to use either one to disprove the other is either dishonest or very ignorant of even the most basic idea of what statistics is/are.

In order to gather good hard evidence of such a claim I think we would need to gather an overwhelmingly large amount of data on a large part of populations, as well as on DNA (which is a lot of data in itself!).The testing-related data pile psychometricians have accumulated is quite vast, and the patterns in what kinds of people get which scores aren't seriously contested by anyone; only how they got that way is argued over. The genetic stuff is more recent and only consists of a few brain-related examples so far (although there are hundreds of other alleles with similar race-differentiated selection patterns too, some with known functions like lactose tolerance and pigment reduction). Watson didn't do the relevant genetic studies himself but is surely aware of them. Some of the articles in which I read about "advantageous brain genes" that are very unevenly distributed between the populations are gone now, but here are a couple that remain:

http://www.hhmi.org/news/lahn4.html
(same article as http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9258970/ )

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/science/26human.html?_r=1&ex=1189224000&en=413288d517f209d0&ei=5070&oref=slogin

Uneducated third worlders of any race probably don't do very good on standardized SAT's.And the same thing that makes them bad at SATs, regardless of what the cause is, can also bode ill for the future of their society.

There was a book, _The Bell Curve_ that came out in 1994 that lit off an inferno... And they didn't argue it was actually genetic, just that it was there in the data, but their critics said the implication was there even if they didn't say it outright.I have that book. They did say that the evidence on intelligence and race appears, to them, to support a mixed explanation involving some biological factor(s) and some environmental factor(s) that hasn't been suggested and tested yet. (And this was before the genetic discoveries I'm talking about.)

However, the reaction to the book has been just about as interesting as the book itself. By far, most of its opponents have just taken personal potshots at the authors and used one logical fallacy and red herring after another and lied about what the book says and such, over and over again, instead of ever producing a single serious, honest, scientific counter to anything the book says. But one book I've found, a collection of articles that were written in response to TBC mostly by scientists, does have some noteworthy stuff in it. Even in this book, there's still a lot of the usual crap in there (starting with Stephen J. Gould's shamefully antiscientific PC denialist tract), and I've only read the first fifth or so of it (due to college interrupting me), but at least one of the articles does present a case against which I know of no defense for the authors of TBC. The book is "The Bell Curve Debate", collected and edited by Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman. I think the article that intrigued me instead of having me rolling my eyes like the rest was "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" by Leon J. Kamin, even though that title itself sounds like another popular antilogical falsehood often used on the losing side of debates (that all statistics are worthless and can be made to present any case you want). The author says at least four things that would take a pretty big bite out of TBC's objectivity and credibility if true, even though they only directly affect a few small parts of the book's overall themes:

1. That the studies which TBC's authors claim concluded that intelligent workers are usually better workers didn't actually conclude what they claim it did;
2. That the studies which TBC's authors claim showed racial differences in performance on a simple buttons-&-lights test didn't actually show such differences;
3. That the authors of TBC placed too much credibility on, and based too much of their book on the work of, J. Philippe Rushton, whose ideas about the races seem racist in an almost bizarrely off-the-wall way; and
4. That one of the data points which TBC's authors used, to say that black people at high IQ levels are overrepresented in high-paying prestigious jobs compared to whites of equally high IQs, came from such a small sample size that the equations would have only predicted 0.76 black people in such jobs, so the 1 person in the actual data is "overrepresented" but it doesn't mean nearly what it's made out to mean.

To know which side to take on the first two, I'd have to get my hands on the original studies in order to tell which side is presenting the originals accurately, but the first one isn't even race-related anyway. For the third, I'd have to reread TBC in order to check for Rushton's actual significance to the book, and I won't be rereading TBC any time soon, so all I can say is that I didn't notice the name coming up much or in an important way the first time through when I wasn't looking for it. On the fourth, I even noticed myself, at the time I first saw it in TBC, that it didn't seem like it could be based on very many individuals, given how few people could possibly have that high IQ level out of a low-scoring minority race within an original sample of the size they were working with on that study. I didn't have the ability to calculate the problem as precisely as the author of the other book did, though. It really does seem like they presented that truth in a deceptive manner, making the insignificant seem significant. But that was about affirmative action and reverse discrimination anyway, not a claim about one race being more or less intelligent than another. So, with #1 not involving race in any way, that means the authors of TBC might have, on racial issues, lied on one thing (#2) which doesn't affect the magnitude of the test score differences but does falsely favor a neurological explanation for them, and used a weirdly racist source (#3) for some of their data (whether that data itself was good or not).

publius

18-October-2007, 06:28 AM

I used to be a racist, but I wrecked the car and became a typist instead.

On a nice day I'll become a walkist but usually not a runnist. I can't afford to lose any weight.

Your attempt to diffuse the tension is noted. :) Again, it's a lit match and gasoline. I see Wiki has a page on the data, and you'll note the red flag warnings at the top. Disputed indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence_(test_data)

This can indeed be used to promote racism, and do great harm. I mean think of some kid reading that and thinking he doesn't have chance.

However, it can also be used to combat racism. Apparently, Jews (and that's defined more specifically, basically Jews of European stock) have the highest mean IQ scores. 100 is normalized to be the mean for the entire population, and Jewish mean is about 113. They're almost 1 SD above the mean.

There is a lot of antisemitic stuff about a Jewish conspiracy to control the wealth and take over the world, and that was used for the persecution of Jews. The Holocaust was a result of that. And it still persists to this day in the fever swamps. Well, in most quarters. In some, it's still wide open.

Well, looking at that data, you'd expect them to do the best as a group. And indeed, Jews make up only 1/4% of the world's population, but they account for 30% of the Nobel Prize winners, for instance.

It's a very dangerous subject, but it can be used for good as well as evil.

-Richard

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 06:47 AM

Your attempt to diffuse the tension is noted. :)
Yeah!? What are you gonna do about it?:mad:

Again, it's a lit match and gasoline. I see Wiki has a page on the data, and you'll note the red flag warnings at the top. Disputed indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence_(test_data) (corrected url for the quote)

This can indeed be used to promote racism, and do great harm. I mean think of some kid reading that and thinking he doesn't have chance.

However, it can also be used to combat racism. Apparently, Jews (and that's defined more specifically, basically Jews of European stock) have the highest mean IQ scores. 100 is normalized to be the mean for the entire population, and Jewish mean is about 113. They're almost 1 SD above the mean.

There is a lot of antisemitic stuff about a Jewish conspiracy to control the wealth and take over the world, and that was used for the persecution of Jews. The Holocaust was a result of that. And it still persists to this day in the fever swamps. Well, in most quarters. In some, it's still wide open.

Well, looking at that data, you'd expect them to do the best as a group. And indeed, Jews make up only 1/4% of the world's population, but they account for 30% of the Nobel Prize winners, for instance.

It's a very dangerous subject, but it can be used for good as well as evil.

-Richard

You are quite correct. Like many things- it can be used for good or evil.

However, it also makes me wonder a certain point.

Midas' parents supposedly hung blocks in his crib and all manner of things to enhance their sons IQ early on.
Some believe that he became too brilliant and ended up insane.

I wonder if there may be a cultural influence involved?

One that encourages higher intellect. Or another culture which accepts you as you are.

publius

18-October-2007, 06:54 AM

Yeah!? What are you gonna do about it?:mad:

I think you may have taken that the wrong way, if you really are :mad: and not just joking. I wasn't criticizing, just noting that tension does build up.

-Richard

3dknight

18-October-2007, 07:02 AM

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 79-year-old said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".

I agree that white kids may score better nationally than black kids but did he mention that Asian kids nationally score higher than white kids? Thats a big fat NO. If he wanted to talk about testing he should have talked about the whole story behind this.

publius

18-October-2007, 07:03 AM

The editor did botch that URL, dropping the trailing ')', but the system won't let me edit -- just get a never ending hourglass. I'll post the correct one here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence_(test_data)

-Richard

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 07:03 AM

I think you may have taken that the wrong way, if you really are :mad: and not just joking. I wasn't criticizing, just noting that tension does build up.

-Richard

It was a play on tension.
lol
C'mon keep up with me here...

publius

18-October-2007, 07:19 AM

It was a play on tension.
lol
C'mon keep up with me here...

That's what I was hoping. But :mad: is sort of stark. Best temper that with :) to make sure. Online communciation is notorious for this, lacking the all important body language and facial expressions, and several times I've made people spitting mad who took something very different from what I intended. I just wanted to be sure.

-Richard

Jens

18-October-2007, 07:24 AM

Actually, I think a key here is how he used it, i.e. to say that there is no point in providing assistance to Africa. Whether or not there are differences between groups, I don't think that anybody has ever demonstrated a causal relationship between IQ and development.

In Europe, Spain was once the dominant power but then was superceded by England and then Germany became powerful, etc. So would this mean that at one time, Spaniards had a higher IQ but then their IQs mysteriously dropped? Or in Asia, China was long way ahead of Japan, but then Japan surpassed it in the early 20th century but now is probably going to get beaten again. There are just too many factors involved in development, like natural endowments, geographical location, cultural traits, etc. So on that score, at least, I think that Watson was being quite unscientific.

Actually, the whole idea that you need a high IQ to develop seems pretty suspect to me.

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 07:30 AM

That's what I was hoping. But :mad: is sort of stark. Best temper that with :) to make sure. Online communciation is notorious for this, lacking the all important body language and facial expressions, and several times I've made people spitting mad who took something very different from what I intended. I just wanted to be sure.

-Richard

This is true, :p it was obvious to me that there was no way I could have been mad about that but uhhh...

yeah.
Tempering it with a :) would really have killed the humor for me.
Well, it got killed anyway. Oh well...

Originally Posted By Jens
Actually, I think a key here is how he used it, i.e. to say that there is no point in providing assistance to Africa. Whether or not there are differences between groups, I don't think that anybody has ever demonstrated a causal relationship between IQ and development.
(snip)
... So on that score, at least, I think that Watson was being quite unscientific.

Actually, the whole idea that you need a high IQ to develop seems pretty suspect to me.
Very suspect indeed. Otherwise development wouldn't have occured to begin with.

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 07:33 AM

publius

18-October-2007, 07:41 AM

There's also something about "collective IQ". I was reading something about this from somewhere, but I can't remember. For example, you can take a bunch of smart people and put them together in some collective body and the group is dumb as ditchwater. Example is a bureaucracy. :lol:

The argument was it takes just the right combination of competition and cooperation to make the group smart. The optimum balance can make the whole greater than the parts. Get them out of balance, and the group gets dumb collectively.

-Richard

astromark

18-October-2007, 07:51 AM

:)...:(yes from an expert on almost nothing at all...

Best response so far to post number seven. My thoughts also.

If I may, Testing people from very different cultural settings is fraught with preconceived prejudices. Whom is more intelligent. Well obviously only tall people with blond hear... No. Utter nonsense. As history has well prov en. We all know its the short red heads....:)
I am foolish enough to sagest that humanity as a whole is getting brighter regardless of cultural and ethnicity differences. Education is the winner every time. Please note that remark is mine and is based on a drop of wishful thinking as much as fact,. I have a faith in humanity that transcends race...

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 07:58 AM

How did you know that I'm a 5'6" redhead?

mfumbesi

18-October-2007, 10:38 AM

I've seen so many of these "studies" or "revelations", that I hesitate to even rebuke or point out flaws in the arguments.
I belong to another popular forum for skeptics and there every now and then someone will come with the latest and greatest (back of envelop) research which prove this or that relating to this or that group/culture/race/ethnic/OS being superior to the rest (I made up the OS part....OS->Operating System).
I use to get ticked and spend hours looking-up papers and web links to refute/rebuke the posters, but I've learned that stereotype and upbringing issue are hard to remedy over the web. Now I read, giggle a bit and carry on with my life.

Ronald Brak

18-October-2007, 11:42 AM

Here is an essay on the heritability and Malleability of IQ by a smart person. It's quite long, but its a pretty exhaustive coverage and applicable to this thread.

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html

Ronald Brak

18-October-2007, 12:33 PM

mfumbesi

18-October-2007, 12:58 PM

…. He has also suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, positing the theory that black people have higher libidos, and argued in favour of genetic screening and engineering on the basis that ” stupidity” could one day be cured. He has claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: “People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would great.”

I must admit its the first time I heard of Dr.Watson, he doesn't sound like someone who should be taken seriously.
I am not sure whether he is a mor....n or maybe he ill. Maybe hes got some funny strain of the foot in mouth condition.
At first I was worried that a purported intellectual has said some unfortunate things but now I am convinced....we are dealing with an idi..t.

Jens

18-October-2007, 01:41 PM

I must admit its the first time I heard of Dr.Watson

This would be a minor thing, except that Watson happens to be one of the people (with Francis Crick) who discovered DNA. . .

Zachary

18-October-2007, 01:52 PM

Here's madness for you: how can someone who wants to be thought of as following science treat the concept as "of course obviously false beyond any doubt without question", without having any scientific basis for the idea that it is false? Even in the absence of evidence for his claim, basic logic has always dictated that it was at least a possibility.

Hmm, considering you know nothing about me I think it's a little presumptious to slate me as a scientific bigot.

I say it is madness not because of what Dr Watson claims, but more the manner of his claims, particularly:

He went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".

That doesn't sound like rational discussion to me; it sounds like somebody trying to use science to justify their already existing prejudices. That, from somebody so respected and accomplished in the scientific world, suprises me to say the least, particularly on such sensative ground as this.

Argos

18-October-2007, 02:02 PM

I, for one, am a racist. I just LOVE races [can hardly wait for the Brazilian F1 GP on sunday :dance: - oh, and a very smart afro guy is likely going to take it all]

mfumbesi

18-October-2007, 02:19 PM

This would be a minor thing, except that Watson happens to be one of the people (with Francis Crick) who discovered DNA. . .

Biotechnology does not fall within my competences, I am not well versed on the "giants" of biotechnology.
I found out about the DNA discovery on the link I quoted above and reading some of the post here.
In mentioning that I was not familiar with his name does not diminish his work on the discovery of DNA.
In another thread here there is a story about an astronaut who believes that we've met ET already---- meaning you can still be smart but say/believe the darnest things.

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 02:47 PM

Some questions people just don't want to know the answers too. I think this would be one of them. I read the book "Next" by Michael Crichton - which is an interesting take on the some of the consequences of knowing too much about DNA and genetics. Heck - I'm living with it. Life at home isn't too pleasant when you find out something is hereditary when you were convinced it wasn't. I was the only one in my family (I'm talking grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, 2nd cousins, etc.) with a particular defect and was certain it was about as fluke as having 6 fingers on one hand. You pass the trait on and your spouse hates you for it and is convinced there is no way you didn't know.

I can see a future where heredity and genetic predisposition will be used against people more and more. It isn't pretty.

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 02:54 PM

You pass the trait on and your spouse hates you for it and is convinced there is no way you didn't know.

I can see a future where heredity and genetic predisposition will be used against people more and more. It isn't pretty.

People already do that to each other about inherited wealth or property; my mother and her sister haven't spoken to each other in years, due to a fight started over my grandmother's house-- which neither now owns, and which has probably been torn down by its new owners for all we know. But the grudge and its scars live on.

tofu

18-October-2007, 03:12 PM

In my humble opinion, an "ism" be it racism or sexism, is when you apply to an individual, a prejudice that may in fact be true for the group.

For example, if you were to graph upper body strength of males and females you would get two bell curves. The male's curve would be shifted a bit to the right. What that means is that as a group, males have more upper body strength than females. It is NOT sexist, in my opinion, to make that statement.

However, if I tell an individual woman, "sorry but you can't be a firefighter because you're a woman and therefore you aren't strong enough" then that is sexism, in my opinion. Everyone should have equal rights and equal opportunity regardless of their group identity.

Disinfo Agent

18-October-2007, 03:33 PM

The story in the OP is interesting to me, because it illustrates an important point which I've been thinking about for some time, but had trouble expressing.

There is no scientific basis for the existence of biological differences between human races, beyond the trivial ones (black people tend to have darker skin, but that's a tautology). This has been known, and convincingly argued, since the first half of the 20th century. (In the 19th century, one might still have reasonably thought otherwise.)

Yet there have never stopped being believers in the race myth, regardless of the evidence. When they're regular folks, it's understandable: they're just ignorant victims of a school system and a culture that are behind the times. But even scientists -- who ought to know better -- keep falling for the myth! This shows the power that preconceptions and unconscious biases have to obscure the facts, and should humble all of us who have some association with science.

I have met people a couple of times with the naive idea that the Human Genome Project or some other advance in genetics will finally dismantle the idea of biological race. I've always found that a little baffling. Race isn't being refuted now; it has been refuted already! The original refutation came over half a century go, by anthropologists. We don't need genetics for that. The evidence is clear.

Just as it's a mistake to think that genetics will be the one to dispell misconceptions about race, it's naive to think that working in a more modern and technological science (like genetics) makes one wiser than those who work in older and less glitzy sciences (like anthropology).

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 04:23 PM

But wouldn't natural selection dictate some inherent differences in race beyond simply skin color and hair texture? What I mean to say is that it is commonly believed that variances in skin color evolved over the years based on geography. It only seems logical that the selection of a favorable mate would vary based on some of the same geographic characteristics. What physical characteristics would be important for a person living in a mountainous region vs. an open plain? What about a dense forest vs. a grass land? Cold climate vs. warm? Wet vs. dry?

This would be peope choosing tall vs. stocky, fast vs. strong, physical prowess vs. resourcefullness based on their existing environmental conditions for thousands of years. Why wouldn't there be inherent physical differences (which could possibly include the preference of intellect vs. strength).

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 04:33 PM

mike alexander

18-October-2007, 04:36 PM

I've been trying to assemble my thoughts on this topic and find DisinfoAgent has done a pretty darned good summing up. Bravo, DI.

A couple of further thoughts, sort of an appendix. Define 'race'. Most important. If we intend to discuss intelligence (or some subsets of it that are tested), and can make a deal out of small shifts in the mean of a population, we should make sure that the population represents an entity definable by some scientific criterion. Take 'black' (although I've never seen a black person, sort of a gamut from warm tan to a deep brown with purplish undertones. Or a white person, over the range from soft pink to deep brown). Dark skin seems, on average, to be a response to living in a climate with lots of high angle sunlight. So I assume it's something else. What is it?

Another comment earlier mentioned Jews as a race that seem to be brighter than the mean, since they win a large share of Nobel Prizes (not to mention play the violin well). Show me a Jewish genotype, please. Judaism is a religion and a culture, historically somewhat isolated (sic), but difficult to show as a race. (And I come back again to a need for an exact dedfinition of race).

So, while I'm pretty sure that all this intelligence testing is measuring something, it's far from obvious to me what it is being correlated to.

And none of it explains Mozart.

hhEb09'1

18-October-2007, 04:39 PM

And none of it explains Mozart.Or, ironically, Kary Mullis

Disinfo Agent

18-October-2007, 04:51 PM

But wouldn't natural selection dictate some inherent differences in race beyond simply skin color and hair texture?Many have thought so, but they have invariably failed to prove it convincingly.

What I mean to say is that it is commonly believed that variances in skin color evolved over the years based on geography.The origin of human skin color differences between geographic areas of the globe is still under discussion. One possibility is that it's an adaptation to sunlight, yes. Another I've heard about is sexual selection.

It only seems logical that the selection of a favorable mate would vary based on some of the same geographic characteristics.Maybe, but not all biological traits that matter for our survival have a straightforward relation to geography. Even when such a relation exists, it isn't always defined according to a north-south axis. For example, blood types seem to be distributed according to an east-west pattern.

What physical characteristics would be important for a person living in a mountainous region vs. an open plain? What about a dense forest vs. a grass land? Cold climate vs. warm? Wet vs. dry?

This would be peope choosing tall vs. stocky, fast vs. strong, physical prowess vs. resourcefullness based on their existing environmental conditions for thousands of years. Why wouldn't there be inherent physical differences (which could possibly include the preference of intellect vs. strength).Spock, you and your children and your children's children may all be shepherds living up in the mountains, but one day your great-great-grandson may prefer to be a blacksmith, and move to a village downhill to go learn the trade. Or "he" might be a she, and move to the village because that's where her husband's family lives, and the custom of your culture dictates that women move in with their husband when they marry. Or a band of nomadic invaders may destroy the village where they used to exchange their wool products for bread, forcing them to take their sheep and go make a living elsewhere...

Human beings have not stayed put in the same place throughout the last 4 million years. Although it may not seem so in some lifetimes, we're drifters. Human populations are dynamic: we intermarry, we invade, we migrate back and forth. We've just never let much moss grow on us. :)

As for intelligence, assuming there's such a well-defined and unique thing, I have little doubt that it's a useful aid to survival anywhere in this world.

m1omg

18-October-2007, 04:54 PM

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 04:57 PM

No gene pool is entirely isolated. Whenever groups of people interact for any period of time, they... interact. And most early human cultures were highly nomadic, going where the food was. So there were a lot of wandering genes, which did not always stay in one particular group.

Pacific Melanesians and Black Central Africans have similar phenotypes, but genetically are no more related than Vikings and Eskimos. Samoans were shaped by fighting for the right to marry, resulting in selection toward big, burly males, but there are still short Samoans. Unless you have a very small, closed gene pool, there will always be tremendous variation in types, and a whole "race" is far too large a population for that to apply to...

Of course we're all of the same species. Or course there are wide variations within a population. But in discussions of race, one would assume we're speaking of assumptions that can be made about a general population of people. As with your example of Samoans. Of course there are exceptions - but one would be safe in assuming big and burly when referring to a male of this group. In fact that example is a perfect example of what I was referring too. Natural selection dictating physical characteristics of what is (or was) important to a specific group. It's not a bad thing. It's not a good thing. It's just what is.

I'm an American - but if I were to say I was primarily of Dutch and German descent - all of you could get a somewhat fair idea of my appearance. Of course there are exceptions and no you couldn't drawn an accurate picture of me - but in general some assumptions would be safe. Feel free to speculate - I will not be insulted.

Sure people were nomadic - but apparantely they stayed in one place long enough to develop natural variations in skin tone. Presumably most reproduction took place in the local population given that these traits were passed along.

What would be neat (and propably completely unethical and borderline evil) would be to isolate a large group of unrelated caucasions in subsaharan africa and see how many generations it would take for that group to start having offspring with dark skin and hair. Unrelated - I know - but it would answer some questions - no?

...Especially when it comes to selecting against intelligence, which is always a survival trait (At least, I can't think of any conditions where it isn't).

I don't think would be a matter of selecting against intelligence. It would be a matter of selecting for some other characteristic that may appear more valuable at the time. Not a good example, but if I've got to move a bunch of heavy rocks in 20 minutes - intelligence may find an easier way to do it - but would take more time than picking a big strong person to pick them up and move them. I'm not picking against intelligence. I'm picking for strength. Luck might be on my side and that strong person could be really smart - but I really don't care one way or the other (as long as that person isn't dumb as a post).

m1omg

18-October-2007, 04:59 PM

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 05:01 PM

I think that "our white race" is obsessed with race because of a complex of inferiority, because we all know how we whites brutally destroyed many native tribes of america, africa and australia, forced ours "smart" industrial nature destroying consumer way of life to another people, waged the worst wars in the history etc...

I'm neither obsessed with race, nor have I oppressed anyone. I'm an individual, and I only feel guilty for things I've actually done (and not always even then ;)). My ancestors came from all over Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa, and probably some from other places too. I don't know if that constitutes a "white race" but it's not vanilla.

Tucson_Tim

18-October-2007, 05:04 PM

"We're Americans. We're mutts. Our ancestors were kicked out of every decent country in Europe." (From the movie Stripes).

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 05:05 PM

DA - I don't disagree with anything you said and I certainly don't support Dr. Watson's assertions. What I do find interesting is that people can't discuss general populations without having to way over-clarify that specific people can and often are different than the general population they are part of. It's a politically correct thing. Nobody wants to be accused of being a racist so we tend to go way overboard in acknowledging that there are exceptions.

With animals - we've got no problem discussing general populations and how natural selection dictates the evolution of a bear living in North America vs. Asia - without having to specify that not all bears are alike and some grizzly's are bigger or smaller than others, every other sentence.

Tucson_Tim

18-October-2007, 05:11 PM

I think we might be surprised (shocked?) at the racial views of some of the great people of the past that we admire so much for their contributions to science.

hhEb09'1

18-October-2007, 05:14 PM

It's a politically correct thing. Nobody wants to be accused of being a racist so we tend to go way overboard in acknowledging that there are exceptions.Interesting way of phrasing that. It's not that they are acknowledging the exceptions, they are acknowledging the rule.

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 05:18 PM

Interesting way of phrasing that. It's not that they are acknowledging the exceptions, they are acknowledging the rule.

Phrased poorly then. Since it is a rule - we shouldn't have to go way overboard in acknowledging it. But our current politically correct culture dictates that we do.

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 05:19 PM

What would be neat (and propably completely unethical and borderline evil) would be to isolate a large group of unrelated caucasions in subsaharan africa and see how many generations it would take for that group to start having offspring with dark skin and hair.

Most "caucasians" already have dark skin and hair. People of that description form the largest percentage of the population defined as "white", depending on which defintions of "dark" and "white" are being used-- and therein lies the problem. For such large and varied population groups, race becomes pretty much an arbitrary grouping based on physical appearance and where your known ancestors most recently lived.

Disinfo Agent

18-October-2007, 05:20 PM

Interesting way of phrasing that. It's not that they are acknowledging the exceptions, they are acknowledging the rule.Yes, thank you hhEb09'1! :)

Spock, that shepherd's son who one day decides to become a blacksmith is not an exception -- he is the rule! Genetically, we humans are a very jumbled lot. It's not that there are mutts; we are all mutts.

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 05:33 PM

Yes, thank you hhEb09'1! :)

Spock, that shepherd's son who one day decides to become a blacksmith is not an exception -- he is the rule!

The rule being that all individuals are different, not the rule being all shepherd's son's will one day become blacksmiths. Another shepherds son may one day be a ballerina. Some day there may no longer be a need for shepherds at all. You don't say!:doh:

I should just bow out of this one. I feel like I'm being painted with a certain brush when I'm just trying to have a candid discussion.

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 05:39 PM

I should just bow out of this one. I feel like I'm being painted with a certain brush when I'm just trying to have a candid discussion.

I don't think so. But when you state controversial ideas, expect controversy.

Argos

18-October-2007, 05:45 PM

What physical characteristics would be important for a person living in a mountainous region vs. an open plain? What about a dense forest vs. a grass land? Cold climate vs. warm? Wet vs. dry?

One could argue that temperate climates, with their variable nature, are more challenging and stimulating to the intellect [I have heard that]. It could have provided a marginal intellectual advantage for peoples of those regions along history. There is a correlation between temperate climates and material welfare, resulting from the inventivess of the peoples of those regions. Practically all human development stems either from early Chinese and European, or from recent North American inventions; inventive peoples living in temperate zones. Anyway, those [slight] advantages would be environmental and not resultant of any genetic 'superiority'.

Disinfo Agent

18-October-2007, 05:47 PM

I should just bow out of this one. I feel like I'm being painted with a certain brush when I'm just trying to have a candid discussion.I for one am not trying to paint anyone as anything. Believe it or not, I once was on that side of this debate where you are now. And not that long ago.

I don't think would be a matter of selecting against intelligence. It would be a matter of selecting for some other characteristic that may appear more valuable at the time. Not a good example, but if I've got to move a bunch of heavy rocks in 20 minutes - intelligence may find an easier way to do it - but would take more time than picking a big strong person to pick them up and move them. I'm not picking against intelligence. I'm picking for strength. Luck might be on my side and that strong person could be really smart - but I really don't care one way or the other (as long as that person isn't dumb as a post).I want to comment on this you wrote, in light of what Mr. Watson has said.

Mr. Watson says there are differences in intelligence which are consistently "tested". No doubt he is talking about IQ testing. One thing about IQ is that it assumes that intelligence is a well-defined human characteristic which can be represented by a single number (as opposed to a sequence of numbers representing various "dimensions").

Here's the rub: if intelligence is unique, then it should be selected for in any environment, because it's always a plus for survival. (Our whole evolution as hominoids was driven by intelligence to a large extent.)

And if, as you seem to be now suggesting, it's not intelligence per se, but more particular abilities which are selected for or against, then how can we maintain that intelligence is unique?

Nick Theodorakis

18-October-2007, 05:47 PM

I must admit its the first time I heard of Dr.Watson,
This would be a minor thing, except that Watson happens to be one of the people (with Francis Crick) who discovered DNA. . .

If I may pick a nit, Watson (and Crick) didn't discover DNA, they determined a model for its structure (for which they won a Nobel Prize). DNA was known since at least ca. 1900, and the first convincing experiment that demonstrated that it was the genetic material was done by Oswald Avery (who ought to be in the "underappreciated scientists" thread) and coworkers in the 1940's.

But don't let the nitpick keep me from agreeing with you that Watson is one of those names who ought to be known by non-specialists (and maybe we need a thread about that as well).

The other thing is that he is sometimes described as being a geneticist (as if that might give some weight to his comments), but this a bit of an overstatement, or at least an oversimplification. First of all, he hasn't done any research in many years; he has been more of an administrator since the 1960's. Second, his field was more of structural molecular biology, not the kind of genetics that studies inheritance.

Nick

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 05:47 PM

I don't think so. But when you state controversial ideas, expect controversy.

I feel as though I'm asking questions more than advocation positions. But I digress.

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 05:52 PM

I feel as though I'm asking questions more than advocation positions. But I digress.

Well, as I said, in small, completely closed populations which stay in one environment for a large number of generations, what you're asking about could happen. But races are usually defined more broadly, and the label applied to large, open, dynamic and non-homogenous population groups.

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 05:57 PM

And if, as you seem to be now suggesting, it's not intelligence per se, but more particular abilities which are selected for or against, then how can we maintain that intelligence is unique?

I'm not saying intelligence isn't unique. In choosing a mate - some cultures may have dictated that a person who is capable of building the most durable shelter - regardless of strength or size of the individual - would be the most desirable mate. That person may also be big and strong, but that would just be a bonus and not the main factor.

I'm just throwing ideas out there as possibilities - personally I really don't have a set understanding or belief regarding the subject (whatever that may be at this point).

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 06:13 PM

Well, as I said, in small, completely closed populations which stay in one environment for a large number of generations, what you're asking about could happen. But races are usually defined more broadly, and the label applied to large, open, dynamic and non-homogenous population groups.

That's what I'm saying. And I'm not just referring to skin color groups. I don't doubt for a second that even within the continent of Africa there are subsets where different characteristics were desirable in mate. Within European populations, some groups are likely to be blond, some are likely to be tall, some are likely to be short, on average general population vs. general population (with the customary variance among individuals allowed for). The question I'm asking is why not other non-physical characteristics as well?

As the world shrinks - these lines are becoming more and more blurry - and I wouldn't be surprised by a future thousands of years down the road where there are no more blondes, where the degree of skin color variance is far more narrow (not as many really dark or really light skin tones).

Jerry

18-October-2007, 06:18 PM

However, it can also be used to combat racism. Apparently, Jews (and that's defined more specifically, basically Jews of European stock) have the highest mean IQ scores. 100 is normalized to be the mean for the entire population, and Jewish mean is about 113. They're almost 1 SD above the mean.
Well, now we know who is making up the questions in the IQ tests:)

Seriously, the question of what makes a specific population prosper in a given environment is fascinating. There was a time when the Russian's appealed to the Germanic families to provide a ruling class, there was a time the Russians and French shot and beheaded the ruling class because they became such idiots. I suspect there was a time when a similar nomadic clan was run out of Africa. There is this American thing going on with a ruling class that is pathologically intellectually challenged.

There has been enough success and failure of nations of all 'races', no matter how they are subdivided, to conclude Watson's assertions are foolish. As others have said, it is the wise application of knowledge that is most important for long term success.

This implies those who build condos on barrier islands are the most intellectually challenged; seconded by those who would procreate us into oblivion. Foolishness has no racial or intellectual boundries.

Disinfo Agent

18-October-2007, 06:32 PM

And here is a link to a shorter, pithier article directly concerning Watson and his unsupported remarks. I urge viewer disgression as it contains a three letter word for bottom that begins with the letter A and so may be too shocking for some readers:

http://gregladen.com/wordpress/?p=1535One comment in that page is worth quoting:

autumn // Oct 17, 2007 at 11:48 pm

I am reminded by IQ tests of the studies, which crop up every few years, concerning the size of penises among different groups of people. It seems that the only significant difference is always a slight advantage(?) found in the home region of the scientists doing the study.
How true. :D

Doodler

18-October-2007, 06:55 PM

What would be neat (and propably completely unethical and borderline evil) would be to isolate a large group of unrelated caucasions in subsaharan africa and see how many generations it would take for that group to start having offspring with dark skin and hair. Unrelated - I know - but it would answer some questions - no?

You mean like the Boers of South Africa? Gotta keep in mind, traits like that in the modern world of sentience tend to follow asthetic trends. We're very capable of identifying and isolating individuals from the breeding pool with undesirable traits.

m1omg

18-October-2007, 07:03 PM

I strongly hate these eugenic speeches about breeding or gene pools...

m1omg

18-October-2007, 07:05 PM

Who deleted my posts and why?Do I insulted you favourite sciencist?

Doodler

18-October-2007, 07:10 PM

I strongly hate these eugenic speeches about breeding or gene pools...

Get used to it. We're nothing more than animals who think we're too good to be selectively bred, but under the right circumstances, its no more or less difficult to do than it would be with dogs or cattle.

Consider the FLDS cities in Utah and Arizona. Generationally isolated populations suffering from severe inbreeding and the resultant recessive genetic disorders. Over the course of hundreds of generations with those mutations expressing, in theory, they could drift off the main line of human evolution. Its already causing some level of physical and mental alteration from human norms.

Disinfo Agent

18-October-2007, 07:14 PM

Get used to it.I refuse to.

Here is an essay on the heritability and Malleability of IQ by a smart person. It's quite long, but its a pretty exhaustive coverage and applicable to this thread.

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.htmlThat's kind of heavy on the math. I liked this other one (http://gregladen.com/wordpress/?p=1536).

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 07:15 PM

I strongly hate these eugenic speeches about breeding or gene pools...

I'm interested in it because it's affecting me personally right now. I wouldn't be too surprised down the road to find that our (in general terms) children aren't covered by health insurance due to the fact that we should have known the genetic risks of particular health conditions and chose to breed anyway. Or people making genetic screening a pre-condition of marraige.

Delvo

18-October-2007, 07:19 PM

One could argue that temperate climates, with their variable nature, are more challenging and stimulating to the intellect [I have heard that]. It could have provided a marginal intellectual advantage for peoples of those regions along history.The opposite argument is that agriculture, metal, the shorter supply of big dangerous animals, the fact that staying warm in the cold is easier than staying cool in the heat, and such make survival less challenging in Europe than it is in Africa. So explanations how how intelligence might have been more important in one place or the other can be thought up either way... which makes such ideas worthless without facts for them to be needed to explain. The order is observation then idea, not idea first.

Practically all human development stems either from early Chinese and European, or from recent North American inventions; inventive peoples living in temperate zones. Anyway, those [slight] advantages would be environmental and not resultant of any genetic 'superiority'.In modern times, the challenges of a temperate climate don't really touch us, so it can't really still be causing an intelligence boost except through biological responses to past difficulty. And Europe and North America inherited knowledge that was actually discovered or invented in warmer climates first, thousands of years ago.

Palomar

18-October-2007, 07:26 PM

Could it be that Dr. Watson is confusing race with CULTURE?

I've lived in a culture different from the one I was born/raised in. These folks are, imo, of normal intelligence and etc...however, their CULTURE is a bit backwards. For instance, ask the distance to a nearby landmark and the answer is usually "I don't know."

Where I come from, most EVERYONE knows: Distances between places, approximately how old a historical building is, etc.; just general stuff any long-term resident should know.

Or they make up answers. My husband asked a clerk why a $3.00 item was rung up as $4.50. The reply was "it's sales tax." $1.50 sales tax on a $3.00 item?? Of course not. Instead of saying "Oh, I guess I rang that up wrong," the excuse was "sales tax."

It's still sometimes aggravating.

The constant "I don't know, I don't know" is frustrating. Back home, to constantly and freely admit "I don't know" and not care that you don't would have you tagged as a dummy.

Cultural differences are very real.

Spock Jenkins

18-October-2007, 07:29 PM

And Europe and North America inherited knowledge that was actually discovered or invented in warmer climates first, thousands of years ago.

I've heard it said that the Chinese invented gun powder, but it took a European to figure out how to kill somebody with it.

Semi-related joke. One group is actually quite bright. They even invented the toilet seat. Of course 150 years later, this smarter group decided to put a hole in it. (telling it the PC way)

Argos

18-October-2007, 07:49 PM

The order is observation then idea, not idea first.

I think it is well supported by observation: the strinking coincidence between technologically advanced peoples [resulting from an enhanced inventivess] and temperate climates. It is a strong argument.

You may argue that those peoples inherited the wheel and the fire, but those are discoveries, not inventions. They result from careful observation, not intense intellectual ellaboration. Furthermore, the technological ground was rather leveled until the 15th century. There were no parameters for comparison between cultures. Every other people considered themselves the superior, the choosen ones. Dr. Watson´s arguments would be feeble in those times. The 'superiority' argument picked up momentum with the industrial revolution, when differences in inventivess became clear and allowed for hasty comparisons. It is a social phenomenon of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 07:55 PM

As the world shrinks - these lines are becoming more and more blurry - and I wouldn't be surprised by a future thousands of years down the road where there are no more blondes, where the degree of skin color variance is far more narrow (not as many really dark or really light skin tones).

It's possible that rather the opposite could happen; with a technological culture no longer fully dependent on outside conditions, anything goes. Of course, right now, Earth has a massive, increasingly mobile human population which seems like a situation which will, barring disaster, be the norm for the foreseeable future. As humanity eventually develops the means to modify itself and/or expands into space, greater variation will become possible, if not inevitable. And blondes won't vanish- the genes will still be there. There may be less distinction between groups, but there will still be as much human variety in the world. All the genes we have now they will have then, unless some maniac achieves absolute world power and selectively kills or neuters all of one type, or creates a disease to do it for them.

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 08:14 PM

Spock Jenkins, I got one word for ya...
Gattica;)

In the meantime, like many national study results, surveys and the like, I really don't put too much credit on them.

Also, to state such as scientific fact without bias is not an example of prejudice.

Now...
If science says that white or European stock are less intelligent than Asians... I really don't care. I'm not offended. I don't feel like the white folks are doomed nor inferior in any way. We have other gifts to offer.

As far as the attributes of races goes...
Each race and culture bears its gifts and its problems.
We seem to like to compare eachother but forget that although there are differences, we are still basically the same stuff.

Here in the United States, our cultural and ethnic diversity is a major contributer to the success of the country over-all.

Some posters have stated that some races made these inventions and other races expanded on said invention or made other inventions...
Here in the US- we got 'em ALL!

This statement assumes that race plays any real factor in development. I have seen no real hard evidence that it does, I have seen some circumstancial that seems in favor of it...

But in the end. I just don't care.

I don't believe any race is inferior nor supuerior-even if science could demonstrate differences. Differences provide balance. They provide assistance to development. They provide greater understanding and help improve maturity.
I did look into some papers seeing about Delvo's posted evidence. All in all, I couldn't determine that these tests are really conclusive of anything except that there was:
Some testing done of a nature I do not know.(dunno if they tested calculus or what!)
Some testing done on individuals I do not know.
Some testing done on a certain percentage of the population that opens the results up to random contamination.
Some testing done according to standards that I could not determine.

I've had my IQ professionally tested three times in my life. Each time the result was about the same and complimentary.
They told me I have a brain and it functions reasonably well.
If my IQ was a car I would have a really nasty speeding ticket.

And everyday- I act like and idiot, say dumb things, do dumb things and generally demonstrate I have a lot yet to learn.

So I have NO IDEA anymore if I'm smart- Or dumb as a rock. All I know is that I do have one little thing...

The ability to study. To learn. To improve. To take what I have and work on it to make it better.

And that is something, I think, everyone has.

Gillianren

18-October-2007, 08:44 PM

Come to think of it, back when my IQ was lower..
I developed a lot of things.

Right now my IQ has risen because I've been on BAUT a LOT lately...

But I'm predicting a sharp decline again after I watch the news later.

Your IQ generally remains fairly steady, since it is not a figure representing what you know, but how much you are capable of learning. If your IQ were, say, 60, spending time here wouldn't help much; you wouldn't be capable of understanding most of the concepts presented. (Okay, be fair--I'm about 100 points higher than that, and I don't understand a lot of the concepts presented here. But that's because my brain doesn't run in scientific tracks. I do think everyone should know who Watson and Crick were, though.)

Also, you mean Gattaca; the word must be spelled using only those letters that represent the genome. Kind of the point.

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 08:52 PM

Your IQ generally remains fairly steady, since it is not a figure representing what you know, but how much you are capable of learning. If your IQ were, say, 60, spending time here wouldn't help much; you wouldn't be capable of understanding most of the concepts presented. (Okay, be fair--I'm about 100 points higher than that, and I don't understand a lot of the concepts presented here. But that's because my brain doesn't run in scientific tracks. I do think everyone should know who Watson and Crick were, though.)

Also, you mean Gattaca; the word must be spelled using only those letters that represent the genome. Kind of the point.

Thanks for correcting that. I didn't bother to google Gattaca.

I read a study a while back stating that IQ can be raised. Excersizing your brain kind of thing. That the IQ isn't a steady thing throughout your life.
Is this true?

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 08:57 PM

My mother recieved a head injury from a car accident and her IQ reportedly went from 140 to 110. It's definitely affected her, although she's been given some mental exercises and therapy which is supposed to help. I don't think it's possible to return her IQ to what it was, and I don't know what effect the therapy, etc. has.

Tucson_Tim

18-October-2007, 09:02 PM

My mother recieved a head injury from a car accident . . .

Oh man, sorry to hear that. Was it recent?

The_Radiation_Specialist

18-October-2007, 09:04 PM

Eta C

18-October-2007, 09:05 PM

I'm amazed that this thread has gone for three pages and no one has mentioned Steven Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. Basically it goes in to the sad history of attempts to "measure" intelligence and use such measurements to argue for inherent differences between groups. It's a long and sad one. The basic fallacy of these attempts, according to Gould, is one of reification. Namely, these attempts all assume that intelligence is a tangible object and something that is quantifiable by one, or a small number, of numbers be they brain weight, cranial capacity, IQ test, etc. The whole argument is flawed from the start since intelligence is something that cannot be quantified in a manner to allow comparison.

Yes, intelligence exists, it's just that it can't be reduced in the way Watson and the author of the "Bell Curve" assume it can. To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's comment on pornography, "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." That's intelligence for you.

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 09:11 PM

Oh man, sorry to hear that. Was it recent?

About 3 years ago. But it took most of that time for the insurance companies to admit she'd been anything but inconvenienced, long past the 6-months that her doctor said was the time limit for a type of computer-aided therapy she couldn't pay for without insurance, and which might have made a much bigger difference.

Neverfly

18-October-2007, 09:15 PM

So what if blacks had lower IQ? I've had some black friends and they can totally own me and most other white guys in sprint, basketball, etc. They seem generally more superior to white people in physical activities. If a study concluded that, would it be called racist too?

It's all a matter of perception.

Are blacks better at sports than whites?

Here in the US, blacks dominate professional sports. So a lot of people think it may be because they are physically better at sports.

Not necessarily. Due to some rather embarrassing, horrifying and illogical prejudices in the past in US history, for many blacks, the best route for success and education was- Sports.

Thus a misinformed percpetion is born.

Fortunately today, a lot of that has changed. Race is not a factor in employment or education and not the military.
On this count- Watson was dead wrong. Employers should never assume anything about ability or intellect based on race.

Tucson_Tim

18-October-2007, 09:17 PM

About 3 years ago. But it took most of that time for the insurance companies to admit she'd been anything but inconvenienced, long past the 6-months that her doctor said was the time limit for a type of computer-aided therapy she couldn't pay for without insurance, and which might have made a much bigger difference.

Don't you hate insurance companies. I worked for one - life insurance - for about 5 years in EDP but still saw the BS that they fed customers.

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 09:23 PM

Don't you hate insurance companies. I worked for one - life insurance - for about 5 years in EDP but still saw the BS that they fed customers.

The irony is that my mom worked in health insurance before her retirement. She had some Dilbertesque stories to tell about how that circus was run.

publius

18-October-2007, 09:30 PM

Ah, the "Mismeasure of Man". There is a broader argument here, involving more things than subject here of racial differences in one area. And that is differences amongst everyone compared to statistical measures.

The argument is that of late, we take measurements of various human characteristics and determine what is "normal", and what is abnormal. And so, armed with knowledge of what is normal, we tend to force people into certain categories. For example, take height. Armed with statistical data, you might say this child is not growing normally and will be abnormally short. And that is taken to be a bad thing, and might be treated with growth hormones or whatever they can do now.

Before the advent of modern scientific statistics, that wouldn't have happened. Yes, you would notice that some people are short and some are tall, but this "normal" vs "abnormal" thing wasn't as authoritative as it is now.

Of course, it can do great good as well, when something abnormal that wouldn't be noticed before indicates a real problem or disease that can be solved. But I'm sympathetic to the argument that it goes too far, and all this comparing how many sigmas one is from the mean can do much mischief.

-Richard

-Richard

Noclevername

18-October-2007, 09:45 PM

But I'm sympathetic to the argument that it goes too far, and all this comparing how many sigmas one is from the mean can do much mischief.

Me too. There's too many stigmas for our sigmas.

Celestial Mechanic

18-October-2007, 09:56 PM

[Snip!] There's too many stigmas for our sigmas.
:clap:

JohnD

18-October-2007, 10:18 PM

I've skipped over 5 pages, so excuse me if this has been noted, but Prof.Watson has 'apologised unreservedly' for his remarks.
See: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,,2193992,00.html

See an interview with him, also to mark the publication of his new book, that appeared only two days earlier, in which the interviewer, John Crace, staff journalist on the Guardian, says, "Throughout his life, Watson has made few concessions to anyone or anything and, even though he is a committed liberal, political correctness has never featured anywhere on his list of priorities."
See: http://education.guardian.co.uk/academicexperts/story/0,,2191666,00.html

John

hhEb09'1

18-October-2007, 10:44 PM

I've skipped over 5 pages, so excuse me if this has been noted, but Prof.Watson has 'apologised unreservedly' for his remarks.
See: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,,2193992,00.html
"That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

But also:

"I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said," the statement said.

publius

18-October-2007, 11:40 PM

Another comment earlier mentioned Jews as a race that seem to be brighter than the mean, since they win a large share of Nobel Prizes (not to mention play the violin well). Show me a Jewish genotype, please. Judaism is a religion and a culture, historically somewhat isolated (sic), but difficult to show as a race. (And I come back again to a need for an exact dedfinition of race).

So, while I'm pretty sure that all this intelligence testing is measuring something, it's far from obvious to me what it is being correlated to.

Here's a recent (2005) paper on this. I know little about ethnic categories, but there are several subgroups of Jews. The ones that score the highest are called "Ashkenazi". This is the one that stands out. Other Jewish subgroups score a little less than the mean 100. So what's going on there, and that was the subject of this paper:

http://homepage.mac.com/harpend/.Public/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf

The argument is apparently that the Ashkenazi culture actually selected for intelligence due to various pressures on the group. They were persecuted and the playing field was strongly tilted against them. Their response, it is argued, was to overcome the bias by getting smarter.

-Richard

BigDon

19-October-2007, 12:02 AM

You guys are not looking at the bigger implications of this.

Don't you know that, according to the rules of PCness, if somebody says something stupid early OR later in life, it completely decredits everything they've every done? Look at Von Braun. He was a Nazi, ergo, we never went to the moon. Soooo since Dr. Watson is a racist that must mean that DNA doesn't have a double helix shape! And all the other biologists have been fooled into thinking so! "I've" never seen DNA form into a doulbe helix. I've only seen "pictures". And those can not only be doctored, but created out of nothing... Oh I can't keep this up with a straight face.

(Well, its my first post since the 25 of last month. I'm practicing being a looney. Still doesn't come off right. Too stilted yet. Looks like I'm faking it. I just can't muster up the "spittle flying" effect. Aww, not enough capital letters and exclamation points!)

Neverfly

19-October-2007, 12:10 AM

Welcome back from your hiatus.

And I agree. This does, indeed, discredit the double helix design.

Now we need to figure out why this conspiracy exists.

mike alexander

19-October-2007, 12:24 AM

Another thought is the possible confusion of intelligence with technology. We have better guns, faster computers and so forth, therefore our culture must be better.

I would posit that BCE Greece (know most about my own general culture) had people at the top as good or better than anything since. Since the top culture as a whole saw no great intrinisic value in mechanism the intellectual effort went in other directions.

Humans have been capable of a high technological society for a long time, many thousands of years at the least. I suspect the contingent facts of history chose a particular group in time and place to start the exponential growth of technical knowledge.

My present culture has placed a high value on applied knowledge, almost a parody of the Connecticut Yankee. A culture that places more emphasis on more abstract or artistic pursuits will look very different, for example.

Gillianren

19-October-2007, 01:07 AM

Thanks for correcting that. I didn't bother to google Gattaca.

I didn't have to! (Actually, I haven't seen it yet, and won't for probably months. There's an awful lot of movies starting with the letter "C," it turns out.)

I read a study a while back stating that IQ can be raised. Excersizing your brain kind of thing. That the IQ isn't a steady thing throughout your life.
Is this true?

Not 100%, but most of its mobility is indeed downward from one kind of brain injury or another. (It doesn't take someone or something taking a whack at your head; you can consume substances all on your own that kill brain cells, and many people do.) I've also read--and do remember I'm hardly an expert in this field--that those self-same brain exercises may help hold off various kinds of senility and dementia, but I don't know how well they work at that, either.

Sorry about your mom, noclevername. The system's a real pain sometimes, isn't it?

Noclevername

19-October-2007, 01:18 AM

Sorry about your mom, noclevername. The system's a real pain sometimes, isn't it?

Yes. A grindingly slow, thoroughly impersonal pain.

KaiYeves

19-October-2007, 01:46 AM

Now we need to figure out why this conspiracy exists.
So we will eat our vegtables without complaining. Isn't that the source of all conspiacies?

Delvo

19-October-2007, 02:08 AM

I've had some black friends and they can totally own me and most other white guys in sprint, basketball, etc. They seem generally more superior to white people in physical activities. If a study concluded that, would it be called racist too?It would by some no matter how solid the evidence was, but actually the idea of black athletic superiority over whites is already pretty widely accepted by some people, treated as fact. (Often it's for jokes, but those jokes wouldn't work without the presumption that it's a fact already in place in the background, just like jokes about people & things falling wouldn't work if people weren't familiar with gravity.) I take the lack of popular resistance to this idea as an indicator that racial differences which make white people inferior are socially acceptable. It's just the ones that go the other way around that aren't.

Here in the US, blacks dominate professional sports. So a lot of people think it may be because they are physically better at sports.

Not necessarily. Due to some rather embarrassing, horrifying and illogical prejudices in the past in US history, for many blacks, the best route for success and education was- Sports.

Thus a misinformed percpetion is born.But it's not the past we're talking about. They're overrepresented in sports TODAY. Do you mean that it's the only way they can be successful today?

Treating the idea as clearly false without really examining it is just the same as doing so on the issue of intellect. Whether it is true or not can be indicated by additional information. For example, is it also that way in other countries or when people from different countries compete with each other? Can you detect a difference when eliminating cultural factors by testing the very young? (This one's been done, and found that black children do indeed develop certain measures of physical coordination sooner/faster than white children.) If it's an economic issue, then the racial difference should disappear or at least shrink when you're comparing whites & blacks who grew up economically equivalent; so does it? If it's a matter of the seemingly inferior group just not being interested or motivated, then there should be other signs of that attitude, to be found in either surveys or other data about people's recorded behaviors; so are there? If it's bias and denial of opportunity, then there will be other data showing signs of people in power blocking one group out; so does the system fit that description or not?

And so on it goes. You don't just say it must be a certain way because you want it to be (or because you don't want it to be); you check the facts. Maybe the answer's yes, and maybe it's no, but if you don't actually do anything to find out the facts, then you're not talking about reality; you're talking about a fantasy.

On this count- Watson was dead wrong. Employers should never assume anything about ability or intellect based on race.He didn't say they should assume it. He said they tend to find it out from experience. (And then he apparently said later that he didn't mean it, as if he was possessed when he said it.)

Neverfly

19-October-2007, 02:15 AM

(snip)

But it's not the past we're talking about. They're overrepresented in sports TODAY. Do you mean that it's the only way they can be successful today?

Irrelevent. The past hasn't magically dissappeared.
I covered the difference between perception and the actual reality.

Treating the idea as clearly false without really examining it is just the same as doing so on the issue of intellect. Whether it is true or not can be indicated by additional information.
Yet you were just doing that about the atheletes...

For example, is it also that way in other countries or when people from different countries compete with each other? Can you detect a difference when eliminating cultural factors by testing the very young? (This one's been done, and found that black children do indeed develop certain measures of physical coordination sooner/faster than white children.) If it's an economic issue, then the racial difference should disappear or at least shrink when you're comparing whites & blacks who grew up economically equivalent; so does it? If it's a matter of the seemingly inferior group just not being interested or motivated, then there should be other signs of that attitude, to be found in either surveys or other data about people's recorded behaviors; so are there? If it's bias and denial of opportunity, then there will be other data showing signs of people in power blocking one group out; so does the system fit that description or not?

And so on it goes. You don't just say it must be a certain way because you want it to be (or because you don't want it to be); you check the facts. Maybe the answer's yes, and maybe it's no, but if you don't actually do anything to find out the facts, then you're not talking about reality; you're talking about a fantasy.

Yet you are doing some assuming here yourself.

What studies show that blacks are better at athletics than whites?

If they came straight out of Africa, from harsher wilderness and necessity to be more physical (African long distance runners are some of the best in the world)
Then it is simple natural selection. The fittest have been the ones desirable for genetic reproduction.

However in the United States, can you specifically prove that blacks are better at sports, yet dumber at academics?

The very nature of the issue is when people try to reasonably seperate what is not really so different.

Human kind is human kind.
There is great variance in all the races.

To try to claim some are more and some are less seems to be very unscientific to me. It defies logic.

He didn't say they should assume it. He said they tend to find it out from experience. (And then he apparently said later that he didn't mean it, as if he was possessed when he said it.)

He is still wrong.

There are a great many employers that would most likely admit that they have not noticed a difference in racial intellects.

Fortunate

19-October-2007, 03:01 AM

Nobel Winner Sorry for Race Remarks
http://news.aol.com/story/nc/_a/nobel-winner-sorry-for-race-remarks/20071018200209990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

"I am mortified about what has happened," Watson said. "More importantly, I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.

Delvo

19-October-2007, 03:03 AM

Yet you were just doing that about the atheletes...No. I was talking about asserting a conclusion without evidence, which is something I didn't do; I didn't assert any conclusion about it because I don't have much evidence.

Yet you are doing some assuming here yourself.

What studies show that blacks are better at athletics than whites?You seem to have assumed that someone who says to look for such studies must be claiming to already know of some and what the conclusions from them are. But I didn't say what the studies would show if they were done. I just said that a position on the issue can't be rationally advocated either way without them.

However in the United States, can you specifically prove that blacks are better at sports, yet dumber at academics?They're 13% of the population and anyone can tell at a glance that they're much more than 13% of the professional teams in several sports. Does that mean "better at sports"? Without more information, no. But if they aren't, then it's a fact that needs some explanation... explanation backed up by facts, not faith.

In academics, there's nobody disputing the fact that they get lower grades and test scores; the debate is over why. Does that mean "dumber at academics"? Without more information, no. But if they aren't, then it's a fact that needs some explanation... explanation backed up by facts, not faith.

Jens

19-October-2007, 03:07 AM

What studies show that blacks are better at athletics than whites?

Without pointing to any studies, this is what I've heard about this issue. It is generally believed that humanity came out of Africa. The people who traveled far away, i.e. the Caucasians and the Asians, for example, tend to have less genetic diversity than those who remained within Africa. So it's not just that blacks are better at athletics. In fact, I believe that the tallest people on earth are black, and the shortest people are black. So for example, if you look at long-distance runners, many come from Ethiopia, not Nigeria. Whereas sprinters often come from the West coast of Africa. So it's not about "blacks" versus "whites". It's about certain tribes within Africa. So it's clear that some African tribes excel at basketball, because they are the tallest people on earth, on average. But clearly the forest pygmy peoples, who are the shortest people on earth, will not.

Neverfly

19-October-2007, 03:08 AM

No. I was talking about asserting a conclusion without evidence, which is something I didn't do; I didn't assert any conclusion about it because I don't have much evidence.

You said:
It would by some no matter how solid the evidence was, but actually the idea of black athletic superiority over whites is already pretty widely accepted by some people, treated as fact. (Often it's for jokes, but those jokes wouldn't work without the presumption that it's a fact already in place in the background, just like jokes about people & things falling wouldn't work if people weren't familiar with gravity.) I take the lack of popular resistance to this idea as an indicator that racial differences which make white people inferior are socially acceptable. It's just the ones that go the other way around that aren't.
This led me to believe you support the idea without saying so.
You seem to have assumed that someone who says to look for such studies must be claiming to already know of some and what the conclusions from them are. But I didn't say what the studies would show if they were done. I just said that a position on the issue can't be rationally advocated either way without them.

They're 13% of the population and anyone can tell at a glance that they're much more than 13% of the professional teams in several sports. Does that mean "better at sports"? Without more information, no. But if they aren't, then it's a fact that needs some explanation... explanation backed up by facts, not faith.

In academics, there's nobody disputing the fact that they get lower grades and test scores; the debate is over why. Does that mean "dumber at academics"? Without more information, no. But if they aren't, then it's a fact that needs some explanation... explanation backed up by facts, not faith.

As to the sports- I gave an answer which you immediately brushed aside. I can probably produce better evidence that black students took a carreer path in sports do to racial tensions than you can provide evidence to support that black people are magically better at sports.

As to the academics- Are we talking about the academics performed by those there on a football scholarship!?!?

Cuz uhhh...
The white guys there on a sports scholarship don't exactly win nobel prizes either...:doh:

Neverfly

19-October-2007, 03:10 AM

Without pointing to any studies, this is what I've heard about this issue. It is generally believed that humanity came out of Africa. The people who traveled far away, i.e. the Caucasians and the Asians, for example, tend to have less genetic diversity than those who remained within Africa. So it's not just that blacks are better at athletics. In fact, I believe that the tallest people on earth are black, and the shortest people are black. So for example, if you look at long-distance runners, many come from Ethiopia, not Nigeria. Whereas sprinters often come from the West coast of Africa. So it's not about "blacks" versus "whites". It's about certain tribes within Africa. So it's clear that some African tribes excel at basketball, because they are the tallest people on earth, on average. But clearly the forest pygmy peoples, who are the shortest people on earth, will not.

I would contribute this to natural selection. Given time- that tendancy in Africa will become less apparent.

The sports discussion refers to Americans.

publius

19-October-2007, 03:59 AM

Now that race and sports have come up, might as well mention the version of "The Bell Curve" for that, a book by Joe Entine, entitled "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It".

He makes the case it is biological/genetic.

http://www.jonentine.com/sports_race.htm

That's another inferno. But whatever the reason, blacks are indeed dominating sports -- the world over, actually. Just look at the stats. 80% of the NBA, for instance. And track and field and running....the numbers are staggering. And indeed, everyone is afraid to talk about it.

-Richard

Neverfly

19-October-2007, 04:02 AM

Jens

19-October-2007, 04:14 AM

publius

19-October-2007, 04:22 AM

Did you read my post above? I think it provides a fairly logical explanation. Would you agree or disagree?

I don't know enough about it to form an opinion. :) Yes, you can come up with logical explanations for something, but that doesn't mean it's correct. Right now, thanks to commentary on Entine's book, I'm just learning the basic facts (and even the disputes if they are indeed facts). Theories to explain those facts are nowhere on my horizon yet. :)

-Richard

Neverfly

19-October-2007, 04:23 AM

I think I don't know enough either.
But this is a pretty touchy issue...

I'm gonna count me out of this thread.

Delvo

19-October-2007, 05:09 AM

whatever the reason, blacks are indeed dominating sports -- the world over, actually.That goes against the theory I've heard a few times that the phenomenon in American sports was due to selection by slave abductors in Africa or breeding by slave-owners in the countries they were taken to.

I find it interesting that people occasionally talk about the white/black numbers in American sports but don't say anything about eastern Asians. Maybe most Americans just don't notice because that's only about 4% or less of the population anyway so not having them around isn't really conspicuous; it's what we're used to. But they seem to be a lot less than 4% in American professional sports. Maybe it's another example of willingness to declare a minority superior but unwillingness to appear to be declaring a minority inferior.

publius

19-October-2007, 05:49 AM

Delvo,

Just read some of Entine's stuff and see what you think -- you know more about the science here to evalulate it than I do. For instance,

http://www.jonentine.com/reviews/express.htm

And there's an interesting quote there by Walter Williams (very libertarian economist at George Mason who is black), who said that if decent people are afraid to talk about racial differences, then they cede the ground to the racists, of all races.

And you mention East Asians -- well, they do have their sports niche, just not the big American sports, according to the above. They excel at Gymnastics, ice skating, diving, and table tennis.

And that's something else I'm learning from reading this stuff. Blacks excel at certain kind of sports, the kind that are big here in America, but other racial and ethnic groups excel at others. And he looks for biological and genetic reasons for that.

For example, long distance running -- one tiny area in Kenya has produced what he calls the greatest concentration of raw athletic talent in the hisotry of sports.

But then there's the Mexican Hills, where some tribesman there blew away the ultra-long distance, ultra aerobic running events. One runner, wearing their traditional sandals mind you, ran 100 miles, at altitudes over 12,000' , breaking the record averaging less than 13 minutes per mile. They were so good there was a backlash and they had to quit!

ETA: Didn't see this, but one tribesman who won that 100 mile race was 55 years old! Anyway, that's an example of extraordinary physiological traits in a small population. I mean, the lung efficiency there must be unbelievable.

-Richard

Ronald Brak

19-October-2007, 08:57 AM

Sigh. Wasn't anyone here alive during the 1930's? The idea that dark brown people are better at sports than light brown/pink people is quite modern and has only really existed for 70 years. Indeed, back in the 1930's semetic people were considered to be the best basketball players and they they were genetically gifted to play that sport. You may also remember hearing something about Aryan supermen from that period. Back then when a person with African characteristics beat a person with European characteristics in sports many people with European characteristics would be very put out. Eventually it became commonly accepted that African people could be good at sport. However, many people didn't not beleive they could be good at intellectual pursuits, despite much evidence to the contrary.

There have been studies that demonstrate that the most important factor in sports ability is practice. All other considerations appear quite minor in their effects compared to this one.

The_Radiation_Specialist

19-October-2007, 09:04 AM

It would by some no matter how solid the evidence was, but actually the idea of black athletic superiority over whites is already pretty widely accepted by some people, treated as fact. (Often it's for jokes, but those jokes wouldn't work without the presumption that it's a fact already in place in the background, just like jokes about people & things falling wouldn't work if people weren't familiar with gravity.) I take the lack of popular resistance to this idea as an indicator that racial differences which make white people inferior are socially acceptable. It's just the ones that go the other way around that aren't.

I think the word "double standards" describes this. Its perfectly OK for someone to tell a joke stereotyping white people but if done about black people...

Ronald Brak

19-October-2007, 09:08 AM

Neverfly

19-October-2007, 09:15 AM

Doodler

19-October-2007, 12:31 PM

There could be a genetic factor involved in Kenya's success in producing long distance runners, however I'd be inclined to consider the high protien diet eaten by certain groups of Kenyans, the high altitude at which many Kenyans live, and which sports don't require a large capital investment in training equipment and technical expertise to excell in. There could be some alleles found in higher frequency that give them some advantage, but I wouldn't be surprised if no genetic advantage is ever found compared to say the Dutch (another bunch of high protien diet tall people, but from a much lower alttitude.)

Wouldn't also hurt that Kenya's culture is such that running is one of the more common means of getting from one place to another. When you grow up with your own two feet being 90% or more of your transportation in life, the ability to run efficiently becomes very second nature.

I don't know that it would be genetic, except as an example of how amazingly flexible the human body can be when trained to the nth degree in a particular matter.

Spock Jenkins

19-October-2007, 12:42 PM

He is still wrong.

There are a great many employers that would most likely admit that they have not noticed a difference in racial intellects.

Just to play devils advocate. Given our political environment today - even if they had - would they admit it? Professing such would spell certain disaster for them both personally and for their business. Likely being fired if they are an emlployee of a larger company or facing a boycott of their business if they are they owner.

Doodler

19-October-2007, 01:08 PM

That's another inferno. But whatever the reason, blacks are indeed dominating sports -- the world over, actually. Just look at the stats. 80% of the NBA, for instance. And track and field and running....the numbers are staggering. And indeed, everyone is afraid to talk about it.

-Richard

Lets spin that a bit, Publius. Is it inherent black athleticism, or a serious lack of it among caucasians?

Since when did we (speaking as a caucasian, myself) get nominated at the gold standard against which all others are compared? Who's to say caucasian ethnic culture doesn't have a very critical flaw inherent to it because we do fall WAY short in physical development?

I look at pro sports and I see NFL football being fairly balanced overall in terms of ethnic distribution, but if you go by positional assignments, a few things start showing through. I see a LOT of white linemen on both sides of the neutral zone, I see an ongoing predominance of white quarterbacks and kickers. Blacks are dominant runners and receivers along with their defensive counterparts in the linebackers and safeties. The appearance of black dominance comes to play because the positions they tend to occupy are the "marquee" positions that end up with lots of name recognition.

Speaking to the NBA, don't go crazy assuming that's a place whites don't do well, either. There was an impressive stretch in the 1990s where players came over from the European leagues into the NBA and hung in the game with the best players black America ever produced. Even now, there are some European teams that will put an American "dream team" in its place. The NBA is predominantly black, because the best native players are black due to a cultural predalection

There are some professional sports in the US that are not dominated by blacks, to the point of having almost no black representation. In terms of minimal to no black dominance, there's golf* and hockey. (actually, I can't think of the name of a black hockey player off the top of my head...)

Baseball is the great equalizer, its ethnic identity is very nicely balanced among blacks, whites, hispanics, and a very healthy asian contingent.

*Ok, lets clarify. Tiger Woods is a living god on the fairways. When he decides to play, the only competition the man has are fast greens. But aside from Indian and Hispanic players, the field here is freakin' anemically pale. So, I would say "A black man is dominating the living crap out of pro golf, but blacks as a whole, do not dominate pro golf".

Disinfo Agent

19-October-2007, 03:04 PM

Looking at international events like the Olympics, there are plenty of sports where blacks are rarely prominent. Gymnastics is but one example.

Of course, one might still say "Maybe each race is especially skilled for some sports, but different races are skilled for different sports". However, I think that historical trends show that there is a lot of fluidity in these things. What I think really happens is that some countries, or some ethnicities within a country, invest a lot in one sport, achieve a couple of visible successes (e.g. Jesse Owens in the track), and then it kind of snowballs. Other people of the same ethnicity will be drawn to that sport because their childhood heroes played it, and suddenly an impression that the sport is for that ethnicity develops in the whole of society, and other ethnicities simply start to feel that the sport "isn't meant" for them, and dedicate themselves to something else. It's a matter of dedication and perseverance over several generations, not genetic predisposition.

Usually, this is what I'd say happens. In the specific case of golf, I think we can all agree that it's very much a game of the wealthy.

Noclevername

19-October-2007, 03:22 PM

Usually, this is what I'd say happens. In the specific case of golf, I think we can all agree that it's very much a game of the wealthy.

Not at all, I'm dead broke and I can hit the little windmill every time. ;)

Tucson_Tim

19-October-2007, 03:25 PM

Noclevername

19-October-2007, 03:27 PM

Golf is played by everyone, from poor to rich.

That's a very recent development, though.

Tucson_Tim

19-October-2007, 03:27 PM

Even it there was some difference in intellect between the races (which I don't believe) that is a very slippery slope to take a step onto.

Hydro

19-October-2007, 03:34 PM

I was reading a story the other day about Basketball, and how the inner city youths can play the game with little expense. It takes a lot of friends, a lot of expensive equipment, and a large open area to play either baseball or football, but you can shoot hoops almost anywhere, and practice makes perfect.

Some of these elite baseball and football camps require quite a large fee for participation, ruling out many youngsters. In many cases, public schools is their first taste of organized sports.

Tucson_Tim

19-October-2007, 03:38 PM

I was reading a story the other day about Basketball, and how the inner city youths can play the game with little expense.

OT: This is one of the reasons that soccer is a World Sport - it can be played with less equipment than basketball (don't need the hoop) and just as few players as basketball. One-on-one play is quite common. On TV I've seen poor kids in underdeveloped countries playing with a tin can.

Doodler

19-October-2007, 03:40 PM

Usually, this is what I'd say happens. In the specific case of golf, I think we can all agree that it's very much a game of the wealthy.

Like hell it is. I know guys who golfed every weekend who were just barely getting by as waiters. Byron Nelson wasn't wealthy. He played just enough to put a roof over his family's head when he started out.

Now, these guys end up making sickening amounts of money through endorsements, but if you look at the money boards just from the sport itself, golf's about as blue collar as it gets.

Tucson_Tim

19-October-2007, 03:42 PM

That's a very recent development, though.

That's true - but it has been that way for at least 30 years.

Disinfo Agent

19-October-2007, 04:09 PM

O.K., so I'm a golf ignoramus. Never cared much about the thing. Sue me. :p

Tucson_Tim

19-October-2007, 04:12 PM

O.K., so I'm a golf ignoramus. Never cared much about the thing. Sue me. :p

Hey, I don't care about it either - especially the way the courses waste water here in the Sonoran Desert.

Disinfo Agent

19-October-2007, 04:26 PM

Genetics: the tangled web we weave! (http://snafu-ed.blogspot.com/2007/10/obama-cheney-related.html)

Robert Tulip

19-October-2007, 04:42 PM

The good thing about BAUT is the commitment to evidence. This topic tests that commitment by flagging possible facts which can be manipulated. However, despite that risk, my conviction is that a rigorous evidentiary approach will prove more productive in the long run. I work for the Australian government on its overseas aid program, and observe that evidence-based approaches are just one part of the policy process, which takes into account a range of political factors. But the evidence-based approaches tend to be the most effective in the long run, whereas denial of facts produces a range of perverse consequences.

I wrote a paper on Papua New Guinea (http://peb.anu.edu.au/pdf/Tulip-Historical_perspective_on_Australias_Aid_program.p df) in which I observed that "Before 1935, the million people living in the fertile valleys of the PNG Highlands had no knowledge of the outside world, including of things we take for granted such as metal, paper and the sea. The wrenching change of modernization has been immense for them and for all of PNG. One way I like to think about this change is by looking at the shift from the village to the office. The traditional values of village culture are a major influence in PNG, where 85% of people live in small rural communities. It is an important question how the assumptions that govern village life translate into the modern office environment. In PNG’s culture of subsistence affluence, where there is basically always enough food and land, the need to plan for the future is less than in countries with colder climates where harvests must be stored over winter, so long term planning gets less emphasis in PNG. The need to maintain equipment is less where wood and stone tools and grass huts are replaced when they wear out, rather than repaired. The wantok (tribal) system does not value cooperating with strangers, but emphasises strong cooperation within the clan. These patterns regarding planning, maintenance and social relations served well in traditional village life but are problematic for modern bureaucratic systems, with their impersonal management needs, and especially now with rapidly growing population."

These comments are offered in the spirit of a focus on how PNG (or comparable African countries) can escape their economic stagnation of recent years and improve the lives of their people. I believe it requires a resolute focus on evidence to define the best available policies. For example a recognition that Sweden's environment produced a culture with greater focus on planning than did PNG's can be a helpful way to begin a realistic appraisal of what needs to improve in PNG. As in Africa, the worst example of a denialist approach is the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Noclevername

19-October-2007, 04:47 PM

A traditionalist culture works, until the conditions that led to those traditions changes. Then everybody's all at sea.

Spock Jenkins

19-October-2007, 04:48 PM

Like hell it is. I know guys who golfed every weekend who were just barely getting by as waiters. Byron Nelson wasn't wealthy. He played just enough to put a roof over his family's head when he started out.

Now, these guys end up making sickening amounts of money through endorsements, but if you look at the money boards just from the sport itself, golf's about as blue collar as it gets.

Let's see - you need transportation to the course (public or private - either way it has costs) as not too many people of limited means are within walking distance of a course. You've got to pay to play, each time you play. You need clubs, and the better the equipment - the more expensive. You need a bag. You can get by w/o shoes or golf clothes.

A lot of people who are just getting by may choose to spend their limits resources this way - but a lot of inner city parents who are less than getting by don't have the disposable income to have their kids participate from a young age. Typically (yes - I already know there are always exceptions) you aren't going to take up a sport as an adult and become good enough to earn a living at it.

These parents can buy a $5 basketball at Target and most places are within walking distance of a basketball hoop. Most time they don't even need a ball. Somebody at the park will have one.

Noclevername

19-October-2007, 04:50 PM

You don't often drive through the city and see kids in a concrete lot practicing their golf swing.

Tucson_Tim

19-October-2007, 04:53 PM

You don't often drive through the city and see kids in a concrete lot practicing their golf swing.

Over someone's head. maybe.

Noclevername

19-October-2007, 04:59 PM

Over someone's head. maybe.

Nah, that's what pool cues are for.

Disinfo Agent

19-October-2007, 05:00 PM

Here's an opinion piece about this from The Independent online:

There is a widespread assumption that because IQ has such a large heritability, then the differences in IQ between the races is largely due to genes and not environment, culture or upbringing. This would be wrong.

Steve Connor: This is not a black and white issue (http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article3070538.ece)Although the author commits one error:

Just because skin colour and race are genetically determined, is it reasonable to suppose that IQ difference between the races has also got something to do with genes?Neither skin color nor race are completely determined by genetics, especially the latter.

Argos

19-October-2007, 05:24 PM

Neither skin color nor race are completely determined by genetics, especially the latter.

Regarding skin colors, the wide gammut of colors found in the caucasian "race" proves the fragility of the racial genetic determinism.

Noclevername

19-October-2007, 05:27 PM

Regarding skin colors, the wide gammut of colors found in the caucasian "race" proves the fragility of the racial genetic determinism.

I can go through half of that range myself on a sunny day.

Disinfo Agent

19-October-2007, 05:39 PM

Regarding skin colors, the wide gammut of colors found in the caucasian "race" proves the fragility of the racial genetic determinism.Not to mention the other races. Look at this map of average skin tone worldwide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color). Notice how much variation there is in Africa alone. If one were to believe popular ideas about race, all Africans should be the same color. Instead, there is much more variation in Africa than in Europe!

Noclevername

19-October-2007, 05:42 PM

Look at this map of average skin tone worldwide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color).

Suddenly I'm craving a chocolate sundae with whipped cream.

JohnD

19-October-2007, 06:21 PM

Doodler

19-October-2007, 06:32 PM

Let's see - you need transportation to the course (public or private - either way it has costs) as not too many people of limited means are within walking distance of a course. You've got to pay to play, each time you play. You need clubs, and the better the equipment - the more expensive. You need a bag. You can get by w/o shoes or golf clothes.

A lot of people who are just getting by may choose to spend their limits resources this way - but a lot of inner city parents who are less than getting by don't have the disposable income to have their kids participate from a young age. Typically (yes - I already know there are always exceptions) you aren't going to take up a sport as an adult and become good enough to earn a living at it.

These parents can buy a $5 basketball at Target and most places are within walking distance of a basketball hoop. Most time they don't even need a ball. Somebody at the park will have one.

Spock, buying a set of clubs and greens fees on public courses (which aren't much) puts the sport within the means of a modest middle class income. There's a whole economic spectrum of us that exist between inner city poverty and "rich".

Disinfo Agent

19-October-2007, 06:32 PM

I had never realised how hideously white this board is.

"They, them, the blacks, black people."
I'm willing to bet that no one here is black.
Including me.
And if there were, I'm afraid that they won't come back.

Everyone here is very polite, but with an arm's length air, as if no one has ever talked to, known a black person - there I go! We, that is white people, the whites, us, have anawful legacy to work through still.

JohnI can't agree, since one of the first posts to this thread was by a black person.

Spock Jenkins

19-October-2007, 06:36 PM

Everyone here is very polite, but with an arm's length air, as if no one has ever talked to, known a black person - there I go! We, that is white people, the whites, us, have anawful legacy to work through still.

John

In todays environment - white people do have to be very polite with an arms length air on this subject lest we be branded a racist or bigot or what have you. It's not really a subject non-minorities can discuss candidly.

I grew up in a largely minority neighborhood. Years of first hand experience taught me that one can not just be candid regarding this subject matter.

Doodler

19-October-2007, 06:36 PM

I had never realised how hideously white this board is.

"They, them, the blacks, black people."
I'm willing to bet that no one here is black.
Including me.
And if there were, I'm afraid that they won't come back.

Everyone here is very polite, but with an arm's length air, as if no one has ever talked to, known a black person - there I go! We, that is white people, the whites, us, have anawful legacy to work through still.

John

Ehm, just skimming over the thread here, I'm pretty sure 3rdKnight will take issue with the Pale Complexion Theory. While not black, I'm also sure that Suntrack2 and some of our non-white, non-black members might find themselves scratching their heads at your assertion.

Thou shalt never assume.

Spock Jenkins

19-October-2007, 06:45 PM

Spock, buying a set of clubs and greens fees on public courses (which aren't much) puts the sport within the means of a modest middle class income. There's a whole economic spectrum of us that exist between inner city poverty and "rich".

I grew up modest middle class. My parents could have encouraged golf if they felt like it - but it would have been cost prohibitive. It would have required sacrifice to encourage it the way one would have to participate to join the pro ranks. There were far more important things to spend money on that were chosen instead. I had a school yard and basketball court right behind my house. I could've practiced a few hours a day, every day if I had been so inclined.

Just because they are capable of it - doesn't mean it's a choice people of limited means will make. Bottom line is it's not as inexpensive nor as widely supported by the community as Basketball, Baseball, or Football are.

We are discussing the disparity in professional athletics - not just weekend warriors here, correct?

The_Radiation_Specialist

19-October-2007, 06:47 PM

I'm willing to bet that no one here is black.

:D How much?

There are some I'm sure. Do we really need a poll for this? :neutral:

Tucson_Tim

19-October-2007, 06:51 PM

This just popped up on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/19/uk.race/index.html

Nobel laureate biologist James Watson was suspended Friday from his longtime post at a research laboratory and canceled his planned British book tour after controversial comments that black people are not as intelligent as white people.

Argos

19-October-2007, 07:03 PM

Do we really need a poll for this? :neutral:

We´d need defniitions first. :)

Spock Jenkins

19-October-2007, 07:10 PM

I had never realised how hideously white this board is.
John

I also fail to understand why, even if the board is predominately white - why does it have to be "hideously" white. If this was a predominately black board and you were to call it "hideously" black - how would that be received? Sometimes things just are. This is a largely anonymous message board freely accessable to all who are interested in the subject matter and are willing to post within the rules. If the majority of the people happen to be white - so be it. If they aren't - again - so be it. I don't see why it's necessary to lable it "hideously" anything.

The_Radiation_Specialist

19-October-2007, 07:27 PM

I think Spock Jenkins pretty much nailed it.

We´d need defniitions first.

That's not too hard. On the scale of 1-5. Or use this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Map_of_skin_hue_equi.png

Disinfo Agent

19-October-2007, 07:33 PM

What race are the green-skinned people? :D

That map is obviously "false-color", to use a term we are familiar with from astronomy. ;)

Delvo

19-October-2007, 07:35 PM

I had never realised how... white this board is.I never realized you were prone to assessing someone's race without actually seeing him or her!

"They, them, the blacks, black people."... as if no one has ever talked to, known a black personIf you looked at it without bias, you'd see that other races are referred to in just the same abstract terms. It's because statistical data about people is always referred to with third-person plurals, because it's about some large number of people who identities don't need to be specified, aren't relevant, and are mostly unknown to the speaker. There's no other way statistical data can be talked about, because statistics isn't about individuals that you or I know.

Jerry

19-October-2007, 07:43 PM

This just popped up on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/19/uk.race/index.html

And in a British TV documentary that aired in 2003, Watson suggested that stupidity was a genetic disease that should be treated.
mmm I can't disagree, perhaps it has an timed trigger.

The_Radiation_Specialist

19-October-2007, 07:45 PM

What race are the green-skinned people? :D

I'm green, and I am offended.

:D

Tucson_Tim

19-October-2007, 07:49 PM

mmm I can't disagree, perhaps it has an timed trigger.

Good one!

The timer just popped and he shot himself in the foot.

Noclevername

19-October-2007, 09:44 PM

Why assume what race most posters are? I don't think the majority have identified their particular race/ethnicity. Since the comments in the OP that started this ball rolling were about black people in particular, then it makes sense to say "blacks/black people" in the responses.

Celestial Mechanic

19-October-2007, 10:01 PM

I'm green, and I am offended.

:D
It's not easy being green ... -- Kermit the Frog

KaiYeves

19-October-2007, 10:13 PM

My human form is Mediterranean, thank you very much.

Tucson_Tim

19-October-2007, 10:17 PM

My human form is Mediterranean, thank you very much.

So, you're stay on Earth is a temporary assignment.

Noclevername

19-October-2007, 10:18 PM

I'm sure I have some black ancestors in the mix too. Well-travelled Mediterranians got around, if you know what I mean. In between the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, somewhere.

Hydro

19-October-2007, 10:25 PM

My neck has a reddish hue, that durn sun is harsh on my fair skin so I have to wear a shirt and hat.

Of course, I live on 3 acres in rural Texas, and I drive a truck. Take a wild guess. :D

publius

20-October-2007, 08:07 AM

Did you read my post above? I think it provides a fairly logical explanation. Would you agree or disagree?

Jens,

After that outburst in this thread a few posts up, I figured it was best to drop it completely, but after further reading on this, I'd say you are closer to the mark than not.

In short, it is about different subpopulations in Africa. It's wrong to say "Blacks dominate sports". What is correct is to say "Those of West African ancenstry dominate in sports that are big in America". Entine makes a strong case that West Africans have an edge in anaerobic activity, explosive, but shorts bursts of speed and power such as sprinting, and jumping, etc. One that stood out to me was members of this population produce less of that "muscle cramping" enzyme. Just read the long list of links on that page (and he includes commentary against his thesis as well, in there) And that comes in handy in basketball and football (well, specifically running backs and receivers).

The Kenyans dominate the aerobic side, endurance, long distance running.

The numbers are again staggering. Take sprinting, the 100m dash. That has been absolutely owned by West Africans for decades. Of the top 500 finish times in that, 494 are by West Africans.

And no caucasian or Asian (or Kenyan for that matter) athlete has ever broken 10 sec in the 100m dash. The top 200 times are all less than 10 secs and all by West Africans.

Does that mean others can't run and run well? No. It means that in the best of the best of the best, the West Africans seem to have an advantage. Is one born a world class athlete? No. It takes hard work, training, dedication, smarts, and even luck. But when you do all that to push yourself to the limits, a slight physiological advantage makes all the difference. In that game a small fraction of second is the difference between 1st place and 4th place.

And apparently, the same characteristics that give them the edge in the "short fuse" power and speed, are a disadvantage in other sports, such as swimming, and that shows up as well.

Entine makes this case, and makes it well. Others disagree with his genetic conclusions, but it's a lot more involved than the simple, knee-jerk explanations to avoid, well, "unfortunate outbursts".

-Richard

KaiYeves

20-October-2007, 07:20 PM

So, you're stay on Earth is a temporary assignment.
Do Earth anthropologists stay forever in the places that they study?

Noclevername

20-October-2007, 10:24 PM

Do Earth anthropologists stay forever in the places that they study?

Depends on whether the culture they study is hostile; if so, they might spend the rest of their lives there.

Disinfo Agent

20-October-2007, 11:26 PM

It's not easy being green ... -- Kermit the FrogIndeed. Here's a better picture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Luschan%27s_chromatic_scale)* of the scale they used to make the map, called Von Luschan's chromatic scale.

* Well, not exactly a better picture. The "false color" map is intentional: it makes it easier to distinguish between the various shades.

JohnD

20-October-2007, 11:36 PM

Hmmmmmmm.
I seem to have revealed more about my own prejudices than I knew.
And sincere apologies to 3dknight, whose post I missed.

As to being able to tell what skin colour people have by what they write, it was the "they, them, black people" that made me assume that there was a lack of a black perspective.

JOhn

The_Radiation_Specialist

20-October-2007, 11:36 PM

It's safe to say that shows the indigenous peoples.

Noclevername

20-October-2007, 11:40 PM

I'm black, when the lights are off. :D

Ronald Brak

21-October-2007, 12:14 AM

It's safe to say that shows the indigenous peoples.

If you are talking about the map of human albedos it's not safe to conclude much from it. Check out the high albedo stripe in North Africa, Australia's uniform low albedo, etc, etc. It's more a map of what some Europeans and North American's thought were albedos of people in those areas.

Jens

21-October-2007, 07:23 AM

Jens,

Does that mean others can't run and run well? No. It means that in the best of the best of the best, the West Africans seem to have an advantage. Is one born a world class athlete? No. It takes hard work, training, dedication, smarts, and even luck.

Yes, that's the way I see it. It's funny, but I'm about as liberal as you can get, but it's never really bothered me to see differences like that. It seems crystal clear to me that a person who is 1.60 meters can succeed in NBA basketball (there is one person like that) but it's by far the exception. The average height of NBA players is about 2 meters, and there are even some who are like 2.3 meters, which is huge. And there are many traits that are passed down, so it just seems fairly obvious that members of certain families will be more apt at certain things than members of other families.

The problem of "race" is where the problem comes in, because it is not based on reality in that sense. Like I said, it appears that there are more differences among Africans than between Africans and members of other "races".

Paracelsus

21-October-2007, 06:31 PM

"The scientist has courted controversy in the past, saying that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual."

I think he is racist homophobe.
Typical nazi.

As to that remark, I think a woman should have the right to end her pregnancy no matter what the stated reason. A woman's right to control her own fertility should not be subsumed by the desire to stamp out homophobia. Bigotry is vile indeed, but two wrongs don't make a right.

phaishazamkhan

21-October-2007, 06:35 PM

Every time I see this thread I think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional creation who would assuredly be considered racist when judged by 21st century mores. Would someone just change the thread's title to Dr. James Watson, racist? Dr. James Watson isn't a household name even taking the recent brouhaha over his remarks regarding genetics and race.

KaiYeves

21-October-2007, 07:59 PM

Every time I see this thread I think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional creation who would assuredly be considered racist when judged by 21st century mores.
So do I. Could somebody change that, please? And wasn't that Watson a woo-woo as well?

phaishazamkhan

21-October-2007, 09:48 PM

So do I. Could somebody change that, please? And wasn't that Watson a woo-woo as well?

What is a "woo-woo"?

Gillianren

22-October-2007, 12:21 AM

A "woo-woo" is a person who believes any number of crazy things, such as Planet X people or people who use crystals for healing. I noted with some delight that the term appears in Dragonhaven, Robin McKinley's newest book--and the book is set in a world in which dragons are real. The narrator refers to some of the people with ideas about dragons (which are, in the story, very difficult to study) as woo-woos. (As I recall, included are those who think dragons were brought to Earth from another planet.)

Neverfly

22-October-2007, 12:35 AM

I would define a "woo woo" as someone who ignores data and evidence in favor of speculation, beliefs and personal desire.

Tucson_Tim

22-October-2007, 12:43 AM

I thought that "woo woo" had its origins in The Dancing Wu Li Masters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dancing_Wu_Li_Masters

The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav is a popular new age book from 1979 about mysticist interpretations of quantum physics.

KaiYeves

22-October-2007, 12:48 AM

I thought that "woo woo" had its origins in The Dancing Wu Li Masters.
Before I came to this board, I just called them "That kind of people".

Noclevername

22-October-2007, 01:15 AM

I would define a "woo woo" as someone who ignores data and evidence in favor of speculation, beliefs and personal desire.

No, those people are called "the majority"; they just don't make a lot of noise about it. The woo-woos are the ones who try fervently to convince others that their speculation, beliefs and personal desire are facts.

Disinfo Agent

22-October-2007, 12:28 PM

If you are talking about the map of human albedos it's not safe to conclude much from it. Check out the high albedo stripe in North Africa, Australia's uniform low albedo, etc, etc. It's more a map of what some Europeans and North American's thought were albedos of people in those areas.No, the map was based on data -- measurements. However, for some areas of the globe the data was scarce, so the map is not entirely reliable (certainly, Australia is too dark, if one is to include the white population, which is today the majority). It's also based on an outdated method of measuring skin tone. The Wikipedia article explains this.

mickal555

23-October-2007, 01:39 PM

He's a racist cook.

Spock Jenkins

23-October-2007, 02:37 PM

He's a racist cook.

But is a good cook? I'm hungry.

Doodler

23-October-2007, 03:28 PM

But is a good cook? I'm hungry.

I'm thinking he meant "kook".

And to that, I'm less inclined to believe it, he's not a kook as much as he is a very intelligent misanthrope who's decades out of his time.

KaiYeves

23-October-2007, 11:06 PM

According to Newsweek, he's "Utterly Undignified" and "a four letter word that rhymes with 'Crick'."
Well, what did you expect from a news-magazine that printed Carl Sagan's name on the same two page spread as an ad for Grindhouse?

Gillianren

23-October-2007, 11:34 PM

Well, what did you expect from a news-magazine that printed Carl Sagan's name on the same two page spread as an add for Grindhouse?

Um . . . what does that have to do with the journalistic integrity of the magazine? Come to that, what's wrong with it?

SeanF

24-October-2007, 06:13 AM

Um . . . what does that have to do with the journalistic integrity of the magazine? Come to that, what's wrong with it?
I figured you'd be more interested in the "four-letter word that rhymes with 'crick.'" :)

Jens

24-October-2007, 06:20 AM

I figured you'd be more interested in the "four-letter word that rhymes with 'crick.'" :)

Doesn't the word that starts with a "d" also rhyme with it?

Gillianren

24-October-2007, 06:22 AM

Doesn't the word that starts with a "d" also rhyme with it?

Indeed yes, which is why I didn't comment on that.

Noclevername

24-October-2007, 07:23 AM

Doesn't the word that starts with a "d" also rhyme with it?

"Derrick"?

The_Radiation_Specialist

24-October-2007, 07:40 AM

*Waits for 01101001 to list all the 4 letter words rhyming with crick " :D

Jens

24-October-2007, 08:01 AM

"Derrick"?

No, "drastic"! :) Or was that, "dynastic"?

SeanF

24-October-2007, 02:16 PM

Doesn't the word that starts with a "d" also rhyme with it?

:doh: There's my Emily Litella moment for the day...

KaiYeves

24-October-2007, 09:33 PM

Come to that, what's wrong with it?
I found it to be disrespectful.
Also, they gave Sputnik's anniversary one page and Halo 3's debut three pages with big pictures.
Still, I like reading that Anna Q-something lady's collum at the back.

Gillianren

25-October-2007, 03:40 AM

I found it to be disrespectful.

Why? I've worked on a paper, and I can tell you that they very seldom know, when they're writing the article, what ads will go on that page and vice versa. Further, why is it disrespectful to have an ad for a movie, regardless of the movie, in the same spread as mention of Carl Sagan? I don't think he would have cared.

Also, they gave Sputnik's anniversary one page and Halo 3's debut three pages with big pictures.

So you're upset because they didn't give three pages to something that happened decades ago? I'm surprised they gave it one.

Still, I like reading that Anna Q-something lady's collum at the back.

That would be Anna Quindlen's column.

KaiYeves

26-October-2007, 01:56 AM

Further, why is it disrespectful to have an ad for a movie, regardless of the movie, in the same spread as mention of Carl Sagan? I don't think he would have cared.
I wouldn't want my name printed next to an add for a zombie movie.
So you're upset because they didn't give three pages to something that happened decades ago? I'm surprised they gave it one.
Yeah, but it was the beginning of all the rest of history! Games come and go.

Ronald Brak

26-October-2007, 03:07 AM

Yeah, but it was the beginning of all the rest of history! Games come and go.

Not surprising it got a lot of coverage when you consider there are more World of Warcraft players in the United States than farmers.

Gillianren

26-October-2007, 08:46 AM

I wouldn't want my name printed next to an add for a zombie movie.

I wouldn't care--and I doubt Carl Sagan would've, either. Even if I did, and even if he did, it's the price of being a public figure. You appear in a magazine, and you stand a chance of having your name appear in print next to an ad (note spelling) for just about anything. If you let it bother you, you're going to spend a lot of time bothered.

Yeah, but it was the beginning of all the rest of history! Games come and go.

Yes. However, this one is the same sort of cultural phenomenon as, shall we say, a Star Wars movie--it's not actually important, but there are a lot of people who care. And, importantly for its appearance in a news magazine, it's currently happening. I agree that Sputnik was important; don't get me wrong. However, it did actually happen fifty years ago. The cultural and economic effects of Halo 3 (which, to be fair, I don't personally care about) are happening now. I think you need to gain a sense of perspective.

Noclevername

26-October-2007, 12:41 PM

As far as "news" publications go, Newsweek is far from the worst. At least they covered the Sputnik aniversary. At least they had an article about Sagan.

Doodler

26-October-2007, 01:29 PM

Yes. However, this one is the same sort of cultural phenomenon as, shall we say, a Star Wars movie--it's not actually important, but there are a lot of people who care. And, importantly for its appearance in a news magazine, it's currently happening. I agree that Sputnik was important; don't get me wrong. However, it did actually happen fifty years ago. The cultural and economic effects of Halo 3 (which, to be fair, I don't personally care about) are happening now. I think you need to gain a sense of perspective.

I think you people underestimate the impact that a video game can have on modern culture. While to you personally, it might mean nothing. But consider the people to whom it does.

1) The players. All 10 plus million of them. At $50 a pop, that's a LOT of economic power.

2) The employees of the company. Not only are their creative credentials on the line, so are their jobs.

3) Investors in the company. The stockholders, who stand to lose quite a bit.

4) The console makers. Think Sony or Nintendo wants to hear that the marquee title on which they were hinging the sales of their new gaming machines sucks? The recent decision by Rockstar to push GTA IV off till next year sent shockwaves through the console market. Halo's a Microsoft product, so its absolutely critical for it to be a success, because if it fails, Microsoft's gaming division suffers, its console division suffers, and by default because of the overall impact on stock value, the entire megacorporate construct suffers.

Video games, especially at the higher end, are slowly eeking their way up in cultural importance that movies and TV shows once held unopposed. To underestimate their value to us as cultural art and as storytelling devices is shortsighted.