How much are genetic variations responsible for the U.S. black-white IQ differences?

[Trodon]

Now, the way to test for what the OP was probably asking about is to correct all social injustices towards black people, level the employment, wealth, health, and education playing fields across all of society, let that sink in for a couple of generations, then test everyone's IQ. I look forward to that experiment.

Since 1964 discrimination against Negroes has been outlawed. Blacks are discriminated in favor of with affirmative action policies. Considerable sums (I am not sure how much) has been spend on anti poverty programs. Nevertheless, the race gap in mental aptitude has hardly closed at all. From the school year of 1986-87 to that of 2011-12 the race gap in SAT averages has grown slightly.

http://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=171

No Child Left behind left most Negro children behind because they lacked the intelligence to keep up. NCLB does not seem to have reduce the race gap in academic achievement at all.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Since 1964 discrimination against Negroes has been outlawed. Blacks are discriminated in favor of with affirmative action policies.

That must explain why the richest, most powerful, most highly educated people in the United States are black.

Oh wait, I see... you're saying that they have been given the greatest advantages in our society today, and it is only their genetically lower IQs that are holding them back.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up for me.

 

[Jokodo]

Now, the way to test for what the OP was probably asking about is to correct all social injustices towards black people, level the employment, wealth, health, and education playing fields across all of society, let that sink in for a couple of generations, then test everyone's IQ. I look forward to that experiment.

Since 1964 discrimination against Negroes has been outlawed. Blacks are discriminated in favor of with affirmative action policies. Considerable sums (I am not sure how much) has been spend on anti poverty programs. Nevertheless, the race gap in mental aptitude has hardly closed at all. From the school year of 1986-87 to that of 2011-12 the race gap in SAT averages has grown slightly.<snip>

You know what also grew from the 80s to the 10s? Social inequality, by whatever measure, is what also grew. So, knowing that blacks are on average poorer than whites, the hypothesis that the race gap is caused by environmental factors predicts a growth of the gap in the relevant period. Thy hypothesis that it's genetics does not.

You guys really are very good at bringing up evidence that doesn't support you.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Since 1964 discrimination against Negroes has been outlawed. Blacks are discriminated in favor of with affirmative action policies. Considerable sums (I am not sure how much) has been spend on anti poverty programs. Nevertheless, the race gap in mental aptitude has hardly closed at all. From the school year of 1986-87 to that of 2011-12 the race gap in SAT averages has grown slightly.<snip>

You know what also grew from the 80s to the 10s? Social inequality, by whatever measure, is what also grew. So, knowing that blacks are on average poorer than whites, the hypothesis that the race gap is caused by environmental factors predicts a growth of the gap in the relevant period. Thy hypothesis that it's genetics does not.

You guys really are very good at bringing up evidence that doesn't support you.

About ten years ago, Charles Murray published a book titled Coming Apart that proposed that the economic division (rich vs. poor) is segregated along IQ lines (the higher IQ tends to be richer and lower IQ tends to be poorer), and this trend will continue, as the rich tend to mate with the rich and the poor with the poor. Charles Murray did not make racial distinctions in his argument (he decided to be less controversial after The Bell Curve), but the theory would seem to predict the division between whites and blacks. That would be the genetic argument. Can you please express the environmental argument that predicted the increasing division?

 

[Canard DuJour]

Because you get your genes from your parents, not unrelated people who look like you. If academic attainment or an IQ of 115 is n% genetic and heritable for white people, it's no less so for black people (otherwise you're assuming, not different heritage, but different heritability). Yet here you have people with certain phenotypic characterteristics ending up more like unrelated people with the same phenotypic characterteristics than the parents they've inherited their genes from. Suggesting, if anything, that something about the phenotypic characteristic (in this case being black) tends to negatively affect innate IQ.

The IQ's of siblings resemble each other more than the IQ's of non related people. The IQ's of identical twins resemble each other more than the IQ's of siblings who are not identical twins. The IQ's of twins who were raised in other families resemble each other more than the IQ's of unrelated people raised in the same family. All of this strongly indicates that genetics is more important than determining IQ than environment.

And all of them would have scored significantly lower in 1930, showing that environment is more important. Except it doesn't, any more than twin studies etc show the converse. It'd be equally valid (ie not) to say, since identical twins raised apart don't have identical scores, environmental influence overrides genetic. The same kid raised by wolves would score very differently. What they all suggest is somewhat independent genetic and environmental factors (which hardly anyone disputes). Two of the three race related factoids you cited earlier, however, suggest environmental if anything.

In Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner demonstrate that reading to children has little or no effect on the academic achievement of the children, but that having lots of books in the house does. They reasoned that parents of superior intelligence are likely to accumulate books, and that having intelligent parents is what really matters.

A fun read, much of which has been debunked since. IIRC what they demonstrated was that having books in the house seemed to be what mattered. The best genes in the world won't confer literacy without access to it via the environment. Of course having intelligent parents matters, but can't be "what really matters" in any exclusive sense.

Look, even if the inferences you draw re genetic vs environmental influence were valid, it would still be invalid to infer that genetic influence therefore predominates in group IQ test differences. You may be right in some ultimate sense, I don't know (or much care), but your conclusions are unwarranted by the kinds of evidence you keep citing.

 

[Jokodo]

You know what also grew from the 80s to the 10s? Social inequality, by whatever measure, is what also grew. So, knowing that blacks are on average poorer than whites, the hypothesis that the race gap is caused by environmental factors predicts a growth of the gap in the relevant period. Thy hypothesis that it's genetics does not.

You guys really are very good at bringing up evidence that doesn't support you.

About ten years ago, Charles Murray published a book titled Coming Apart that proposed that the economic division (rich vs. poor) is segregated along IQ lines (the higher IQ tends to be richer and lower IQ tends to be poorer), and this trend will continue, as the rich tend to mate with the rich and the poor with the poor. Charles Murray did not make racial distinctions in his argument (he decided to be less controversial after The Bell Curve), but the theory would seem to predict the division between whites and blacks. That would be the genetic argument. Can you please express the environmental argument that predicted the increasing division?

Is this supposed to be a serious argument and question? I'm not even going to talk about the questionable assumptions you (or apparently Murray) try to smuggle in here - let's just pretend they're valid - but how about: changing economic policies, loss of unskilled labour to outsourcing and automation, making an education more vital for success than it was before at a time when college tuition fees rose substantially above inflation rates, etc. All of this very clearly predicts that the children of poor people will on average be relatively to the population average) poorer than their parents.

You (and Trodon, and the folks you keep citing) keep making this mistake, so here's a very basic thing about science: If your hypothesis is merely compatible with the data using only a few additional assumptions that are arguably not entirely implausible, you can't use that as an argument for your hypothesis - especially not when the same data are predicted by the alternative hypothesis without further assumptions. Creationism is compatible with the facts about the similarity of human and chimpanzee genomes under the assumption that god just wanted it that way, the theory of evolution predicts them. </public interest broadcast>

 

[Jokodo]

Another thing, your argument doesn't even work. If people preferentially mate with people in the same wealth range and wealth is largely a function of innate intelligence, we expect people with below average IQ to have kids with innate abilities similar to their own - not even lower. So you still need the economic argument to explain a growing (rather than stagnant) division, and blaming genetics actually gains you nothing at all in terms of explanatory power.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You know what also grew from the 80s to the 10s? Social inequality, by whatever measure, is what also grew. So, knowing that blacks are on average poorer than whites, the hypothesis that the race gap is caused by environmental factors predicts a growth of the gap in the relevant period. Thy hypothesis that it's genetics does not.

You guys really are very good at bringing up evidence that doesn't support you.

About ten years ago, Charles Murray published a book titled Coming Apart that proposed that the economic division (rich vs. poor) is segregated along IQ lines (the higher IQ tends to be richer and lower IQ tends to be poorer), and this trend will continue, as the rich tend to mate with the rich and the poor with the poor. Charles Murray did not make racial distinctions in his argument (he decided to be less controversial after The Bell Curve), but the theory would seem to predict the division between whites and blacks. That would be the genetic argument. Can you please express the environmental argument that predicted the increasing division?

I do agree that people tend to marry others of similar intelligence. Few people want to marry someone they regard as inferior. Furthermore, as technology advances this will become more of an issue. Whether this translates into racial segregation is another matter, though.

- - - Updated - - -

Another thing, your argument doesn't even work. If people preferentially mate with people in the same wealth range and wealth is largely a function of innate intelligence, we expect people with below average IQ to have kids with innate abilities similar to their own - not even lower. So you still need the economic argument to explain a growing (rather than stagnant) division, and blaming genetics actually gains you nothing at all in terms of explanatory power.

Not only that but you tend to see a regression to the mean. Geniuses will tend to have a kid not as smart as they are, retards will tend to have a kid that's smarter than they are.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

About ten years ago, Charles Murray published a book titled Coming Apart that proposed that the economic division (rich vs. poor) is segregated along IQ lines (the higher IQ tends to be richer and lower IQ tends to be poorer), and this trend will continue, as the rich tend to mate with the rich and the poor with the poor. Charles Murray did not make racial distinctions in his argument (he decided to be less controversial after The Bell Curve), but the theory would seem to predict the division between whites and blacks. That would be the genetic argument. Can you please express the environmental argument that predicted the increasing division?

I do agree that people tend to marry others of similar intelligence. Few people want to marry someone they regard as inferior.

Yup. See that all the time with rich old guys marrying very smart blondes.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I do agree that people tend to marry others of similar intelligence. Few people want to marry someone they regard as inferior.

Yup. See that all the time with rich old guys marrying very smart blondes.

Tend to. You do sometimes see rich marrying young and beautiful but that's not the usual pattern. There just aren't enough rich for that.

 

[ApostateAbe]

On that note, another uncomfortable reality is that beauty significantly correlates with intelligence (r=0.4), in spite of the crude popular stereotype of the "dumb blondes." Murray's theory means that people born with the genes for intelligence will likewise monopolize the genes for beauty, as more intelligent men tend to be richer and will continue to tend to mate with the more beautiful women.

 

[Jokodo]

On that note, another uncomfortable reality is that beauty significantly correlates with intelligence (r=0.4), in spite of the crude popular stereotype of the "dumb blondes." Murray's theory means that people born with the genes for intelligence will likewise monopolize the genes for beauty, as more intelligent men tend to be richer and will continue to tend to mate with the more beautiful women.

That doesn't change the fact that you don't understand the very basics of science.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

On that note, another uncomfortable reality is that beauty significantly correlates with intelligence (r=0.4), in spite of the crude popular stereotype of the "dumb blondes." Murray's theory means that people born with the genes for intelligence will likewise monopolize the genes for beauty, as more intelligent men tend to be richer and will continue to tend to mate with the more beautiful women.

My experience has been the exact opposite, at least when it comes to applied intelligence. The beautiful ones are more able to get others to do the thinking for them and put less effort into doing their own. (And I think there's something to the dumb blonde bit, also--but only bottle blonds. I think it's the same factor at work--favoring looks as a solution over favoring brains as a solution.)

 

[ApostateAbe]

On that note, another uncomfortable reality is that beauty significantly correlates with intelligence (r=0.4), in spite of the crude popular stereotype of the "dumb blondes." Murray's theory means that people born with the genes for intelligence will likewise monopolize the genes for beauty, as more intelligent men tend to be richer and will continue to tend to mate with the more beautiful women.

My experience has been the exact opposite, at least when it comes to applied intelligence. The beautiful ones are more able to get others to do the thinking for them and put less effort into doing their own. (And I think there's something to the dumb blonde bit, also--but only bottle blonds. I think it's the same factor at work--favoring looks as a solution over favoring brains as a solution.)

We all have our personal experiences, and the science sometimes lies, but the many studies seem concordant on the matter. That isn't to say that women who are beautiful don't act stupid.

 

[Jokodo]

My experience has been the exact opposite, at least when it comes to applied intelligence. The beautiful ones are more able to get others to do the thinking for them and put less effort into doing their own. (And I think there's something to the dumb blonde bit, also--but only bottle blonds. I think it's the same factor at work--favoring looks as a solution over favoring brains as a solution.)

We all have our personal experiences, and the science sometimes lies, but the many studies seem concordant on the matter. That isn't to say that women who are beautiful don't act stupid.

Which "many studies"? If you mean the Kanazawa (2011) "study", that's obvious bullshit for pretty obvious reasons: He doesn't independently measure attractiveness at all. In the British sample, the attractiveness of the kids was rated by their teachers("At ages 7 and 11, the teacher of each NCDS respondent is asked to describe the child's physical appearance"), and in the US sample by the interviewers just after they'd administered the intelligence test ("At the conclusion of the in-home interview at each wave, the Add Health interviewer rates the respondent's physical attractiveness on a five-point ordinal scale"), and he doesn't have any independent ratings by strangers who've had no prior contact to the kids. The most natural interpretation of his results is thus that we tend to overrate the attractiveness of people we've taken a liking to for other reasons (for example, because we know they're intelligent); there may or may not be an effect in the reverse direction too, where teachers subconsciously devote more attention to pretty kids, creating a better learning environment for them. But nothing to suggest a biological basis for the correlation.

In short, he didn't find a correlation between measured intelligence and measured attractiveness, merely a correlation between measured intelligence and attractiveness as rated by people who know and care about the kids' intelligence. If you don't see the difference, you're beyond help.

But there's a more recent and methodologically much sounder study that finds "No relationship between intelligence and facial attractiveness in a large, genetically informative sample". I include the abstract below:

Theories in both evolutionary and social psychology suggest that a positive correlation should exist between facial attractiveness and general intelligence, and several empirical observations appear to corroborate this expectation. Using highly reliable measures of facial attractiveness and IQ in a large sample of identical and fraternal twins and their siblings, we found no evidence for a phenotypic correlation between these traits. Likewise, neither the genetic nor the environmental latent factor correlations were statistically significant. We supplemented our analyses of new data with a simple meta-analysis that found evidence of publication bias among past studies of the relationship between facial attractiveness and intelligence. In view of these results, we suggest that previously published reports may have overestimated the strength of the relationship and that the theoretical bases for the predicted attractiveness–intelligence correlation may need to be reconsidered.

 

[ApostateAbe]

We all have our personal experiences, and the science sometimes lies, but the many studies seem concordant on the matter. That isn't to say that women who are beautiful don't act stupid.

Which "many studies"? If you mean the Kanazawa (2011) "study", that's obvious bullshit for pretty obvious reasons: He doesn't independently measure attractiveness at all. In the British sample, the attractiveness of the kids was rated by their teachers("At ages 7 and 11, the teacher of each NCDS respondent is asked to describe the child's physical appearance"), and in the US sample by the interviewers just after they'd administered the intelligence test ("At the conclusion of the in-home interview at each wave, the Add Health interviewer rates the respondent's physical attractiveness on a five-point ordinal scale"), and he doesn't have any independent ratings by strangers who've had no prior contact to the kids. The most natural interpretation of his results is thus that we tend to overrate the attractiveness of people we've taken a liking to for other reasons (for example, because we know they're intelligent); there may or may not be an effect in the reverse direction too, where teachers subconsciously devote more attention to pretty kids, creating a better learning environment for them. But nothing to suggest a biological basis for the correlation.

In short, he didn't find a correlation between measured intelligence and measured attractiveness, merely a correlation between measured intelligence and attractiveness as rated by people who know and care about the kids' intelligence. If you don't see the difference, you're beyond help.

But there's a more recent and methodologically much sounder study that finds "No relationship between intelligence and facial attractiveness in a large, genetically informative sample". I include the abstract below:

Theories in both evolutionary and social psychology suggest that a positive correlation should exist between facial attractiveness and general intelligence, and several empirical observations appear to corroborate this expectation. Using highly reliable measures of facial attractiveness and IQ in a large sample of identical and fraternal twins and their siblings, we found no evidence for a phenotypic correlation between these traits. Likewise, neither the genetic nor the environmental latent factor correlations were statistically significant. We supplemented our analyses of new data with a simple meta-analysis that found evidence of publication bias among past studies of the relationship between facial attractiveness and intelligence. In view of these results, we suggest that previously published reports may have overestimated the strength of the relationship and that the theoretical bases for the predicted attractiveness–intelligence correlation may need to be reconsidered.

Mitchem et al 2014 is a great find, thank you. Kanazawa 2011 got the most attention, but there have been other studys backing the same conclusion, including:

• Zerbowitz et al - "Looking Smart and Looking Good: Facial Cues to Intelligence and Their Origins" 2002 (http://smg.media.mit.edu/classes/Identity2004/ZebrowitzHallRhodes.2002.pdf).
• Prokosch et al - "Intelligence tests with higher g-loadings show higher correlations with body symmetry: Evidence for a general fitness factor mediated by developmental stability" 2004 (https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/95822/intelligence-and-body-symmetry.pdf).
• Mohr and Lund - "Beauty as Related to Intelligence and Educational Achievement" 1933 (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1933.9921573).

But I did find another study with a contrary result:

• Scholz and Sicinski - "Facial Attractiveness and Lifetime Earnings: Evidence from a Cohort Study" 2011 (http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~scholz/Research/Beauty.pdf). This study found a relationship between lifetimes earnings and facial attractiveness but not between IQ and physical attractiveness.

I am inclined to place lower relevance on Mitchem et al 2014 because the claim of the correlation between IQ and beauty would be more applicable to the genetic variations within the whole population and less applicable to genetic variations within families, as genetic variation within families would be expected to be much less. Carriers of genes for both beauty and IQ would tend to mate with each other, non-carriers would mate with each other, and the distributions of inheritance of those genes among their children would be expected to merely add randomization.

Still, I think that is enough evidence to conclude uncertainty on the matter. The science is divided. Especially salient, to me, is Mitchem et al's finding of publication bias.

 

[ApostateAbe]

On that note, another uncomfortable reality is that beauty significantly correlates with intelligence (r=0.4), in spite of the crude popular stereotype of the "dumb blondes." Murray's theory means that people born with the genes for intelligence will likewise monopolize the genes for beauty, as more intelligent men tend to be richer and will continue to tend to mate with the more beautiful women.

That doesn't change the fact that you don't understand the very basics of science.

If you disagree with a claim, then please dispute the claim with data and relevant argument, not personal attacks. Thank you.

 

[Jokodo]

Which "many studies"? If you mean the Kanazawa (2011) "study", that's obvious bullshit for pretty obvious reasons: He doesn't independently measure attractiveness at all. In the British sample, the attractiveness of the kids was rated by their teachers("At ages 7 and 11, the teacher of each NCDS respondent is asked to describe the child's physical appearance"), and in the US sample by the interviewers just after they'd administered the intelligence test ("At the conclusion of the in-home interview at each wave, the Add Health interviewer rates the respondent's physical attractiveness on a five-point ordinal scale"), and he doesn't have any independent ratings by strangers who've had no prior contact to the kids. The most natural interpretation of his results is thus that we tend to overrate the attractiveness of people we've taken a liking to for other reasons (for example, because we know they're intelligent); there may or may not be an effect in the reverse direction too, where teachers subconsciously devote more attention to pretty kids, creating a better learning environment for them. But nothing to suggest a biological basis for the correlation.

In short, he didn't find a correlation between measured intelligence and measured attractiveness, merely a correlation between measured intelligence and attractiveness as rated by people who know and care about the kids' intelligence. If you don't see the difference, you're beyond help.

But there's a more recent and methodologically much sounder study that finds "No relationship between intelligence and facial attractiveness in a large, genetically informative sample". I include the abstract below:

Theories in both evolutionary and social psychology suggest that a positive correlation should exist between facial attractiveness and general intelligence, and several empirical observations appear to corroborate this expectation. Using highly reliable measures of facial attractiveness and IQ in a large sample of identical and fraternal twins and their siblings, we found no evidence for a phenotypic correlation between these traits. Likewise, neither the genetic nor the environmental latent factor correlations were statistically significant. We supplemented our analyses of new data with a simple meta-analysis that found evidence of publication bias among past studies of the relationship between facial attractiveness and intelligence. In view of these results, we suggest that previously published reports may have overestimated the strength of the relationship and that the theoretical bases for the predicted attractiveness–intelligence correlation may need to be reconsidered.

Mitchem et al 2014 is a great find, thank you. Kanazawa 2011 got the most attention, but there have been other studys backing the same conclusion, including:

• Zerbowitz et al - "Looking Smart and Looking Good: Facial Cues to Intelligence and Their Origins" 2002 (http://smg.media.mit.edu/classes/Identity2004/ZebrowitzHallRhodes.2002.pdf).

Judging from the abstract, they're making a claim that's totally different from yours: They're not claiming a correlation of beauty and intelligence based on assortative mating, but that both are caused by developmental stability. This is a very different hypothesis with different predictions. If you want to switch to that one, you should make it explicit (also, if that's the case, you can't handwave away Mitchem et al.'s finding - if they correlate not just because of assortative mating but because the same genes influence both, you expect to find correlations even when you just look at siblings).

• Prokosch et al - "Intelligence tests with higher g-loadings show higher correlations with body symmetry: Evidence for a general fitness factor mediated by developmental stability" 2004 (https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/95822/intelligence-and-body-symmetry.pdf).

Same objection as before (not the hypothesis you're peddling), plus, it's published in the journal that accepted Kanazawa's obvious bullshit. Feel free to quote relevant passages or data, but I'm not going to read beyond the abstract (which indicates that it's a different hypothesis they defend, one that should be out of the window with Mitchem et al.'s metastudy).

• Mohr and Lund - "Beauty as Related to Intelligence and Educational Achievement" 1933 (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1933.9921573).

I don't have access. From the abstract, this is the most relevant of your citations. But an obvious contention is: They had college students as subjects. Surely, by that age, you could argue that people might have found a style that suits their body type, and that on average more intelligent people are simply better at finding such a style, yielding higher ratings without being innately more beautiful? It's not obvious from the abstract how, if at all, they tried to control for such effects.

But I did find another study with a contrary result:

• Scholz and Sicinski - "Facial Attractiveness and Lifetime Earnings: Evidence from a Cohort Study" 2011 (http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~scholz/Research/Beauty.pdf). This study found a relationship between lifetimes earnings and facial attractiveness but not between IQ and physical attractiveness.

I am inclined to place lower relevance on Mitchem et al 2014 because the claim of the correlation between IQ and beauty would be more applicable to the genetic variations within the whole population and less applicable to genetic variations within families, as genetic variation within families would be expected to be much less. Carriers of genes for both beauty and IQ would tend to mate with each other, non-carriers would mate with each other, and the distributions of inheritance of those genes among their children would be expected to merely add randomization.

That's a relevant objection if you stick with your original hypothesis. Not if you switch to the hypothesis explicitly defended by the majority of your sources. So we apparently have another case of citing evidence that doesn't support your position.

Still, I think that is enough evidence to conclude uncertainty on the matter. The science is divided. Especially salient, to me, is Mitchem et al's finding of publication bias.

I expect you to admit explicitly that your "uncomfortable reality" from a few posts ago may as well be a figment of imagination.

 

[Underseer]

Aw, the poll is private? I wanted to see who the 5 racists are.

Look, genes play a very big part of the explanation for why human brains are physically different from the brains of other species. I bet you practically all of the intelligence differences between species can be attributed to genetics.

But in comparing groups of humans to other groups of humans? You'd have to be stupid to think genes play a significant role in that. How do I know? China. China has these weird cyclical revolutions that happen every couple of centuries. You can practically calibrate your calendars by these things. Everyone thought that when the communists took over this endless cycle of revolution would end, then the Cultural Revolution happened under Mao right around the time the next revolution should have happened, and it had more or less the same features of all the other revolutions, including rounding up large numbers of smart people and killing them.

Every couple/few centuries, China has been rounding up large numbers of smart people and killing them, and they've been doing this for pretty much all of recorded human history. If genes played a significant role in determining the intelligence of a population compared to other populations, then by now China would be the dumbest nation on the planet, because no other nation slaughters so many smart people with such regularity over such a long period of time.

Just look at the long list of Nobel prize-winners China has produced. Even when you account for their large population, it's a pretty impressive list considering how many nations have never produced a Nobel laureate at all. The Chinese are a lot of things, but they are not the dumbest nation on the planet.

It therefore follows that the genetics of very smart people and the genetics of dumb/average people are identical or nearly identical (aside from certain well-known genetic defects that negatively impact intelligence or learning).

So if you think African-Americans have a lower IQ because of genetics, then you are just looking for a "sciencey" excuse for your racism. It really is that simple.

 

[beero1000]

Aw, the poll is private? I wanted to see who the 5 racists are.

Look, genes play a very big part of the explanation for why human brains are physically different from the brains of other species. I bet you practically all of the intelligence differences between species can be attributed to genetics.

But in comparing groups of humans to other groups of humans? You'd have to be stupid to think genes play a significant role in that. How do I know? China. China has these weird cyclical revolutions that happen every couple of centuries. You can practically calibrate your calendars by these things. Everyone thought that when the communists took over this endless cycle of revolution would end, then the Cultural Revolution happened under Mao right around the time the next revolution should have happened, and it had more or less the same features of all the other revolutions, including rounding up large numbers of smart people and killing them.

Every couple/few centuries, China has been rounding up large numbers of smart people and killing them, and they've been doing this for pretty much all of recorded human history. If genes played a significant role in determining the intelligence of a population compared to other populations, then by now China would be the dumbest nation on the planet, because no other nation slaughters so many smart people with such regularity over such a long period of time.

Just look at the long list of Nobel prize-winners China has produced. Even when you account for their large population, it's a pretty impressive list considering how many nations have never produced a Nobel laureate at all. The Chinese are a lot of things, but they are not the dumbest nation on the planet.

It therefore follows that the genetics of very smart people and the genetics of dumb/average people are identical or nearly identical (aside from certain well-known genetic defects that negatively impact intelligence or learning).

So if you think African-Americans have a lower IQ because of genetics, then you are just looking for a "sciencey" excuse for your racism. It really is that simple.

Eh, the mathematician in me had to distinguish the difference between 'insignificant' and 'zero'. I picked the ridiculously broad 0-40% range just because I didn't want to definitively say 0%. I suspect the others in that range are in a similar nitpicky boat.