Race and IQ

[Theodisk]

Theodisk, you obviously didn't have many children or many siblings. You would notice right away how different kids can be from the moment of birth. They could grow up in same environment, same parents, same teachers, same water, food, air, family. At the end of the day you you'll have different people with different interests, personalities and talents.
Interestingly the differences are bigger when parents are of contrasting personalities, intellect, etc.
On other hand go to Amish or hutterites closed colonies and you see how similar people in colony are. They mingled long time together in these closed communities, and you'll have almost same mold, DNA.
Observe little newborn kids, or early weeks, and you'll see immediately differences in personalities, characters, physical development, motor control and coordination, attention and interests what they love to watch or listen .
No, we are not born same, clean slate.

Where i had sad we are "all born same"!? You didnt read exactly what i had written. Im one of three siblings, and i know that we are individual personals. The mental evolution begins with the womb and there develop their own personalities already. Some parts of the development based on genetic attributes from the parents.

 

[Theodisk]

My understanding of what you have said here is that you can inherit through genetics the characteristic of your ancestors. So effectively their attributes in part are directly linked to our genetic make up.

Yes, but you cant categorized people with this. Each human on this earth is unique.

This could only be noticable event in humans if the behaviour where distinct eg were different from others. So if a family displayed certain "talents" why then wouldnt the larger genetic family(genetic group within a city, country, island) also to some extent share those talents?

Some of this people already. But you dont inherite all from your ancestors, many is individual of the own personality. How i sad that each human on earth is unique.

I see what your saying about character influecing the mentality of an individual hence creating a variation in performance. If this is a genetic factor is it still not significant to note that genetics is determining the behaviour(intellectual ability, physical, social) of people depending on their genetic variation?

Yes, some points are inheritable. But what do you realy want from me?

 

[LeBrok]

Hell yes, that's how I understood you. In all your post you're proving how genetically identical we are, therefor we have started same. It doesn't mater if it's at birth or conception. At one point we were same,...maybe with minute differences of 0.1% .
Don't give too much credit to the womb shaping your mind. There are no mental stimuli in a womb. Womb is about nutrients, not about education.
I have twins, not identical, and they were born different in looks, character and learning skills. How do you explain this if they shared same womb, at same time and ate same nutrients from same mother?

Also, even though we have same genes at 99.9%, it doesn't mean that all the genes are expressed same way in all of us. Read about this here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...ls-the-differences-between-humans-425432.html

 

[LeBrok]

To celebrate our differences, genetic or environmental, whatever, have a good lough with Russell Peters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYiteaPBlz0&feature=related

 

[Theodisk]

Hell yes, that's how I understood you. In all your post you're proving how genetically identical we are, therefor we have started same. It doesn't mater if it's at birth or conception. At one point we were same,...maybe with minute differences of 0.1% .
Don't give too much credit to the womb shaping your mind. There are no mental stimuli in a womb. Womb is about nutrients, not about education.
I have twins, not identical, and they were born different in looks, character and learning skills. How do you explain this if they shared same womb, at same time and ate same nutrients from same mother?

Also, even though we have same genes at 99.9%, it doesn't mean that all the genes are expressed same way in all of us. Read about this here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...ls-the-differences-between-humans-425432.html

1. Keep cool. Take it easy and relax.
2. My english is not very good and its very difficult for me to describe how i think about this complex thematic.
3. I know that each human developed different.
4. What do you want from me?

 

[LeBrok]

Nothing much, just discussing an issue. It's cool, I just really like good discussions, that's all.

1. Don't start your thread input saying that what we wrote here is a bull-shit.
2. Make sure that if you state something, you can defend it.
3. Your english is quite good, I can understand your point. If not sorry for jumping to conclusions.
Later

 

[Aristander]

I believe our genetics set a set of boundaries in which our bodies can operate. These boundaries can be fairly wide and be reflected in a number of ways. For an example when speaking of identical twins, I once new 2 sisters who were mirror identical twins. In appearance they appeared quite perfectly identical. All through their childhood and until young adulthood they had basically identical lives. At 14 one of them had to have an emergency appendectomy, 3 weeks later the second twin had to have her appendix removed.
They both married at about the same age and had 3 children each over a period of 10 years. Up until this time they lived what looked like identical lives then a great deal of stress was visited upon one of the twins. This stress lasted for a number of years over this period of time her health progressively got worse. By the time she was 43 years old she suffered her first heart attack. Her health continued to falter and she suffered a stroke which left her partially paralyzed and finally her heart was so damaged that she died at age 56.
Her identical twin during this time had absolutely no health problems, after her sister's health began to fail she began to check on her health. Her doctors found absolutely nothing wrong with her. Her heart was perfect. She is now 62 years old and is in perfect health.
The only difference in their lives was the amount of stress that one twin suffered from because of problems with her children. They were raised by the same parents, lived in the same town, lived nearly identical lifestyles, yet one twin's body crumbled. They had the same genes yet one suffered from a physical breakdown and the other is still living a full life.

 

[LeBrok]

Interesting how big stress can bring people down. There are instances of people going grey (hair) in mater of days under huge stress.
Maybe stress is similar to depression, and we know how "healthy" depressed people look...

 

[Aristander]

I think that we have only scratched the surface about how much control our genes have on our lives. I think that we will discover that epigenetic forces are more important than we realize and we will learn that an identical genome does not mean an identical outcome.
I know how far this discussion has strayed from our original question does race have anything to do with how intelligent we are, but I think that too many things go into how intelligence is formed to ever come to any sort of meaningful answer.
It is my belief that genetics has an effect, environment has an effect but the whole question is just too nebulous and twisted to quantify with a test. I cannot think of a way to determine how much each element has on the IQ of a subject.

 

[John Harvey]

Since we now know that many physical differences have evolved over evolutionary time between the various races of mankind, what is the reason that some contributors to this debate insist racial IQs are immune to this process? Is it that human mental activities are somehow protected from natural selection - in which case why are we brighter than chimps? Alternatively, is it simply that a racial identicality of all IQs would be emotionally satisfying, morally comforting and properly PC, so nothing else matters?

 

[LeBrok]

Very logical argument John.
Welcome to the Eupedia.

 

[Sybilla]

Yes, there is. Look the world avarage IQ map:

 

[how yes no 2]

Yes, there is. Look the world avarage IQ map:

brain is like muscles...if environment does not provide enough stimulants, it will not develop... imagine what would be your IQ if you did grow up in tribal society and would it be fair to measure it in way it is measured for people who did grow up in cultures with different priorities and with different information available... not to mention that many questions in such tests rely on assumptions that some notions are well known while this is largely culturally specific issue...

only comparison you can do in countries that have ethnically mixed population and long enough period of living in same conditions... which is still not long enough for USA where till 60s black people had no rights....

 

[Marianne]

brain is like muscles...if environment does not provide enough stimulants, it will not develop... imagine what would be your IQ if you did grow up in tribal society and would it be fair to measure it in way it is measured for people who did grow up in cultures with different priorities and with different information available... not to mention that many questions in such tests rely on assumptions that some notions are well known while this is largely culturally specific issue...

only comparison you can do in countries that have ethnically mixed population and long enough period of living in same conditions... which is still not long enough for USA where till 60s black people had no rights....

I agree with this. We can't just measure the IQ in Africans and Europeans and conclude.

I also see this within my country when I happen to read studies about IQ differences within the country. People who live in villages don't care about school. They just finish the compulsory 9 years of education and then start working in the fields. They seem to have low IQ, while people living in big cities have a lot higher. But 80% of people living in big cities have parents who come from various Greek villages where the IQ seems to be low. So in this case it is not genetic, it's just that in big cities the majority of kids have 12 years of school and then continue to university.

It can't be that people with the same DNA (within Greece I mean) just happen to become smarter after they move to big cities... They just receive better education than those living in villages who only want to finish school to be able to work at their farms.

I don't know how they conclude the average IQ of each country but if they measure the IQ of people all over Greece for example the average will be lower for the reasons I said above, but this doesn't really reflect how much the IQ of Greeks is.

Same in USA. If they want to compare the IQ of white Americans and black Americans they shouldn't take samples from the ones living in ghettos because the majority is not educated. That is the only way to really see if race and IQ are related...

 

[Mzungu mchagga]

@Marianne and how yes no

I have to agree with both of you. It seems that most people here have never heard about the thingy which is called the 'Flynn-Effect'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

How does one explain that people in all Western Countries are getting smarter from generation to generation, and that all people in this forum would out-perform their grandparents in IQ-tests when tested at the same age? I'm really sick of hearing 'natural selection' as an argument. Within one or two generations? This would mean people must have had an awful lot of dumber siblings that got killed!

 

[Marianne]

I agree.

I am one of the 2 people who voted "not sure" in this poll, because I haven't seen so far data that support that race and IQ are linked or the opposite. I believe that good education is one of the main reasons that affect someone's IQ. Maybe cold/warm climate also affects it, or the quality of the mother's life while being pregnant, playing with lego toys as a kid or watching cartoons, or maybe there are 1000 more reasons.

In order to really say if IQ is race-related the study should only include people living in the same area, with the same living standards and education that belong to different races. Then after years of studying them we may be able to tell the answer to the question

 

[LeBrok]

Oh, you are killing me guys. There is no argument, except from Reinaert, that there are differences between races in colour of skin, facial features and other easy to spot physical attributes. But somehow it cannot effect the structure of the brain?!
There is also no argument that there are differences in structure of brain between man and woman, and yet we can be equal. Now when it comes to structure of brain between races, then we have a big no no. Because what? It would effect equality between race? Is this the only reason?

Surely the external stimuli are very important to fully develop brain. Close a child in a room with no brain stimulation, just feed it. The final effect will be always a moron, no matter what genetic predisposition the child would have.
Compare apples to apples, yes. But don't jump into conclusions that all people are born clean slate with same abilities.
You all went to schools and you noticed that even though you were from same city district or village, you progressed in school differently. How come? You probably noticed that generally kids of successful, well off parents, were doing much better than kids of parents from so called margins of life. Food was mostly the same for all kids from Europe and North America, air the same, teachers the same, roughly the same environment. But somehow the product was so different. The only logical explanation was the genetics. The smarter kids inherited the better predisposition to do better in school. Mostly a better memory, logical thinking, maybe working harder gens.
Now when it comes to races, of course there is no difference, right?

If you want a real life experiment. Adopt a child from mothers known to belong to poor, disadvantaged families. Raise it and try to mold it the way you are, give it all the advantages. Good luck, you are going to need tons of it!

Once again I have to stress that I believe that all people should be equal, and treated alike. I just can't deny that there are differences among races, that's all.

 

[Marianne]

Neither me nor Mzungu mchagga said that race and IQ are not related. We just said that currently the data we have cannot support it 100%. I have also seen studies in which black kids have lower scores in IQ tests in American schools and asian kids have the highest. This is an indication of course that IQ differs between races but it is not 100% conclusive since we all know that black kids in America do not have the same opportunities in education, at least the majority of them. We need extensive research to be able to prove 100% that race and IQ are related.

Of course if we only compare whites and asians then we can pretty much say that IQ and race are related since they tend to score higher than us.

My instinct tells me that the races must have IQ differences, but I would like to see conclusive research to be able to tell for sure, since I like to consider all the facts before I make a decision.

 

[LeBrok]

Fair enough.

 

[Melusine]

Why not read up on genetics by geneticists. The URl that I am referring you to is not available, however, for anyone interested it can be found via Google: did the neolithic age start in the middle east, and go to the article The history and geopgrapy of human genes by Luigi Luca Cavalli- Sforza eta ll. There are genetic tables that clearing show that no matter what the color our our skin on the outside we are all "the same". Genetically we are all out of AFRICA.

10,000 years ago at the beginning of the neolithic age and the end of the last ice age, it is estimated that there were about 5 million humans on earth. We all descend from one of those "couples".

IQ is not a racical outcome, it has a simple explanation: Reading , Writing and Arithmatic. The more a human has "this knowledge, the higher the IQ. And the "means to aquire it.

As for physical prowess, all humans when they "train" their bodies are exactly alike. That is what was happening in Rome 2,000 years with the gladiators/slaves of all "colors"

Melusine