Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 54

rewrite
Agree with re-write nom - This article does need a rewrite; for one thing, it doesn't get down to the meat of the topic (is there a correlation and what is the correlation?) until a good 3 or 4 sections later, preceded by a lot of excusing, explanation, and general "we're sorry the data says this but it IS what it says". I hate to make criticism without being proactive, but given the number of experts and obviously well-researched data as well as the amount of time put into this thing I'm keeping my hands off. My suggestion? Put the background information much lower in the article or shorten it up, and de-obfuscate the language in the rest of the article so a person who wants to know about this topic can find out the basics without reading the entire thing carefully. By the way, I found this article through a wiki-path that started with Intertel and ended here by way of Intelligence Quotient - CredoFromStart 18:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Scope
This is a huge topic. Is there a portal for it? Or at least a WikiProject?

There is so much material, that managing and organizing it all is a task in itself - let alone the challenge of finding a neutral treatment.

Is there a main point? Or are there 2 or 3 main issues? I'll try to list a few here:
 * Are some people simply "born smarter"?
 * If so, does this heritage correlate with "race"?
 * Is intelligence immutable? (Or can a person become smarter or stupider during their lifetime?)
 * Are smarter people more "successful" in any significant way?
 * get better jobs
 * invent more stuff
 * create more artistic stuff
 * How should society treat people who appear to be smarter or less smart?
 * Help the disadvantaged, i.e., remedial classes or extra "points" for certain races/ethnicities on placement tests
 * Give up on stupid people, i.e., "they can't be educated, let them be janitors"
 * Change the way money and power are distributed so that intelligence is no longer an advantage (socialism?)

A good Wikiproject would list all the issues and recruit volunteers to write about each of them, preferably in compatible groups.

Your comments are quite helpful. But please sign your posts. :) -Ste|vertigo 21:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that. My username is Uncle Ed 11:40, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

summary of interpretations article
the only time the word "genetic" appears in that article is (1) in the inaccurate summary JK wrote and (2) in a summary of one scholar's opinion that the question of genetics is irrelevant to the topic of the article. JK's summary fails to summary that article. --W.R.N. 05:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Much of the argument in other articles also belongs in interpretations. I'll attempt more reorganization myself later, unless you'd like a crack at moving information regarding conclusions to that section. --JereKrischel 07:36, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Let's begin by discussing what should be in that article. You've labeled it "interpretations", but it would better be called "practical validity". If you want to have an article that matches what you wrote as the summary of the current "interpretations" article, it should be yet another article. Evolutionary explanations/racial interpretations and practical validity are not at all the same topic. --W.R.N. 08:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I've tried a new intro...I don't think "practical validity" is very clear. Could you explain what you mean by "practical validity"? --JereKrischel 08:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll put together an actual response later, but see Intelligence_quotient for the within group version. --W.R.N. 08:49, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems like the Intelligence_quotient is completely different than what you're describing. If validity is the correlation of a score with an outcome, how can you enter race into the equation?  Is there a score for "race"?  I think that the idea of having a "practical validity" section seems misplaced -> yes, there is practical validity to IQ scores (test scores related to outcomes), but to put it in this article seems like a stretch, or at least a significant gloss over the idea of race.


 * Perhaps you could have a section on the practical validity of genetic racial tests (correlation of a score on that test with an outcome of self-identification)...but think about it, if you had an article "Economics and Intelligence", what would you put in the practical validity section that was any different than "Health and Intelligence" or "Race and Intelligence"? --JereKrischel 08:57, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

JK, what you're saying here makes sense. Having overly extensive information of practical validity smacks of POV pushing. futurebird 16:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Frankly, your opinions are apparently uninformed, and don't make any sense as far as I can tell. If you don't understand the material in the section, you should stop trying (and failing) to summarize it for the main page. Otherwise, read and grapple with what's written in the section, ask question if you want, and we'll continue this discussion. --W.R.N. 18:31, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Read Civility.Ultramarine 19:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you talking to me or to Jere in that last comment WRN? In either case, I felt this comment was a little terse. futurebird 19:25, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

WRN, my sincere apologies if this sounds terse, but it seems that your opinions are uninformed, and you have yet been unable to present a coherent argument for your suggested titles to the section. This may be a result of your sources - there are hereditarian books which argue about what they call "practical validity", but in this context, that peculiar non-sequitur doesn't make sense.

If what you're trying to do is mirror a racialist book in this article, then "practical validity" seems appropriate. What they're really trying to do doesn't have anything to do with "practical validity" in any technical sense, what they're trying to do is find alternative explanations to group differences that don't include racism or economic oppression - they want to assert IQ differences are the cause of other differences, and combined with their assertion that IQ differences are genetic, it makes the case that groups have different outcomes because of nature itself. A section heading called "It's not because we're racists" or "Certain races are naturally inferior and we should expect to see that" seems more to the point of their argument.

If you're trying to write an NPOV article, then the idea that "practical validity" has anything to do with the combination of "race and intelligence" (rather than the single score of "intelligence") is unsupportable.

Please answer the following question, WRN, and maybe we can understand your rationale better: if you had an article "Economics and Intelligence", what would you put in the practical validity section that was any different than "Health and Intelligence" or "Race and Intelligence"?

My guess is that if we were to assert some sort of "practical validity" for "Economics and intelligence", and made some assertion that if you're poor and have low intelligence then you must be Black (two scores leading to one outcome) you'd have a problem with that. --JereKrischel 19:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, now it seems that both of you are being a little terse. Ah well, as long as no one feels offended at this point it's all good.


 * To chime in here: "practical" and "valid" are not terms that everyone agrees on when describing IQ tests. There are significant and prominent detractors to each or both of these views. I'm not even saying they are right, so please don't respond by telling be about "strong correlations" All that I am saying is that these are loaded terms.


 * Could we have an article called "The impractically and invalidity of IQ tests?" I don't think that would work so well either. futurebird 20:00, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * "Practical validity" is a technical concept. It's not simply the combination of the common sense meanings of "practical" and "validity". The article in question, call it what you will, is about the non-IQ consequences of IQ differences as they relate to differences between groups. So for example, there is an IQ gap and an income gap, and the question is 'what fraction of the income gap can be accounted for by the IQ gap?' (answer: a lot of it.) likewise, 'what fraction of the marriage gap is accounted for by IQ?' (answer: not much). this is the topic of the article. it is essentially the inverse of the "explanations" article. rather than looking for explanations of the IQ gap, it's looking for explanations of other gaps in terms of IQ. the topic is important because an IQ gap would be of no real interest to people if it didn't have real-world consequences. --W.R.N. 04:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You're right, "practical validity" is a technical concept, and AFAIK, there are no scores for race to determine "practical validity" - practical validity is the correlation of a score to an outcome. So in terms of "what fraction of the income gap can be accounted for by the IQ gap", the question only means anything if the assumption is that those two variables aren't affected by the same factors when divvying up things by "race".


 * So for example, if we took the topic "Economics and Intelligence", and wanted to explain the health gap between rich and poor, and asked the question "what fraction of the health gap can be accounted for by the IQ gap", what meaning does that question really have? Even if the correlation is high, you've fallen into a logical fallacy.


 * Another example, if we took the topic "Health and Intelligence", and wanted to explain the economic gap between the healthy and the unhealthy, and asked the question "what fraction of the economic gap can be accounted for by the IQ gap", we really aren't getting anywhere.


 * Practical validity, as a technical concept, does not relate to arbitrary groupings - you've added in an additional variable that doesn't fit.


 * Try this - how about turn it around, and ask the question in regards to high-iq people and low-iq people, "what fraction of the economic gap (between high-iq and low-iq people) can be accounted for by the race-gap"? This topic is important because race and racism would be of no real interested to peope if it didn't have real-world consequences. --JereKrischel 08:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Practical importance (removed section)


The appearance of a large practical importance for intelligence makes some scholars claim that the source and meaning of the IQ gap is a pressing social concern. and argue that the IQ gap is reflected by gaps in the academic, economic, and social factors correlated with IQ. However, some dispute the general importance of the role of IQ for real-world outcomes, especially for differences in accumulated wealth and general economic inequality in a nation. (See "Practical importance of IQ".)

The effects of differences in mean IQ between groups (regardless if the cause is social or biological) are amplified by two statistical characteristics of IQ. First, there seem to be minimum statistical thresholds of IQ for many socially valued outcomes (for example, high school graduation and college admission). Second, because of the shape of the normal distribution, only about 16% of the population is at least one standard deviation above the mean. Thus, although the IQ distributions for Blacks and Whites are largely overlapping, different IQ thresholds can have a significant impact on the proportion of Blacks and Whites above and below a particular cut-off.

According to Murray and Herrnsteins' Bell Curve, when IQ is statistically controlled for, the probability of having a college degree or working in a high-IQ occupation is higher for Blacks than Whites. Controlling for IQ shrinks the income gap from thousands to a few hundred dollars. Controlling for IQ cuts differential poverty by about three-quarters and unemployment differences by half. However, controlling for IQ has little effect on differential marriage rates. For many other factors, controlling for IQ eliminates the differences between Whites and Hispanics, but the Black-White gap remains (albeit smaller).

Just put it here so we can talk about it. futurebird 20:08, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * At university, I heard about a computer program called SPSS which is used to relate various "factors" in social science research. Around the same time, I discovered that nothing is more common than to "leave out" factors which you don't understand or do not want anyone else to discuss when presenting research.


 * We like to say that we "controlled" for this or that factor, meaning that we have shown that it's not very important. But in the Law of supply of demand, three factors influence each other. In race and intelligence, there are much more than 3 factors. What influences what?


 * Affirmative action (AA) programs are specifically designed to nullify certain advantages caused by various factors. So research which "controls for a factor" needs to mention the effects (observed or hoped-for) of AA programs.


 * In The Bell Curve, IIRC the authors state that college education is an important factor in economic success, while also noting that AA reduced the effect of this factor. Anyone else remember reading this? (By the way, if anyone needs a copy of the book for Wikipedia writing, just put it on your Amazon.com wishlist and I'll buy it for you. :-) --Uncle Ed 11:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

moved again
why? if its the same reason as above, then the same answer applies. --W.R.N. 18:41, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Let's hold off until mediation. I think the solution to this question will come from the content of the article. futurebird 19:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Talking about us like we're not in the room.
One of the primary reasons that writing on "race and intelligence" can come across as offensive, even when the motivations of the research are supposedly nobel, or even when the research claims to be 'trying to help' is related to the impression so much of this gives of talking about racial minorities as if they would never read the article

In what ways can we ensure that these articles address everyone? (Many of the recent changes help to do this.)I'm wondering, though, if anyone is aware of any others ways we can diversify the perceptive here. Do people in other countries or cultures have ideas about the intelligence of different races? How do they justify those ideas? futurebird 18:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Top paragraph - write clinically and dispassionately; use nonjudgmental language to describe differences (by the prevailing philosophy, value judgments don't belong in science); describe what results mean and do not mean; separate different kinds of topics so that the most controversial topics do not bleed all over other discussions. --W.R.N. 19:01, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * But, the thing is, this isn't just about science. It's also about history and the facts that go along with history. I agree that we need to avoid vaule judgements in the intro.

Oh just as a note, it could be a bad idea to do this in a way the masks or glosses over the very real problems of poverty and its impact on technological development in countries and intelligence. I'm going to thumb through Collapse and Guns Germs and Steele in the mean time. I think that any kid who grew up underfed would take "murray's magic pill" right away. futurebird 19:19, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

maybe you should ask your question again. --W.R.N. 04:41, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * huh? futurebird 04:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * If I haven't answered your original question or addressed your original point, maybe if you rephrase it or ask it in a new way, I can give a more satisfactory answer. --W.R.N. 04:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm gonna have to ask a reference librarian for help with this. And I hate doing that. People always think I'm some kind of "Neo-marxist" ... :P futurebird 05:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Murray's elephant story
copied here from copyrighted source:

If you think this is mushy nonjudgmentalism, try a thought experiment: Suppose that a pill exists that, if all women took it, would give them exactly the same mean and variance on every dimension of human functioning as men—including all the ways in which women now surpass men. How many women would want all women to take it? Or suppose that the pill, taken by all blacks, would give them exactly the same mean and variance on every dimension of human functioning as whites—including all the ways in which blacks now surpass whites. How many blacks would want all blacks to take it? To ask such questions is to answer them: hardly anybody. Few want to trade off the unique virtues of their own group for the advantages that another group may enjoy.

Sometimes these preferences for one’s own group are rational, sometimes not. I am proud of being Scots-Irish, for example, even though the Scots-Irish group means for violence, drunkenness, and general disagreeableness seem to have been far above those of other immigrant groups. But the Scots-Irish made great pioneers—that’s the part of my heritage that I choose to value. A Thai friend gave me an insight into this human characteristic many years ago when I remarked that Thais were completely undefensive about Westerners despite the economic backwardness of Thailand in those days. My friend explained why. America has wealth and technology that Thailand does not have, he acknowledged, just as the elephant is stronger than a human. “But,” he said with a shrug, “who wants to be an elephant?” None of us wants to be an elephant and, from the perspective of our own group, every other group has something of the elephant about it. All of us are right, too.


 * I don't think you understand what I'm saying. Or maybe you do, and just don't get your response...let me think about this...I don't really understand this story either. Maybe it's suggesting that strong cultural allegiance could be a source for the gap, but, I just don't trust Murray much, to be honest. 3/4ths the time he's quite logical, but the rest of the time... I mean was the point of this story just that people should stay separate? Or is it just honestly showing how viewed from another perspective the things that we value highly in the west may not have as much value in other cultures. (Diamond would take issue even with that...) I'm probably reading too much in to it. But then, I'm going to go read it in context, now, and I might add it to the section on the effort gap.


 * What I'm really looking for are view of the intelligences of different peoples 'from a non-western perspective. Even Ogbu is "western" in the sense of his training. This will be hard to do, but it's hard to imagine that westerners are the only people to ever have these ideas. I have a few colloquial examples, but yeah yeah yeah we gotta cite the sources. futurebird 19:13, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Chinese have been testing outcomes for hundreds and hundreds of years by way of their examination system. But I see no grounds for assuming/believing that they have the same preoccupation with intelligence as a separate component of human beings and/or as a component by which humans should be ranked. I also have no grounds for assuming/believing that they have the same preoccupation with [race] that we do. Both these concepts are western ideas. In other words, the intensions of the words "race" and "intelligence" are different from any words (except translations keyed to western concepts) in Chinese that may have extensions that cover roughly the same phenomena. For example, westerners will see racial/genetic differences between Chinese and Japanese or Chinese and Thai, but Chinese will see "central country" vs. "peripheral country" and "our culture" vs. "other culture" differences. If science consists of "convenient fictions" (i.e., useful fictions), then rational people who come upon new fictions when cultures come in new contact will tend to accept the fictions that actually prove to be "convenient" assuming that they do not have some previous set that biases them to accept some fictions that are not convenient. I just checked the Chinese Wikipedia article on "race." It's being translated from the English article. It lists no Chinese sources in the bibliography. The same is true of the Chinese article on intelligence.  Look up Imperial examination in Chinese and you will get Chinese sources cited, and the main supercategory is "Confucianism" -- because that's the cultural context that sets the criteria of competencies considered essential for being a good official. There is no indigenous assumption or belief, as far as I know, that there is a noun, a category of beings, that corresponds to what we call "intelligence" in English, and that can be measured and marked on a scale. P0M 15:58, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the clear response POM. I don't know if it is a distinctly western idea, though. Look at this table Might not some of these other divisisons share a parallel tradition with the western ideas? futurebird 16:36, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I was going to give a long reply, but I will give offense to somebody or other. Short personal POV and OR answer is: "Parallel"?!" Parallel evolution (human eyes and octopus eyes) is brought about by similar environmental requirements and lots of history. I don't see any parallel social evolution and I don't see any parallel social constructs that look like "race" to me. What I see are social constructs that cover some of the same extension, at most. "Race" is our social construct and our hangup. We preempted the intellectual territory by getting the idea first in a global village. Some populations may adopt the idea. Some populations are highly enough evolved that they care more whether individuals are humane than they care how clever or powerful they are. If "race" is out there it should be possible to find evidence that can be cited, but I wouldn't know where to look. The best thing to look for might be Japanese definitions of Ainu. They are a genetically, linguistically, and culturally different group that I guess would count as a "second white race" to those who deal in attributions of race.P0M 17:53, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Japan is crazy about IQ. Headlines in national newspapers read like "Japanese still smartest!"   "Japanese have highest IQ!", etc.  Many Latin Americans think whites (non-hispanic) and asians are smarter.  But many of the older generation in these countries can't even read, and the difference between intelligence and education is pretty murky even on this particular page.  So when every American that comes to town can read, write, speak multiple languages, and has all sorts of high-tech gadgets its understandable that they come to the conclusion Americans are all geniuses.   You might have a hard time verifying this. 71.112.7.212 18:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I did some checking, for what little it is worth since one cannot prove a negative.


 * For the Ainu, the following group terms are used in other Wikipedias.


 * 族群 (zu qun) Chinese
 * 民族 (minzoku)Japanese


 * 民 = human. More of a group name for humans than 人. Jiang is a 人. He is a citizen of the 人民 Republic of China.
 * 族 = clan. More inclusive than a nuclear family or an extended family (great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, children considered as a group of all living members).
 * 群 = flock. Used figuratively.


 * So the term used to characterize the Ainu is “clan flock” in the Chinese Wikipedia and is “human clan” on the Japanese Wikipedia. They are seeing differences among populations of humans, but they are not trying to explain them. Everybody kind of knows why clans are clans. What need is there for genetic explanations of similarity if you already know that the people are related?


 * The Japanese article on IQ mentions the Bell Curve and the controversy surrounding it under the topic "heritability", but does not mention 民族. P0M 21:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I think you've made a good case for "race and intelligence research" being a primarily western idea. But race is certainly a concept found in many cultures... or is it? In other cultures races are like clans and that are taken, I think as you describe it, as self evident.  To extend this, the concept of race is needed for racism, since racism is founded on the idea of an "other" --that is humans who are in some way, less than human. It seems strange to suggest that this is uniquely western. I don't have the answers, I'm just asking the questions. I wish I had some good books to read about this-- what would you suggest, POM?futurebird 23:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The concept of "otherness" is not primarily a Western concept, although we trace it back to the ancient Greeks (see "barbarian"). The Japanese word for a non-Japanese (gaijin) has connotations of barbarism. Christians have their heathens, Jews have their goyim, and Muslims have their infidels. Pick a group, and there's a word for "us decent folk" and "them outsiders".
 * I disagree, sort of. The word literally means "outside person," i.e., not one belonging to my/our "in group." To be "outside" is enough already. Different does not imply inferior, but it may imply "difficult to get to fit in." Being "other" does not mean being of another [race] or being "barbaric." P0M 04:42, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I daresay it has something to do with the concept of superiority. One naturally likes to feel superior to someone else, it seems; and we all hate to feel inferior to anyone. If intelligence is immutable and race-based, that puts social engineers in a quandary. How to erase the differences? Perhaps that's what makes this issue such a hot button.


 * I only bring this up as background information, hoping to shed some light on why scientists are pressured to leave this issue alone. Safer for the Harvard president to suggest researching why there aren't more women in fields like math. Hey, did you count how many of the top JavaOne presenters are male? 24 out of 24. Dare I wonder why? --Uncle Ed 00:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Recognizing somebody as "different" is certainly part of everybody's experience. But how their differentness is conceptualized depends on the whole worldview of the people. There is the kind of difference that one sees between one's family and one's neighbor's family. They may all speak the same language, attend the same church, etc., but one knows that they are of a different family. Then, in many traditional cultures, one knows that one belongs to a clan. In the past, educated Chinese kept track of all their family relations for many generations and could trace the male line of descent back and know that everybody who had the same remote ancestor was part of a clan. (There are still people around who trace their ancestry back to Confucius, I am told.) Then one learns that several clans hang together in a larger organization that may be called a tribe. I could keep going, but you can see what I am getting at. When ancient Israel split I suppose they felt some need for a term that would recognize that they were all of one common history even though they were under two governments. When Ireland split into north and south I guess it made some sense to speak of "the Irish race" and even include the ones who were incapable of speaking anything but English. But I don't think that idea is what most people presently mean by "race." Probably the people who conceptualize in terms of "races" would call all the light-skinned people in and from that part of the world "whites." The current idea of race seems to have come about when Western people encountered people from so far away that they were totally ignorant of their connections. There were Irish Celts and Spanish Celts and earlier there were Celts all over the place, and there were Angles and Saxons, the Germanic tribes, etc., but everybody knew that they were all mixed up in their family lines. Then they came upon people who looked greatly different, spoke languages that shared few if any cognates, used body language signals that were discordand with their own, etc., and they decided that they were so different that they needed a broader category than they had used to speak of the various populations of Europe.


 * The nearest to something "racist" that I have seen in Chinese comes from the writings of the Chinese equivalent of St. Thomas Aquinas, a man named Zhu Xi (1130-1200). He characterized non-Chinese tribal peoples, yi-di in Chinese, as "between human beings and animals." But he did not have a category for [race] that was as broad as our current term. He used the time-honored term for the kinds of people who lived around the periphery of China, looked pretty much the same as Chinese people, but spoke non-Chinese languages and had different customs. By his own philosophy he could not have conceptualized them as cut off from his own group because even humans and animals were characterized as having shared the same womb. (物我同胞 wu wo tong bao, critters me same caul.) He knew about the nuclear family, he knew about the extended family, he knew about the clan, he knew about being Chinese, and he needed only one more level of particularity to take care of the rest of the humans he encountered -- non-Chinese. According to the generally accepted world-view of traditional China, all creatures are like leaves on twigs, the twigs are on branches, the branches are on major limbs, the limbs share a common trunk, and it is all coming out of one non-phenomenal source called the Tai-ji (Great Ultimate). That is to say, everything is part of an organic unity. Nothing is truly separate. Nothing is a discrete being even though we appear to be. So they can't get non-Chinese people out of their family tree any more than I could get my cousin out of mine -- and they don't try. If you check the literature on the subject you will find that Chinese people are generally said to be "ethno-centric," and not "racist." They are not proud of their [race]; they are proud of their culture. (They also had realized, long before Zhu Xi, that culture is acquired.)


 * [Race] may be a meme, a verbal virus that starts organizing information into its own likeness whenever it infects a person. Maybe there are people in the non-Western world who have been infected with this meme. What Futurebird is presumably looking for is a group that had a definition of divisions of humanity broader than tribe and nation but connected with biology rather than theology or some other obviously acquired characteristic. How did the first Amerinds to see white people conceptualize them? If I recall correctly they conceptualized horses as "another kind of dog," "not our kind of dog," so perhaps white people were "not our kind of people." I don't know. P0M 04:42, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I do not see any value in the word "meme" - I think it is just a material-determinist's ways of allowing for idea-determinism through metaphor, which sloppy natural science and sloppy human science. Just my opinion, I don't mean to start a debate that I would likely lose (i.e. be in the minortiy) and that will add nothing to this article. As to the general issue, whether races are in some scientific sense "real" there is abundant evidence that it is not a cultural universal (i.e. exists in all cultures). I also respectfully disagree with the claim that "races are like clans and that are taken, I think as you describe it, as self evident" - there are many societies in which there are no clans, too. I would agree that all cultures have some idea of "otherness" but there are many cases where beliefs about otherness do not depend on a radical opposition between self and other, or some kind of hierarchy or notion of superiority. I think we have exhausted this thread as I do not see how it can help us improve the article. But if anyone wants to know just how different another culture's ideas of "otherness" can be from ours, I recomment Eduardo Vivieros de Castro's book, From the Enemy's Point of View Slrubenstein  |  Talk 11:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Futurebird's original request was: "What I'm really looking for are views of the intelligences of different peoples from a non-western perspective." Any group defined as having "otherness" (to use SLR's term) would work. I know something about a major group that is concerned with the excellence of outcomes but no indigenous idea of "race" to my knowledge. I believe that there is extremely low probability of another group coming up with a word with an intension that is a close match for the Western idea of "race" (which itself is rather incoherent). But I could be mistaken. Maybe the Aztecs had such an idea. If not the Aztecs then maybe some other group. We only need one such case to disprove my contention. Or maybe just any definition of otherness (e.g., "those people whose talk sounds like 'ber ber") will do if we can find it coupled with a statement to the effect that "they are all so stupid."


 * The social context of Futurebird's question suggests that she would like some way of making the R&I article better by not having it limited to Western sources. To do that we would need to find, in the same non-Western group, something at least close to "race" and something that could be taken as a measure (maybe even just an indirect measure) of g. One cannot prove a negative, but if I were inclined to gamble I'd give fairly high odds on whether anybody will come up with a non-derivitive R&I equivalent. I'll believe it when I see it.


 * If we can't find a non-derivitive R&I equivalent, then there will continue to be a flag because somebody thinks it "should be expanded to include a worldwide view of the subject." P0M 02:24, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Removed paragraph
Arthur Jensen writes that claims that race is fictional, that races do not exist in reality, and that they are merely social constructions, which then imply that it is meaningless to inquire about the biological basis of any racial differences, are rooted in five sources which are political rather than scientific: (1) "heaping scorn on the concept of race is deemed an effective way of combating racism", (2) "Neo-Marxist philosophy (which still has exponents in the social sciences and the popular media)" (3) discrediting race itself (not just misconceptions of it) "is seen as a way to advance more harmonious relations among the groups in our society that are commonly perceived as 'racially' different" (4) "universal revulsion to the Holocaust", and (5) frustration with "wrong-headed" popular conceptions about race among population genetics experts lead some to "abandon the concept instead of attempting candidly to make the public aware of how the concept of race is viewed by most present-day scientists".

I removed this because it makes the page read like an inline debate. It's confusing and too much detail for a short section that is there just to point out that some people think that race is a social construct. Let's let the readers come to their own conclusions, not stage a debate for them. I don't know if this is anyplace else in the articles, so if you want to use it someplace else place feel free.

Also, the idea of race as a social construct isn't the same thing as simply saying that race is fictional. Jensen seems confused here and I think it just makes him seem argumentative and naive about how this theory really works. The theory says that race is real because it is constructed by society. It's not just "oh let's ignore this and hope it goes away." futurebird 01:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * FB, it's generally not okay to only present one side of an argument. In this case, it clearly isn't. Sternberg et al. aren't just arguing that there are aspects of race that is socially constructed (e.g., the one-drop rule), but that race is wholly socially constructed without genetic or biological importance/significance/implications/underpinnings. Jensen (among others) argue that this position is motivated by political rather than scientific considerations. Each side of that debate has to be represented if the point is to be made in that way. --W.R.N. 04:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll put it back for now. The whole section needs work anyway. futurebird 04:42, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm going to look for a source that explains the social construct idea in a different way. futurebird 04:45, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I still think it reads too much like a debate. futurebird 04:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * "reading" like a debate may be a problem (as compared to reading like an encyclopedia), but when there are at least two opposing view points, it will be something of a debate. --W.R.N. 04:50, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, a lot of the section on race is on biological definitions. Then there is the short opposing view of "social construct" but then there's a rebuttal of this, and it's not based on a study or a number it's just one guy's opinion. (which might be based on studies and numbers but that is besides the point) Like it or not this is a question that prominent academics still argue about. So we should get to hear both sides. And in the main article we don't need a side comment on every side comment. Jensen has undue weight in this series anyway, his name is in every article, many many times. He's not the only voice out there. Some people think he's extreme. Some people think the social constuct idea is extreme too... but, it's not all over the place to the same extent. futurebird 04:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * having discussion of "social" construction of race in a separate section and citing a view as extreme as Sternberg's is probably a bad idea. for simplicity and to eliminate the need for counterbalancing, it should simply be worked into the first paragraph of the section which presents opposing viewpoints. --W.R.N. 05:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Also, WRN calling something "Neo-Marxist" is almost as hysterical sounding as calling something "Neo-nazi" --Just like we don't leap in to information on white supremacists groups on the main page and all those accusations that have been made, we don't need to call people "Neo-Marxists" either.

I know that you think I always just push a POV, but I'm trying to be fair here. I really think this quote makes Jensen look bad, like he's name-calling and I think it's confusing, bringing down the whole level of the discourse. (why I moved the stuff about "colonialism and slavery" to the history section, by the way.)

But, I'm open to hearing you understanding of it. Or what anyone else around here thinks. futurebird 05:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * FYI -- Gould and Lewontin are self-described Marxists and they were/are major antagonizers of race, intelligence, and r&i research. --W.R.N. 05:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

this paragraph should summarize all the main views:

"Racial distinctions are generally made on the basis of skin color, facial features, inferred ancestry, national origin and self-identification in the United States. In an ongoing debate, some geneticists argue race is neither a meaningful concept nor a useful heuristic device,[28] and even that genetic differences among groups are biologically meaningless,[29] on the basis that more genetic variation exists within such races than among them,[30] and that racial traits overlap without discrete boundaries.[31] Concordant with this, a survey of cultural and physical anthropologists done in 1999[32] found that the concept of race was rejected by 69% of physical anthropologists and 80% of cultural anthropologists. Other geneticists, in contrast, argue that categories of self-identified race/ethnicity or biogeographic ancestry are both valid and useful,[33] that these categories correspond with clusters inferred from multilocus genetic data,[34] and that this correspondence implies that genetic factors might contribute to unexplained phenotypic variation between groups.[35]"

let's work on that and kill the subsection. --W.R.N. 05:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

marxism

 * Whatever Gould and Lewontin's views of Marx were/are, those views were irrelevant to their work as biologists. Social-constructionism has a long tradition in sociology independent of Marxian theory. I am sure Gould and Lewontin were influenced by anthropologists who have argued that race is a social construction, but of those anthropologists, well, some were Marxists, some were critical of Marxism, and some were just indifferent about Marx.  Slrubenstein   |  Talk 17:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Jenson is not arguing on the evidence. He is trying to persuade people that others have motivation for misusing the evidence. He could be challenged on the same grounds. So what? The evidence rules, not who hauls the evidence into court. P0M 21:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * From Not in Our Genes, by Lewontin et al.: We share a commitment to the prospect of the creation of a more socially just--a socialist--society. And we recognize that a critical science is an integral part of the struggle to create that society, just as we also believe that the social function of much of today's science is to hinder the creation of that society by acting to preserve the interests of the dominant class, gender, and race. This belief--in the possibility of a critical and liberatory science--is why we have each in our separate ways and to varying degrees been involved in the development of what has become known over the 1970s and 1980s, in the United States and Britain, as the radical science movement.
 * WRT the equivalence of calling someone a Neo-Nazi, in the NYRoB (1975) they wrote that hypotheses that promote a biological explanations for social behavior tend to provide a genetic justification of the status quo and of existing privileges for certain groups according to class, race, or sex. Historically, powerful countries or ruling groups within them have drawn support for the maintenance or extension of their power from these products of the scientific community. . . Such theories provided an important basis for the enactment of sterilization laws and restrictive immigration laws by the United States between 1910 and 1930 and also for the eugenics policies which led to the establishment of gas chambers in Nazi Germany.
 * whatever your personal opinions about all this, you can't say its obvious that Jensen is simply ranting. i know it all seems ridiculous now, but this was going on in the 70s and 80s when (for example) Lewontin wrote his widely repeated conclusions about Fst and race and when Gould wrote The Mismeasure of Man. --W.R.N. 01:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Was Jensen writing as an expert "in psychometrics and differential psychology"? Or was he writing as an expert and unbiased figure in the history of ideas? P0M 01:55, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

"Historically, powerful countries or ruling groups within them have drawn support for the maintenance or extension of their power from these products of the scientific community. . . Such theories provided an important basis for the enactment of sterilization laws and restrictive immigration laws by the United States between 1910 and 1930 and also for the eugenics policies which led to the establishment of gas chambers in Nazi Germany."

I'm confused about your point here WRN are you saying there is no truth in this statement about history? Perhaps this assessment of R & I research is giving undue weight to the negative examples.

Do this for me, please tell me one use this type of research has been put to successfully that isn't creepy. Right now I can only think of two:
 * Helping people to acknowledge that racism is real and has real effects on people, ie. stereotype threat
 * Data on IQ an race help educators realize that there is a problem that needs to be addressed.

What are the other positive uses for the kind research that's covered in these articles? Specifically, in the past how have theories of genetic differences been used? futurebird 01:58, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * This is missing the point. See their writings on the relationship of Marxism to science for an understanding of how they thought they two related and why Jensen would suggest that Marxism was a motivation for making certain truth claims about the science. There is an extensive documentation of the "science wars" of the 70s in a number of books.
 * Back on topic, I've suggested a way around this issue in the section immediately above. --W.R.N. 00:07, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * To address futurebird's question about the usefulness of research, another use is avoiding the misallocation of resources and the establishment of unjust or futile remedies. For example, the U.S. government has spent many billions of dollars on social welfare programs aimed at eliminating poverty and its effects (e.g., crime). If the goal is to actually get predictable results for all this spending, the allocation of resources must be guided by a sound theoretical model. The fact that crime and social dysfunction only seem to increase with social spending suggests the spending is not currently being guided by a sound theoretical model &mdash; therefore, more research is necessary. In contrast, if the goal of the spending is not to help the people it is allegedly being spent to help, but is rather to build bureaucratic empires, buy votes, assuage guilt, or merely punish productive people for being successful, then no research is necessary because those other goals are readily accomplished. In any case, the usefulness of particular avenues of research may not be apparent in the early going. For example, what's the use of radio astronomy? So far, it has not produced any tangible benefits, other than some degree of intellectual satisfaction among the few people who follow the field. But that could change. Once upon a time, number theory was considered a branch of pure mathematics, because it appeared to have almost no practical value ("pure" being an amusing euphemism for "useless"). Centuries later, after the invention of computers, number theory became one of the hottest fields in applied mathematics, especially in the area of cryptography. That doesn't prove that every avenue of research will ultimately pay for itself, but it does prove the impossibility of predicting which avenue of seemingly pointless research might ultimately yield the big score. To outlaw a particular avenue of research for purely political reasons is to wager that ignorance is more valuable than knowledge &mdash; not the bet anyone with an awareness of history would want to take. A modern example is the nation of Germany, which has for understandable political reasons discouraged research in the area of human genetics, quite possibly handicapping itself in an important area of emerging technology. Also, if being put to "creepy" use damns a science, then we should outlaw chemistry and nuclear physics and everything else that's ever contributed to weaponry. --Teratornis 18:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

A note on social constructs
Social constructs tend to be diverse. Examples: language, art, music, fashion, architecture, sports, technology, politics, and religion. Social constructs evolve rapidly, and undergo frequent schism, analogously to biological speciation, but typically on much faster time scales, such that their evolution is clearly visible within the historical era, sometimes even within one human lifespan. This gives rise to tree-structured diagrams such as: File:ChristianityBranches.svg.

Claims that race is fictional, that races do not exist in reality, and that they are merely social constructions seem to rely on a different notion of "social construct" than that of the familiar examples (indeed, fiction may be the most fantastically diverse social construct). Where is the diversity, evolution, and schism in this "social construct" of race? You can go anywhere in the world, and people in any culture easily recognize and distinguish between the classical racial groupings. Even the children in any culture can recognize them. The fact that virtually all humans from young ages can recognize the major racial divisions is evidence in favor of an innate human ability/tendency to form such distinctions. It would make as much sense to claim that the colors of the spectrum (red, blue, green, etc.) are "social constructs." We know colors do not actually exist as we see them &mdash; colors are just the perception that our brains create when electromagnetic radiation of particular frequencies impinge on our retinae. However, colors are not credible candidates for "social constructs" because we do not observe any significant diversity between cultures in terms of what colors they see, or how they perceive them. Different cultures might attach different meanings and significances to the various colors, but as far as we can tell, for the most part everybody sees the same colors (except for the blind, the color-blind, etc.). Most people can objectively accept that perception of color is an innate human behavior, because color perception has not yet been politicized.

Another way to think about social constructs is, "Everything which can vary, does." If a human behavior is not based on anything innate, then it constantly mutates, schisms, and evolves, giving rise to dizzying diversity after a few generations. The notion of how people should react to racial differences is a good candidate for a social construct, because it varies with time and place. Indeed, the notion that race is merely a social construct is itself an excellent candidate for a social construct, because that view is novel and largely confined to one small unrepresentative group of intellectuals. It recently mutated out of other ancestral social constructs. --Teratornis 17:32, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Excellent points. futurebird 17:47, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Just to hammer on it a little more, consider how cycling experienced an initial heyday in the United States between 1880-1910, was nearly forgotten by adults from 1920-1960, and then underwent a partial revival from the 1970's onward (which seems likely to strengthen thanks to Peak oil and other factors). This is another aspect of social constructs: people can simply forget about them. Cycling is therefore a plausible candidate for a social construct (much like hula hoops, ragtime music, and the trebuchet). Has any racially diverse human culture ever forgotten the concept of race? A culture's response to race can and certainly does change, but do people ever forget about the concept? --Teratornis 19:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, yes. For example, the Irish were once thought of as a race. futurebird 19:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * By children from, say, China? Children from many times and places might have difficulty distinguishing the residents of Dublin, Ireland from Glasgow, Scotland, but children from almost anywhere would readily distinguish the residents of Oslo, Norway from Nairobi, Kenya. A difference which children from any time or place can recognize is probably not a social construct. How to respond to that difference, in contrast, is. For example, slavery, racial segregation, apartheid, and the Civil rights movement are social constructs. --Teratornis 20:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

The example of color names is instructive, but not exactly for the reasons that Teratornis suggests. Color is a one- or two-dimensional example of the multi-dimensional issues involved when people are categorized according to [race]. Everybody sees the same spectrum in the rainbow, but not everybody applies specific names to the same regions of the continuum of frequencies that is presented in spectra produced by the bending of light through a prism or other such device. Beginning in the earliest written records, Chinese divided light into five 色 sè, 青 qīng,黃 húang,赤 chì, 黑 hēi, and 白 bái. We can take care of four of the five in English rather easily. Húang is yellow, chì is red, hēi is black, and bái is white. That leaves qīng, and there is a problem for English speakers there because that Chinese color term includes the entire range of the spectrum that we divide into blue and green. The reality for English speakers and for the ancient Chinese is the same, but the constructions that are placed upon that common reality are different. The color article goes into the details of other cultures that go to the extreme of having just two color terms. English speakers (and Chinese speakers too) are often confused between violet (which is a spectral color, the far end of the spectrum, the higher side of blue) and purple (a non-spectral color, what we see if our retinas get bombarded by a mixture of light from the two ends of the spectrum and little or nothing from the orange, yellow, and green parts of it). English speakers often put the same name on two different things, a mixture of blue and red and something the other side of blue.


 * What differs more? The Chinese and Western concepts of color, or the Chinese and English languages? The respective color concepts are not identical, but they are mutually intelligible with little effort, whereas the languages are so drastically different that years of study are necessary to bridge the conceptual gulf. --Teratornis 20:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * So what? The spectrum is the same. The Chinese are not incapable of realizing that the part of what they call "red" that is closest to the part they call "yellow" is different in appearance from the far end of "red." We call that part "orange," and Chinese has a couple of words for it, both involving the name of orange-colored citrus fruit. The same goes for the 青 qing (blue and green) part of the spectrum. They have words that name the subdivisions of qing, words tha translate to "blue" and "green." (English doesn't have a word for the set formed by combining blue and green.) They have a couple of words for "brown," one of them being "coffee-colored."  They do not distinguish clearly between purple and violet, at least not in language. But most English speakers don't know the difference either. Just as there is a spectrum of humans from white to black with side lobes in the directions of red (American Indians), yellow (East Asians), and blue ("blue black" and also members of one family who share a gene that produce blue skin color), there is a spectrum of colors from red to violet with side lobes formed by mixtures of colors from opposite ends of the spectrum, adding white light to single-colored light, adding black pigment to pigments that otherwise would reflect bright colors, etc.)  So there are a couple of continuums, one based on skin colors and one based on all the colors in nature, and the divisions that we name are not divisions that occur in nature. There is no gap between yellow and orange, there is no gap between white skin color and black skin color. It is an act of decision that puts the defining point between yellow and orange at a certain frequency. What if somebody says that the dividing line between red and orange is right at a wavelength of 610 nanometers? Will you see a gap in the rainbow right at that point? No way. Will the human eye be able to identify 609 nanometer wavelength light as orange and 611 nanometer wavelength light as red? No. 610 is just a nicr round number about midway between what appears to be the middle of the red band and what appears to be the middle of the orange band. (And the perceived colors are physiological reactions of our nervous systems, not something special about the radiation.) There used to be a color, indigo, between blue and violet. But nobody seemed to really see a big difference, so the color, a whole 1/6 of the spectrum, was just written out of existence.  The same thing happens when some new authority on [races] comes along and adds a [race] or combines remnants of one [race] with two or more other [races]. The intersubjective objects do not change. The needle on the exposure meter trained on some individual did not twitch and move somwhere else the day some authority reclassified that person to a different [race]. All the changes occurred in "World Race Headquarters" or wherever they make such momentous decisions. ;-) P0M 01:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Color, if restricted to spectral colors, is one dimensional, e.g., we only need to specify one number to specify the color of light you get if you vaporize copper in the flame of a Bunsen burner. If we add the non-spectral colors then we need to take care of two frequencies and also different shades (the amount of black pigment in a pigment that would otherwise be bright red, bright green, etc.). (Note what the color article has to say about the color brown, for instance.)

If you look at the history of discussions in the Black people article you will see that some people are not content with a one-dimensional color definition of "black people." So for those people the definition of "black people" depends on factors that would have to go onto other dimensions in a graph. One of the constant themes in the minds of those people seems to be recency of African genetic heritage. A lighter African may be categorized as "black" while a darker Shan is not, for instance.

Even on a one-dimensional "skin reflectivity" scale, there has to be an element of social construction since (as with the rainbow) there are no natural gaps. One categorizer cuts the scale into three parts, another cuts it into five parts, and a third says "Your identity is exactly the reflectivity number, and the identity of somebody who varies from you by .001% is a different identity."

Back to colors, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis took some encouragement from the fact that one culture divides the spectrum into "actinic" and the other into "non-actinic" (or whatever the actually call the two colors), and then somebody did some more refined research. They gathered samples of yarn of all different colors and told people from various cultures to arrange the strands in whatever way was reasonable to them. Nobody put the red strands next to the blue strands. The red strands went next to the orange, the orange next to the yellow, and all the subtle variations in-between got into their arrangements in ways that showed that cross-culturally people were seeing the same similarities even though they might not have a fashion designer's set of names for all the different hues and shades of green, the rose and the Chinese red, etc.

Nobody that I know of doubts that John Kennedy looked remarkably like his relatives in Ireland even though (if I remember correctly) there weren't even first cousins among them. Nobody doubts that people who are related by "blood" are more likely to resemble each other than people who have no obvious family connection. It's the cases where somebody meets an exact double (physically anyway) who has no discoverable family connection that causes others to wonder whether the parents abandoned one twin at birth or whether the two people had the same father and secret twin mothers, or whether there are parallel universes that leak sometimes.

Hardly any categories of things, outside of true fiction, are "merely social constructions." Even bug-eyed monsters have some grounding in fact, else we could not describe them as "bug-eyed." Few, if any, categories of things have no element of social construction. The challenge that Zhuang Zi put to us humans was that we occasionally purify our minds of all of the constructions we have put upon our pure experience and try to be really aware of what is there. In terms that we can understand in a down to earth way, that means doing things like looking at our neighbors as they truly are without first putting a prefabricated label on them. People who take that goal seriously are likely to turn into Zen Buddhists and spend the rest of their lives at the task because by evolution we have become creatures that induce useful information from our environments, e.g., insects that are brightly colored are generally equipped with industrial strength stingers and bad tempers.

I keep coming back to a single question that I like to throw at people who are hung up on [race]: What do you know about Francəs that you didn't know before when somebody tells you that Francəs is Fiji? P0M 20:11, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The underlying implicit premise of sensitivity training courses is not only that we can stereotype people accurately just by looking at them, but we must &mdash; or possibly lose our jobs! For example, a stereotypically "insensitive" person must learn to behave differently around different people, depending on how much they differ by appearance. That's the whole point of sensitivity training, learning to overcome the assumption that people who do not resemble us outwardly might nonetheless resemble us inwardly, as much as the people who resemble us outwardly normally do. If they did, sensitivity training would not be necessary. --Teratornis 20:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Let me try to restate what you are saying to be sure that I understand it. People who do sensitivity training or impose it on others believe that people can stereotype other people accurately. My rough understanding of "stereotype" is a "one size fits all" set of identical looking "boxes" with identical contents labels on them into which one inserts individuals without due regard to significant differences among them. "No Chinese can drink more than one drink-equivalent without flushing," for instance (with the additional implication that it would have been easy for Nixon to drink Mao under the table). That's sort of a nutty place for anybody trying to reduce racism and its impacts to use as a jumping off point. Besides, having been drunk under at least one table myself I know it is not a dependable stereotype to depend on when betting the family farm. Whatever. Let's see to the rest of it. I'll give the sensitivity trainers you describe the benefit of the doubt and amend your statement to indicate that they think humans are good at "pegging" people as members of certain groups on the basis of a few indications that may or may not be intentionally revealed.   Then you are saying, or the sensitivity police are saying, "You'd better do a good job of pegging out-group people for whatever they really are." And, "Having pegged them as members of whatever group, you must use due diligence to avoid giving offense to members of that group" -- even if in your heart of hearts you would like to say things that would give offense. So you're saying we are required to figure out who we are really talking to and then we have to lie to them to hide our real antagonisms. Then you attempt to rationalize this duplicity by producing an ancillary argument. You think that humans naturally assume that "outlandish-looking" people, weird though their appearance may be, might well be human or similar to ourselves underneath, but, you affirm, the sensitivity police are determined to disabuse us of this dangerous presumption. We are supposed to take into account that their outlandish looks might be matched by outlandish ways of thought. So we cannot automatically approach them as though they were "human just like us," and are instead required to treat them with the kid gloves ordinarily reserved for ET's abusive and alien-hating parents.


 * If that is what sensitivity training is all about, then I am a lost cause. That kind of "sensitivity training" presupposed that in addition to being weird both inside and out, the "beneficiaries" of the newly inculcated "sensitive behavior" are too stupid to see through somebody who is systematically lying and dissembling in an attempt to hide his/her true emotional reactions. And they seem oblivious to the obvious consequences for interpersonal relationships when one party's fundamental strategy is deceit. A drunken Thai once threw my yard-wide Chinese hat out the window of a third-class railway car. I was apprehensive because he was obviously angry at me, and I wondered if he would make me the next thing to land on the siding. He embarrassed the hell out of every single other Thai citizen on that railway car, but his honest reaction did not make me wish he had kept his anger to himself and had contrived a friendly outer display. That's because I am much more bothered by people who falsely claim to be my friend than I am by friends who tell me I'm a shithead for something I did. But maybe the sensitivity police are as you say, and maybe they are right. P0M 02:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Another question I think about often: If people are really interested in the problems of low intelligence, would they start by trying to identify the category that groups the greatest number of people with low intelligence and that has some promise of being something that one can do something about? Or would they look around for one of the "usual suspects" and direct the D.A. to assemble enough evidence to convict?


 * The problem with human intelligence is that no one knows how to influence it much yet. A person's intelligence is even less engineerable than their height, at the moment. But that will almost certainly change, because it's almost certainly just a matter of learning to push some molecules around. Humans are smarter than chimpanzees, for example, and the difference is not due to the differences between how they are raised. Adopt an infant chimpanzee and you'll soon see. --Teratornis 20:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem is why people are going after symptomatology and ignoring etiology in cases where social ills are associated with low measures of intelligence. People commit a logical error if they begin by assuming as true what they are trying to prove. You are assuming that genetics are the sole cause of low measured IQ. Humans of low intelligence are to humans of high intelligence as chimpanzees are to humans. But look at your own analogy. What happens to a chimpanzee infant that is raised by speaks of American Sign Language and learns to "speak" from them? Suddenly we see indications of intelligence that were not available to inspection before. Moreover, learning grows brains. Now turn it around. What happens to human infants who are raised by Oran-utangs? For one thing unless they are reclaimed by humans soon enough they will never learn to speak. Somewhere around the age of 12 that capacity to learn (to grow new brain) shuts down. After that, the ability of the individual to score high on the IQ tests I am familiar with is doomed. What do we do to the intelligence of a child when we (meaning his/her society, his/her immediate community) fails to teach the person to read and to do math? If the child tests out with an IQ of 85, is anybody surprised? Maybe his parents, who see him doing "impossible" things like building a professional quality guitar at age 18, but, hey, they are not capable of being objective about their own child's intelligence. Sure, he's clever with his hands, but look at his grades all through school until he dropped out at age 16.


 * One of the reasons they choose to deal with IQ tests and [race] is that IQ tests are easy to get and score, and all you have to do is look at the kid to tell what his [race] is, right? (I'd like these geniuses to take a look at one of my "African-American" friends and tell us both what her [race] is.) On the other hand, to look at a statistically significant number of 18 year old kids and try to tease out the etiological factors (intelligence excluded for the time being) that influenced either success or failure in their academic and social lives is not an easy job. It's a time consuming job. Time is money. Who is going to pay for a big study to tell the powers that be in what ways they have failed the children living in "the bottoms"? P0M 02:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

A third question: Why do the authors of the Bell Curve think that people of low intelligence are the causes of our crime problem?


 * Is that what they think? I don't recall reading in The Bell Curve that low intelligence was claimed to be the cause of crime. Can you cite the specific section which makes this claim you attribute to the authors? --Teratornis 21:18, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

The crimes I worry about are the ones that get my entire identity stolen or my pension flown off to the Bahamas. Losing my bicycle to some jerk with a pair of bolt cutters is not going to change my life unless I let myself pop an aneurysm over it. P0M 20:28, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It's possible to insure against crimes of theft, from petty theft right up to identity theft. In contrast, there is no effective way to insure against violent crime, if one becomes a victim of it. The fear that is driving white flight is not the fear of having one's bicycle stolen. It is more probably the fear of being murdered, assaulted, raped, etc. --Teratornis 20:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Look at all the assumptions that are coming out. We're talking about [race] and intelligence and you are equating certain factors with violent crime, murder, assault, and rape. Maybe the sensitivity police will be lenient if we say that the implication being considered here is that low intelligence alone is associated with violent crimes. My personal experience with violence shows me that highly intelligent people can be quite violent, and that individuals with known brain damage and resultant limited intelligence can be non-violent, friendly, and not vengeful. Everybody has a potential for aggressive behavior. The American psychiatrist and founder of a major midwestern mental health hospital, Karl Menninger, maintained that aggression was not bad, and the essential thing for a well-ordered and harmonious society is that people learn how to channel their aggressiveness in socially productive ways. (I think I recall his recommending cancer surgeon and lawyer as occupations suited to particularly aggressive individuals.)


 * I could go into personal experiences, but I guess that could get into personal research. Suffice it to say that I've only ever come into situations where physical conflict looked imminent when dealing with white people, all but one of them suburban and well-to-do. And that's moving all over the world and from "the bottoms" of Philadelphia to some rather nice socio-political territory inhabited by my would-that-I-could-unclaim relatives in Delaware.


 * Some good points, POM. Despite what Futurebird thinks, Tarotrnis's points are not excellent (one hint being the lack of any citable sources - it sounds like mostly personal opinion, much of it made up, to me).  A minor point: the neurological basis for the perception of color may be universal, but in fact (as POM suggests) people world-wide perceive and classify color in very different ways - this was clearly established by Berlin And Kay's research in the 1960s.  Anyway, the central claim, "You can go anywhere in the world, and people in any culture easily recognize and distinguish between the classical racial groupings" is simply false.  There is a good deal of historical scholarship on the rise of racial discourse in the West, and there is little (and highly debatable, e.g. Gil White's article in Current Anthropology) evidence that non-Western peoples classify human groups according to essentializing schema ... Slrubenstein   |  Talk 14:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * But that isn't what my sentence that you quoted plainly states. I claimed that you can go anywhere in the world, and most people will immediately recognize the difference between, say, a black guy and a white guy. For example, a professional sports team might have black, white, and asian players. If it were possible to construct a suitable wager, I would wager one thousand dollars that everywhere that team should play, even the children in the audience will readily be able to distinguish most of the black, white, and asian players as members of distinct groups. I simply claimed that people everywhere can and will recognize the obvious differences between the main groupings of black, white, and asian. I did not claim that people everywhere will construct the same ideology in response to that recognition. Indeed, even in a nation such as the United States, where virtually everyone recognizes some of the same obvious differences between ethnic groups, hardly any two people form exactly the same attitudes about every group. --Teratornis 21:18, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Teratornis, I quoted you, directly, and responded, accurately. Now you are changing what you said.  Look, as a kid I could tell the difference between my mother's mother, and my father's mother, and my mother's mother's cleaning-lady and her building's doorman.  I still remember their names.  I remember being young enough to think of them just as nice people who were part of my grandma's world.  They looked different but I already knew all people I had met looked different (including my two grandmothers).  To say that children can recognize the difference between two people who look different - wow, what a profound statement (not).  That my grandmother's cleaning-lady and doorman were of another race is something I only learned later, when I learned about races.  When I was four the fact is they were utterly unimportant to me. Even when i was six, seven, eight and had friends and schoolmates who were black race itself was still out of my radar.  By the time I was nine or ten i started to catch on to the whole race thing.  Now, the bigger issue, Teratornis: make any wager you want.  This is not a chat room and your personal opinions are irrelevant. Obviously you have done no research - how someone who has done no research could think to contribute to a an encyclopedia is beyond me. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 10:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * If you put my friend from Malawi, my friend from Taiwan, and me one one team and asked the audience to group the three of us with photos of Sun Yat-sen, George Washington, and Kenyatta, you would win your bet (assuming any of the three of us were dumb enough to make it). On the other hand, what would they do with a team made up of a guy from Sri Lanka, a Navaho, and an Ainu? They'd probably associate the Sri Lankan with Kenyatta, the Navaho with Sun Yat-sen, and the Ainu with George Washington. Or, if you put all six of these guys one one team, the audience might well associate the guy from Malawi with the guy from Sri Lanka, the Navaho with the guy from Taiwan, and put me with the Ainu. I've mistaken Shan for African-Americans and I've seen Havaho kids mistake a Cantonese for one of their own. All that proves, as far as I can see, is that people make some facile judgments based on gross similarities. In other words they easily construct "they're alike" groups based on a very few points of intersubjective evidence.


 * Given more time and reasons to get involved, some communities may construct groups that are quite different. As far as I can tell, what really counts with Chinese is not what somebody looks like but what their cultural identity is. My part-white part Cherokee friend is "black" as far as the community in which he and his "black" son live. Why? Because people say he is black. Why is that? It appears to have lots to do with what side he has been on regarding lots of issues. He certainly doesn't look "black." It never even crossed my mind until I got to know his family and he told me of his mixed hieritage that he might be anything other than just another Anglo type. Right down to the English family name. To me it is oddly touching that when some kids came to visit his family and one of them said something questioning about the rather large light-skinned individual sitting on the couch some other visitor said, "Never mind him. He's black." P0M 03:37, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * ... I know of a couple of anthropologists who have made this claim but it is by no means widely shared let alone established. Let me add one more point - Berger and Luckman's point in The Social Construction of reality is just that: reality itself is socially constructed. To identify something as a social construct is in no way to suggest it is unreal. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 14:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Is the fact that an airplane flies socially constructed? Is the fact that I need a computer to read your writing, and staring at a brick doesn't seem to do, part of the reality that has been socially constructed? Would it be possible for society to construct a different reality, in which pigs could not only fly under their own power, but write good poetry as well? I prefer the view of Richard Dawkins; for example, he mentions Cargo cults as evidence of the limited ability of humans to socially construct reality.


 * And are you saying that if a white person travels to, say, an isolated location in New Guinea which has had little contact with outsiders, the physical appearance of the white person will have no effect on the residents? The children won't show any curiosity? The residents won't soon come up with a word to classify the white person based on appearance? I've read any number of anecdotal accounts of such contacts between cultures, and I cannot recall reading one in which the natives failed to notice the difference in physical appearance. Do you know of any such examples? --Teratornis 21:18, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * One can argue that Bournouli's law is not a social construct, but of course there are those who would argue it is (once again, your comments reveal the fact that you would rather BS your way around here than do any real research). But airplanes themselves are of course social constructions.  So are computers.  You think they would exist were it not for the social relations required to invent and build them, in a social context that made their invention meaningful, useful, desirable?  As to your second point you are still talking out your ass.  All human beings who are minimally functional can reecognize physical differences between people.  This has no bearing on the question of whether race is socially constructed or not.  None. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 10:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It's personal research, but I've done that. "Backwoods" Taiwan is close enough. A white-skinned guy wearing a Chinese hat that disguises his appearance from a poor child until the alien is almost upon him can be terrifying. On the other hand, a nearly naked, white skinned, big beaked, abnormally tall individual in a stream or swimming pool can prove intense scrutiny, attempts to detach samples of arm hair, etc. There is no question but that they have identified the "outlander" as such. But they could care less about categorizing him. They're having too much fun trying to take him apart (metaphorically at least). There is not the least ill feeling or aggression in this inspection. It's the same thing you'd do if somebody brought a Wookie down from a mission to Mars. Once you figured out that you weren't on is breakfast menu, your next reaction would be to get to know as much as possible about this fascinating creature. Genus? Species? Obviously he's an extra-terrestrial, just as I was a "from out of this country guy."


 * To get an idea something like our idea of race you would have to have a sort of family tree idea, or the idea that some people belong to the "wolf" group, some belong to the "fox" group, etc., that wolves can marry foxes, etc., etc. What I'm trying to indicate is that people have already divided their known human associations up into nuclear families (if they have nuclear families), organizational forms that group several nuclear families, maybe organizational forms that group the foregoing, etc. Then at some point after they've divided up the whole human spectrum that has been available to them for the last several thousands of years, somebody comes in from way far away, and then these people start to realize that not only do they need one more group to take care of the alien visitor(s) but that in their own lands they fall into similar sets and sub-sets. Then maybe they realize that there are several other similar groups of groups whose members seem to share features. If all of those requirements held, then somebody might get an idea that's similar to one or another of our ideas of [race].


 * What seems problematical to me is that some groups might not even have nuclear families. Moreover, they might be primarily concerned with cultural devices that act to discourage inbreeding. If they happened to be in a culture that discouraged competition then they might not have warfare and they might not organize into tribes for the purpose of defense. It's speculation, as far as I know, but what would they make of "out-landers"? Maybe just that. They might have a hell of a time trying to understand something like a single nation of millions of Chinese people. "How do they keep themselves from incestuous breeding?" they might ask.


 * I think that for a truly remote culture such as you hypothesize, the reaction to one alien might just be, "Wow! How exotic!" They might not be able to have a reaction to what we call "races" because they might have to learn English to even be able to hold a coherent discussion on the subject simply because their own language would have no words for the simplest elements of the complex situation they would need to concepualize. P0M 04:05, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I made a mistake SLR...
 * Despite what Futurebird thinks, Tarotrnis's points are not excellent (one hint being the lack of any citable sources - it sounds like mostly personal opinion, much of it made up, to me).


 * Which points, specifically, seem made up to you? Please, let's debate actual points, rather than level charges too vague to defend against. I don't cite sources for things which seem to be staggeringly self-evident, at least on my first go, but if necessary I can probably find sources. However, I'm not sure what value sources could have to people who believe "reality itself is socially constructed." I thought the point of citing sources was to anchor our claims in some type of objective reality, which is not a matter of mere personal opinion or social construction. If reality is only socially constructed, then what would make someone else's construct more valid than mine, and thus necessary for me to cite? --Teratornis 21:18, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * What you call "staggeringly self-evident" I call "your opinion." As to the latter part of your statement, it is an oxymoron based on a bad-faith or disingenuous slip.  You start talking about "social constcutions" bue immediately then suggest they are equivalent to personal opinion.  Social constructions are the opposite of personal opinions.  Then you write as if each person has their own social construction.  Do you really not understand the difference between "person" and "society?"  They are not the same thing and it is precisely because something is socially constructed that it has so much power over people. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 10:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I misread the point. I thought that Tarotrnis was saying that "race is real because it is socially constucted" which I think makes sense. Race has a real impact on the lives of people, it can even make people sick. futurebird 15:39, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, whatever BS teratornis, is pushing, Futurebird, on this you and I agree! Slrubenstein  |  Talk 10:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * But if race is socially constructed, wouldn't the impact of race on the lives of people itself be socially constructed? Why couldn't the present victims simply construct for themselves a different reality? Are you implying that white males are the ultimate arbiters of socially-constructed reality, that they mandate the reality everyone else must inhabit? If so, then what are whites fleeing from? I'd expect whoever is constructing reality to construct a reality in which they don't have to run away from supposedly "inferior" groups (indeed, wouldn't we normally expect the "superior" group to stay put and boss the "inferior" groups around?), and in which everybody would like them. What is to stop every group from constructing its own reality, in which race does not make them sick? The sickness of which you speak must also be socially constructed, if it is part of reality (which is socially constructed). The claim that "reality itself is socially constructed" quickly collapses into a mass of logical contradictions, unless there is some invariant fact or axiom or something that isn't itself subject to endless second-guessing. Do you really want it to be Turtles all the way down? --Teratornis 21:18, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Teratornis writes, "Why couldn't the present victims simply construct for themselves a different reality" The answer: because reality is socially constructed.  This means people cannot just go around individually or even in small groups and just make up their own reality.  teratornis continues to claim to have logical arguments about things that are self evident, but it is clear now that this is just a bad-faith excuse for his laziness and unwillingness to do research e.g. read real books by real scholars. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 10:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Perception is unfortunately way too powerful for it's own good. Social construct is my new study subject, however, I wish to add a point as referenced to perception. Think real estate or the tabloids or the stock market. If a group of homeowners in a neighborhood perceive a new homeowner to be of a certain race and if said current homeowners perceive some false and negative racism upon the new homeowner, then, whether it warrants it or not, the existing homeowners may feel threatened and want to sell their houses. Is that rational or fair? NO. Is it a reality? Unfortunately all too often yes. A similar example in the real estate market is that of gentrification. Once the turnover of homeownership accelerates, then the perception of the neighborhood changes. Much like a rumor, all it might take is the power of suggestion and suddenly the area is labeled. Once that perception takes hold in certain populations, then it exists. Like the stock market, once talk of a market adjustment filtrates, then stock owners might make sales or purchases accordingly. The self-fulfilling_prophecy could arise. When no one wants to own property in the rumored or socially negatively marked neighborhood, the area can see decline such as crime and property damage. An unfair negative perception such as perception based on solely on a race seems to keep reconstructing the negative perception of a race. What does it take to separate the fact from fiction and the truth from rumor? Wikipedia can transcend. Marycontrary 00:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Think real estate or the tabloids or the stock market. If a group of homeowners in a neighborhood perceive a new homeowner to be of a certain race and if said current homeowners perceive some false and negative racism upon the new homeowner, then, whether it warrants it or not, the existing homeowners may feel threatened and want to sell their houses. Is that rational or fair? NO. Is it a reality? Unfortunately all too often yes.


 * Exactly. Race is a social construct that has real physical impacts on people and environments. It is even more relevant when it causes people to make the wrong decision. Race works on both sides of the divides it creates. This is what we see in action trough Stereotype threat. futurebird 00:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

worldwide
I removed and UL restored this text:

"It should be noted that most research has been done in the US and a few other developed nations. That research cannot directly be generalized to the world as a whole. Blacks in the US do not constitute a random sample from Africa, and environmental conditions differ among nations. IQ tests done in developing countries are likely to have been affected by conditions associated with poverty that are common in the developing world, such as nutritional deficiencies and the impact of diseases (e.g., HIV, anemia or chronic parasites that may affect IQ test scores)."

there are some problems with this text, not worth discussing now, but the main problem is that worldwide scores aren't a major matter of discussion (but they are clearly a minor matter).

otoh, ultramarine removed (and I restored) the only figure in the main article that gives IQ scores outside of the BW gap in the U.S. also, a tag says the article "should be expanded to include a worldwide view of the subject".

what is our actual goal in having a "worldwide view" and what does this entail? there are sources that discuss worldwide IQ scores. there are probably sources which discuss stereotypes of "others" being less intelligent worldwide. is there much more than that? simply claiming that we should have a global view may be like claiming that ice cream shouldn't make you fat. --W.R.N. 05:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The figure comes from a non-academic book from a publisher of suspect literature. The author's previous similar book has been severely criticzed. As such, it is inappropriate for the front page. I find it extremely strange that you insist on keeping this but insist on removing the above paragraph.Ultramarine 05:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * the results presented in the figure were intentionally limited to studies performed in developed countries. the poorest country represented is China. Lynn's previous book was criticized for (1) very low scores in developing countries, (2) very small samples used to estimate the IQ of countries and (3) being a bumble-f**k with adding and subtracting numbers. Criticisms 1 and 2 don't apply to the0 dozens of studies that make up each column of the graph, as they present averages that are pretty much mainstream (lowest average 85 for blacks and highest 106 for east asians). Criticism 3 still applies, but the effect washes out when there are so many dots packed so closely together. -- thus, regarding the paragraph, i don't see the need for a disclaimer about developing countries if we don't discuss them in the main article. my question is -- should we mention them? --W.R.N. 05:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * (3) is very serious. IMHO futurebird 05:26, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I've found a few of the errors. It's things like recording the wrong sample size, the wrong age range, or adding rather than subtracting a flynn effect correction. The examples found so far include recording a Native American IQ scores too high and mixing up two rows in a table. There's no suggestion that they would be noticeable in a graph as compressed as the one we're using. --W.R.N. 06:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Considering the numerous problems with the former book, for example the arbitrary adjustments for the Flynn effecc, ethnic groups in nations, or studies the authors simply did not like, and the suspect publisher, the source is not reliable. The adjustments make it possible to get any desirable score. All quality research material today is published in academic press.Ultramarine 05:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Right. But, are we ready to strike anything that isn't from an academic press from the main? How are the sources on the Pioneer Fund? What about popular books like the bell curve and MMoM? Or is this just a rule for images because of the much greater impact they tend to have on readers? futurebird 05:42, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * There is a difference between voicing opinions and making factual claims. Anyone can voice an opinion and if by prominent source it can be included. For factual claims, especially extraordinary clams, a higher standard applies.Ultramarine 05:53, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not a rule at all. WP:RS defines a reliable source. Scholarly sources are reliable. This book, TBC, and MMoM are treated as scholarly (if flawed) works by other scholars -- for example, book reviews are written about them at the time of their publication in scholarly sources and they are cited by scholars. There is no doubt about who the authors are -- and all of the authors have academic qualifications (PhDs or are professors). --W.R.N. 05:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I see no problem with the graph in a subarticle, in context. It is not appropriate for the frontpage, anymore than a long unopposed quote by Gould would be.Ultramarine 05:55, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with the logic of your contention, but I don't see any criticism of Lynn's work that apply to this image (the flynn effect corrections were criticized for assuming that the effect was equal in say African and Europe, but now we're talking about only the U.S., U.K., Japan, etc.) except his aforementioned sloppiness. If there are apt criticism, it's worth noting them in the figure legend, but currently the value in showing where many hundreds of previous reports put the average IQ of each group certainly outweighs any downsides. --W.R.N. 06:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The columns, altbough strange enough not the main title, mentions places all over the world.Ultramarine 06:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The columns are peoples whose ancestors came from all over the world. The places where they they live and where tested are N. America, Europe, and E. Asia. So "South Asian" means South Asian peoples living in N. America, Europe, and E. Asia, and so on. --W.R.N. 05:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Ultra, I'm going to play the devils advocate and ask for some sources that say the book is unreliable. I don't think the data in it are surprising. --the problem is that it can be misread to be a static or complete picture of the inherent intelligences of races, when it may very well show who can afford enough protein in their diet and avoid enough pollution and leda (and racism) to be able to jump through the hoops if a random test of mental ability with enthusiasm and speed.


 * Ultra, do you think that the numbers are wrong, the presentation, or is this more about the greater problem with this article, which is undue-weight to western methods of looking at intelligence and too many pro-genetic theory academics as sources?futurebird 05:19, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Oddly WRN answered my question. futurebird 05:42, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * How about the ideas that people in different parts of the world have about the intelligences of other races? Do people in India think people in china are smart? Why or why not? Things like that. futurebird 05:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * If there were sources, that would be appropriate. Does that satisfy the "worldwide" requirement? Should we mention IQ scores from developing countries? --W.R.N. 05:16, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Adding scores from other countries isn't bringing a new perspective. This isn't just about scores. futurebird 05:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

"Much of the research currently cited is based on IQ testing in the United States. There is much less data from other nations, in particular the developing world, and conclusions from the US data cannot automatically be generalized to the world as a whole."

There's no way we can take this out until such a time when se find sources that offer other perspectives on the question. This is simply a true statement about what we have in these articles. I would go as far as to say it's mostly been about the black/white gap. futurebird 05:26, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

How about this:

"Most research has been done in the US and a few other developed nations. That research cannot directly be generalized to the world as a whole. IQ tests done in developing countries are likely to have been affected by conditions associated with poverty that are common in the developing world, such as nutritional deficiencies and the impact of diseases (e.g., HIV, anemia or chronic parasites that may affect IQ test scores)."

futurebird 05:30, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm agnositc about it. That's fine with me. --W.R.N. 05:53, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems fine.Ultramarine 06:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Another archive warning
I have archived the earliest material but the page is still 15 times too long. I hope that amidst all of this talk is some valuable content that actually might improve the page, and I would hate to archive anything someone wrote that may still be of use. My plan is to archive what is currently the first nine sections later today or tomorrow. I ask all active editors to review just those sections and make sure there are no important points that have not been addressed yet, and note them down for future reference, and also check for any content you think ought to go into the article. Thanks. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 09:52, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Now the article is only 10 times too long!! Tomorrow I will archive more - at least up to the discussion of the lead image. PLEASE go over sections 1-13 of this talk page carefully to make sure there is nothing there you want preserved or put in the article. Tomorrow I will archive it. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 13:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Do what you gotta do. You know how many archives there are for talk:global warming?

I am doing it - just in a prudent fashion. I will next archive current sections 1-19. Section 19 in WRN's Feb. 15th request for page protection and my reply. I ask active contributors to review material in current sections 1-19 to see if there is anything you want to preserve or put in the article before I archive it. I'll archive it tomorrow

Tut, tut. I'm new, but even I sign my comments : ) Anyhow, I made a comment below about the archives and how there should be a general contents page for them (so that it is possible to navigate to material within all of the archives, rather than have to open the 53 tabs needed to navigate through all of them. --MrASingh 21:00, 23/03/2007, 2007 (UTC)

multiple intelligence theory
discussion of MI doesn't belong in this article unless something more than the definition and a suggestion that it may someday produce results related to this subject can be documented. either way, such suggestions must be attributed because the majority view is that MI is bunk. You could document the scholarly case against MI just by citing papers in which Sternberg is an author -- just to give you an idea of how rejection of MI cuts across all lines drawn in this article. --W.R.N. 21:29, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I think we should mention it. futurebird 21:50, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The questions are -- where, how and about what? I'll rephrase my comment above -- discussion of MI doesn't belong in the background section of the article unless something more than the definition and a suggestion that it may someday produce results related to this subject can be documented. if that's it, then it's not background. documenting the existence of alt. theories of intelligence may be useful as a note in that section, but if they won't be mentioned again, then expanding on them is inappropriate. --W.R.N. 21:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I’m not familiar with this theory, though a quick read of the first paragraphs of the WP article are intriguing. I have had thoughts in this direction to explain how these drastic IQ variances within populations are less manifested in day to day life. The example of a child unable to master rote learning but highly capable elsewhere is my personal story.  While a whiz at calculus, I was a dunce at multiplication tables.  While able to compose and interpret complex contracts, I’m a flop at spelling.  How does this simple empirical example relate to potential strengths within populations?  It was no secret in business school that some “races” were absent from the accounting program, while the “race” which dominated accounting was slimly represented in marketing classes. --Kevin Murray 00:28, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Kevin, it's not disputed by anyone that there are a multiplicity of cognitive skills and abilities (or learning temperaments). What is disputed by experts is that (1) these are independent abilities and that (2) the abilities identified by Gardner are all actually "intelligences" in any meaningful sense. Across the full range of intellectual ability, the kind of divergence of skills you are describing does not occur to any great extent. It is only in the top few percent of the population that notable discrepancies in specific abilities are obvious (e.g., a math geek, a musical prodigy). See Triarchic theory of intelligence for a much better but still minority view of multiple intelligences. --W.R.N. 03:43, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

The issue is not whether a majority of psychologists think MI is bunk, because NPOV insists that we include minority views. The issue is whether MI is the view of one man, or a tiny and marginal group, or a minority of scholars who nevertheless are credentialed and publish in peer-reviewed journals. If that is the case - if the view is verifiable and comes from reliable sources and relevant - of course this other view must be included. I actually do not know whether Gardner is a single crank or one of a number of researchers who, though a minority, are nevertheless significant. If Futurebird or someone else can demonstrate that MI is a concept discussed in most major psychology textbooks, and the subject of ongoing research in peer-reviewed journals, I do not see how we have any grounds for leaving it out. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 14:26, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Sort of misses my point. MI belongs in the intelligence article w/o a doubt, where you can currently read about it. But the R&I relevant literature from MI research appears to not extend beyond saying that it would be great if such literature existed. The fact that most researchers find MI bunk is simply an explanation as to why there's no MI research on race -- because there's essentially no MI research at all -- and as to why its not worth mentioning here, it's not actually background. If those claims turn out to be wrong, and it is background for something in this article, then we'd need to reassess. --W.R.N. 19:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * My other point is that Gardner's MI is not unique, and there are several variants, including Sternberg's which plausibly is related to R&I given some work published on it. --W.R.N. 19:59, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Right. MI is largely an rhetorical argument, rather than a scientific theory, and as such only has meaning in the context of being applied to other arguments and theories. It does have meaning here, but I dont think its fair to make too much hay of it except to say that 'the common sense notion that different people have different strengths has been codified somewhat into the term "multiple intelligences". The concept is controversial and has been said to be more of a rhetorical argument more than a theory' etc. (But then again not much better can be said about racial differences with respect to intelligence testing). By the way, it isnt more intelligent to capitalise every new trademarked theory that comes along. Multiple intelligences should not be capitalised. -Ste|vertigo 00:11, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * For the record I dislike how this whole subject has been split and made into a lot more than it is. I think its about the most abhorrently incoherent series of articles I have seen since... 2002. -Ste|vertigo 00:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Steve, I think I agree with you ... but I do not see an alternative ... Can you propose a concrete alternative that you have good reason will address the concerns of the other principal contributors? Slrubenstein  |  Talk 10:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The five races of man
http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007 Risch, N., Burchard isn't a good source for this sentence:

"Worldwide, human populations are geographically bounded into five less than perfectly distinct continental areas: the Americas, Eurasia (including Europe, North Africa and West Asia), East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Pacific Islands (including Australia)."

For he writes: "A major discussion has arisen recently regarding optimal strategies for categorizing humans, especially in the United States, for the purpose of biomedical research, both etiologic and pharmaceutical."

This is an idea that is respected by many people. But, I could not find a single mention of the word "intelligence" in his paper. Calling race 'primarily biological' and then using it to look at other (most likely) biological phenomena is accepted by many who find the categories helpful and practical. An article called "Race and skin color" would never draw much attention, "Race and height" could raise a few howls of protest but "Race and intelligence" is the most explosive of them all. Why? Because there isn't any universal agreement about what intelligence is, or for that matter, how it can be measured and the degree to which it is a biological phenomena. Using this as a source here isn't OK.

To put this "five races" idea in to the article, I think you need to name the source in the text and use a source who is talking about intelligence. futurebird 01:43, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I looked at a few of the other sources in this section and many of them seem to have this same problem. Including some of the ones I that "like" I think we should be fair about this and ax them all in favor of what has been written on the subject of races as a 'biological concept' with respect to race and intelligence. futurebird 02:44, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The section provides background on the topic of race as it is best understood by contemporary scholars. Intelligence is a phenotype, and you won't find the best general discussions of race in the content of discussing any particular phenotype. Likewise, the best background on intelligence will come from sources giving a general overview of the topic, not those specifically focused on R&I.
 * Rather, it's only in the choice of which details are salient background that R&I should come into the picture. --W.R.N. 03:36, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * But, it smacks of original research to use these ideas in this context. Especially the one mentioned above. The paper is quite explicit about the contexts where the author argues that race is a useful category. I'd rather just have a statement from Rushton or Jensen here, attributed to Rushton or Jensen. I think it is a mistake to conflate the concerns of medical researchers about the usefulness of biological race in medicine with the the type of work that is done in R & I... I think I even have a paper where a biologist is trying to distance her work and concerns from this very topic. Likewise, we can also trim the information on individuals and groups. I see what you're trying to do here, and I'm not saying it's a bad idea to have an overview. I just think we can have better sources.  futurebird 03:50, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Which paper are you talking about? Risch has written a handful to papers about race, some of which discuss it in broad terms and some in specific terms (including cognitive ability). Likewise with Lewontin and others. Interjecting their general treatment at random points in the article would be inappropriate and probably OR. Summarizing the race debate in the background section is neither. OR has specific prohibitions, and the kind your probably thinking about (synthesis) does not apply in this context. --W.R.N. 01:15, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Futurebird has made two points in this section and I think both of them are valid. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 14:11, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Sources to look at
Just putting these here to help this conversation.


 * - Sounds like there isn't much consensus on this topic...
 * - concerns from the medical field about the use of race...
 * -- The complexity of individual identity, the lack of clear-cut boundaries between categories used to capture socially defined constructs of race and ethnicity, and the lack of consistency across studies and data sets in the selection and definition of categories make it difficult to write about race/ethnicity with precision.
 * --In this paper, I explain how race is used in medicine as a proxy for genes that encode drug metabolizing enzymes and how a proper understanding of race calls into doubt the practice of treating race as a marker of any medically relevant genetic trait.
 * The recently completed African-American Heart Failure Trial (A-HeFT)5 and the African-American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension (AASK)6 are examples of studies focused in ethnic minorities that demonstrate the value of this research approach. In addition, the more than 40 000-participant Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT)7–9 is an example of a clinical trial designed to prospectively assess ethnic differences in response to antihypertensive therapy. Each study has yielded important pathophysiological data with direct impact on the population studied, as well as data that are of great value in the general understanding of disease mechanisms. These studies also represent major advances in the knowledge base for treatment of important diseases and emphasize how the paucity of such studies may actually contribute to racial/ethnic healthcare disparities. (They seem to find it useful, but in a practical way that they relate to SES factors.)

The general sense that I get is that the medical field likes using race because it is easy and can serve as a crude indicator of both genetic AND cultural background. I also get the sense that if they had the choice they'd use genetic tests and background questions instead. futurebird 04:06, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Risch has written specifically about this topic. According to his argument, if you used indicators other than race itself when looking for the cause of a phenotype (in research), you'll most likely just fool yourself (generally in the direction of wrongly concluding that a phenotypic difference has a genetic cause). --W.R.N. 01:15, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Most of the medical research is also based on relatively stable populations in the United States where self-identified race is often (though not always) a practical surrogate for genetic population. My point is that the use of "race" to talk about genetic difference depends on the scale of the research as well as the purpose of the research.  Evolutionary scientists (like biological anthropologists) who are interested in understanding genetic variation on a global scale often find that self-identified race is not useful.  In other words - as Futurebird is suggesting - we can't take claims about race in absolute terms, we have to see how they are made in particular contexts. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 14:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Feldman, Rosenberg, Pritchard and colleagues have looked at this issue generally. Racial labels can be a problem, but the notion that there is a geographically-linked population structure holds. Thus, Africans are distinguishable from Europeans, who are distinguishable from East Asians. There may be issues at the margins, but I don't know if they arise in any situations in this article. --W.R.N. 01:15, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * So, is it 3 races or 5 or is it 30? JJJamal 11:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * WRN, you leave out the best part of your cite: Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of “biological race.” They explicitly note that a "specific context" is necessary to assert a notion that any distinguishing being done is useful. --JereKrischel 07:12, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * In case people have forgotten, here's Risch's 2002 conclusion: In our view, much of this discussion does not derive from an objective scientific perspective. This is understandable, given both historic and current inequities based on perceived racial or ethnic identities, both in the US and around the world, and the resulting sensitivities in such debates. Nonetheless, we demonstrate here that from both an objective and scientific (genetic and epidemiologic) perspective there is great validity in racial/ethnic self-categorizations, both from the research and public policy points of view. --W.R.N. 01:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * WRN, you leave out the best part of Risch - Finally, we believe that identifying genetic differences between races and ethnic groups, be they for random genetic markers, genes that lead to disease susceptibility or variation in drug response, is scientifically appropriate. What is not scientific is a value system attached to any such findings. Great abuse has occurred in the past with notions of 'genetic superiority' of one particular group over another. The notion of superiority is not scientific, only political, and can only be used for political purposes. The idea that somehow Risch's notion of "race" is at all supportive of folk like Rushton and Jensen who believe in an inherent genetic inferiority of intelligence for black people, is a stretch. --JereKrischel 06:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it they use race in medicine, because of the fact that they've always used race. It gives the data historical continuity. What seems to becoming more important are background questions and home environment. One might infer that a white patient lives in the suburbs and thus isn't a high asthma risk due to particulate matter, but this inference is pointless if that white person lives in the city. Why not just ask "Where do you live" ? JJJamal 11:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * See above. Some medications are statistically more suited to certain populations as defined by their [races], and the implication is not that the medications are more effective with people who live in a certain place or have a certain economic status. Later comment seems to indicate that some MDs have forgotten about the words "statistically more suited" and have prescribed without confirming that the drug in question is actually more effective for the individual. The R&I article must avoid overgeneralization and affective contamination. It must not conclude genetic superiority/inferiority because certain individuals or certain groups have asserted it, and it must not tar any group with a single value judgment that applies uniformly to all members of a group because of their group membership.


 * The medical use of [race]in association with treatment modalities is a model for understanding the general use of [race] in conjuction with attempts to understand intelligence. To recycle your question, "Why not just ask, 'What is your genetic inheritance?'" When the problems with that question were worked out, it would then be clearer why there is no obvious and useful unit of generality between the general human genotype and the specific genetic inheritances of individuals, and on that understanding it would be clearer why some people search where the streetlight shines and ask about "race and intelligence." P0M 14:27, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

To go back to what Futurebird said in the beginning, she objected to the use of the article by Risch et al., that doesn't have a single mention of intelligence, to support a statement in our article about the untility of categorization by race in the study of intelligence. What may seem to one person like a reasonable and logical extrapolation from what one author says to matters in a slightly different universe of discourse may seem unacceptable to others (and maybe even to the person who wrote the article taken as evidence). Risch et al., when you read them carefully, are giving the word "race" a different intension than it has when most people speak of "the five races of human beings" because for Risch it ropes in so many factors that are (1) not genetic and (2) determined by the social contexts that are geographically limited, e.g., to places like the U.S., to South Africa during Apartheit, etc.

Also, while [race] might have a useful function to play in the process of discovery of factors that are related to measured levels of intelligence among various populations, the most useful point of Risch's article seems to me to be that the use of the category [race] can (1) only be heuristic, and (2) ought not be used to con-fuse [race] and genetic identity. The way Risch is using "race" is as what he calls a surrogate, a term that "ropes in" several factors that happen in the social reality of one place and time to frequently accompany each other, viz., genetic identity, economic status, treatment by police, treatment by courts, treatment by emergency medical service providers, treatment by GPs, treatment by hospital administrations and staff, environmental conditions such as proximity to toxic dumps, etc., etc. The way he is looking at things, a high correlation between "race" and IQ might as easily be related to socialization conditions as to genetic identities, and you would only discover the truth through greatly refining the "granularity" of currently available studies. P0M 03:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

New archiving warning
I propose to archive what are now sections 1-8 (this more or less carries us to the point when the request for mediation was made), ending with the section on "cooperation and respect for others" on Monday Feb. 26. I ask current contributors to go over material in those eight sections and make sure that anything that should be in the article, or be preserved for continued discussion, is acted on before I archive. Thanks, Slrubenstein  |  Talk 13:51, 24 February 2007 (UTC)