Racism is innate

[moody]

From your initial post, these are the two main problems I encountered:

1. As other's have pointed out, your use of "racism" is unclear and fluctuates.

2. It appears as though your assertion, "racism is innate," translates to racism being embedded in our genes through evolution. However, the studies and findings you use to back up your claims are primarily sociological ones, insomuch you use a biological finding to superimpose an explanation that would suite your argument, "racism is innate."

The conclusions you draw between the sociological studies and biological findings do not come from an academic community. Are there connections? Possibly. For example, Harvard's study on implicit bias has found most people to be racism in their reactions. Yet, there is noting in our genetics that programs us with the specific biases we have. Our implicit biases come from the attitudes and beliefs held in our community that we assume as we age. We pick up on the feelings of those around us, and we indoctrinate the as our own because we are a social animal.

I will say you mentioned our nationalistic and religious prejudices as influences as well, which indicates you understand the sociology studies you've used. (It actually seems as though you were evolving into an argument that developing a form of racism is innate. That thesis may have better suited your argument).

Bottom line: I don't think "racism is innate" is proven with the evidence and argument you used in support. The ability to form racism is innate, and we will form implicit biases in our childhood. I would recommend revising your thought process through delving into which sociological phenomenons would result in bias.

 

[moody]

Racism is a spectrum, however, depending on the cohort they may have selective attention and attributions to the effects counter to inherent realities.

Is this why it sometimes feels impossibly to understand anything someone says or responds to?

 

[ApostateAbe]

Sure, disregarding retarded opinions is emotional. I'm sorry I don't take every retarded opinion to heart. I mean, if someone has the opinion people with buck teeth are inferior, I should agree, or I'm just being an emotional idiot. I mean, look at all the facts.

Nobody said anything about anyone being "inferior." Or "superior."

 

[ApostateAbe]

From your initial post, these are the two main problems I encountered:

1. As other's have pointed out, your use of "racism" is unclear and fluctuates.

2. It appears as though your assertion, "racism is innate," translates to racism being embedded in our genes through evolution. However, the studies and findings you use to back up your claims are primarily sociological ones, insomuch you use a biological finding to superimpose an explanation that would suite your argument, "racism is innate."

The conclusions you draw between the sociological studies and biological findings do not come from an academic community. Are there connections? Possibly. For example, Harvard's study on implicit bias has found most people to be racism in their reactions. Yet, there is noting in our genetics that programs us with the specific biases we have. Our implicit biases come from the attitudes and beliefs held in our community that we assume as we age. We pick up on the feelings of those around us, and we indoctrinate the as our own because we are a social animal.

I will say you mentioned our nationalistic and religious prejudices as influences as well, which indicates you understand the sociology studies you've used. (It actually seems as though you were evolving into an argument that developing a form of racism is innate. That thesis may have better suited your argument).

Bottom line: I don't think "racism is innate" is proven with the evidence and argument you used in support. The ability to form racism is innate, and we will form implicit biases in our childhood. I would recommend revising your thought process through delving into which sociological phenomenons would result in bias.

The popular definitions of "racism" are confusing and diverse, but my own definition in this context is simple and consistent: prejudice in favor of one's own race.

I don't assert that any of the academics share my conclusions. My argument is an empirical and theoretical argument that follows from their data, not their conclusions. The sociologists are social constructionists and they tend to avoid relating their own data to biology. I claim that their data follows directly from biology, specifically the "selfish gene."

 

[moody]

I don't assert that any of the academics share my conclusions. My argument is an empirical and theoretical argument that follows from their data, not their conclusions. The sociologists are social constructionists and they tend to avoid relating their own data to biology. I claim that their data follows directly from biology, specifically the "selfish gene."

I understand. However, you're taking an array of studies, and plugging them into your one theory. By doing so, you're looking over all the other possible factors that contribute to the results of the studies. Sociologists abstain from drawing connections genetics because that is an entirely separate field. Making assumptions like that is how we got the lobotomy. One man observed the changed behavior of a chimpanzee that had his frontal cortex disconnected from the brain, figured that must be the key to "curing" people with similar mental conditions, and, without proper research, went through with standardizing the lobotomy.

Genes are highly complex, and for a long time we've been aware that our environment often determines whether or not a gene relies dormant or gets turned on.

You're probably right about the selfish gene playing apart in the innateness of racism; but this implies that our nature is greater than our nurture, which is a shaky way to base any argument. Nature and nurture work together, they never overpower the other.

Our selfish gene wouldn't be solely responsible for any demonstrated racism. The only thing the selfish gene automatically implies is our ability to choose ourselves over others. How that manifests depends on your other genes and the way our environment interacts with said genes.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I don't assert that any of the academics share my conclusions. My argument is an empirical and theoretical argument that follows from their data, not their conclusions. The sociologists are social constructionists and they tend to avoid relating their own data to biology. I claim that their data follows directly from biology, specifically the "selfish gene."

I understand. However, you're taking an array of studies, and plugging them into your one theory. By doing so, you're looking over all the other possible factors that contribute to the results of the studies. Sociologists abstain from drawing connections genetics because that is an entirely separate field. Making assumptions like that is how we got the lobotomy. One man observed the changed behavior of a chimpanzee that had his frontal cortex disconnected from the brain, figured that must be the key to "curing" people with similar mental conditions, and, without proper research, went through with standardizing the lobotomy.

Genes are highly complex, and for a long time we've been aware that our environment often determines whether or not a gene relies dormant or gets turned on.

You're probably right about the selfish gene playing apart in the innateness of racism; but this implies that our nature is greater than our nurture, which is a shaky way to base any argument. Nature and nurture work together, they never overpower the other.

Our selfish gene wouldn't be solely responsible for any demonstrated racism. The only thing the selfish gene automatically implies is our ability to choose ourselves over others. How that manifests depends on your other genes and the way our environment interacts with said genes.

On public radio, I heard an interview with a sociologist who argued that we should care for other people's children exactly as much as our own children. The host objected: what about the parental instinct? The sociologist responded: As a sociologist, I am concerned with the cultural reasons for our thinking, not the genetic reasons. This is a paraphrase, not an exaggeration. And of course that illustrates the central problem. Human brains are purely biological constructs. Even the socially-influenced traits have a biological basis. Any social explanation for a psychological phenomenon is incomplete without biology. If some genetic hypotheses are wrong, then the solution is what? Avoid genetics?

The selfish gene is not all there is to it, for sure. It is just a good start, and upon that start we can incorporate the many social complexities. Sociologists don't even have that start. They think hate is purely learned.

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[computerhxr]

Racism is a spectrum, however, depending on the cohort they may have selective attention and attributions to the effects counter to inherent realities.

Is this why it sometimes feels impossibly to understand anything someone says or responds to?

Not if you understand their perspectives, motivations, and biases. Each side really isn't listening to each other, they are looking for opportunities to push their bias on others.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I found that interview again. It is not on public radio, but it was printed in The Atlantic. I bolded the sentence that serves as a validation of the most ridiculous caricature of American sociologists.

Hagerman: ...But the best answer I can really give is that the micro level potentially could shape what goes on at the institutional or structural level. I really think—and this might sound kind of crazy—that white parents, and parents in general, need to understand that all children are worthy of their consideration. This idea that your own child is the most important thing—that’s something we could try to rethink. When affluent white parents are making these decisions about parenting, they could consider in some way at least how their decisions will affect not only their kid, but other kids. This might mean a parent votes for policies that would lead to the best possible outcome for as many kids as possible, but might be less advantageous for their own child. My overall point is that in this moment when being a good citizen conflicts with being a good parent, I think that most white parents choose to be good parents, when, sometimes at the very least, they should choose to be good citizens.

Pinsker: I don’t doubt that you’re onto something, but, pragmatically speaking, wouldn’t that ignore a biological impulse to look after one’s own?

Hagerman: So as a sociologist, I’m much more interested in how things are socially constructed rather than biologically constructed. For example, there are lots of families who have kids who are adopted, or where parents are taking care of kids who aren’t biologically theirs—I don’t have any children, but I care very deeply about other people’s kids, and would do things to protect them. So, I hear what you’re saying, but I wonder if even the way we think about what it means to be a parent is to some extent socially constructed. We have other societies that do things differently. I think when we look across time and history and geography, we can see that the way that we’re doing it—prioritizing your own child over everyone else—is one way, but I don’t think that has to be the only way. I don’t have any grand answer, but I think people could think in bigger ways about what it means to care about one another and what it means to actually have a society that cares about kids.

How Well-Intentioned White Families Can Perpetuate Racism
The sociologist Margaret Hagerman spent two years embedded in upper-middle-class white households, listening in on conversations about race.
JOE PINSKER
SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

 

[moody]

On public radio, I heard an interview with a sociologist who argued that we should care for other people's children exactly as much as our own children. The host objected: what about the parental instinct? The sociologist responded: As a sociologist, I am concerned with the cultural reasons for our thinking, not the genetic reasons. This is a paraphrase, not an exaggeration. And of course that illustrates the central problem. Human brains are purely biological constructs. Even the socially-influenced traits have a biological basis. Any social explanation for a psychological phenomenon is incomplete without biology. If some genetic hypotheses are wrong, then the solution is what? Avoid genetics?

Focusing on the cultural reasons doesn't mean that the sociologist disclaims the biological ones, nor does it mean the sociologist believes there cultural forces outside of us are separate from our biology.

There is a difference between having ethical views of what people "should" be like versus working with a realistic model. If the interviewee was speaking in terms of policy making and social work, then yes, we "should care about our children equally." In terms of individuals, it is simply unrealistic to expect anyone to care for another person's child above or equal to our own. To do so isn't only biologically unnatural, but it sets up children to be in a less than ideal home situation duo to the way we develop socially and biologically.

I found that interview again. It is not on public radio, but it was printed in The Atlantic. I bolded the sentence that serves as a validation of the most ridiculous caricature of American sociologists.

Thank you for sharing!

I understand what the sociologist was getting at, but reading what he actually said, he seems to have a little bit of information and political bias in his judgments of other people. Granted, he is a sociologist, the one who's going over and gathering the data, not the one implementing policy change.

It's important to keep in mind context when analyzing what others mean. That being said, including a biological cause is irrelevant. That sociologist is looking for ways to trouble shoot a problem; he is not trying to look for what causes the problem.

As I said before, the individual treatment of your child is different that when you make decisions that effect other children.

This brings up the important point of how much our "biology" can excuse actions that hurt other people. Rape, for instance: most of us have a sex drive due to our biology. Does this excuse instances of rape? It certainly explains it, but most do not think having a strong libido excuses traumatizing another person.

The relationship between our government, community, and individuals is called a social contract. We benefit off of others by engaging in a social contract that requires us to do our best to not inflict damage on others also engaged in said social contract. This, ideally, includes voting on things that would cause the least overall repercussions, simply put. The more people take advantage of personal gains, the less effective the social contract.

I don't agree with the sociologist's working, but that's beside the point. I do agree with this: the decisions we make that harm others more than they help us are unethical. We have a responsibility to the people we benefit from, within reason.

The selfish gene is not all there is to it, for sure. It is just a good start, and upon that start we can incorporate the many social complexities. Sociologists don't even have that start. They think hate is purely learned.

That is not necessarily true. A sociologists job is to study what social forces outside of us make us hate whom, which is why all hate they study is "learned."

We are all born with the potential to hate, to varying degrees. What that hate manifests as depends our social environment. (i.e., how our selfist gene gets expressed). We can learn to hate our families if they've caused us undue harm, and we learn to hate other social groups if everyone around us seems to hate them. We take on the feelings of those around us automatically, as that is how we've evolved to survive.

A sociologist's job is not to identify the biological causes behind hate, but rather why we hate what we do. Scientists specialize so that we can gain new knowledge rapidly. If each and every person took it upon themselves to figure out all the causes behind everything they studied, we would never learn anything new. That is another part of human sociology: we learn through the collective banks of knowledge of our species, and we seek to contribute as opposed to running every study ourselves because we didn't trust what we didn't see.

*I apologize for any unclear statements or points that I made. Please ask for clarification if anything is too confusing...I have a tendency to get too convoluted in my explanations.

 

[ApostateAbe]

If the problem were merely that sociologists ignore biology in their attempts to troubleshoot, then that would be a mountain of a problem enough. The horse blinders are not merely a problem of focus but a problem of delusion. You brought up the example of the naturalistic fallacy in relation to the biology of rape, which reminds me of a related problem. You have heard many times that, "Rape is about power, not about sex." This is a doctrine that emerged out of American sociology. The problem is not just the ignoring of biology; it is a delusion that follows from the denial of biology. And that is why they troubleshoot the problem of rape like clowns in a clown car. They think that any advice for women to protect themselves against horny men is blaming the victim.

 

[ApostateAbe]

American sociologists are highly wary of the naturalistic fallacy: if it is natural then it is moral, or variations thereof. They point, flash the lights, and sound the alarm about that fallacy. And then they hug, kiss, and go to bed with the moralistic fallacy: if it is moral then it is natural, or variations thereof. It is not just an occasional blunder, but it is a component of their thinking, like it isn't even a fallacy.

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[redbaron]

You brought up the example of the naturalistic fallacy in relation to the biology of rape, which reminds me of a related problem. You have heard many times that, "Rape is about power, not about sex." This is a doctrine that emerged out of American sociology. The problem is not just the ignoring of biology; it is a delusion that follows from the denial of biology. And that is why they troubleshoot the problem of rape like clowns in a clown car. They think that any advice for women to protect themselves against horny men is blaming the victim.

That's because it really is blaming the victim.

There's quite a few levels of violence between inappropriate remarks or an isolated event of inappropriate contact without physical harm and actual rape. In certain contexts I might not condone but also not necessarily condemn the former as being a violation of someone's bodily autononomy.

But when we talk about actual rape, especially prolonged or violent occurrences there's a lot more than 'horny' going on there. The brutal kind of attacks and physical harm involved in a lot of these instances go far beyond any biological reproduction impetus and even if we were to remove the sexual component from many cases you'd still have a case of physical assault to deal with. People who rape are not doing so just because they're horny, that's asinine. I also wouldn't be purporting that it could be singularly reduced to 'power' either: but it's important to keep in mind that there are seemingly a significant number of cases of rape where the perpetrator's motive or general mentality does encompass quite a spiteful, violent and angry component, not just 'yeah i was horny.'

 

[Black Rose]

I can only understand simple things.
If a woman wants to protect herself is that a bad thing.
Is the information available, should it be?

Like RB I do not see rape as being selected for evolutionarily.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I meant it only as an example of an absurdity confined to the sociological priesthood, but I forgot that some people outside the Holy Order actually believe it. I will start a new thread on the biology of rape behavior.

 

[redbaron]

To be clear: no one is denying that there is a biological basis for emotions and motives. This is a phantom that you are working yourself up to argue against.

What's being contested is the idea that it can be chalked up to 'horny'. All studies on behaviour of perpetrators of rape (that I've read) point to the fact that there are a myriad of reasons behind why people rape, included in these are violent motives (people who intend to burgle or physically assault, who also commit rape as an extension of this violent intent) that are often quite separable from simply wanting to have sex.

In other cases, there are incidences of people trying to get people drunk and/or drugging people to make it easier to have sex.

Included are often mindsets of rationalising the behaviours by minimising their severity. Things like, "she enjoyed it" or, "they deserved it" etc.

The mentalities and motives for many cases of rape extend well and truly beyond simply being, "horny" and it's not just 'muh sociologists' who provide this information. These are accounts of interviews with perpetrators or confessions made during treatment.

All of these myriad behaviours go beyond the idea of simple, "horny". They require a subversion of commonly accepted ethics and morality to engage in, and are the result of a number of different anti-social behaviours or beliefs held by perpetrators of the crime.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Yes, I am aware of the nuance you intend, and I am aware that you are not an extremist on the matter. That makes the position only somewhat absurd. Biological sex drive really is the central unifying component of common rape behavior (the behavior, not just the act of rape). American sociologists have built their theory on anecdotes selected by popular books written by activists, not on the body of data, and furthermore it is at odds with the body of data, and the theory became the basis of anti-rape policies among American institutions. I may get around to writing that thread some time this week.

 

[Hadoblado]

The way you speak about a whole field as if it's a monolith is disturbing. You don't state or address anything that they say, you just invoke them as a boogeyman. This is exactly what you did earlier in the thread about biologists and their views on racism.

I'm open to the shortcomings of scientists and experts, and I'm pretty open to a lot of the conclusions you're pushing if they are evidenced. But you're just saying "expert bad" without providing an argument or even examples of what you take issue with.
It's pretty disappointing tbh.

If a mainstream position is incorrect, you should be able to represent that position accurately, and then explain why it is wrong. You're not even straw-manning because you don't even bother telling us what it is that makes you upset.

 

[redbaron]

Not really talking about sociological theory though. Talking plainly about the reported reasons for rape by perpetrators and how we assess what particular behaviours they engage in mean.

From a reductionist point of view you could say that a lack of ability to fulfil a biological sex drive plays as a significant initial motivator for these behaviours: but there are other motives and desires when they commit physical violence (often by surprise) on their victims. These aren't the behaviours of simply being horny or having a sex drive: many people who are horny don't end up raping or physically assaulting people.

There's multiple components to most rapes that occur. Sex is a component in some cases of rape, but saying that it's a component in every case, let alone 'the' component that really matters in every case is not a very tenable position.

 

[ApostateAbe]

The way you speak about a whole field as if it's a monolith is disturbing. You don't state or address anything that they say, you just invoke them as a boogeyman. This is exactly what you did earlier in the thread about biologists and their views on racism.

I'm open to the shortcomings of scientists and experts, and I'm pretty open to a lot of the conclusions you're pushing if they are evidenced. But you're just saying "expert bad" without providing an argument or even examples of what you take issue with.
It's pretty disappointing tbh.

If a mainstream position is incorrect, you should be able to represent that position accurately, and then explain why it is wrong. You're not even straw-manning because you don't even bother telling us what it is that makes you upset.

I did not mean to disappoint you. I gave such an example in post #58.

 

[Hadoblado]

Okay fair, but that's one person. Is their view even mainstream? You're talking about American sociologists as if it's a cabal. Is this one person representative of the entire field?

Also, what that person said is only wrong if you assume they mean that biological mechanisms are irrelevant. They are a sociologist, so of course, they're more interested in the sociological mechanisms. If they don't know much about the biological ones, they'd be being irresponsible if they spoke from a position of authority about those aspects. That said, if they're making prescriptive judgments, they should have at least a basic understanding.

You speak as if you have a mountain of examples of the majority of sociologists being idiots or ignoring the obvious. This is just one person.


also unrelated:

Hagerman: One of the things I was really struck by was how frequently some of these children used the phrase That’s racist or You’re racist. They were using this word in contexts that had nothing to do with race: They were playing chess, and they would talk about what color chess pieces they wanted to have, and then one of them would say, “Oh, that’s racist”—so things that had to do with colors, but also sometimes just out of the blue, instead of saying, “That’s stupid.” These kids have taken this phrase, That’s racist, and inverted it in a way such that it’s become meaningless.

It's a joke. Black always goes last, so people prefer white. They seem a bit dense...

 

[ApostateAbe]

Okay fair, but that's one person. Is their view even mainstream? You're talking about American sociologists as if it's a cabal. Is this one person representative of the entire field?

Also, what that person said is only wrong if you assume they mean that biological mechanisms are irrelevant. They are a sociologist, so of course, they're more interested in the sociological mechanisms. If they don't know much about the biological ones, they'd be being irresponsible if they spoke from a position of authority about those aspects. That said, if they're making prescriptive judgments, they should have at least a basic understanding.

You speak as if you have a mountain of examples of the majority of sociologists being idiots or ignoring the obvious. This is just one person.

Just one sociologist, but American sociologists really do tend to agree with you, with RedBaron and with that one sociologist interviewed by the Atlantic, that being a sociologist means generally ignoring the genetic components of human behavior. There are a few American sociologists who integrate the biology, and they occupy the fringe. It used to be "sociobiology"; it is now "evolutionary psychology."

 

[ApostateAbe]

If you would like more than just the example I gave, I suggest the book by Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. His TedTalk on the matter is a good place to start:

 

[walfin]

It is not innate because different groups of dark-skinned people were discriminated against by lighter skinned people despite being the most genetically distinct on earth - the negritos in the Philippines and African-Americans historically.

Instead, it is a social construct that seems to rely on easily visually distinguishable phenotypes - e.g. skin colour, eye shape, etc.

It's probably the result of the need to be able to distinguish friend from foe - it's easier to pick out enemies if they're easily identified.

Most of the people arguing that racism is innate are scientific racists. It is probably more than a coincidence that most scientific racists are caucasian, as caucasians need to find a way to justify their historical advantages.

 

[ApostateAbe]

It is not innate because different groups of dark-skinned people were discriminated against by lighter skinned people despite being the most genetically distinct on earth - the negritos in the Philippines and African-Americans historically.

Instead, it is a social construct that seems to rely on easily visually distinguishable phenotypes - e.g. skin colour, eye shape, etc.

It's probably the result of the need to be able to distinguish friend from foe - it's easier to pick out enemies if they're easily identified.

Most of the people arguing that racism is innate are scientific racists. It is probably more than a coincidence that most scientific racists are caucasian, as caucasians need to find a way to justify their historical advantages.

"It is not innate because different groups of dark-skinned people were discriminated against by lighter skinned people despite being the most genetically distinct on earth - the negritos in the Philippines and African-Americans historically."

To see how much that argument holds up, maybe try expressing it as a syllogism. For example:

(1) Different groups of dark-skinned people were discriminated against by lighter skinned people despite being the most genetically distinct on earth.
(2) Therefore, racism is not innate.

It does not seem to follow (a non-sequitur). I am not even sure how it is intended to follow. But, I suspect it is a mutation of a similar argument I have seen expressed many times elsewhere among academics:

(1) Black Africans are the most genetically-diverse people in the world.
(2) Therefore, races do not exist.

That does not follow either, but it is easier to find the hidden fallacious assumption that makes the argument seem to follow: each race must have equal genetic diversity.

All the arguments against biological human races seem to be like that. They are misleading or irrelevant. To explain further, all of the following points are facts, and yet none of the points count for anything against the claim that races are subsets of the human species that have diverged significantly along different evolutionary paths as they adapted to different environments:

• The boundaries among the races are spectral.
• Different cultures have different ideas about race.
• More variation exists within each race than between races.
• Australian aborigines look the same on the outside as black Africans.
• We are all 99.9% the same.

"Most of the people arguing that racism is innate are scientific racists."

You are absolutely right. Racists like me should not have a monopoly on a coherent handle of objective reality. What will happen when some of the most racist claims become established fact beyond reasonable doubt because of the advance of the science of genetics? Well-meaning liberals may double down and accept conspiracy theories, in place of accepting that some races are on average genetically less intelligent and more criminal. They would rather accept conspiracy theories than believe that their core dogma is flatly wrong. We need to start to get it right, and fast. Maybe a good start is the acceptance that humans are no exception to evolutionary biology.

 

[walfin]

"It is not innate because different groups of dark-skinned people were discriminated against by lighter skinned people despite being the most genetically distinct on earth - the negritos in the Philippines and African-Americans historically."

To see how much that argument holds up, maybe try expressing it as a syllogism. For example:

(1) Different groups of dark-skinned people were discriminated against by lighter skinned people despite being the most genetically distinct on earth.
(2) Therefore, racism is not innate.

It does not seem to follow (a non-sequitur). I am not even sure how it is intended to follow. But, I suspect it is a mutation of a similar argument I have seen expressed many times elsewhere among academics:

(1) Black Africans are the most genetically-diverse people in the world.
(2) Therefore, races do not exist.

That does not follow either, but it is easier to find the hidden fallacious assumption that makes the argument seem to follow: each race must have equal genetic diversity.

All the arguments against biological human races seem to be like that. They are misleading or irrelevant. To explain further, all of the following points are facts, and yet none of the points count for anything against the claim that races are subsets of the human species that have diverged significantly along different evolutionary paths as they adapted to different environments:

• The boundaries among the races are spectral.
• Different cultures have different ideas about race.
• More variation exists within each race than between races.
• Australian aborigines look the same on the outside as black Africans.
• We are all 99.9% the same.

"Most of the people arguing that racism is innate are scientific racists."

You are absolutely right. Racists like me should not have a monopoly on a coherent handle of objective reality. What will happen when some of the most racist claims become established fact beyond reasonable doubt because of the advance of the science of genetics? Well-meaning liberals may double down and accept conspiracy theories, in place of accepting that some races are on average genetically less intelligent and more criminal. They would rather accept conspiracy theories than believe that their core dogma is flatly wrong. We need to start to get it right, and fast. Maybe a good start is the acceptance that humans are no exception to evolutionary biology.

Historically, people have by and large discriminated not on the basis of genes (which are invisible) but on the basis of skin colour, a phenotype which can be caused by various different combinations of genes. Why skin colour? Simply because it is the most apparent? This shows that racism is nothing to do with natural selection but everything to do with being a justification for advantages which a particular group already enjoys. These might not have arisen due to genetic differences between the races but other factors such as geography (see Guns, Germs and Steel), chance, or better political systems (which could be learnt by other races eventually).

And yes, as you know, humans are 99.9% alike (and different races can continue to mate with each other) so races are not subspecies. This shows, all the more, that racism is a social construct.

 

[ApostateAbe]

"It is not innate because different groups of dark-skinned people were discriminated against by lighter skinned people despite being the most genetically distinct on earth - the negritos in the Philippines and African-Americans historically."

To see how much that argument holds up, maybe try expressing it as a syllogism. For example:

(1) Different groups of dark-skinned people were discriminated against by lighter skinned people despite being the most genetically distinct on earth.
(2) Therefore, racism is not innate.

It does not seem to follow (a non-sequitur). I am not even sure how it is intended to follow. But, I suspect it is a mutation of a similar argument I have seen expressed many times elsewhere among academics:

(1) Black Africans are the most genetically-diverse people in the world.
(2) Therefore, races do not exist.

That does not follow either, but it is easier to find the hidden fallacious assumption that makes the argument seem to follow: each race must have equal genetic diversity.

All the arguments against biological human races seem to be like that. They are misleading or irrelevant. To explain further, all of the following points are facts, and yet none of the points count for anything against the claim that races are subsets of the human species that have diverged significantly along different evolutionary paths as they adapted to different environments:

• The boundaries among the races are spectral.
• Different cultures have different ideas about race.
• More variation exists within each race than between races.
• Australian aborigines look the same on the outside as black Africans.
• We are all 99.9% the same.

"Most of the people arguing that racism is innate are scientific racists."

You are absolutely right. Racists like me should not have a monopoly on a coherent handle of objective reality. What will happen when some of the most racist claims become established fact beyond reasonable doubt because of the advance of the science of genetics? Well-meaning liberals may double down and accept conspiracy theories, in place of accepting that some races are on average genetically less intelligent and more criminal. They would rather accept conspiracy theories than believe that their core dogma is flatly wrong. We need to start to get it right, and fast. Maybe a good start is the acceptance that humans are no exception to evolutionary biology.

Historically, people have by and large discriminated not on the basis of genes (which are invisible) but on the basis of skin colour, a phenotype which can be caused by various different combinations of genes. Why skin colour? Simply because it is the most apparent? This shows that racism is nothing to do with natural selection but everything to do with being a justification for advantages which a particular group already enjoys. These might not have arisen due to genetic differences between the races but other factors such as geography (see Guns, Germs and Steel), chance, or better political systems (which could be learnt by other races eventually).

And yes, as you know, humans are 99.9% alike (and different races can continue to mate with each other) so races are not subspecies. This shows, all the more, that racism is a social construct.

External differences are cues to genetic differences among groups on the whole, even if the only such cue is skin color. But don't be misled: skin color is most certainly not the only such cue. Other such cues include nose shape, head shape, lip shape, eye socket shape, height, natural hair style, speech and behavior. I don't know why we were ever led to think that racial differences are reducible to skin color, except maybe it was because "white" and "black" were used to denote races in America. But, if you take a look at pictures of albino southern Africans (hunted like rare animals for the magical healing powers of their organs), then you will see that they look hardly less African and hardly more European.

I brought up the 99.9% argument as an example of a misleading argument against races, and here is why. Some small numbers seem small until they have proper perspective. A random human has about 98.0% of his or her genome in common with a random chimpanzee. That means human races are maybe about one twentieth on the way toward diverging away from each other as the human species has diverged from the chimpanzee species. So it is a scandal in my opinion that so many academics take the 99.9% argument seriously.

 

[walfin]

External differences are cues to genetic differences among groups on the whole, even if the only such cue is skin color. But don't be misled: skin color is most certainly not the only such cue. Other such cues include nose shape, head shape, lip shape, eye socket shape, height, natural hair style, speech and behavior. I don't know why we were ever led to think that racial differences are reducible to skin color, except maybe it was because "white" and "black" were used to denote races in America. But, if you take a look at pictures of albino southern Africans (hunted like rare animals for the magical healing powers of their organs), then you will see that they look hardly less African and hardly more European.

I brought up the 99.9% argument as an example of a misleading argument against races, and here is why. Some small numbers seem small until they have proper perspective. A random human has about 98.0% of his or her genome in common with a random chimpanzee. That means human races are maybe about one twentieth on the way toward diverging away from each other as the human species has diverged from the chimpanzee species. So it is a scandal in my opinion that so many academics take the 99.9% argument seriously.

External differences do not show anything apart from those differences themselves. It is fallacious to assume that simply because some persons have different physical features and skin colour, then they are necessarily less intelligent (for example). Also, intelligence is at least partly determined by environment - the Flynn effect has been slowing down in more developed countries, compared to less developed countries. Scientific or no, racism exists because of self-interest: when a group has an advantage, it wants to maintain that advantage and thus has to demean other groups to justify its privileged position. Consider the (scientifically unproven) stereotype in the US that Asians have smaller penises - isn't that just a way to demean another group when those caucasians who are racist cannot demean them using IQ (since, according to IQ tests, Asians apparently have a higher IQ)?

Further, racism leads us to assume that a person fits a stereotype when s/he may not, and causes us to neglect environmental causes for the current differences that exist between races. Sub-Saharan Africans may have a lower average IQ according to current IQ tests, but how do you know that a particular person is average? If a government were to assume that a particular group has a lower IQ because of their race, that government might cease investing in education for that group when education may be the very thing that boosts IQ, turning the racial stereotype into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In any case, I also have yet to see a successful case of a human mating sexually with a chimpanzee. Surely if the human race was already divided into subspecies, fertilisation between different races would have come to a halt.

 

[ApostateAbe]

External differences are cues to genetic differences among groups on the whole, even if the only such cue is skin color. But don't be misled: skin color is most certainly not the only such cue. Other such cues include nose shape, head shape, lip shape, eye socket shape, height, natural hair style, speech and behavior. I don't know why we were ever led to think that racial differences are reducible to skin color, except maybe it was because "white" and "black" were used to denote races in America. But, if you take a look at pictures of albino southern Africans (hunted like rare animals for the magical healing powers of their organs), then you will see that they look hardly less African and hardly more European.

I brought up the 99.9% argument as an example of a misleading argument against races, and here is why. Some small numbers seem small until they have proper perspective. A random human has about 98.0% of his or her genome in common with a random chimpanzee. That means human races are maybe about one twentieth on the way toward diverging away from each other as the human species has diverged from the chimpanzee species. So it is a scandal in my opinion that so many academics take the 99.9% argument seriously.

External differences do not show anything apart from those differences themselves. It is fallacious to assume that simply because some persons have different physical features and skin colour, then they are necessarily less intelligent (for example). Also, intelligence is at least partly determined by environment - the Flynn effect has been slowing down in more developed countries, compared to less developed countries. Scientific or no, racism exists because of self-interest: when a group has an advantage, it wants to maintain that advantage and thus has to demean other groups to justify its privileged position. Consider the (scientifically unproven) stereotype in the US that Asians have smaller penises - isn't that just a way to demean another group when those caucasians who are racist cannot demean them using IQ (since, according to IQ tests, Asians apparently have a higher IQ)?

Further, racism leads us to assume that a person fits a stereotype when s/he may not, and causes us to neglect environmental causes for the current differences that exist between races. Sub-Saharan Africans may have a lower average IQ according to current IQ tests, but how do you know that a particular person is average? If a government were to assume that a particular group has a lower IQ because of their race, that government might cease investing in education for that group when education may be the very thing that boosts IQ, turning the racial stereotype into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In any case, I also have yet to see a successful case of a human mating sexually with a chimpanzee. Surely if the human race was already divided into subspecies, fertilisation between different races would have come to a halt.

"External differences do not show anything apart from those differences themselves. It is fallacious to assume that simply because some persons have different physical features and skin colour, then they are necessarily less intelligent (for example)."

When I wrote that "External differences are cues to genetic differences among groups on the whole, even if the only such cue is skin color," I should explain further what I mean. I mean that external genetic differences probably mean that internal genetic differences also exist. If the only difference we could see is skin color, then we would also know that we have pretty good odds that other genetic differences exist among the races, in frequency or on average. But in fact we absolutely know the differences are about much more than skin color, even if we are talking about external differences alone. We know about natural hair style, the number of layers of skin, the nose shape, the lip shape, the skull shape, and height. What would be the odds that these are the only differences and no internal differences exist? A damn near miracle, and of course we already know for certain fact that the internal racial differences also exist the minute we talk to medical doctors, who are quizzed about such differences in their license exams, and it is an everyday part of their jobs. Races differ drastically in many ways on the inside of the body, and it broadly affects medical research, diagnoses and treatments. So, next step: what are the odds that genetically races differ in all of these ways but they are genetically exactly the same inside the skull cavity? Damn near 0%.

That is not to say that we should judge individuals this way. For individuals, it is merely probabilistic. If we are talking about racial intelligence differences and not the cause of them, be the cause genetics or white supremacy, then we know that a random black person is more likely to be stupider than a random Chinese person. We know that by looking at the IQ bell curves, not by looking at genetics. But, of course it would be madness to judge a black business executive on Wall Street as stupider than a homeless Chinese drug addict. The black executive would be on the right tail end of the black distribution, whereas the Chinese homeless meth head would be on the left end of the Asian distribution. Desperately few such people exist--I don't think I have ever seen a homeless Chinese person--and that is why the averages matter.

"Consider the (scientifically unproven) stereotype in the US that Asians have smaller penises - isn't that just a way to demean another group when those caucasians who are racist cannot demean them using IQ (since, according to IQ tests, Asians apparently have a higher IQ)?"

Not proven, but the limited data confirms the stereotype. It is not just a means of insult, but such knowledge is necessary for saving lives. The World Health Organization is not going to fight the spread of HIV by distributing condoms in Nigeria that fit Chinese men. The condoms will likely fit few Nigerians.

"Further, racism leads us to assume that a person fits a stereotype when s/he may not, and causes us to neglect environmental causes for the current differences that exist between races."

You fear the consequences of such knowledge. Not that it is wrong, but it will be misused. I think that is why you should not let the racists lay sole claim to this knowledge. I don't want them to be the only correct people on such matters, but rational people like you can balance the genetic knowledge with the environmental knowledge, to prevent the genetic knowledge from being abused by the racists.

"In any case, I also have yet to see a successful case of a human mating sexually with a chimpanzee. Surely if the human race was already divided into subspecies, fertilisation between different races would have come to a halt."

That is generally true for different species, not for different subspecies. Humans and chimpanzees are two different species, not two different subspecies. Many subspecies most certainly can interbreed with fertile offspring (the example I already gave was Africanized honeybees, a hybrid of European honeybees and African honeybees).

The geneticist Sewell Wright wrote his opinion on human subspecies in 1978, and I attached a page from one of his books, good for a short education on the matter. It is Sewall Wright, 1978, Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Volume 4: Variability within and among Natural Populations, page 439, first page of Chapter 10.

 

[YOLOisonlyprinciple]

1. Racism is overrated.

2. A smart objective person shouldn't be racist.

As an INTP, I couldnt care less about society.

 

[ApostateAbe]

1. Racism is overrated.

2. A smart objective person shouldn't be racist.

As an INTP, I couldnt care less about the society.

Overrated? I have never seen anyone call racism anything but evil. Are you saying it is even worse than that?

 

[Grayman]

1. Racism is overrated.

2. A smart objective person shouldn't be racist.

As an INTP, I couldnt care less about the society.

Overrated? I have never seen anyone call racism anything but evil. Are you saying it is even worse than that?

Calling racism evil is an oversimplification of the underlying problem. In fact, so many things get categorized as racist even though they don't in any way meet the definition simply because people over simplify the concept and then dump any evil they perceive in the same basket whether or not it belongs in that basket.

 

[ApostateAbe]

1. Racism is overrated.

2. A smart objective person shouldn't be racist.

As an INTP, I couldnt care less about the society.

Overrated? I have never seen anyone call racism anything but evil. Are you saying it is even worse than that?

Calling racism evil is an oversimplification of the underlying problem. In fact, so many things get categorized as racist even though they don't in any way meet the definition simply because people over simplify the concept and then dump any evil they perceive in the same basket whether or not it belongs in that basket.

Yes, I agree. Putting racism on one's moral compass causes problems. When one end of the needle points toward racism, then we would run in the direction of the other end, wherever that may lead. That's a problem especially because some important established facts make you a racist for accepting them and because valuing one's own race is an instinct. Racism does not belong on the moral compass. If you value truth, then point the needle toward the truth. If you value equality, then point the needle toward equality. Keep it simple.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[Niclmaki]

There’s learned hatred / bigotry (usually from observing older family members - or mentor figures in general).

Personal experience and over generalization. Eg. One man was mean to me once, therefore all men are bad.

Peer pressure from a group you belong to. You can’t help but start to agree with some of their views to ‘fit in’.

And finally, just unconscious bias. Usually formed from familiarity. Eg. - caucasians are what I’m used to seeing, so anything other than that is disagreeable to a small degree. Could also just be a societal stereotype that holds no merit, but will still influence you. Eg. Women are bad drivers.

This is the only category I would consider “innate”. The others are from poor rationalizing skills, or beliefs that were forced onto you before you could reason. I also consider it innate because of how difficult it is to work around unconscious biases. (And for the most part, do the least amount of harm)*

Each of these categories could be called racism/sexism. It makes it hard to talk to someone about their racism if you mention it, because some are so much worse than others. On one end you have literal hate crimes and violent acts, on the other end, scooting to the corner of an elevator because a person of colour stepped in. It IS a spectrum of some kind though, and racists anywhere on it can almost always point to someone worse than them, and claim they are the racists, not them. Sorry, it is annoying to deal with.

I’m sure there are even other categories I didn’t mention here.

*That isn’t to say it should be disregarded, but extremists ideas and actions should take priority.

 

[walfin]

"External differences do not show anything apart from those differences themselves. It is fallacious to assume that simply because some persons have different physical features and skin colour, then they are necessarily less intelligent (for example)."

When I wrote that "External differences are cues to genetic differences among groups on the whole, even if the only such cue is skin color," I should explain further what I mean. I mean that external genetic differences probably mean that internal genetic differences also exist. If the only difference we could see is skin color, then we would also know that we have pretty good odds that other genetic differences exist among the races, in frequency or on average. But in fact we absolutely know the differences are about much more than skin color, even if we are talking about external differences alone. We know about natural hair style, the number of layers of skin, the nose shape, the lip shape, the skull shape, and height. What would be the odds that these are the only differences and no internal differences exist? A damn near miracle, and of course we already know for certain fact that the internal racial differences also exist the minute we talk to medical doctors, who are quizzed about such differences in their license exams, and it is an everyday part of their jobs. Races differ drastically in many ways on the inside of the body, and it broadly affects medical research, diagnoses and treatments. So, next step: what are the odds that genetically races differ in all of these ways but they are genetically exactly the same inside the skull cavity? Damn near 0%.

That is not to say that we should judge individuals this way. For individuals, it is merely probabilistic. If we are talking about racial intelligence differences and not the cause of them, be the cause genetics or white supremacy, then we know that a random black person is more likely to be stupider than a random Chinese person. We know that by looking at the IQ bell curves, not by looking at genetics. But, of course it would be madness to judge a black business executive on Wall Street as stupider than a homeless Chinese drug addict. The black executive would be on the right tail end of the black distribution, whereas the Chinese homeless meth head would be on the left end of the Asian distribution. Desperately few such people exist--I don't think I have ever seen a homeless Chinese person--and that is why the averages matter.

"Consider the (scientifically unproven) stereotype in the US that Asians have smaller penises - isn't that just a way to demean another group when those caucasians who are racist cannot demean them using IQ (since, according to IQ tests, Asians apparently have a higher IQ)?"

Not proven, but the limited data confirms the stereotype. It is not just a means of insult, but such knowledge is necessary for saving lives. The World Health Organization is not going to fight the spread of HIV by distributing condoms in Nigeria that fit Chinese men. The condoms will likely fit few Nigerians.

"Further, racism leads us to assume that a person fits a stereotype when s/he may not, and causes us to neglect environmental causes for the current differences that exist between races."

You fear the consequences of such knowledge. Not that it is wrong, but it will be misused. I think that is why you should not let the racists lay sole claim to this knowledge. I don't want them to be the only correct people on such matters, but rational people like you can balance the genetic knowledge with the environmental knowledge, to prevent the genetic knowledge from being abused by the racists.

"In any case, I also have yet to see a successful case of a human mating sexually with a chimpanzee. Surely if the human race was already divided into subspecies, fertilisation between different races would have come to a halt."

That is generally true for different species, not for different subspecies. Humans and chimpanzees are two different species, not two different subspecies. Many subspecies most certainly can interbreed with fertile offspring (the example I already gave was Africanized honeybees, a hybrid of European honeybees and African honeybees).

The geneticist Sewell Wright wrote his opinion on human subspecies in 1978, and I attached a page from one of his books, good for a short education on the matter. It is Sewall Wright, 1978, Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Volume 4: Variability within and among Natural Populations, page 439, first page of Chapter 10.

That's the problem with racism - it cherry picks unreliable data to justify dangerous conclusions. What's the odds that external appearance shows that one group has a lower IQ than another? The answer is, none unless there's evidence of a correlation. There are ugly people who are smart and good-looking people who are smart as well, for instance.

Just like you can't cite any data for the stereotype that there are significant differences in penis size between the races. On the other hand, here's a study review that found that there are no significant differences in penis size between races: https://www.bostonmedicalgroup.com/whats-the-average-penis-size. Additionally, the fact that an allegedly smaller penis is perceived negatively (for no cogent reason) in the United States shows that this stereotype was created to demean and not, for instance, to save the world from HIV as you appear to suggest (for that matter, condoms are stretchable anyway). Compare ancient Greece, where smaller penises were perceived as more desirable (https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-ancient-greek-sculptures-small-penises).

In any case, in the course of my work as a criminal defence lawyer in an Asian country I have defended numerous Chinese drug addicts. They simply had a worse environment which caused them to fall into a vicious cycle of wanting to escape their miserable lives.

The fact is that environmental factors play such a huge part that racial differences, even if they exist, are largely negligible. Plant children from a dirt-poor place in Africa in a developed country and they'll almost certainly do better than if they remained where they were. Look at how Botswana does better than the vast majority of African countries - clearly it is good governance that makes the difference and not race.

 

[ApostateAbe]

"External differences do not show anything apart from those differences themselves. It is fallacious to assume that simply because some persons have different physical features and skin colour, then they are necessarily less intelligent (for example)."

When I wrote that "External differences are cues to genetic differences among groups on the whole, even if the only such cue is skin color," I should explain further what I mean. I mean that external genetic differences probably mean that internal genetic differences also exist. If the only difference we could see is skin color, then we would also know that we have pretty good odds that other genetic differences exist among the races, in frequency or on average. But in fact we absolutely know the differences are about much more than skin color, even if we are talking about external differences alone. We know about natural hair style, the number of layers of skin, the nose shape, the lip shape, the skull shape, and height. What would be the odds that these are the only differences and no internal differences exist? A damn near miracle, and of course we already know for certain fact that the internal racial differences also exist the minute we talk to medical doctors, who are quizzed about such differences in their license exams, and it is an everyday part of their jobs. Races differ drastically in many ways on the inside of the body, and it broadly affects medical research, diagnoses and treatments. So, next step: what are the odds that genetically races differ in all of these ways but they are genetically exactly the same inside the skull cavity? Damn near 0%.

That is not to say that we should judge individuals this way. For individuals, it is merely probabilistic. If we are talking about racial intelligence differences and not the cause of them, be the cause genetics or white supremacy, then we know that a random black person is more likely to be stupider than a random Chinese person. We know that by looking at the IQ bell curves, not by looking at genetics. But, of course it would be madness to judge a black business executive on Wall Street as stupider than a homeless Chinese drug addict. The black executive would be on the right tail end of the black distribution, whereas the Chinese homeless meth head would be on the left end of the Asian distribution. Desperately few such people exist--I don't think I have ever seen a homeless Chinese person--and that is why the averages matter.

"Consider the (scientifically unproven) stereotype in the US that Asians have smaller penises - isn't that just a way to demean another group when those caucasians who are racist cannot demean them using IQ (since, according to IQ tests, Asians apparently have a higher IQ)?"

Not proven, but the limited data confirms the stereotype. It is not just a means of insult, but such knowledge is necessary for saving lives. The World Health Organization is not going to fight the spread of HIV by distributing condoms in Nigeria that fit Chinese men. The condoms will likely fit few Nigerians.

"Further, racism leads us to assume that a person fits a stereotype when s/he may not, and causes us to neglect environmental causes for the current differences that exist between races."

You fear the consequences of such knowledge. Not that it is wrong, but it will be misused. I think that is why you should not let the racists lay sole claim to this knowledge. I don't want them to be the only correct people on such matters, but rational people like you can balance the genetic knowledge with the environmental knowledge, to prevent the genetic knowledge from being abused by the racists.

"In any case, I also have yet to see a successful case of a human mating sexually with a chimpanzee. Surely if the human race was already divided into subspecies, fertilisation between different races would have come to a halt."

That is generally true for different species, not for different subspecies. Humans and chimpanzees are two different species, not two different subspecies. Many subspecies most certainly can interbreed with fertile offspring (the example I already gave was Africanized honeybees, a hybrid of European honeybees and African honeybees).

The geneticist Sewell Wright wrote his opinion on human subspecies in 1978, and I attached a page from one of his books, good for a short education on the matter. It is Sewall Wright, 1978, Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Volume 4: Variability within and among Natural Populations, page 439, first page of Chapter 10.

That's the problem with racism - it cherry picks unreliable data to justify dangerous conclusions. What's the odds that external appearance shows that one group has a lower IQ than another? The answer is, none unless there's evidence of a correlation. There are ugly people who are smart and good-looking people who are smart as well, for instance.

Just like you can't cite any data for the stereotype that there are significant differences in penis size between the races. On the other hand, here's a study review that found that there are no significant differences in penis size between races: https://www.bostonmedicalgroup.com/whats-the-average-penis-size. Additionally, the fact that an allegedly smaller penis is perceived negatively (for no cogent reason) in the United States shows that this stereotype was created to demean and not, for instance, to save the world from HIV as you appear to suggest (for that matter, condoms are stretchable anyway). Compare ancient Greece, where smaller penises were perceived as more desirable (https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-ancient-greek-sculptures-small-penises).

In any case, in the course of my work as a criminal defence lawyer in an Asian country I have defended numerous Chinese drug addicts. They simply had a worse environment which caused them to fall into a vicious cycle of wanting to escape their miserable lives.

The fact is that environmental factors play such a huge part that racial differences, even if they exist, are largely negligible. Plant children from a dirt-poor place in Africa in a developed country and they'll almost certainly do better than if they remained where they were. Look at how Botswana does better than the vast majority of African countries - clearly it is good governance that makes the difference and not race.

"What's the odds that external appearance shows that one group has a lower IQ than another? The answer is, none unless there's evidence of a correlation."

Even without a known correlation, the answer would have to be somewhere above 0%. That is because genetic differences in some things tend to mean genetic differences in other things. I think we have a strong ideological interest in presuming genetic sameness, but it just isn't likely on the face. Would we presume that groups of people with external genetic differences in every other respect probably have exactly the same genotypic bodily height, for example? Possible but just not likely.

"Just like you can't cite any data for the stereotype that there are significant differences in penis size between the races. On the other hand, here's a study review that found that there are no significant differences in penis size between races: https://www.bostonmedicalgroup.com/whats-the-average-penis-size."

The "study review" is a pop science article, and you did not need to cite it, because the full text of the original science is online (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bju.13010). Here is what they actually wrote:

"It is not possible from the present meta‐analysis to draw any conclusions about any differences in penile size across different races."

Their claim was a negative claim--uncertainty. Immediately after that quote, they did write that other researchers collected data that confirmed the popular stereotype, but those studies did not meet their stringent inclusion criteria. Like I said, the limited data supports the stereotype.

The following excerpt is from a 1998 publication of the World Health Organization titled, "The Male Latex Condom."

6.4.3 Width

The choice of width of condoms is
important, because it is one of the main factors in
determining whether the condom is easy to put
on, stays on in use, and is comfortable to the user.
(The thinness of the film in association with its
modulus will also play a part.).

Condoms are made in various widths. Based
on studies in Australia, Thailand and the USA,
and the experience of major agencies, the wider
condoms (flat width 52-55 mm) will be preferred
in Australia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, the
Middle East and North America, and the
narrower condoms (47-51 mm) will be preferred
in several Asian countries (see Appendix III).
Other widths are also made for small specialized
markets.

I attached Appendix III. Some of the studies they cite are old (such as the Kinsey data), but it aligns with "the experience of major agencies." They would be mad to presume sameness as though condoms that fit Chinese men will also fit Nigerians. Races have differences. That isn't hateful. That isn't about bullying Asian men. It is saving lives.

 

[ApostateAbe]

There’s learned hatred / bigotry (usually from observing older family members - or mentor figures in general).

Personal experience and over generalization. Eg. One man was mean to me once, therefore all men are bad.

Peer pressure from a group you belong to. You can’t help but start to agree with some of their views to ‘fit in’.

And finally, just unconscious bias. Usually formed from familiarity. Eg. - caucasians are what I’m used to seeing, so anything other than that is disagreeable to a small degree. Could also just be a societal stereotype that holds no merit, but will still influence you. Eg. Women are bad drivers.

This is the only category I would consider “innate”. The others are from poor rationalizing skills, or beliefs that were forced onto you before you could reason. I also consider it innate because of how difficult it is to work around unconscious biases. (And for the most part, do the least amount of harm)*

Each of these categories could be called racism/sexism. It makes it hard to talk to someone about their racism if you mention it, because some are so much worse than others. On one end you have literal hate crimes and violent acts, on the other end, scooting to the corner of an elevator because a person of colour stepped in. It IS a spectrum of some kind though, and racists anywhere on it can almost always point to someone worse than them, and claim they are the racists, not them. Sorry, it is annoying to deal with.

I’m sure there are even other categories I didn’t mention here.

*That isn’t to say it should be disregarded, but extremists ideas and actions should take priority.

Thinking of racism as a spectrum is misleading, in my opinion. The acceptance of some established facts beyond reasonable doubt make you a racist for accepting them. For example, the rate of sexual assault is far higher among black men than among Asian men. If you accept this fact established beyond reasonable doubt, then you are a racist. If you are a woman who uses this knowledge to decide whether or not to get on an elevator with black men, then that would make you even more racist. So, where would that put you on the racism spectrum? Would you attempt to deceive yourself for the sake of sliding further away from the racist end of the spectrum? I don't suggest it. It isn't even a spectrum. It is a messy tangled ideological web with a lot of good ideas and bad ideas woven into it.

 

[Niclmaki]

There’s learned hatred / bigotry (usually from observing older family members - or mentor figures in general).

Personal experience and over generalization. Eg. One man was mean to me once, therefore all men are bad.

Peer pressure from a group you belong to. You can’t help but start to agree with some of their views to ‘fit in’.

And finally, just unconscious bias. Usually formed from familiarity. Eg. - caucasians are what I’m used to seeing, so anything other than that is disagreeable to a small degree. Could also just be a societal stereotype that holds no merit, but will still influence you. Eg. Women are bad drivers.

This is the only category I would consider “innate”. The others are from poor rationalizing skills, or beliefs that were forced onto you before you could reason. I also consider it innate because of how difficult it is to work around unconscious biases. (And for the most part, do the least amount of harm)*

Each of these categories could be called racism/sexism. It makes it hard to talk to someone about their racism if you mention it, because some are so much worse than others. On one end you have literal hate crimes and violent acts, on the other end, scooting to the corner of an elevator because a person of colour stepped in. It IS a spectrum of some kind though, and racists anywhere on it can almost always point to someone worse than them, and claim they are the racists, not them. Sorry, it is annoying to deal with.

I’m sure there are even other categories I didn’t mention here.

*That isn’t to say it should be disregarded, but extremists ideas and actions should take priority.

Thinking of racism as a spectrum is misleading, in my opinion. The acceptance of some established facts beyond reasonable doubt make you a racist for accepting them. For example, the rate of sexual assault is far higher among black men than among Asian men. If you accept this fact established beyond reasonable doubt, then you are a racist. If you are a woman who uses this knowledge to decide whether or not to get on an elevator with black men, then that would make you even more racist. So, where would that put you on the racism spectrum? Would you attempt to deceive yourself for the sake of sliding further away from the racist end of the spectrum? I don't suggest it. It isn't even a spectrum. It is a messy tangled ideological web with a lot of good ideas and bad ideas woven into it.

This is what I’d call “dangerous knowledge”. It is not racist, but society will fight back against it because true racism still exists, and this kind of knowledge is very likely perpetuate it. Most people would draw improper conclusions from such studies and cause more harm. As a judgement call, I would consider it right to keep such knowledge concealed and taboo.

I am sure you mentioned it somewhere in this thread already, but the studies of IQ and race were heavily discounted, discouraged, and ‘debunked’. The professors that did the studies turned into pariahs. Maybe in the future the study can be done again without so much scorn.

 

[ApostateAbe]

There’s learned hatred / bigotry (usually from observing older family members - or mentor figures in general).

Personal experience and over generalization. Eg. One man was mean to me once, therefore all men are bad.

Peer pressure from a group you belong to. You can’t help but start to agree with some of their views to ‘fit in’.

And finally, just unconscious bias. Usually formed from familiarity. Eg. - caucasians are what I’m used to seeing, so anything other than that is disagreeable to a small degree. Could also just be a societal stereotype that holds no merit, but will still influence you. Eg. Women are bad drivers.

This is the only category I would consider “innate”. The others are from poor rationalizing skills, or beliefs that were forced onto you before you could reason. I also consider it innate because of how difficult it is to work around unconscious biases. (And for the most part, do the least amount of harm)*

Each of these categories could be called racism/sexism. It makes it hard to talk to someone about their racism if you mention it, because some are so much worse than others. On one end you have literal hate crimes and violent acts, on the other end, scooting to the corner of an elevator because a person of colour stepped in. It IS a spectrum of some kind though, and racists anywhere on it can almost always point to someone worse than them, and claim they are the racists, not them. Sorry, it is annoying to deal with.

I’m sure there are even other categories I didn’t mention here.

*That isn’t to say it should be disregarded, but extremists ideas and actions should take priority.

Thinking of racism as a spectrum is misleading, in my opinion. The acceptance of some established facts beyond reasonable doubt make you a racist for accepting them. For example, the rate of sexual assault is far higher among black men than among Asian men. If you accept this fact established beyond reasonable doubt, then you are a racist. If you are a woman who uses this knowledge to decide whether or not to get on an elevator with black men, then that would make you even more racist. So, where would that put you on the racism spectrum? Would you attempt to deceive yourself for the sake of sliding further away from the racist end of the spectrum? I don't suggest it. It isn't even a spectrum. It is a messy tangled ideological web with a lot of good ideas and bad ideas woven into it.

This is what I’d call “dangerous knowledge”. It is not racist, but society will fight back against it because true racism still exists, and this kind of knowledge is very likely perpetuate it. Most people would draw improper conclusions from such studies and cause more harm. As a judgement call, I would consider it right to keep such knowledge concealed and taboo.

I am sure you mentioned it somewhere in this thread already, but the studies of IQ and race were heavily discounted, discouraged, and ‘debunked’. The professors that did the studies turned into pariahs. Maybe in the future the study can be done again without so much scorn.

"This is what I’d call “dangerous knowledge”. It is not racist, but society will fight back against it because true racism still exists, and this kind of knowledge is very likely perpetuate it. Most people would draw improper conclusions from such studies and cause more harm. As a judgement call, I would consider it right to keep such knowledge concealed and taboo."

That is the Noble Lie. Theoretically, some Noble Lies may be necessary. Not this one. Here is the problem: we are wearing glasses that distort and muddle our view of all the things the topic touches, and the topic reaches deeply into very many things. It is not just about rationally choosing your elevators. As another example, it is racist to vote to block off the southern border if you think too many poor Latino refugees are genetically stupider and more criminal, yes? Racist for sure, by definition. But, because we think avoiding racism is more important than confronting the actual objective truth, the United States of America is now on course to become another Latin American nation, blending in seamlessly with Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil, generally just as poor, just as dysfunctional, and just as dangerous. Not a single white person in America wants that, though Latinos may be OK with it because it is their people. That is as dangerous as it gets, and we are completely blind to it, because we don't want to be racist. We can't rightly solve problems by making everyone wear glasses that turn the world upside-down. If that is the solution, then the solution is much worse than the initial problem. We can solve problems only by knowing the truth.

"I am sure you mentioned it somewhere in this thread already, but the studies of IQ and race were heavily discounted, discouraged, and ‘debunked’. The professors that did the studies turned into pariahs. Maybe in the future the study can be done again without so much scorn."

The change needs to start now. The science of IQ (human general intelligence) is both the most important and the most scientifically-robust subfield of psychology, immune to the replication crisis, confirmed through a hundred years of criticism and the triangulation of many other knowledge networks including genetics and neuroscience, the hard physical stuff. The people who discount IQ (such as school teachers) in favor of stupid bullshit like "multiple intelligences" need to be loudly and forcefully called out for their stupid bullshit, without holding back, much like what we already do for young-Earth creationists.

 

[Inexorable Username]

Are interested in hearing my opinion?

 

[Inexorable Username]

Mine will differ from yours, but I won't judge you for yours.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Mine will differ from yours, but I won't judge you for yours.

Jesus said, "Don't judge lest ye be judged." That was before the Internet. On the Internet, judgment falls from the sky, judgment blankets everything, and we build judgment forts and get into judgment ball fights.

 

[Inexorable Username]

Mine will differ from yours, but I won't judge you for yours.

Jesus said, "Don't judge lest ye be judged." That was before the Internet. On the Internet, judgment falls from the sky, judgment blankets everything, and we build judgment forts and get into judgment ball fights.

Oh, well. You can judge me if you'd like - I don't care much. But I'm not exactly well-integrated with pop culture so I never got much into the judgement/label-assignment thing.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Mine will differ from yours, but I won't judge you for yours.

Jesus said, "Don't judge lest ye be judged." That was before the Internet. On the Internet, judgment falls from the sky, judgment blankets everything, and we build judgment forts and get into judgment ball fights.

Oh, well. You can judge me if you'd like - I don't care much. But I'm not exactly well-integrated with pop culture so I never got much into the judgement/label-assignment thing.

OK. To answer your question, yes, your opinion is welcome.

 

[Inexorable Username]

Thanks. I no longer feel like giving it.

 

[Inexorable Username]

Jk! I do - but I started cleaning and I have to keep it up, because Peoples and I have a self-discipline thread going and he's putting me to shame.

Plus, I want to make sure my answer is well thought out and such! So I'll respond to this...probably tomorrow.

Thanks for the invitation :3

 

[walfin]

"What's the odds that external appearance shows that one group has a lower IQ than another? The answer is, none unless there's evidence of a correlation."

Even without a known correlation, the answer would have to be somewhere above 0%. That is because genetic differences in some things tend to mean genetic differences in other things. I think we have a strong ideological interest in presuming genetic sameness, but it just isn't likely on the face. Would we presume that groups of people with external genetic differences in every other respect probably have exactly the same genotypic bodily height, for example? Possible but just not likely.

"Just like you can't cite any data for the stereotype that there are significant differences in penis size between the races. On the other hand, here's a study review that found that there are no significant differences in penis size between races: https://www.bostonmedicalgroup.com/whats-the-average-penis-size."

The "study review" is a pop science article, and you did not need to cite it, because the full text of the original science is online (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bju.13010). Here is what they actually wrote:

"It is not possible from the present meta‐analysis to draw any conclusions about any differences in penile size across different races."

Their claim was a negative claim--uncertainty. Immediately after that quote, they did write that other researchers collected data that confirmed the popular stereotype, but those studies did not meet their stringent inclusion criteria. Like I said, the limited data supports the stereotype.

The following excerpt is from a 1998 publication of the World Health Organization titled, "The Male Latex Condom."

6.4.3 Width

The choice of width of condoms is
important, because it is one of the main factors in
determining whether the condom is easy to put
on, stays on in use, and is comfortable to the user.
(The thinness of the film in association with its
modulus will also play a part.).

Condoms are made in various widths. Based
on studies in Australia, Thailand and the USA,
and the experience of major agencies, the wider
condoms (flat width 52-55 mm) will be preferred
in Australia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, the
Middle East and North America, and the
narrower condoms (47-51 mm) will be preferred
in several Asian countries (see Appendix III).
Other widths are also made for small specialized
markets.

I attached Appendix III. Some of the studies they cite are old (such as the Kinsey data), but it aligns with "the experience of major agencies." They would be mad to presume sameness as though condoms that fit Chinese men will also fit Nigerians. Races have differences. That isn't hateful. That isn't about bullying Asian men. It is saving lives.

Firstly, the data is clearly not exhaustive and thus it was not possible to draw any conclusions about differences in penile size between the races. As you have admitted, the data is limited. As such, it certainly cannot be taken to be conclusive evidence. Even based on the Appendix which you attached (which relies on old data), there is a high degree of variability within races, which shows that racial differences are less important than differences between individuals. Anyway, even if your conclusion were true, we don't know what causes the variation in penis sizes - even if there is a (partial) genetic cause, there is likely to be an environmental factor as well. Consider height: it was believed for a long time that height was genetic but we now know that nutrition significantly affects height (https://ourworldindata.org/human-height).

It's not true that it's not about bullying Asian men either. If it wasn't, having a small penis (if it is indeed true that Asian men have smaller penises, which is not admitted) would not be seen as negative, but as a neutral or perhaps even positive fact. Again, I draw your attention to the fact that the ancient Greeks considered a smaller penis to be desirable. That is not the case in the United States.

As regards IQ, it is dangerous to presume that just because a group has a lower average IQ, then the cause of that lower average IQ is genetic. The people who push this ideology are not trying to improve the IQs of Africans (even though IQ is at least partially environmentally caused). They are trying to justify discrimination against Africans (and other races which they believe are lesser) instead. Led to its logical extreme, this would mean the justification of atrocities like genocide and slavery against fellow human beings. I have yet to see any believer in racism (scientific or otherwise) try to find a way to improve the lot of races which they believe are lesser than their own (e.g. funding education for the races which are of lower IQ so they can at least reach their maximum potential IQ). That's because racists are interested in nothing more than preserving unfair advantages which have accrued to their race, which they cannot justify except by resorting to racism.

Anyway, you did not rebut my other points as well.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Firstly, the data is clearly not exhaustive and thus it was not possible to draw any conclusions about differences in penile size between the races. As you have admitted, the data is limited. As such, it certainly cannot be taken to be conclusive evidence. Even based on the Appendix which you attached (which relies on old data), there is a high degree of variability within races, which shows that racial differences are less important than differences between individuals.

You shifted your claim to uncertainty, I do not challenge the uncertainty, and I am done talking about penises. Not that it isn't interesting. You have some peculiar ideas about why modern people don't like small dicks, and I prefer to let that stand. The conversation may devolve into lowbrow ridicule.

Anyway, even if your conclusion were true, we don't know what causes the variation in penis sizes - even if there is a (partial) genetic cause, there is likely to be an environmental factor as well. Consider height: it was believed for a long time that height was genetic but we now know that nutrition significantly affects height (https://ourworldindata.org/human-height).

Variation of height within groups is about 90% genetic. We know this from twin and adoption studies, and the value does not change even after we know that the average height all over the world has risen drastically over the last hundred years or so. It is one of many large secular changes of polygenic traits, including intelligence and lifespan, but height is the most obvious such trait, and I don't think the puzzle can be resolved with the 10% remainder. The only way to explain it all, in my opinion, is with epigenetics in response to the newly safe and plentiful environments. It is still about genetics, but the changed environments triggered secular changes of the genetic expressions, which I expect is an evolutionary mechanism that enables hasty adaptation to a changed environment. It is just my own hypothesis, and I think it is a pretty good one.

As regards IQ, it is dangerous to presume that just because a group has a lower average IQ, then the cause of that lower average IQ is genetic. The people who push this ideology are not trying to improve the IQs of Africans (even though IQ is at least partially environmentally caused). They are trying to justify discrimination against Africans (and other races which they believe are lesser) instead. Led to its logical extreme, this would mean the justification of atrocities like genocide and slavery against fellow human beings. I have yet to see any believer in racism (scientific or otherwise) try to find a way to improve the lot of races which they believe are lesser than their own (e.g. funding education for the races which are of lower IQ so they can at least reach their maximum potential IQ). That's because racists are interested in nothing more than preserving unfair advantages which have accrued to their race, which they cannot justify except by resorting to racism.

I mostly agree. One way or the other, racists are interested in either preserving advantage or bringing advantage to their own race, and there is a strong popular link between that sort of racism and the "scientific racism" which holds that one race's average IQ is different from another because of genetics. You really have to go far out of your way to find some people who believe one and not the other. Those people would be the psychologists who specialize in human intelligence. For an example, I suggest the 2017 book by Richard Haier, The Neuroscience of Intelligence. In Chapter 6 he wrote his opinions on the realities of intelligence differences as follows:

What are the possible policy implications of introducing neurobiology perspectives to research on these problems? Not all individuals have a pattern of cognitive strengths that allow barely minimum success in modern, complex society. This is evident with respect to g and other factors of intelligence. To the extent that different patterns of cognitive strengths and weaknesses are rooted more in neurobiology and genetics than in childhood experience, it is incorrect to blame lack of economic or educational success entirely on poor motivation, poor education, or other social factors. All these things matter, but with respect to intelligence, they do not appear to matter that much, as the weight of evidence indicates.

Here is my political bias. I believe government has a proper role, and a moral imperative, to provide resources for people who lack the cognitive capabilities required for education, jobs, and other opportunities that lead to economic success and increased SES. This goes beyond providing economic opportunities that might be unrealistic for individuals lacking the requisite mental abilities. It goes beyond demanding more complex thinking and higher expectations for every student irrespective of their capabilities (a demand that is likely to accentuate cognitive gaps). It even goes beyond supporting programs for early childhood education, jobs training, affordable childcare, food assistance, and access to higher education. There is no compelling evidence that any of these things increase intelligence, but I support all these efforts because they will help many people advance in other ways and because they are the right thing to do. However, even if this support becomes widely available, there will be many people at the lower end of the g-distribution who do not benefit very much, despite best efforts. Recall from Chapter 1 that the normal distribution of IQ scores with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 estimates that 16% of people will score below an IQ of 85 (the minimum for military service in the USA). In the USA, about 51 million people have IQs lower than 85 through no fault of their own. There are many useful, affirming jobs available for these individuals, usually at low wages, but generally they are not strong candidates for college or for technical training in many vocational areas. Sometimes they are referred to as a permanent underclass, although this term is hardly ever explicitly defined by low intelligence. Poverty and near-poverty for them is a condition that may have some roots in the neurobiology of intelligence beyond anyone’s control.

The sentence you just read is the most provocative sentence in this book. It may be a profoundly inconvenient truth or profoundly wrong. But if scientific data support the concept, is that not a jarring reason to fund supportive programs that do not stigmatize people as lazy or unworthy? Is that not a reason to prioritize neuroscience research on intelligence and how to enhance it? The term “neuro-poverty” is meant to focus on those aspects of poverty that result mostly from the genetic aspects of intelligence. The term may overstate the case. It is a hard and uncomfortable concept, but I hope it gets your attention. This book argues that intelligence is strongly rooted in neurobiology. To the extent that intelligence is a major contributing factor for managing daily life and increasing the probability of life success, neuro-poverty is a concept to consider when thinking about how to ameliorate the serious problems associated with tangible cognitive limitations that characterize many individuals through no fault of their own.

Public policy and social justice debates might be more informed if what we know about intelligence, especially with respect to genetics, is part of the conversation. In the past, attempts to do this were met mostly with acrimony, as evidenced by the fierce criticisms of Arthur Jensen (Jensen, 1969; Snyderman & Rothman, 1988), Richard Herrnstein (1973), and Charles Murray (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Murray, 1995). After Jensen’s 1969 article, both IQ in the Meritocracy and The Bell Curve raised this prospect in considerable detail. Advances in neuroscience research on intelligence now offer a different starting point for discussion. Given that approaches devoid of neuroscience input have failed for 50 years to minimize the root causes of poverty and the problems that go with it, is it not time to consider another perspective?

Here is the second most provocative sentence in this book: The uncomfortable concept of “treating” neuro-poverty by enhancing intelligence based on neurobiology, in my view, affords an alternative, optimistic concept for positive change as neuroscience research advances. This is in contrast to the view that programs which target only social/cultural influences on intelligence can diminish cognitive gaps and overcome biological/genetic influences. The weight of evidence suggests a neuroscience approach might be even more effective as we learn more about the roots of intelligence. I am not arguing that neurobiology alone is the only approach, but it should not be ignored any longer in favor of SES-only approaches. What works best is an empirical question, although political context cannot be ignored. On the political level, the idea of treating neuro-poverty like it is a neurological disorder is supremely naïve. This might change in the long run if neuroscience research ever leads to ways to enhance intelligence, as I believe it will. For now, epigenetics is one concept that might bridge both neuroscience and social science approaches. Nothing will advance epigenetic research faster than identifying specific genes related to intelligence so that the ways environmental factors influence those genes can be determined. There is common ground to discuss and that includes what we know about the neuroscience of intelligence from the weight of empirical evidence. It is time to bring “intelligence” back from a 45-year exile and into reasonable discussions about education and social policies without acrimony.​

It is a good book, and I suggest a full reading of it. It is available as an e-book. The Alt Right is correct about the science, and it is therefore unfortunate that they are nearly the only voices speaking in defense of the science. We need more voices like that of Richard Haier.

 

[walfin]

It is a good book, and I suggest a full reading of it. It is available as an e-book. The Alt Right is correct about the science, and it is therefore unfortunate that they are nearly the only voices speaking in defense of the science. We need more voices like that of Richard Haier.

Now, I haven't read the book you recommended but the excerpt you cited does not mention races at all. It simply stands for the proposition that some persons are more intelligent than others and less intelligent persons are economically disadvantaged. That may likely be true, but that does not mean the alt-right are correct about the science. The alt-right have no room in their ideology for persons who deviate from the average: to them, every single person in another race is inferior, whether in terms of intelligence or otherwise, no ifs, no buts. But like you mentioned, even if the average IQ of Asians is higher than that of Blacks, there may still be individual Blacks who are more intelligent than individual Asians. And who's to say that those with a lower IQ are inferior? The excerpt from Richard Haier suggests that they should not be treated in such a manner.

That said, there are now potential means of enhancing intelligence, although the science is only in its infancy. For instance, I have come across a product that uses neuro-soundwaves to stimulate the brain to enhance speed of thought and forming of neural connections in the brain: http://neurocodesg.com/. Who knows, if groups with lower average IQs have their brains stimulated, they may begin to perform better.

 

[ApostateAbe]

It is a good book, and I suggest a full reading of it. It is available as an e-book. The Alt Right is correct about the science, and it is therefore unfortunate that they are nearly the only voices speaking in defense of the science. We need more voices like that of Richard Haier.

Now, I haven't read the book you recommended but the excerpt you cited does not mention races at all. It simply stands for the proposition that some persons are more intelligent than others and less intelligent persons are economically disadvantaged. That may likely be true, but that does not mean the alt-right are correct about the science. The alt-right have no room in their ideology for persons who deviate from the average: to them, every single person in another race is inferior, whether in terms of intelligence or otherwise, no ifs, no buts. But like you mentioned, even if the average IQ of Asians is higher than that of Blacks, there may still be individual Blacks who are more intelligent than individual Asians. And who's to say that those with a lower IQ are inferior? The excerpt from Richard Haier suggests that they should not be treated in such a manner.

That said, there are now potential means of enhancing intelligence, although the science is only in its infancy. For instance, I have come across a product that uses neuro-soundwaves to stimulate the brain to enhance speed of thought and forming of neural connections in the brain: http://neurocodesg.com/. Who knows, if groups with lower average IQs have their brains stimulated, they may begin to perform better.

I tried looking for ways in which the leading spokesmen get it wrong about the science of intelligence. I could not find any examples. Even David Duke, the most extreme among the Alt Right, gets the science of IQ correct. They openly recognize the intelligence advantage of Asians and Jews, and they openly recognize the IQ diversity within each race. The people who get it drastically wrong seem to be strictly on the other side of the race debates. The Alt Right gets other science wrong, such as climate change and sexual psychology. But, they get the science of IQ completely correct. That would not be a problem, but the progressive well-meaning people of the world are stuck in a dark and tragic morass of delusion. This needs to change, and fast.

I should have explained the background of the excerpt from Haier, because otherwise it looks like he avoided the topic of race and IQ. He didn't. The literature he cited was all about racial hereditarian theory of IQ, especially Jensen, 1969, an article which touched off an era of the science versus the public about race and IQ.


Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[walfin]

Odds are high that you will more quickly associate good things with your own race and evil things with racial outsiders.

I tried looking for ways in which the leading spokesmen get it wrong about the science of intelligence. I could not find any examples. Even David Duke, the most extreme among the Alt Right, gets the science of IQ correct. They openly recognize the intelligence advantage of Asians and Jews, and they openly recognize the IQ diversity within each race. The people who get it drastically wrong seem to be strictly on the other side of the race debates. The Alt Right gets other science wrong, such as climate change and sexual psychology. But, they get the science of IQ completely correct. That would not be a problem, but the progressive well-meaning people of the world are stuck in a dark and tragic morass of delusion. This needs to change, and fast.

I should have explained the background of the excerpt from Haier, because otherwise it looks like he avoided the topic of race and IQ. He didn't. The literature he cited was all about racial hereditarian theory of IQ, especially Jensen, 1969, an article which touched off an era of the science versus the public about race and IQ.


Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

"This is what I’d call “dangerous knowledge”. It is not racist, but society will fight back against it because true racism still exists, and this kind of knowledge is very likely perpetuate it. Most people would draw improper conclusions from such studies and cause more harm. As a judgement call, I would consider it right to keep such knowledge concealed and taboo."

That is the Noble Lie. Theoretically, some Noble Lies may be necessary. Not this one. Here is the problem: we are wearing glasses that distort and muddle our view of all the things the topic touches, and the topic reaches deeply into very many things. It is not just about rationally choosing your elevators. As another example, it is racist to vote to block off the southern border if you think too many poor Latino refugees are genetically stupider and more criminal, yes? Racist for sure, by definition. But, because we think avoiding racism is more important than confronting the actual objective truth, the United States of America is now on course to become another Latin American nation, blending in seamlessly with Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil, generally just as poor, just as dysfunctional, and just as dangerous. Not a single white person in America wants that, though Latinos may be OK with it because it is their people. That is as dangerous as it gets, and we are completely blind to it, because we don't want to be racist. We can't rightly solve problems by making everyone wear glasses that turn the world upside-down. If that is the solution, then the solution is much worse than the initial problem. We can solve problems only by knowing the truth.

"I am sure you mentioned it somewhere in this thread already, but the studies of IQ and race were heavily discounted, discouraged, and ‘debunked’. The professors that did the studies turned into pariahs. Maybe in the future the study can be done again without so much scorn."

The change needs to start now. The science of IQ (human general intelligence) is both the most important and the most scientifically-robust subfield of psychology, immune to the replication crisis, confirmed through a hundred years of criticism and the triangulation of many other knowledge networks including genetics and neuroscience, the hard physical stuff. The people who discount IQ (such as school teachers) in favor of stupid bullshit like "multiple intelligences" need to be loudly and forcefully called out for their stupid bullshit, without holding back, much like what we already do for young-Earth creationists.

Bringing the topic back to your original post, the problem is that racism is more than just the belief that racial differences exist. It involves attributing evil to racial outsiders. And that's precisely what you've shown in your post which attributes evil to Latinos. If you believed that a group has a lower IQ and therefore should be helped, then the motivation would be different. There are lots of people who are advocating for reduced Latino and Black immigration into the United States, but I don't see anyone advocating increased Asian immigration despite the available data reflecting that Asians may have a higher average IQ. This shows that racism is primarily about inciting hatred against other groups of people who can easily be distinguished by their physical features, by those who cannot justify the institutional advantages they enjoy except by demeaning others.

Even if one believes that certain racial groups may have a lower average IQ, it does not automatically follow that it is innate to dislike those races. Case in point - my nephew (this is true) has a lower IQ than the average human as he is intellectually disabled (so presumably he would be at the left tail end of the ethnic Chinese IQ spectrum according to you). He is not a meth head. He is not homeless as his parents are taking care of him. I do not despise him despite his medically certified lower IQ. So why should it be natural that I would attribute evil traits to sub-Saharan Africans even if it were true that they have a lower IQ? Ultimately all of us came from a common ancestor.