'Science's Last Taboo'

[Rummy]

So, I sort of expected a thread on this already but I guess there isn't one. I'd been seeing the adverts but not cared then I saw one and sort of did and wanted to catch up on all the ones I'd missed only to find it hadn't actually started yet and in fact starts tonight.

 

Anyone interested in it? With the recent political correctness thread and the nick griffin on qt one, I should think this series of programmes shall make for good threading material!

 

 

(For those unaware, as this doesn't really indicated it at all, The 'Last Taboo' is that of Race, and it's a whole series of programmes planned to air on Channel 4, I believe there's like 3/4 of them this week, with the first due tonight at 9pm on Channel 4 entitled Race and Intelligence)

[Wesley]

This will be very interesting.

 

I'll save any judgement about the validity of it until I've watched the programme.

 

But...

 

One thing I will say.

 

Is what purpose will this actually serve?

 

I mean: Science for science sake is all good and important.

 

But...

 

What good could ever come out of proving that one race is superior in terms of IQ.

 

Plus: IQ testing is a pack of shit.

[Nolan]

I think I can accurately say that Race and Intelligence do not correlate.

[Pyxis]

What good could ever come out of proving that one race is superior in terms of IQ.

 

Plus: IQ testing is a pack of shit.

 

Agreed. A popular belief is that East Asians have the highest IQs, but their countries' societies are broken in so many ways. IQ scores mean nothing to me and they wouldn't alter my perception of different races.

 

A test that claims to measure your intelligence, but doesn't test you on your knowledge or wisdom is stupid...

[jayseven]

SO the show's over now. Did anyone watch it? What's the next especial in the series?

[Shino]

We've been thought through out our lifes that every race is the same and skin colour is a minimal difference between humans, but we can't deny that black people are more physically fit or that Asians have a smaller penis in average, and it wouldn't be surprising if there is differences in intelligence too. BUT with that said, this differences between race requires extreme amounts of work and effort from an individual to be noticeable.

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

Black people are more physically fit??? sauce please. And by that I don't mean based on your observations or what you see on tv.

 

The main driving force of intelligence imo is environment, and THEN genetics. When you are faced with problems the human instinct is to overcome it. Put 2 creatures in a pond of water, both are the same biologically. In one pond food is so abundunt the creature doesn't have to do much but in the other food is hidden and on top of that the creature is hunted by pedators. If both creatures both survived to this day, my money is on the creature with the most problems to solve to be the most intelligent.

[Nolan]

If both creatures both survived to this day, my money is on the creature with the most problems to solve to be the most intelligent.

Depends on how you measure intelligence. A gang from teh ghetto will have more street smarts, but they'll likely be below average when it comes to conventional knowledge, sometihng like telling the time on an analog watch/clock may escape them.

[Wesley]

...well, it's not that black people are physically more "fit".

 

Black people can develop muscle tissue faster, they have slightly heavier bones and some other small differences.

 

This is why you see a lot of great black athletes in sports such as running.

 

But hardly any in swimming.

 

I have no source for this apart from old A Level text books.

 

Sorry.

 

Anyway, the programme was pretty fantastic but a lot of it did start to swish over my head because I wasn't paying enough attention (too busy making custard).

 

But I think the end conclusion is pretty much what I thought about the whole subject anyway.

 

The next in the series is about coloured people (wait... is it "ok" to say coloured?) who have their skin bleached.

 

Maybe this thread can be re-named to something else so we can talk about all the programmes in here?

 

I'm really looking forward to the episode about whether you're a racist or not.

 

I worry all the time that I'm a racist.

 

I come from fen lands where I was actually contracted at birth to marry my cousin; but managed to escape (to Huddersfield; which isn't much better really).

 

So I think the first coloured (again, is that bad?) person I saw was probably when I was around 8, in McDonalds, and I was fucking amazed.

 

But, anyway, I worry I'm a racist because now I live in an area where I see more ethnic groups than white people (which is better, white people are so plain), and I worry about things like how long to look at that person.

 

If I don't look will they think, "Racist bastard didn't even look at me."

 

If I look too long will they think, "What you staring at Racist?"

 

If I only glance will they think, "Couldn't you bare to look at my black face?!"

 

But I guess that's completely stupid.

 

When I know exactly what they're really thinking: "Look at that podgy, quazeyed geek, who can't seem to look at one thing for more than a split second."

[jayseven]

Black people are more physically fit??? sauce please. And by that I don't mean based on your observations or what you see on tv.

 

The main driving force of intelligence imo is environment, and THEN genetics. When you are faced with problems the human instinct is to overcome it. Put 2 creatures in a pond of water, both are the same biologically. In one pond food is so abundunt the creature doesn't have to do much but in the other food is hidden and on top of that the creature is hunted by pedators. If both creatures both survived to this day, my money is on the creature with the most problems to solve to be the most intelligent.

 

I like your analogy But if we are to pursue this race debate then simply when did we stop evolving? If our skin altered due to environmental conditions, then what is to say that one race had a different set of 'problems' to solve than another?

 

(personally I don't think intelligence is really all that importance in a commercial, money-driven world. If we were all about attaining harmony and solving world hunger and all that, then yeah, being smart would be roxor)

[Paj!]

But, anyway, I worry I'm a racist because now I live in an area where I see more ethnic groups than white people (which is better, white people are so plain), and I worry about things like how long to look at that person.

 

If I don't look will they think, "Racist bastard didn't even look at me."

 

If I look too long will they think, "What you staring at Racist?"

 

If I only glance will they think, "Couldn't you bare to look at my black face?!"

 

But I guess that's completely stupid.

 

When I know exactly what they're really thinking: "Look at that podgy, quazeyed geek, who can't seem to look at one thing for more than a split second."

 

I love.

 

I do hate how there's never really been a defined way of "being racist" and "not being racist". I didn't know for years that "coloured" was supposedly offensive (not that I used it, but I heard it used in a non-negative way).

 

But in Edinburgh, where there are very few ethnic groups in comparison to white people, I don't think pointing a person out by the colour of their skin in a crowd or whatever can really be frowned upon...is that offensive? I'm so confused. It's not like it's a lie or anything...

[Wesley]

Another thing that worries me is that I often get annoyed with people.

 

Well, I always get annoyed with lots of people.

 

Although I try my hardest to get over it, because it's clearly me being the idiot.

 

And when I get annoyed with people often remarks that may be considered racist slip out (in my head).

 

But these remarks are, in my mind at least, no different from when a horrible remark about someone's looks, clothes, weight, etc. etc. slips out.

 

They're no real reflection of what my true opinion is.

 

Just to demonstrate what I mean:

 

Earlier today some guy with glasses nearly bumped into me and clearly didn't give a crap.

 

And in my head I thought, "I hope you bump into someone, fall over and land on your face; causing your glasses to smash into your eyes and blind you you 4 eyed TWAT!"

 

All in my head though, I am after all coward.

 

But all this was said while I was pushing my own glasses up.

 

So sometimes something that would be considered racist can pop into my mind.

 

I hate it.

 

I wish it wouldn't.

 

But just as much as I wish the other things about some poor bugger wouldn't pop into my head.

 

Hum...

 

I need to watch that programme and maybe hand myself into the police for being a racist.

[Chi019]

The problem with the documentary is that they commit the Lewontin fallacy to make their argument.

 

That is that there is greater variation within groups than between them. Cambridge geneticist AWF Edwards debunked this in a 2003 paper.

 

Basically, while it is correct for individual genes, this overlooks the correlations and the fact genes vary in frequency across groups.

 

Armand Leroi explains the fallacy here:

 

"The dominance of the social construct theory can be traced to a 1972 article by Dr. Richard Lewontin, a Harvard geneticist, who wrote that most human genetic variation can be found within any given "race." If one looked at genes rather than faces, he claimed, the difference between an African and a European would be scarcely greater than the difference between any two Europeans. A few years later he wrote that the continued popularity of race as an idea was an "indication of the power of socioeconomically based ideology over the supposed objectivity of knowledge." Most scientists are thoughtful, liberal-minded and socially aware people. It was just what they wanted to hear.

 

Three decades later, it seems that Dr. Lewontin's facts were correct, and have been abundantly confirmed by ever better techniques of detecting genetic variety. His reasoning, however, was wrong. His error was an elementary one, but such was the appeal of his argument that it was only a couple of years ago that a Cambridge University statistician, A. W. F. Edwards, put his finger on it.

 

The error is easily illustrated. If one were asked to judge the ancestry of 100 New Yorkers, one could look at the color of their skin. That would do much to single out the Europeans, but little to distinguish the Senegalese from the Solomon Islanders. The same is true for any other feature of our bodies. The shapes of our eyes, noses and skulls; the color of our eyes and our hair; the heaviness, height and hairiness of our bodies are all, individually, poor guides to ancestry.

 

But this is not true when the features are taken together. Certain skin colors tend to go with certain kinds of eyes, noses, skulls and bodies. When we glance at a stranger's face we use those associations to infer what continent, or even what country, he or his ancestors came from - and we usually get it right. To put it more abstractly, human physical variation is correlated; and correlations contain information.

 

Genetic variants that aren't written on our faces, but that can be detected only in the genome, show similar correlations. It is these correlations that Dr. Lewontin seems to have ignored. In essence, he looked at one gene at a time and failed to see races. But if many - a few hundred - variable genes are considered simultaneously, then it is very easy to do so. Indeed, a 2002 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Stanford showed that if a sample of people from around the world are sorted by computer into five groups on the basis of genetic similarity, the groups that emerge are native to Europe, East Asia, Africa, America and Australasia - more or less the major races of traditional anthropology. "

 

nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html?pagewanted=2

 

Steve Hsu also explains this here and that as further genome sequencing becomes available more information on group differences will come to light:

 

"There is no strong evidence yet for specific gene variants (alleles) that lead to group differences (differences between clusters) in behavior or intelligence, but progress on the genomic side of this question will be rapid in coming years, as the price to sequence a genome is dropping at an exponential rate.

 

What seems to be true (from preliminary studies) is that the gene variants that were under strong selection (reached fixation) over the last 10k years are different in different clusters. That is, the way that modern people in each cluster differ, due to natural selection, from their own ancestors 10k years ago is not the same in each cluster -- we have been, at least at the genetic level, experiencing divergent evolution.

 

In fact, recent research suggests that 7% or more of all our genes are mutant versions that replaced earlier variants through natural selection over the last tens of thousands of years. There was little gene flow between continental clusters ("races") during that period, so there is circumstantial evidence for group differences beyond the already established ones (superficial appearance, disease resistance).

 

infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for-race.html

 

"Dec. 10, 2007 - Researchers discovered genetic evidence that human evolution is speeding up - and has not halted or proceeded at a constant rate, as had been thought - indicating that humans on different continents are becoming increasingly different.

 

"We used a new genomic technology to show that humans are evolving rapidly, and that the pace of change has accelerated a lot in the last 40,000 years, especially since the end of the Ice Age roughly 10,000 years ago," says research team leader Henry Harpending, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.

 

Harpending says there are provocative implications from the study, published online Monday, Dec. 10 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

 

"We aren't the same as people even 1,000 or 2,000 years ago," he says, which may explain, for example, part of the difference between Viking invaders and their peaceful Swedish descendants. "The dogma has been these are cultural fluctuations, but almost any Temperament trait you look at is under strong genetic influence."

 

 

"Human races are evolving away from each other," Harpending says. "Genes are evolving fast in Europe, Asia and Africa, but almost all of these are unique to their continent of origin. We are getting less alike, not merging into a single, mixed humanity." He says that is happening because humans dispersed from Africa to other regions 40,000 years ago, "and there has not been much flow of genes between the regions since then."

 

unews.utah.edu/p/?r=120607-1

Edited October 27, 2009 by Chi019
Automerged Doublepost

[jayseven]

Hey, new poster. Get to grips with the quote tags and I think I'll look forward to more of your posts

[Rummy]

Yeah, I got far too bored with that too quick, too much...stuff. Break it down, sum it up in a paragraph, I'm brown, and not that smart :p

[Wesley]

Break it down, sum it up in a paragraph, I'm brown, and not that smart :p

 

*bumps fist*

 

I hear ya' bro.

 

Okay, I'm not brown.

 

But that was the funniest thing I've read all day (although it is 10am).

[navarre]

It was an interesting show that raised some good points. Any scientist who still believes white people are more intelligent than black people needs to meet some of the white friends I have. Then they'll change their mind. The next show is on tonight and is at 10 on Channel 4. I think from memory it's about how ethnic minorities try to look white to fit in to a predominantly white society.

[Rummy]

*bumps fist*

 

I hear ya' bro.

 

Okay, I'm not brown.

 

But that was the funniest thing I've read all day (although it is 10am).

 

Racist. jokes<3

 

Seems BBC1 has something called 'Make Me White' on during this that tackles a similar sort of issue, shame I'm gonna have to miss that one. Looks more like a sort of personal take on it by some asian(south) lass going by the blurb in the guide...

[Pyxis]

I watched it, but I didn't really like it..

 

The guy seemed to be more like a black man on a mission than an ubiased person actually wanting to get to the truth of the matter. I agreed with the conclusion though, especially when it comes to Chinese people and how they are driven to do well at school. The size of your brain isn't really important if you have the will power to achieve something.

 

Culture is what really shapes people, but then you could point out that those different cultures correlate with race, hehe.. If we are naturally lazy, at least we can do something about that.

[Rummy]

Rule 0 of statistics: Correlation is not causation.

 

I've well failed at watching, like a pussy I couldn't handle the surgery scenes and switched over the BBC1 programme, which was interesting, it's pretty south asian/indian focused, and their desire to be lighter, it's pretty cool, got a slight more personal touch. I'll watch this on 4od later though. It was a shame seeing the people who were so insecure about themselves and where they came from, though

[Ashley]

I watched (most of) "Is being mixed race better?" (or whatever it was called) last night. It was an interesting hypothesis but I wish they'd do a follow up exploring the sociological ramifications.

[Paj!]

My mum once said/says that she always thought mixed-race people were more beautiful.

 

Which is a very fragile statement, as "mixed-race" means many different things/combinations. Though what I really think she finds so beautiful is white mixed with other skin "colours".

[Ashley]

Well they were talking about potential health benefits, although beauty (through symmetry) did come up.

 

I have become more of a xenophile lately, but that's more libido than science.

[MoogleViper]

My mum once said/says that she always thought mixed-race people were more beautiful.

 

Which is a very fragile statement, as "mixed-race" means many different things/combinations. Though what I really think she finds so beautiful is white mixed with other skin "colours".

 

Actually I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that mixed race people are generally considered to be more attractive. Something about not having extreme features or something.

[Emasher]

Black people are more physically fit??? sauce please. And by that I don't mean based on your observations or what you see on tv.

 

The main driving force of intelligence imo is environment, and THEN genetics. When you are faced with problems the human instinct is to overcome it. Put 2 creatures in a pond of water, both are the same biologically. In one pond food is so abundunt the creature doesn't have to do much but in the other food is hidden and on top of that the creature is hunted by pedators. If both creatures both survived to this day, my money is on the creature with the most problems to solve to be the most intelligent.

 

This. For the most part, here in Canada anyway, east asian immigrants tend to be exceptionally smart, because their parents practically force them to be. In china, its so hard to get into University that the parents put pressure on their children to do well in school. There's a term thats starting to be used now called "asian fail" which is used by east asian children to describe the way that if they get marks under 90%, or 95% in some cases, they get punished. I've heard about one girl who had to kneel down on raw rice for an entire evening, for getting a mark that many people would be called "nerd" for achieving. It could be down to genetics, but its mostly down to their parents harshness.