Scientific Racism & Racial Theory

[Mole]

My heart and my liver are not where they are supposed to be...

I am sure you're heart's in the right place.

 

[01011010]

You can tell your friend...

The voice of empirical reason.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

My Psychology textbook says that as of 2000, 91% of all research on psychology was published in Europe or North America.

I imagine that has a profound effect.

 

[Anja]

Certainly climate must play a part in development of countries.

 

[Mole]

My Psychology textbook says that as of 2000, 91% of all research on psychology was published in Europe or North America.

And the very word, "psyche", comes from the Ancient Greek and it means, "soul".

 

[Mole]

Certainly climate must play a part in development of countries.

They keep telling us that the country, that is the climate and the environment, have the decisive effect on the Australian character.

But it is as plain as the nose on your face that we are a polity.

Our polity was formed during the Enlightenment and continues successfully day by day.

But the Romantics among us want to believe we are formed by the country itself.

They even throw paleolithic culture in our faces and say that we don't own the country but the country owns us.

But the prosaic truth is that paleolithic culture is over and Australia is now a successful polity.

 

[heart]

But the prosaic truth is that paleolithic culture is over and Australia is now a successful polity.

So said the sun, but the moon disagreed. They have to have it one or the other to be happy and humans suffer torn between them.

 

[Ezra]

Alright, thanks for the inquiries. Like I've said, its a long one, but I'll try to summarize it.

[I should note, after reading Victor's post below, that the following doesn't deal with the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution etc. -- probably more up to the decline of the Roman Empire, but it is enough to illustrate the point]

Now, civilization has its roots in hunter-gatherer societies, basically the first form of civilization that ever existed. Tens of thousands BC. This is the timeframe where we set up (or find) shelter to the best of our ability, hunt animals, and try to live off them. However, this kind of lifestyle doesn't really allow for a sedentary, "settled" society, because eventually the amount of wildlife that can be hunted go down, and we need to move lest we starve. Keep in mind that during this time we're still made of tribes, and we still interact with each other and other tribes. This is important, because eventually, with time (a lot of time!), we learn a very important thing -- planting seeds. This is due to humans' learning (after all -- all this time, we observe nature's processes) and capacity for problem-solving. And eventually we come to a point where we realize that instead of being nature's slave and running off to find food, we can stay where we are and try to make nature work for us.

This is agriculture. Agriculture is critical, because it allows for a settled society. How is this important? Well, in a settled, agricultural society, two concepts appear: Divison of labor and food surplus. Basically, the society is divided into a class-system with administrators, warriors, artisans, peasants, etc. All of them have their own responsibilities, and all of them possess certain skills that make them belong to their class. Food surplus is even more important -- It's basically extra food that can be stored for the future (ensures longevity), but more importantly, it's potential tax and thereby, currency. So what happens is that, the artisan class (which is a very general term, think of the average "citizen"), over a very, very long time, produces work. Discusses things. Invents new technologies. Trades stuff, also ideas, commercializes professions. (especially around Greece and the like) Meanwhile the administrators keep the show running by taxing the peasants' extra food all this time, which is then redistributed. I'm greatly simplifying here. So as a result, humanity keeps on solving more and more problems. New tools are fashioned, new systems designed. Intellect develops greatly.

Africa, for the most part, doesn't possess the same kind of geographical advantage Europe does. Irrigation techniques made European farming possible, and irrigation needs rivers. But Africa: The lands are rather infertile, arid, there are a lot of deserts too. Quite a few rivers, you're pretty much in trouble if you're stuck inland. The temperatures are maddeningly hot. Both bad news for any farming and the people. Basically, the guys down there are cheated out of the above fun. They miss the train, and keep on being hunter-gatherers. Which shouldn't be news, we've all heard about "African tribes" one time or another. Same deal. It might sound prosaic, and I have simplified greatly, but this is pretty much the reason why they stagnated. Keep in mind that this process of honing our intellect and problem solving, takes many, many thousands of years. Agriculture was a key catalyst in speeding it up, though.

Good answer. I have a book to read by Jared Diamond called Guns, Germs and Steel. I believe he basically attributes Africa's stagnation to geopolitical issues, which is pretty intuitive.

Good question.

For 200,000 years we lived in a spoken culture.

A spoken culture is learnt intuitively and gives rise to intuitive habits of thought, such as the Sun goes round the Earth.

However in 1440 the printing press was invented in Europe and gave rise to the dream of universal literacy.

However almost no one learns to read and write naturally and intuitively. In fact we are compelled by law to attend a special institution with specially trained staff, in order to learn to read and write.

So learning to read and write is counter-intuitive and give rise to counter-intuitive habits of thought - such as the Earth goes round the Sun.

And counter-intuitive literacy gave rise to the Enlightenment -

• And Astrology was replaced by Astronomy.
• Alchemy was replaced by Chemistry.
• Creationism was replaced by the Origin of Species.
• Exorcism was replaced by Psychiatry.
• The encyclopaedia replaced ignorance.
• Magic and sorcery were replaced by technology.
• Medicine replaced superstition.
• Usury was replaced by Adam Smith's, "The Wealth of Nations".
• Institutional slavery was abolished for the first time in human history by the House of Commons in 1833.
• Women gained their emancipation in the 20th Century.
• And in the last 15 years, child sexual abuse was prosecuted for the first time in our Criminal Courts.
• Nazism was defeated.
• And Communism was defeated.
• And Fascism was overcome.
• And racism was replaced by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• Free Speech replaced ideology.
• And the Church was separated from the State.
• And we all became equal under the Law.
• And beliefs based on evidence replaced beliefs based on divine revelation.
• And the Divine Right of Kings was replaced by Democracy.

So it was the Enlightenment that created Europe.

And it is instructive to look at those who oppose the Enlightenment today. They are Islamists, Marxists, Romantic tribalists and the New Age.

And most interesting MBTI is part of the New Age Movement.

In fact a war called Jihad has been declared on the Enlightenment and on us.

And it is in our interest as well as our moral duty to defend the Enlightenment and ourselves.

Interesting ideas, although I'm not sure I agree with your latter comments. They seem a bit simplistic.

You can tell your friend he hasn't understood a single point of the evolution theory, since every living beings on Earth are just "as evolved" as any other one, because their lineages have managed to survive so far.

[...]

Furthermore, while speaking of us, no living man is closer to "apes" than the other, unless you want to mean than we all are a subspecies of chimpanzees (technically, we are). We can say every hominoids diverged from simians exactly at the same moment. Again, this proves that your so-called friend is just prejudiced, and hasn't understood a word of what "evolutionary science" or phylogenetics are.

What you've done here is assert that my friend is wrong because he is. You haven't actually provided any reasoning as to why he's wrong. You should have structured your post thus:

"Your friend is wrong because evidence shows that x"

Rather than:

"Your friend is wrong because x" [x being easily refutable without evidence which you do not have].

 

[Blackmail!]

You haven't actually provided any reasoning as to why he's wrong.

It simply means you haven't read.

Or rather, that you do not want to integrate facts that contradict your own biases. So you skip them, you say they don't exist.

You should learn phylogenetics instead, and try to figure out how this science works.

 

[lowtech redneck]

Anyone else notice that the people on this forum who would allegedly benifit the most from a supposed genetic hierarchy (those with East Asian and Ashkenazi heritage) based on "scientific racism" are the same people who have put forth the most comprehensive and credible rebuttals? Maybe Ezra should take that as a hint....

Anyway, the examples of East Asian and Ashkenazi (though the latter MAY in fact have a SLIGHT genetic edge in terms of IQ on account of the holocaust combined with relatively closed courtship opportunities after the fact) are easily explained by cultural upbringing; the Chinese writing system (which influenced other East Asian writing systems) is absurdly inefficient (albeit useful as a mechanism for integration), requiring children to undergo extensive early childhood education simply to read the language. Over time, the culture developed to facilitate this, in myriad subtle and unpurposeful ways, so that products of chinese culture are brought up in an environment conducive to IQ development. The same thing applies to Ashkenazis (disproportionately descended from professional classes, due to both midieval discrimination and the holocaust), who over the centuries were raised from an early age to enter professions requiring vast amounts of knowledge, necessitating extensive early childhood education. I think virtually any other ethnic or "racial" disparities can be attributed to differences in early childhood development, in terms of education, nutrition, and culture.

 

[DigitalMethod]

Everyone has the potential to reach any goal set in front of them, any standard society has created, the ability to prove themselves equal. Unless a handicap is in place such as retardation.

So why does it matter?

 

[Didums]

To make it simple: Evolution is shaped like a tree with branches, not like a ladder.

 

[Qre:us]

The Day Ezra massacred the Theory of Evolution

The subject I'm most interested in is race and intelligence. I want to know whether or not there is (even a rough) correlation between race and intelligence. I read about comments made by James Watson, a distinguished scientist, a few months ago. The first obstacle encountered is to get past all the moronically subjective and fabricated crap various people have attributed to the scientist as having said. The second obstacle is deciding whether or not his comments are true or not - is there actually a correlation between race and intelligence?

First off, it is very much so an excursion in how NOT to fence-sit, and how best to be subjective, when you take James Watson's inquiry re: intelligence and race, to extrapolate to the whole continent of Africa.

Cuz:
1) It is pretty obscure and ridiculous to interpret that, as a WHOLE continent, there is genetic inferiority in terms of intelligence....you would have to show how exactly the WHOLE is contained (what are its parameters)
2) What is race? Esp. as a contained unit within Africa? E.g., egyptians
3) Evolution is SLOW AS MOLASSES. Intelligence, at the level of human group differences, when quantified (most used - IQ testing), would point towards the opposite of genetics, because as a whole, we are 'smarter' (on avg) than we were 40 or even 50 years ago. This time frame is too small for evolution.
Humans are like maggots' maggots within the context of evolution & its timescale.

4) As such, differences rising to firstly, have distinct 'races' and secondly, have them statistically significantly differ on intelligence...goes against any intuition one has about the workings of genetics and evolution.

Firstly, I need to define what I understand to be race. A lot of people (including me) see "race" as being "the human race" - that is every human being. However, another view which I see as perfectly legitimate is the view that there are different races within humankind. When people like Watson use "race", they are talking about whites, blacks, browns and yellows, and this is what I'm interested in.

And....there's your commentary to my inquiry: what is race?

In order to look at race from a biological perspective, one would have to look at phenotypic differences. Most evidence show that rather than a geographic cluster, we see a cline, meaning there's gradual changes in allele frequencies from place to place. I.e., we cannot see something that is inherent to a geographically-bound parameter, but rather due to a change in the envt. across the species' geographic range. The change is due to more pinpoint factors (such as change in environment) than at any global scale, like, a continent. (unless you think all of Africa's environment is the same).

For your edification:
Serre, D. & Paabo, S. (2004). Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity Within and Among Continents. Genome Research, 14, 1679-1685.

Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity Within and Among Continents — Genome Research

{dunno if you can access the article, as I am under my school's proxy server & have access}


Secondly,

Another view, propounded by my housemate (who is a scientist (albeit a chemist rather than a biologist, which his father is)), is that there is a single human race, but that black people are less evolved than other types of people (I will call them "races" for simplicity's sake). This is, according to him, because black people are biologically closer to apes (from which every human being evolved) than other races. Think about the logic of this: apes -> black people -> white people. He backs this claim up by explaining that Africans cannot rule themselves, and are better with white rule e.g. Zimbabwe, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone and so on and so forth. I realise that this looks backed up by irrational prejudice (and indeed I do think it is, and he actually recognises that it is), but I do think he has a valid point which needs to be properly challenged instead of just being dumped in the bin. Now, I have a few problems with this which I shall outline.

You are commenting on evolution and using culturallly prescribed subjective words (along with a host of other misinformation). That's a fallacy (along with your fallacy of appealing to 'authority').

Mistakes:
1) Humans did not evolve from apes. Humans ARE apes, in scientific terms.
Ape - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1a) if in colloquial jargon you wanna speak of the 'apes', it is STILL an error to say Humans evolved from apes. We shared a common ancestor long ago. We didn't evolve from them. Difference. note it.

2) There is no such thing as "MORE EVOLVED" when commenting on and contrasting any species that are currently living today. This is a ridiculous assertion if you understood even a fraction of evolutionary theory. All species, living in their present state, are more evolved than whatever came before them in their evolutionary line. There is no species that can be ---> another, and have both the species living side-by-side, at present. THIS WOULD THEN NOT BE EVOLUTIONARY THEORY.

3) I have never seen any scientific proof that says black people are closer to 'apes' (cuz, well, back to 1) we, ALL people, not just blacks, are apes)

4) There is no scientific justification of why the 'end' line of evolution is white people....as most 'white people' have the greatest variety in terms of ancestral phenotypes.

The rest of your posts have been tackled by others, esp. w/ regards to the 'demise of Africa' so I'll end here for now.


* please note: fence-sitting may be something you want to practice more than you preach, because as it stands, you have little to no understanding of what it looks like on either side of the fence. Let alone, then, make an informed choice for the middleground.

 

[Feops]

To make it simple: Evolution is shaped like a tree with branches, not like a ladder.

With frequent pruning

 

[sculpting]

James Watson[/url], a distinguished scientist, a few months ago. The first obstacle encountered is to get past all the moronically subjective and fabricated crap various people have attributed to the scientist as having said.

This is, according to him, because black people are biologically closer to apes (from which every human being evolved) than other races. Think about the logic of this: apes -> black people -> white people. He backs this claim up by explaining that Africans cannot rule themselves, and are better with white rule e.g. Zimbabwe, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone and so on and so forth.

1) Watson is considered a fcking jerk by most scientists and a loon on top of that. Jst FYI as his ideas are not taken seriously scientifically. Crick was a really awsome guy but watson is a jerk

2) Africans actually are more gentically diverse from one another than when comparing the avarage african to the avarage north american. I in texas white as a lily could be more closly related genetically to the guy in the sudan than thee black guy in the next town. Africans did not stop evolving when the first migrants moved up into eurasia (actualyy that has been happeneing for about 100,000 years in waves). Instead they kept evolving gentically just like the rest of us. In northern eurpoe the selective pressure for melanin content was not present-actually likely selected against in low light climates given our need for vitamin D sysnthesis.

IQ does have genetic components but being too smart makes you useless and social-economic factors have a much larger influence on eventual social status

 

[01011010]

It simply means you haven't read.

You should learn phylogenetics instead, and try to figure out how this science works.

I understand. Which is why your explanation makes perfect sense to me, but not everyone is educated in that field of knowledge. Too bad.

With frequent pruning

That's how it should be. Unfortunately, modern medicine is allowing some individuals to live, that wouldn't be able to otherwise.

 

[CrystalViolet]

There are slight differences in biochemistry, Blood cell distrubitons between "races", as well as variations in red cell markers (protien and sugar coatings on the surface of red cells), but this tends to be more related to geographical distribution than race, but I fail to see how this reflects in levels of intelligence as most of these differences are due to exposure of environmental factors (such as nutrition, types of infections etc) over thousands of years.
As various people have stated in various different ways, it is environmental, and cultural factors that affect intelligence, not "race".
I also believe that perhaps you are working from a narrow definition of intelligence, as there are many different types. I won't reiterate what others have said, but I believe they explained more concisely than I would have.