I suggest when toshiromiballza comes back with the racist Bell Curve theories he was posting a previous thread, you just ignore it rather than posting any papers. There's no need to even entertain the idea.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I'm not necessarily in favor of AA, but I have *never* heard anyone make the argument that AA is needed because people from poorer backgrounds are less intelligent. In fact, that's really the *opposite* of the intent of AA, which says that you need AA to get the people who are just as intelligent but face discrimination because of race or class background.

Which is just a politically correct excuse for the harsh reality that they ARE less intelligent in the majority of cases.

yudantaiteki Wrote:AA isn't even really relevant to this discussion because AA isn't supposed to be about making up huge gaps, but (in theory) is supposed to say that if you have a big pool of nearly equal candidates, you should not just take all the whites. Maybe that's not how it always comes out in practice, but I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that you should use AA to take a vastly underqualified minority in favor of a very qualified white person.

If you have a pool of "nearly equal" candidates, you take the ones with the best scores. If they happen to all be white, so be it. If they happen to all be Asian, so be it. What happens in reality is that people with lower scores get a certain job or accepted into a university because the institution is afraid of getting accused of "racism" and not being "diverse" enough.

Irixmark Wrote:"Poor" isn't the same as "disadvantaged." I come from a family that lost all material possessions in WWII (twice, actually, thanks to the Nazis and the Soviets). But my grandparents and parents valued education more than anything else almost, we had books at home, and my Mom checked that I was doing my homework. They may have been poor, but I was privileged. I'm pretty sure that's true for many immigrant children, and especially so among Chinese immigrants whose parents are obsessed about their children's education. Or think of the Korean greengrocer where the grandparents in their eighties still pack the vegetables onto the shelves so that the grandchild can go to university.

As I said, the vast majority of AA recipients are less skilled because they were born like that. Why were they born like that? Because their parents are not as skilled/intelligent. Is that a disadvantage? Yes it is. Can you do anything about that? No, you can't (unless you're born an exception), but the world needs people doing low-skilled jobs and this is where these people come into play. Your grandparents and parents are/were obviously intelligent people, and if you want to call yourself or the Chinese/Koreans "privileged" because of that, go ahead, but I find it laughable.

Hyperborea Wrote:I see that above our eugenics and Phillipe Rushton fan has joined in above. I think we now run the risk of hitting Godwin's law pretty soon.

You almost sound like those fundamentalist Christian creationists. "Those darn Charles Darwin fans and their heresy!" Godwin's law has already been set to 1.

Irixmark Wrote:Just to forestall anything in that direction: Neither IQ as measured by IQ tests nor determination to keep studying (or for that matter, keep at any difficult task) are heritable. That old view has long since been debunked as a spurious correlation based on testing of selected groups of nearly exclusively white, middle-class undergraduate students in the US in the labs of psychology departments.

Better head off over to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ and set them straight, then!

Does the environment matter? Sure it does, especially in children, where the environment sets in motion the child's genetic side of intelligence which then unfolds and increases over time accordingly. However, two 80 IQ redneck dumbasses winning the lotto and then raising their children as millionaires will not result in intelligent children. They will have the lowest grades in their fancy little private school. Being raised in a good environment will only add a few extra points to a person's IQ, but nowhere near how much genes account for. Substituting the lack of a better environment with AA is in the majority of cases like giving an A to a D student simply because you feel sorry for him.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I suggest when toshiromiballza comes back with the racist Bell Curve theories he was posting a previous thread, you just ignore it rather than posting any papers. There's no need to even entertain the idea.

He's free to post outdated papers that have been debunked by actual scientists like Philippe Rushton. It's too bad he died last October, but there's fortunately more scientists than just Rushton who will continue to debunk pseudo-scientific papers as they come.

Since topic related I wanted to share this article: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mill...nd-in-hand

Some of you might have read it already, though.

ahahah perfect response Tori. +1

Tori-kun Wrote:Since topic related I wanted to share this article: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mill...nd-in-hand

Some of you might have read it already, though.

I like this article more: Low IQ & Liberal Beliefs Linked To Poor Research?

You probably haven't read it yet, though.

toshiromiballza Wrote:the harsh reality that they ARE less intelligent in the majority of cases.

what proof have you got of this?

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:what proof have you got of this?

Race related IQ statistics.

"Standardized tests and IQ tests are biased towards whites."

Cool story, then explain why Asians outscore whites on the very same tests that are supposedly biased in their favour.

could you post them? Are you seriously arguing that poorer people are less intelligent?

That's essentially what he was saying in the Romney thread before, alongside Blacks being genetically less intelligent and having genetic criminal tendencies:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9969&page=7

I don't think there's any need to respond to his posts with questions and rebuttals as if the issue were even worth discussing.

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:could you post them? Are you seriously arguing that poorer people are less intelligent?

I could, but I don't want to search for them again. I've probably posted them in the old Romney thread.

No, I'm not arguing that poorer people are less intelligent, but that the less intelligent people tend to end up poorer, and since intelligence is mostly genetic, this goes on one generation after another. Thus, affirmative action in America (note, I have no idea how similar systems work in England or in other European countries, some of which don't even have any such programs, so I am talking exclusively about AA in America) is a complete waste of time with the sole purpose of diversifying colleges and workplaces by employing minorities that did worse off in high school, because otherwise those institutions would be labelled "racist."

Yes, yudantaiteki, humans have been evolving for thousands of years, some races isolated from any other race for more than 50,000 years, and we have all evolved different physical characteristics, with some races excelling in certain activities due to these differences (hint: Usain Bolt), but our brain has somehow evolved exactly the same, so in terms of intelligence, all races are exactly the same. In dog breeds, however, there are certain breeds that are clearly more intelligent than others, yet they evolved in just 10,000 years. See the disconnect?

do you not think you should maybe try to actually understand the science involved before running around shouting your nazi remarks to anyone who'll listen?

I'd be more worried about my own intelligence level if i were you...

IceCream Wrote:do you not think you should maybe try to actually understand the science involved before running around shouting your nazi remarks to anyone who'll listen?

Yeah, that's the proper way to win an argument whenever faced with a non-PC opposition: yell "racism," "nazi," "bigot." Whatever you need to keep believing in your unscientific world view... Kinda like Christians and faith.

Consider that .the lowest common denominator will always hold the greatest variance. Robert Sapolsky has a lot to say about nature vs. nurture in general, including factors concerning intellect. I recommend his books

toshiromiballza Wrote:The environment as a factor of intelligence for 18-year-olds and adults is only about 20 percent, the rest is completely genetic (of course there are exceptions; the brain is still a mystery to us). Not everyone is born equally intelligent; some are born smarter and some dumber. Harsh reality, but nature was never fair or "equal." The number of children that truly do worse off than their peers because, for example, their parents cannot afford books and the like is minuscule in comparison

Important to understand is that genes influence behaviour, environment influences behaviour, and genes and environment interact. One can also overwhelm the other, as demonstrated in "knock out" rats that, when replacing certain genes involved in intelligence with nonfunctional versions, completely overcome their genetic disadvantage over time when placed into a more stimulating environment. Likewise, even the most stimulating environment can do nothing to compensate for catastrophic genetic defects. I think you invented your 20% statistic, and you would do well to open your mind a little regarding the influence of both genes and environment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligen...nteraction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

I have nothing to say about AA, because I'm aware of its limitations and potential drawbacks. Its more of a treatment for the symptoms, and not the causes of low academic achievement.

I wasn't expecting any antagonism in this thread lol.

toshiromiballza Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:do you not think you should maybe try to actually understand the science involved before running around shouting your nazi remarks to anyone who'll listen?

Yeah, that's the proper way to win an argument whenever faced with a non-PC opposition: yell "racism," "nazi," "bigot." Whatever you need to keep believing in your unscientific world view... Kinda like Christians and faith.

You might want to start with figuring out what heritability actually means.

Yes, except that IQ is not mostly genetic (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2012.07.007).

More entertaining, however, is this blog post: http://theslittyeye.wordpress.com/2011/1...-in-china/

The data is of course not great because it's from self-selected IQ test takers on the web. But there's no reason to think that the selection is correlated with IQ, i.e. that only smart people from Shanghai take the test online and only dumb people from Sichuan. It follows that IQ variability within China is so great that there are regional concentrations of a combined population of several hundred million people who have a lower average IQ than northern Europeans, and other regional populations of hundreds of millions of people, genetically indistinguishable from the "dumber" Chinese, that have a much higher average IQ than Europeans. What's more, this "genetic" difference will even out very quickly as China becomes more urbanized and the populations gets more mixed... or well, everyone is a little better off.

The most important takeaway point for me is that psychologists tend to be pretty poor statisticians. My favourite example is Kanazawa, Satoshi (2006. “IQ and the Wealth of States.” Intelligence. 34: 593-600) whose research is nicely picked apart by this Columbia stats professor.

The other little fact that I learned along the way is that East Asians may be more intelligent or not, but that it is indisputable that they are more likely to be shortsighted. I blame that on those annoying characters in tiny print.

interestingly we have had no input from people who have come from bad background and received "encouragement". I must say I found at lot of it very patronising to say the least and it nowhere near compared to passing an agency test. Others I have spoken to agree. I think affirmative action and dumbing down can give people a false sense of achievement.

I do believe the education system favours privileged students and is blatantly unfair to wasp men.

I also think certain subjects favour women and certain favour men. I also think teachers are treated with way too much respect in schools as many of them are idiots who can't get another job.

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:I do believe the education system favours privileged students and is blatantly unfair to wasp men.

This seems contradictory since privileged people are primarily white males.

i meant unfair in a good way. ie biased . sorry it wasn't clear

That you feel that way just confirms to me that support in the sense of helping disadvantaged kids achieve the same learning outcomes in the school system is what's needed, not affirmative action. How can anyone prove they're just as smart as the private school kids when they're guaranteed admission based on race? How do you counter the comments behind your back that you're the "AA student" who wouldn't have made it otherwise?

In any case, much research (and personal experience) shows that persistence is as much or more important than "IQ". I highly recommend this book which can occasionally be "located" as audiobook online.

HonyakuJoshua, the fact that you're studying Japanese and got to where you are now is admirable. All the more so since you sometimes come across as slightly deranged

Irixmark Wrote:That you feel that way just confirms to me that support in the sense of helping disadvantaged kids achieve the same learning outcomes in the school system is what's needed, not affirmative action.

Of course it's what's needed, but it's almost impossible to achieve practically. Suppose you are a teacher in a disadvantaged area, and almost all the kids in your class have been disadvantaged in some way, and therefore not achieving their potential. It's not like you can give the one to one support needed to bring them up to the level of someone who hadn't been disadvantaged.

Btw, AA isn't the same in Britain as it is in the USA. It's much more based on family income level / class than it is on race, although there are some race based criteria as well.

I don't think you need to counter those comments. They're made by people who haven't got a clue what it's like to be disadvantaged, or how hard you might have worked.

Governments absolutely must try to tackle the problems that cause people to be disadvantaged, and teachers must absolutely work to help people. But these are deep seated issues, and it's neither fair or helpful to leave certain sections of society stagnating while you attempt that. Hence AA.

In terms of things like A levels, rather than either IQ or persistence (although yeah, you need persistance too), the most important thing is to teach people exactly what is expected of them, how to learn, and how to write good answers to exam questions. I think this is basically how private schools teach their not so exceptional students to get A's regardless.

Animosophy Wrote:I think you invented your 20% statistic

Wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

Irixmark Wrote:Yes, except that IQ is not mostly genetic (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2012.07.007).

Oh, look what I found: http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2012/09/...arter.html

Irixmark Wrote:More entertaining, however, is this blog post: http://theslittyeye.wordpress.com/2011/1...-in-china/

From the same article:

Quote:The relatively low IQ level regions in China largely overlap with the geographical region that has high minority populations with harsh geographical and climatic environment. It is unclear, however, about the role of ethnicity profiles in this observation. This study contains no data about the ethnicity of the participants. Hence, it is inconclusive to say that minorities have a lower IQ tendency compared to Han Chinese in this study, though it is probably the case in reality

Now cling to the author's claim that it is "inconclusive to say that minorities have a lower IQ tendency" like your life depends on it. Whatever you need to shield yourself from the harsh reality.

Irixmark Wrote:It follows that IQ variability within China is so great

Except for the regions with high minority populations, which have lower IQs from the average Han Chinese (gee, who would have thought?), the variability between majority Han provinces is not "great" at all, but mere 2-3 points.

One funny pattern I've noticed with people who refuse to acknowledge a correlation between race and IQ is that at the end of the day they at least partially acknowledge a link, but then they try to weasel out with: "you have to understand the historical background which led to them being disadvantaged (read: less intelligent)." Oh, believe me, I understand it perfectly. However, knowing that does not magically improve their IQ - they still are (statistically) less intelligent. You can feel sorry for them, but it is what it is, and that's all I'm saying. It's like you get a bad grade on a test, and then try to explain to the teacher that you've been really busy with your part-time job and couldn't study enough. Too bad, it is what it is, the teacher won't give you a better grade because he knows your background story that led to the bad grade. The same is with race: it is what it is because certain circumstances led it to this point. However, socio-economic reasons are not the main factor, evolution and genes are, something you people keep refusing to believe has anything to do with it. Like creationists denying evolution...

Also, i just want to point out again, a large part of the problems with social mobility and overcoming disadvantage has nothing to do with intelligence levels and grades whatsoever. Good grades and a high IQ aren't a guarantee you'll do well in life.

Other issues that deprivation may have left you with, health issues, depression, social anxiety, oppositional attitude, lack of self confidence, social problems, criminal records, lack of understanding of how the world actually works and what you have to do, and so on, are all greater bars to social mobility than IQ.

Then there's the monetary bars you face at university. If you work every holidays because you're not supported, you don't have time to do the internships or volunteering you need to get a job afterwards. Carrying on to MA or Phd, you need funding, and it can be difficult to get.

To act like IQ has no genetic basis just seems totally illogical. Most (all?) human traits are a varying result of genes and environmental factors. It is completely non-controversial to suppose a genetic link for characteristics like height, eye/hair color, etc.

I suspect that as a person's brain, thinking ability and knowledge develops their brain eventually approaches some natural limits based largely on individual genetic constraints. In other words if left completely uneducated/unstimulated my IQ might may well have been lower. But I very much doubt I would have had Einstein's IQ if only I'd gone to a private school.
IQ is massively variable. Even if you just look at one grouping like middle class whites kids in adequate public schooling, you'll see a bell curve ranging from the borderline mentally retarded to geniuses. The schooling is at best helping them approach their natural IQ limit whatever that may be. That geographic IQ chart someone posted of china shows a variation of only 7 points (101 - 108) which hardly seems super substantial. The average IQ in shanghai is still well...average. Educated people will perform better at IQ tests because they have studied maths and language and because they are used to taking exams. It doesn't follow that they are better at having deep insights and being creative due to their education. I don't think education can raise a person's IQ 30 points.

I think it is problematic that individuals regardless of personal circumstances are encouraged and/or required to go through the same route known as compulsory public schooling. The rich can and do opt out of that bureaucratic centrally controlled joke of a system, but I don't think there are many affordable and legal avenues for poor people.

@toshirominazi:

Again, learn some science. You need to understand what it is that heritability is a measure of. You don't seem to have grasped the basic concepts about heritability which are written clearly on the page you keep linking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

Quote:Heritability measures the fraction of phenotype variability that can be attributed to genetic variation. This is not the same as saying that this fraction of an individual phenotype is caused by genetics. In addition, heritability can change without any genetic change occurring (e.g. when the environment starts contributing to more variation).

Quote:Heritability asks how much genetics are playing a role in differences in height between people. This is not the same as asking how much genetics influences height in any one person.

Quote:There are a number of points to consider when interpreting heritability:

Heritability measures the proportion of variation in a trait that can be attributed to genes, and not the proportion of a trait caused by genes. Thus, if the environment relevant to a given trait changes in a way that affects all members of the population equally, the mean value of the trait will change without any change in its heritability (because the variation or differences among individuals in the population will stay the same). This has evidently happened for height: the heritability of stature is high, but average heights continue to increase.[7] Thus, even in developed nations, a high heritability of a trait does not necessarily mean that average group differences are due to genes.[7][13] Some have gone further, and used height as an example in order to argue that "even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability."[14] However, others argue that IQ is highly stable during life and has been largely resistant to interventions aimed to change it long-term and substantially.[15][16][17]
A common error is to assume that a heritability figure is necessarily unchangeable. The value of heritability can change if the impact of environment (or of genes) in the population is substantially altered.[7] If the environmental variation encountered by different individuals increases, then the heritability figure would decrease. On the other hand, if everyone had the same environment, then heritability would be 100%. The population in developing nations often has more diverse environments than in developed nations.[citation needed] This would mean that heritability figures would be lower in developing nations. Another example is phenylketonuria which previously caused mental retardation for everyone who had this genetic disorder and thus had a heritability of 100%. Today, this can be prevented by following a modified diet, resulting in a lowered heritability.
A high heritability of a trait does not mean that environmental effects such as learning are not involved. Vocabulary size, for example, is very substantially heritable (and highly correlated with general intelligence) although every word in an individual's vocabulary is learned. In a society in which plenty of words are available in everyone's environment, especially for individuals who are motivated to seek them out, the number of words that individuals actually learn depends to a considerable extent on their genetic predispositions and thus heritability is high.[7]
Since heritability increases during childhood and adolescence, and even increases greatly between 16–20 years of age and adulthood, one should be cautious drawing conclusions regarding the role of genetics and environment from studies where the participants are not followed until they are adults. Furthermore, there may be differences regarding the effects on the g-factor and on non-g factors, with g possibly being harder to affect and environmental interventions disproportionately affecting non-g factors.[17]

Let's move on to the Race and Intelligence page, where you clearly missed the following:

Quote:The American Psychological Association has said that while there are differences in average IQ between racial groups, there is no conclusive evidence for environmental explanations, nor direct empirical support for a genetic interpretation, and that no adequate explanation for differences in group means of IQ scores is currently available.[3][4] The position of the American Anthropological Association is that variation in intelligence cannot be meaningfully explained by dividing a species into biologically defined races.[5] According to a 1996 statement from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, although heredity influences behavior in individuals, it does not affect the ability of a population to function in any social setting, all peoples "possess equal biological ability to assimilate any human culture" and "racist political doctrines find no foundation in scientific knowledge concerning modern or past human populations."[6]

and

Quote:The decoding of the human genome has enabled scientists to search for sections of the genome that may contribute to cognitive abilities. However the geneticist, Alan R. Templeton suggests this question is muddled by the general focus on "race" rather than on populations defined by gene frequency or by geographical proximity, and by the general insistence on phrasing the question in terms of heritability.[99] Templeton points out that racial groups neither represent sub-species or distinct evolutionary lineages, and that therefore there is no basis for making claims about the general intelligence of races.[99] He also finds that phrasing the question in terms of heritability not helpful because heritability "by definition is not applicable to between-population phenotypic differences" and is therefore "completely irrelevant to the question of genetic differentiation for any trait, including intelligence, among human populations." Templeton says that the only way to design a study of the genetic contribution to intelligence is to the correlation between degree of geographic ancestry and cognitive abilities. He states that this would require a Mendelian "common garden" design where specimens with different hybrid compositions are subjected to the same environmental influences, and that when this design has been carried out, it has shown no significant correlation between any cognitive and the degree of African or European ancestry.[99]

Intelligence is both a quantitative and polygenic trait. This means that intelligence is under the influence of several genes, possibly several thousand. The effect of most individual genetic variants on intelligence is thought to be very small, well below 1% of the variance in g. Current studies using quantitative trait loci have yielded little success in the search for genes influencing intelligence. Robert Plomin is confident that QTLs responsible for the variation in IQ scores exist, but due to their small effect sizes, more powerful tools of analysis will be required to detect them.[100] Others assert that no useful answers can be reasonably expected from such research before an understanding of the relation between DNA and human phenotypes emerges.[77]

In fact, you should try reading the whole page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

Irixmark Wrote:How can anyone prove they're just as smart as the private school kids when they're guaranteed admission based on race?

I don't think there's any AA system that *guarantees* admission based on race. Even the most extreme examples of hard racial quotas don't mean that any minority in the United States can just dash off an application and get in no matter what because they're the right skin tone.

The college acceptance system is very different in the US compared to Japan, but I don't know which method Europe is closer to. There are so many factors taken into account when accepting someone that it's very hard to pick two students and say one was "more qualified" to get into the school than another. Grades and standardized test scores are only a small part of the application process at very competitive colleges. If a college decides they want a certain amount of racial diversity, or foreign students, or women, that doesn't mean they're turning away white men who should be getting in instead.