Fun and Games in Racist Fantasyland

Four Objections to the Racial Realist

1. We have no reason to think that genes responsible for phenotypes of facial structure, bone structure or skin tone are identical to those genes responsible for neurological organization.

2. Protein selection is not entirely genetic because of pre-natal influences of hormones

3. Epigenetic selection suggests a high degree of interaction between genes and environment. The idea of seperating causal influences into either genetic or environmental categories presents a false dichotomy and ignores the evidence that environments impact genes directly.

Link to intelligence and epigenetic development: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892514/

4. If intelligence is heretable then it would be positively selected for by natural selection and thus be rediscovered repeatedly in all cultures. But especially in cultures which require high degrees of specialized knowledge. Given these parameters, if anything, we would expect tribal societies to select for intelligence more directly than technological societies.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• heyruka
• race
• racial realism
• fringeelements
• skepticalheretic
• cognition
• intelligence

[OneCerebralSamurai]

I have never heard the argument that the *same* genes that cause the obvious phenotypical differences between races are the same ones that determine IQ.

You straw-manned the HELL out of that point

[MichaelPayton67]

@OneCerebralSamurai I haven't and you know I haven't. The racial realists have claimed that "race determines intelligence" and then further claimed that "race is defined by physical features" then it follows that the claim they are ACTUALLY making is that "physical features determine intelligence." That's not a straw man.

[OneCerebralSamurai]

@MichaelPayton67 I will concede that I haven't been following this "debate" very closely. I see much of it as pretty silly.

I'm not familiar with anyone currently claiming that physical features "define" race. It seems to me that they are saying that there are physical markers that indicate genetic differences, and it's the underlying genetic differences that define race. They might be going so far as to say that the physical markers are correlated to other racial differences like IQ.

[MichaelPayton67]

@OneCerebralSamurai

LibertarianRealist has claimed that race is defined by physical features. I will add that clip in my reply to him. But I would also point out that your initial comment to me was "they never said features define race" and now you are replacing it with "genetic markers define race" but... they ALSO never said THAT either. None of them have been forthcoming about what exactly they mean by race and that was actually a major point in my video.

[MichaelPayton67]

@OneCerebralSamurai

LibertarianRealist has claimed that race is defined by physical features. I will add that clip in my reply to him. But I would also point out that your initial comment to me was "they never said features define race" and now you are replacing it with "genetic markers define race" but... they ALSO never said THAT either. None of them have been forthcoming about what exactly they mean by race and that was actually a major point in my video.

[mindprism]

This is really all irrelevant to the actual debate -- for fun, lets just grant that genetics only influences IQ by 10%, if we assume the real world racial difference between whites and blacks at the given 15pts -- you might just have an environment argument.

But inheritibility of IQ has been shown, using meta-data, to be .85 -- it doesn't matter what happened to get there, there it is. That 10% could be all the difference in the world.

[MichaelPayton67]

@mindprism

"But inheritibility of IQ has been shown, using meta-data, to be .85 -- it doesn't matter what happened to get there, there it is. That 10% could be all the difference in the world."

I would love to see your source for this. The most recent genetic evidence puts the amount of intel. variance caused by genetic differences to be 51%. Which I am fine with, everyone is fine with. I have never claimed that intelligence was in no way heritable, never, and in no way.

[DrinkThatHenny]

We need to develop the moral sensitivities to deal with unpopular and unnerving scientific results; not exercise knee-jerk political reflexes.

Because there could very well come a time in the not-so-distant future when this issue is decided decisively in favor of the hereditarian side... Then what?

[ClumsyRoot]

@LighterPlanet

Even if that were true, it is important to note that there is far more variation in IQ between members of the SAME race than there is any variation in the average IQ between races.

Let's say, e.g., that "blacks" have an average IQ that is 2 points lower than that of "whites." That would still mean that a large percentage of blacks are smarter than a large percentage of whites.

Talking about average intelligence tells us exactly NOTHING about the intelligence of individuals.

[razoodocks]

Good to hear someone intelligent exposing racial essentialism for the hypocritical pseudo-science it is.

[fringeelements]

The overall environmentality of IQ in SS Africa is probably higher than it is in the US, because there are wider variations in environment - nutrition, literacy and basic schooling. Thus environmental interventions could probably improve IQ in SS Africa, probably not so for the (by global standards) super-rich US blacks.

Meaning that Russian IQ which is about 97 can probably be raised more than black american IQ can.

[fringeelements]

51% within what range? Take two people in identical environments - any difference between them will be entirely immutable-genetic, since environment is identical - unless you want to say the gene-environment interaction is different between these people, which itself would be acknowledging some innate difference.

[migkillertwo]

On that note, I think you should have expanded the scope of this video to be a general objection to genetic-determinism. These youtube race-essentialists seem to assume that most, or all, of our characteristics are determined by genes.

[migkillertwo]

"then it follows that the claim they are actually making is that physical features determine intelligence"

While I am not sure where I stand on the issue of "race realism" or "race essentialism", I think oncecerebralsamurai is right here. Reducing an idea to absurdity is one thing, and you did that (albeit by taking "someone's" words VERY literally) nicely, but that's not the same as actually refuting their arguments.

[fieldcommandereyesin]

Dumb shit

[DollaBiIIz]

@MichaelPayton67 You are an idiot.