race differences (from McDonald's thread)
Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2012 7:18 amMoved, because it deserves its own thread.
I was just going to cut and comment on your IQ section, but realized that would change what you said.
The problem is not just how much is environmental and how much is biological. A far bigger problem is what constitutes IQ and whether it is an actual indicator of anything .. or whether IQ is really measuring the attribute we think is important (ability to aquire new information readily).
IQ has historically had a couple very well known bias. One is the example of asking inner city kids to match a cup with either a spoon , a saucer or some other implement. Inner city kids did not see saucers, so tended to say spoons and not saucers. That's a dated example anyway, since mugs are more the standard now, but it illustrates the point.
Another bias is when men create the tests and just innately consider "male" type thinking to be superior. This is far more subtle and complicated. It has been well studied. The impact is changing because girls and boys now have more equal education than they did in the past, but at the highest assessement levels there is apparently still a bias that has to do with those tests heavily targeting a kind of specific linear thinking.
BUT, you bring up a very good point. If you look hard, you can find that just about everyone is in some way racist or sexist or otherwise prejudiced. Most of us could do with such introspection, just to improve our own thinking. However, whe someone else takes it upon themselves, then we have to be much more careful.
For my part, I am not sure that doing away with racism/sexism, etc is really the goal we should achieve. Rather, I think the goal should be to make such things just realtively unimportant in daily living. When you get to the point that gender and race are no more of a bias than judging someone by their accent, style of dress, etc.. we have come a long way.
There is, of course, such a thing as having too much uniformity. It is good to recognize that we can be repulsed by ideas, yet also recognize that just having people who think in particular ways (not unchallenged, but present) is of value. The extremes help define the middle.
In fact, that is one big change we have seen in the past decade. People get so much more information off the internet now that they talk far more to people who think like them.. and far more rarely wind up changing thinking, unless they are of the sort to go out of their way to challenge.
Gillipig wrote:john9blue wrote:^ well said
i often wonder what percentage of people would acknowledge a biological and scientific proof that there are inherent differences in abilities between different races.
we've done the same thing with gender, and some people still think males and females can do everything that the other gender can do equally well. so i don't have much hope.
just because judging people primarily as individuals is a good idea doesn't mean that we can't study differences between groups.
Unfortunately not many.
It should be pretty obvious to people that such differences can exist, but many choose not to take it seriously or simply dismiss it as prejudice. That's just a brain fart on their part.
Nothing is prejudice if it's true. So if you can showcase the existence of such a variety you're not being prejudice. Prejudice is to claim things without having logical reasoning to back it up.
When for example I say white people are better at enduring low levels of sun exposure I'm not being prejudice, because I back it up with logic and a scienctificly oriented mindset. I would claim fair skin has less protection against sun light and is therefore better at absorbing the sun light it's exposed to. Being exposed to the rays from the sun is critical to us because it provides us with vitamin D, without which we are at risk to a variety of diseases.
In this case I took the example of fair skin's positive attributes in areas with low levels of sun exposure on earth, but I could've choosen to highlight the advantage of having dark skin in areas with high exposure to the sun. Either way it would be equally none prejudice. Whatever criticism directed towards the argument should be dealing with the factual statements, because that's the way you discuss scientific matters.
If a scientist disagrees with the studies conducted by another scientist he doesn't get all personal and say something on the lines of "Your face is ugly!" or "Racist pig!", that just reflects badly on himself and makes him look like the idiot (which he would be if he said that)
The same thought process should be used when for example discussing differences in IQ between races. The argument should be about how much of our intelligence is due to our environment and how much is genes, because that's the only way to even remotely explain the measured difference in IQ between races. The wrong way to conduct the argument would be to blame one part for bringing this statitsic up or denying it's existence or just jump staright to the a la natty claim "You're racist!". I'm glad he's gone btw. It's no secret we didn't get along, my problem with him is that he had no integrity. He never hesitated to use cheap tactics to smear others, morphed his opinions just to win an argument and then refused to acknowledge that it changed at all.
[personal comment deleted.......]
*Side note*
According to the stupid definition of the word "racist", any and all claims of difference between races is considered racist. So you can't even state obvious truths like black people are better at enduring high exposure to the sun, without being racist. That's why I consider to word hollow and pointless.
I was just going to cut and comment on your IQ section, but realized that would change what you said.
The problem is not just how much is environmental and how much is biological. A far bigger problem is what constitutes IQ and whether it is an actual indicator of anything .. or whether IQ is really measuring the attribute we think is important (ability to aquire new information readily).
IQ has historically had a couple very well known bias. One is the example of asking inner city kids to match a cup with either a spoon , a saucer or some other implement. Inner city kids did not see saucers, so tended to say spoons and not saucers. That's a dated example anyway, since mugs are more the standard now, but it illustrates the point.
Another bias is when men create the tests and just innately consider "male" type thinking to be superior. This is far more subtle and complicated. It has been well studied. The impact is changing because girls and boys now have more equal education than they did in the past, but at the highest assessement levels there is apparently still a bias that has to do with those tests heavily targeting a kind of specific linear thinking.
BUT, you bring up a very good point. If you look hard, you can find that just about everyone is in some way racist or sexist or otherwise prejudiced. Most of us could do with such introspection, just to improve our own thinking. However, whe someone else takes it upon themselves, then we have to be much more careful.
For my part, I am not sure that doing away with racism/sexism, etc is really the goal we should achieve. Rather, I think the goal should be to make such things just realtively unimportant in daily living. When you get to the point that gender and race are no more of a bias than judging someone by their accent, style of dress, etc.. we have come a long way.
There is, of course, such a thing as having too much uniformity. It is good to recognize that we can be repulsed by ideas, yet also recognize that just having people who think in particular ways (not unchallenged, but present) is of value. The extremes help define the middle.
In fact, that is one big change we have seen in the past decade. People get so much more information off the internet now that they talk far more to people who think like them.. and far more rarely wind up changing thinking, unless they are of the sort to go out of their way to challenge.
