[PLEASE PLACE ALL OFF-TOPIC COMMENTS IN THE MOST RECENT OPEN THREAD. THEY WILL NOT BE POSTED IN THIS THREAD]
HBD chick recently tweeted about a New York Times article on race by Harvard geneticist David Reich. The theme of the article is that it’s finally time to admit HBD is true. This is a very big deal coming from a scientist at the World’s top university and published in the World’s most influential news source. Here are some selected quotes from Reich with the HBD acceptance bolded by me:
…when a teacher looks around a classroom of students of diverse “races,” she or he shouldn’t see them as members of fundamentally different groups of people. “Race” has trivial predictive power about an individual person’s biological capabilities. Even if there are slight average differences among groups of humans, individuals from any group are capable of excelling in any realm….
….It is likely that a few stereotypes will be validated by findings from genetics — even if it is also certain that a great majority will be disproved…
…The key point is that whatever science finds should not affect the way we behave toward one another. Whatever small average differences across groups might exist (and genetic studies have already made it clear that average differences across populations are much less than those between individuals), we are members of a single species, all of whom must be given every opportunity to flourish in every realm…
…There are clear genetic contributors to many traits, including behavior.
… Present-day human populations, which often but not always are correlated to today’s “race” categories, have in a number of instances been largely isolated from one another for tens of thousands of years. These long separations have provided adequate opportunity for the frequencies of genetic variations to change.
… Genetic variations are likely to affect behavior and cognition just as they affect other traits, even though we know that the average genetic influences on behavior and cognition are strongly affected by upbringing and are likely to be more modest than genetic influences on bodily traits or disease…
…Given that all genetically determined traits differ somewhat among populations, we should expect that there will be differences in the average effects, including in traits like behavior…
…To insist that no meaningful average differences among human populations are possible is harmful. It is perceived as misleading, even patronizing, by the general public. And it encourages people not to trust the honesty of scholars and instead to embrace theories that are not scientifically grounded and often racist.
In short, I think everyone can understand that very modest differences across human population in the genetic influences on behavior and cognition are to be expected. And I think everyone can understand that even if we do not yet have any idea about what the difference are, we do not need to be worried about what we will find because we can already be sure that any differences will be small (far smaller than those among individuals)…
A coward speaking to morons or a scholar. So he prepares students to finding that phenotypic differences will be linked through genes to average differences in cognitive and behavioural traits.
What is risky is that the only reason he gives not to be phenotypically prejudiced is that the average difference in groups will always be smaller than the average diffeeenxds among individuals.
This is a low threshold but it will probably be crossed. Average difference in height among men in one population are smaller than average differences among some populations (take Dutch and Indonesian or people from Guatemala).
In IQ the average difference among two peop’e Is 15, but the average among a Japonese and a haitia is double than that !
Maybe if he takes only the average differences explained by genes, for individual and group, in most cases the threshold may not be crossed, but science would justify the prejudice up to that level, and in practice, it’s all the phenotipycal difference that would back up all the prejudice . The net is not a good one.
My idea is more that the differences will cancel out so that there is no better race . Only people being on average fittest for a given peculiar functiin ans sometimes just différents with no scale involved.
Nicholas Wade has written articles before like this, and even wrote a whole book about it. It didn’t seem to have that big of an impact, even among the elite, liberal, coastal 120 IQ chattering classes.
None of this race/IQ stuff is really gonna be a big deal until a famous news journalist or social commentator or maybe a politically active celebrity or well-respected politician comments on it. Until then, mainstream discussion will continue to ignore the 2000-pound elephant in the room.
That’s not to the day the average Joe is unaware, though they may not frame it in terms of rigorous arguments or genetics. Read any Yahoo comments section. Or videos like this on YouTube:
“Given this degree of genetic separation, it is perfectly possible for Jewish populations to have followed a slightly different evolutionary path from Europeans as they adapted to the special circumstances of their history and developed unusual cognitive abilities.” (Wade, 2014: 200)
Definition of a just-so. This draws on Cochran’s Ashkenazi just-so, therefore….:
And he writes right after this that “Yet the idea that there could be meaningful genetic differences between human groups is fiercely resisted by many researchers. They cling to the idea that the mind is a blank slate on which only culture, not genetics, can write, and dismiss the possibility that evolution could have possibly effected any recent change in the human mind” (ph 200).
Name three prominent researchers who are “blank slate-ers”. This is just a strawman. Genes don’t work how HBDers think they do.
Eternaland of Race Surrealist
”my argument is my ”i think so”-personal opinions + unacountable quotas & citations”.
I really don’t know why people in hbb-land still don’t blocked this guy, he no have any meaningfull contribution to do, indeed, it’s totally otherwise. He never refute anything which is not a perfect copy of his extremely doubious, pedantic and complicated just-so-hypothesis-treated-as-absolute-truth.
If he had interesting and in-sane-world arguments and or refutations…. but not.
You’re feeding this self-troll.
If I’m a “self-troll” why do you respond to my comments?
Is the paragraph from Wade *not a just-so story?* If it isn’t, why?
I repeat: Name three prominent researchers who are “blank slate-ers”. This is just a strawman. Genes don’t work how HBDers think they do.
“I really don’t know why people in hbb-land still don’t blocked this guy, he no have any meaningfull contribution to do, indeed, it’s totally otherwise. He never refute anything which is not a perfect copy of his extremely doubious, pedantic and complicated just-so-hypothesis-treated-as-absolute-truth.”
How do you confirm that a hypothesized adaptation isn’t a byproduct/exaptation? Come on Mr. Philosophy. You claim to know philosophy, but when philosophy of science comes up you say “He never refute anything which is not a perfect copy of his extremely doubious, pedantic and complicated just-so-hypothesis-treated-as-absolute-truth.” Asking that question *is* a refutation. Because it it cannot he answered the you cannot logically state that said hypothesized adaptation isn’t byproduct/exaptation.
Learn to philosophy of science.
https://mundoestranho.abril.com.br/ciencia/qual-a-diferenca-entre-dna-gene-e-cromossomo/
Use ”google translator” if you want.
What is the difference between a gene and a DNA.
”The main difference is in size. The smallest of all is the gene. From there, the thing increases: several genes in sequence form the DNA, a set of molecules that carries the genetic information of all living beings. “A comparison helps to understand this difference. If we imagine that DNA is a necklace, each of the beads that make up the necklace will be a gene, “says geneticist Mayana Zatz of the University of São Paulo (USP).”