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Do you believe in a superior race?
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(I wrote a more comprehensive reply but upon submitting it, it didn't actually go through and was lost 
. I can't be bothered to retype it so this is a more condensed version.)
How does that follow from what I said? Individuals can choose to increase their intelligence if they wish.
What do you mean by 'failing that'? An individual's intelligence is unique to them. If there were a sudden increase in crimes in New Zealand committed by people with blonde hair, and somebody saw a correlation between global crime and people with blonde hair, individuals who are incidentally blonde will not suddenly feel compelled to begin committing crime. They are unrelated. What people with blonde hair choose to do to modify their circumstances is personal.
You and I are not 'represented' in the average intelligences of our ethnic groups because our intellectual attainments are a product of our private agencies, and should not be subsumed into an average containing unrelated persons. What other people choose to do is inconsequential to our abilities and willingness to learn. If you introspect, do you feel you are biologically incapable of improving your intelligence, or do you feel you can do so if you persevere? I feel the latter. My personal agency is neither restrained nor influenced by what an arbitrary process of grouping says about me as an individual.
How are you separating ignorance and stupidity? Everyone withou a clinical psychological disorder is capable of learning and becoming more intelligent, even if not in the same area. I'm not suggesting everyone can grow to do a degree in theoretical physics (at least, not at the same speed as other individuals), but that they are capable of becoming more intelligent in certain areas that are idiosyncratic to them. Whether other individuals can mirror their achievements is irrelevant, as everyone's psychological profile is unique.
I object to averaging where the variable in question is fundamentally mutable by personal endeavour (i.e., what other people choose to do is irrelevant).
Urgh, not 'races'. Individuals have taken the choice to improve their personal intelligence, irrespective of what other people do.
Humans are not trees. Our unparalleled sentience enables us to individually increase a trait such as intelligence to the extent we wish as individuals.
. I can't be bothered to retype it so this is a more condensed version.)Original post by NB_ide
Then you are indeed discussing genetics. To what extent is "intelligence" genetically influenced?
Is it influenced, or predicted, by your parents?
What about their parents? And their relatives, and theirs, and so on? If the most accurate way to determine or predict someone's intelligence (or other brain function) is to look at the individual, then failing that the next best would be to look at those most closely related to them genetically and those most influential to them socially, and then failing then you look at the next "shell" out, and so forth.
What about their parents? And their relatives, and theirs, and so on? If the most accurate way to determine or predict someone's intelligence (or other brain function) is to look at the individual, then failing that the next best would be to look at those most closely related to them genetically and those most influential to them socially, and then failing then you look at the next "shell" out, and so forth.
You and I are not 'represented' in the average intelligences of our ethnic groups because our intellectual attainments are a product of our private agencies, and should not be subsumed into an average containing unrelated persons. What other people choose to do is inconsequential to our abilities and willingness to learn. If you introspect, do you feel you are biologically incapable of improving your intelligence, or do you feel you can do so if you persevere? I feel the latter. My personal agency is neither restrained nor influenced by what an arbitrary process of grouping says about me as an individual.
this is an unusual understanding of "intelligence". You can educate away ignorance, but stupid people will always be stupid and intelligent people will always be intelligent. I have no doubt that early upbringing plays a vital role but once in adulthood we can't really make ourselves more intelligent, as such.
In general, do you object to absolutely all sorts of averaging, generalising and categorisations, across the board (human, animal, material, the rest) or is the issue of "race" one in particular you object to because of the social implications?
Original post by Sternumator
If people can change their intelligence it doesn't make the grouping redundant, it changes the question to why certain races have improved their own intelligence more than others.
Urgh, not 'races'. Individuals have taken the choice to improve their personal intelligence, irrespective of what other people do.It feels like we are going round in circles a bit. I am making any claims about the reasons or if they are linked. A statistician doesnt care about the reason, that is someone elses job. Are people of certain races more intelligent is a true or false question. A statisitician can collect data and test this and come up with an answer. It is like a question such as are a certain type of tree on average taller than another type. You go and measure a few trees go and do a bit of stats and you can answer the question. Say one set of trees are taller than another, what people make of the results is up to them and what the results imply is for someone else to decide but you cant say the heights of the trees are not related to their type because whether you like it or not if you go and measure the trees one set is taller than the other.
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by NB_ide
Presumably for sociopolitical reasons, many people object to the very notion of races in the first place. So to use your analogy, some might retort that dividing up trees into different sorts is arbitrary and pointless, and we should just treat each tree as an individual to avoid prejudice based on their membership of an imagined group.
Because populations who remained geographically isolated from each other and inbred among themselves ended up, of course, with different average genetics, many people see fit to categorise them accordingly. Whether human or otherwise.
Others point out that within each such group some individuals will happen to be genetically very similar to some individuals from other groups, or in other words the groups overlap (due to convergent evolution, occasional outbreeding, and so on). To them, this renders the whole exercise nonsensical.
Because populations who remained geographically isolated from each other and inbred among themselves ended up, of course, with different average genetics, many people see fit to categorise them accordingly. Whether human or otherwise.
Others point out that within each such group some individuals will happen to be genetically very similar to some individuals from other groups, or in other words the groups overlap (due to convergent evolution, occasional outbreeding, and so on). To them, this renders the whole exercise nonsensical.
Even if some races are less intelligent it wouldnt be a good thing for society to prove it because some people would misinterpret what that actually meant and start thinking all people from the race have low intelligence. It makes sense to hide the scientific truth for political reason.
If the 'there are exceptions arguement' was valid then there would be no social science, we would know we little about the world except for the basic physical laws. It isnt an arbitrary division because you are dividing the population up by a characteristic that appears to relate to another characteristic. Yes I could divide people up however I wanted for example if I assigned 1 to A, 2 to B etc and then take the people whose place of birth starts with an even number and looked at how there intelligence compares to the other group. The difference is that would not produce a statistically signifcant result that they are related. The fact two variables are dependent means they are interesting things to group the population into.
I believe every characteristic I have is superior. I don't know if other people think this way but I find it strange that someone wouldn't think this way.
Original post by Sternumator
Even if some races are less intelligent it wouldnt be a good thing for society to prove it because some people would misinterpret what that actually meant and start thinking all people from the race have low intelligence. It makes sense to hide the scientific truth for political reason.
Original post by whyumadtho
Tell me you're trolling.
No, unfortunatly there are some stupid people about.
Original post by whyumadtho
It was a question I thought you might like to answer, that's all.
While we're here, this "you can make yourself more intelligent" thing is very controversial and we'd need to settle firmly on what we mean by intelligence before we could discuss it further.
What do you mean by 'failing that'?
I mean, "next best to that". So the best way we can predict a person's characteristics is to examine the individual themselves. But if we can't do that, for whatever reason, the next best thing would be to examine their parents and close relatives (for strongly-heritable characteristics) and those plus unrelated social associates for personality traits. That would let us make a fair guess about the person. Then, the next step back would be an even wider circle of relatives and influences, until you get to the level that people consider to be an entire "race", which still affords us to predict what a person we haven't individually examined is going to be like.
If there's a sprinting race (the running kind) and you have to bet on a winner. Knowing nothing about the competitors except their apparent ethnicity as you observe it, would you bet on a black guy or a white guy?
If you could win money by correctly guessing who would be taller, a random Oriental or a random Northern European, neither of whom you had met, which would you pick?
Or if 100 Northern Europeans and 100 black Africans had their IQ tested under the same conditions, and you could win £1000 by guessing which group would average a higher score, which would you pick?
An individual's intelligence is unique to them. If there were a sudden increase in crimes in New Zealand committed by people with blonde hair, and somebody saw a correlation between global crime and people with blonde hair, individuals who are incidentally blonde will not suddenly feel compelled to begin committing crime. They are unrelated. What people with blonde hair choose to do to modify their circumstances is personal.
This is strange, no none is claiming that a person's current actions will subsequently influence someone else's because they're lumped into the same group. That's not how it works. The idea is that some people have the same traits inherent to them which are likely to manifest as similar behaviours, given the right conditions.
You and I are not 'represented' in the average intelligences of our ethnic groups because our intellectual attainments are a product of our private agencies, and should not be subsumed into an average containing unrelated persons. What other people choose to do is inconsequential to our abilities and willingness to learn. If you introspect, do you feel you are biologically incapable of improving your intelligence, or do you feel you can do so if you persevere?
No I don't feel that I can improve my intelligence, but that's more down to our different understandings of "intelligence" than anything else.
I feel the latter. My personal agency is neither restrained nor influenced by what an arbitrary process of grouping says about me as an individual.
How are you separating ignorance and stupidity? Everyone withou a clinical psychological disorder is capable of learning and becoming more intelligent, even if not in the same area. I'm not suggesting everyone can grow to do a degree in theoretical physics (at least, not at the same speed as other individuals), but that they are capable of becoming more intelligent in certain areas that are idiosyncratic to them. Whether other individuals can mirror their achievements is irrelevant, as everyone's psychological profile is unique.
How are you separating ignorance and stupidity? Everyone withou a clinical psychological disorder is capable of learning and becoming more intelligent, even if not in the same area. I'm not suggesting everyone can grow to do a degree in theoretical physics (at least, not at the same speed as other individuals), but that they are capable of becoming more intelligent in certain areas that are idiosyncratic to them. Whether other individuals can mirror their achievements is irrelevant, as everyone's psychological profile is unique.
Putting aside the issue of what we mean by intelligence, yes everyone can learn and improve their mental abilities one way or another. But this doesn't render pointless the concept of grouping people in some way. Their ability to learn or improve themselves, and in which areas, provides yet another characteristic by which we might wish to categorise people.
I object to averaging where the variable in question is fundamentally mutable by personal endeavour (i.e., what other people choose to do is irrelevant).
Again I wonder if you have it backwards here. Whether one Chinese kid wants to "work harder" or not doesn't influence any other chinese kid's subsequent ability. We all realise that. But the fact that chinese kids are "more intelligent" than English kids remains, and it's a relevant correlation to draw because we can reasonably attribute their superiority to that which defines Chinese, i.e. aspects of their genetics and culture.
Your mental, and physical, situations are unique to yourself and, to some relatively small extent, under your adult conscious control. But they're drawn on the background on your cultural and genetic heritage which is something shared by many other people, to whom you are likely more similar (by definition) than you are to others.
Even if it could be demonstrated that one race, on average, performs better than other races in certain respects that would not justify racial discrimination on account of the fact that all humans are individuals, all races will have outliers (even the race with the lowest average IQ will produce geniuses) and even if we were going to discriminate based on the idea that different races have different IQs it would make more sense to discriminate against people with low IQ rather than certain races (although that would be just as reprehensible).
Original post by whyumadtho
Nope.
"Current systematic theory emphasizes that taxonomy at all levels should reflect evolutionary relationships. For instance, the term ‘Negro’ was once a racial designation for numerous groups in tropical Africa and Pacific Oceania (Melanesians). These groups share a broadly similar external phenotype; this classification illustrates ‘race’ as type, defined by anatomical complexes. Although the actual relationship between African ‘Negroes’ and Oceanic ‘Negroes’ was sometimes questioned, these groups were placed in the same taxon. Molecular and genetic studies later showed that the Oceanic ‘Negroes’ were more closely related to mainland Asians." (Keita et al., 2004).
"Indeed if one attempts to take multiple physical characteristics to define racial groups, you arrive at categorisations that are not indicative of their evolutionary history." (Graves, 2006).
"[T]he physical features focused on as racial are seen to be distributed not uniformly over the continents, but as a series of gradients. This creates real problems in asserting a qualitative difference between nearby populations (such as Ethiopians and Persians), but no such qualitative difference between distant populations (such as Ghanaians and Ethiopians), when in fact all such differences are quantitative" (Marks, 2006) [emphasis added].
"Current systematic theory emphasizes that taxonomy at all levels should reflect evolutionary relationships. For instance, the term ‘Negro’ was once a racial designation for numerous groups in tropical Africa and Pacific Oceania (Melanesians). These groups share a broadly similar external phenotype; this classification illustrates ‘race’ as type, defined by anatomical complexes. Although the actual relationship between African ‘Negroes’ and Oceanic ‘Negroes’ was sometimes questioned, these groups were placed in the same taxon. Molecular and genetic studies later showed that the Oceanic ‘Negroes’ were more closely related to mainland Asians." (Keita et al., 2004).
"Indeed if one attempts to take multiple physical characteristics to define racial groups, you arrive at categorisations that are not indicative of their evolutionary history." (Graves, 2006).
"[T]he physical features focused on as racial are seen to be distributed not uniformly over the continents, but as a series of gradients. This creates real problems in asserting a qualitative difference between nearby populations (such as Ethiopians and Persians), but no such qualitative difference between distant populations (such as Ghanaians and Ethiopians), when in fact all such differences are quantitative" (Marks, 2006) [emphasis added].
Your sources are bogus. Keita for example is an Afrocentric. Those gradients exist in places like Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa because of Eurasian gene-flow, they are not natural gradients but introduced by Caucasoid admixture. Ethiopians are 60% Caucasoid. Afrocentrics like Keita in denial and self-hatred in contrast try to argue those gradients developed in situ.
Original post by whyumadtho
Yeah, there is a uniform distribution of fundamentally qualitative categorisations of someone's appearance across vast geographical expanses. 
Traits exist on a gradient, not as coterminous categories.
Yeah, there is a uniform distribution of fundamentally qualitative categorisations of someone's appearance across vast geographical expanses. Traits exist on a gradient, not as coterminous categories.
Pigmentation exists as a gradient. Not morphology.
Races can be identified by craniometric and craniofacial clusters. Beals et al (1984) who analysed 20,000 skulls discovered every single one fitted in the standard Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid clusters. Howells' world craniometric dataset online does exactly the same, but since his samples cover a wider scope of geography, his clusters include Australoid and Ainuid.
There is no overlap in craniometrics. You won't for example find a Negroid with non-wide nasal measurements, or a Caucasoid with wide nasal measurements.
Original post by whyumadtho
I object to averaging where the variable in question is fundamentally mutable by personal endeavour (i.e., what other people choose to do is irrelevant).
I can think of numerous practical examples where anyone, surely including yourself, would make a decision based on averaging, among groups, of mutable characteristics.
Take, for example, physical strength of some sort. You have a manual job that needs doing and a group of 100 workers, 50 male and 50 female. Who do you prioritise? The men, presumably. Because even though some women are stronger than some men, the average man is stronger than the average woman. And unless you're going to conduct tests on every individual to determine how they rank, which is utterly impractical in most cases, you're best off just choosing the men and getting on with it.
Whatever sort of strength or fitness this task requires can surely be improved, by either sex, through correct training. So this variable is mutable, but mutable by anyone, so we arrive back at the same position of knowing men are more likely to be better at it (indeed in this case women are less likely to have trained for it anyway, but the opposite may be true with other skills).
This works because the higher strength exhibited by men is inextricably linked to the very fact that they are men. It goes hand in hand with it and in a way forms part of the definition of it (following from the genetic differences that distinguish the sexes). It's not just a coincidence that all those men-sorts seem to usually be stronger than the women-sorts, and something we should disregard.
Original post by Sternumator
No, unfortunatly there are some stupid people about.
Original post by NB_ide
It was a question I thought you might like to answer, that's all.
While we're here, this "you can make yourself more intelligent" thing is very controversial and we'd need to settle firmly on what we mean by intelligence before we could discuss it further.
While we're here, this "you can make yourself more intelligent" thing is very controversial and we'd need to settle firmly on what we mean by intelligence before we could discuss it further.
I mean, "next best to that". So the best way we can predict a person's characteristics is to examine the individual themselves. But if we can't do that, for whatever reason, the next best thing would be to examine their parents and close relatives (for strongly-heritable characteristics) and those plus unrelated social associates for personality traits. That would let us make a fair guess about the person. Then, the next step back would be an even wider circle of relatives and influences, until you get to the level that people consider to be an entire "race", which still affords us to predict what a person we haven't individually examined is going to be like.
If there's a sprinting race (the running kind) and you have to bet on a winner. Knowing nothing about the competitors except their apparent ethnicity as you observe it, would you bet on a black guy or a white guy?
Or if 100 Northern Europeans and 100 black Africans had their IQ tested under the same conditions, and you could win £1000 by guessing which group would average a higher score, which would you pick?
Or if 100 Northern Europeans and 100 black Africans had their IQ tested under the same conditions, and you could win £1000 by guessing which group would average a higher score, which would you pick?
If you could win money by correctly guessing who would be taller, a random Oriental or a random Northern European, neither of whom you had met, which would you pick?
This is strange, no none is claiming that a person's current actions will subsequently influence someone else's because they're lumped into the same group. That's not how it works. The idea is that some people have the same traits inherent to them which are likely to manifest as similar behaviours, given the right conditions.
No I don't feel that I can improve my intelligence, but that's more down to our different understandings of "intelligence" than anything else.
Putting aside the issue of what we mean by intelligence, yes everyone can learn and improve their mental abilities one way or another. But this doesn't render pointless the concept of grouping people in some way. Their ability to learn or improve themselves, and in which areas, provides yet another characteristic by which we might wish to categorise people.
Again I wonder if you have it backwards here. Whether one Chinese kid wants to "work harder" or not doesn't influence any other chinese kid's subsequent ability. We all realise that. But the fact that chinese kids are "more intelligent" than English kids remains, and it's a relevant correlation to draw because we can reasonably attribute their superiority to that which defines Chinese, i.e. aspects of their genetics and culture.
Your mental, and physical, situations are unique to yourself and, to some relatively small extent, under your adult conscious control. But they're drawn on the background on your cultural and genetic heritage which is something shared by many other people, to whom you are likely more similar (by definition) than you are to others.
Original post by Pyramidologist
Your sources are bogus. Keita for example is an Afrocentric. Those gradients exist in places like Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa because of Eurasian gene-flow, they are not natural gradients but introduced by Caucasoid admixture. Ethiopians are 60% Caucasoid. Afrocentrics like Keita in denial and self-hatred in contrast try to argue those gradients developed in situ.
Your opinion doesn't trump a world renowned journal, I'm afraid.
There is gene flow everywhere. Can you identify who is the 'purest' 'black', 'white' and 'Asian' person?
Original post by Pyramidologist
Pigmentation exists as a gradient. Not morphology.
Races can be identified by craniometric and craniofacial clusters. Beals et al (1984) who analysed 20,000 skulls discovered every single one fitted in the standard Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid clusters. Howells' world craniometric dataset online does exactly the same, but since his samples cover a wider scope of geography, his clusters include Australoid and Ainuid.
There is no overlap in craniometrics. You won't for example find a Negroid with non-wide nasal measurements, or a Caucasoid with wide nasal measurements.
Races can be identified by craniometric and craniofacial clusters. Beals et al (1984) who analysed 20,000 skulls discovered every single one fitted in the standard Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid clusters. Howells' world craniometric dataset online does exactly the same, but since his samples cover a wider scope of geography, his clusters include Australoid and Ainuid.
There is no overlap in craniometrics. You won't for example find a Negroid with non-wide nasal measurements, or a Caucasoid with wide nasal measurements.
You realise any number of traits could be sought to seek an ever smaller population, don't you? Odokuma et al. (2010) identified cranial differences in Nigerian ethnic groups; i.e., morphology does exist as a gradient. There is no logical reason to stop at the scale you have designated.
Not to mention the problems of qualitative categorisation.
Original post by whyumadtho
I couldn't say, as physical fitness, speed and intelligence are highly mutable and subject to the individual's effort to change them.
You are brilliant - want to make some bets with me?
Bring plenty of cash.
Original post by NB_ide
I can think of numerous practical examples where anyone, surely including yourself, would make a decision based on averaging, among groups, of mutable characteristics.
Take, for example, physical strength of some sort. You have a manual job that needs doing and a group of 100 workers, 50 male and 50 female. Who do you prioritise? The men, presumably. Because even though some women are stronger than some men, the average man is stronger than the average woman. And unless you're going to conduct tests on every individual to determine how they rank, which is utterly impractical in most cases, you're best off just choosing the men and getting on with it.
Whatever sort of strength or fitness this task requires can surely be improved, by either sex, through correct training. So this variable is mutable, but mutable by anyone, so we arrive back at the same position of knowing men are more likely to be better at it (indeed in this case women are less likely to have trained for it anyway, but the opposite may be true with other skills).
This works because the higher strength exhibited by men is inextricably linked to the very fact that they are men. It goes hand in hand with it and in a way forms part of the definition of it (following from the genetic differences that distinguish the sexes). It's not just a coincidence that all those men-sorts seem to usually be stronger than the women-sorts, and something we should disregard.
Take, for example, physical strength of some sort. You have a manual job that needs doing and a group of 100 workers, 50 male and 50 female. Who do you prioritise? The men, presumably. Because even though some women are stronger than some men, the average man is stronger than the average woman. And unless you're going to conduct tests on every individual to determine how they rank, which is utterly impractical in most cases, you're best off just choosing the men and getting on with it.
Whatever sort of strength or fitness this task requires can surely be improved, by either sex, through correct training. So this variable is mutable, but mutable by anyone, so we arrive back at the same position of knowing men are more likely to be better at it (indeed in this case women are less likely to have trained for it anyway, but the opposite may be true with other skills).
This works because the higher strength exhibited by men is inextricably linked to the very fact that they are men. It goes hand in hand with it and in a way forms part of the definition of it (following from the genetic differences that distinguish the sexes). It's not just a coincidence that all those men-sorts seem to usually be stronger than the women-sorts, and something we should disregard.
I shall only speak through my own anecdotal experiences.
Of the black people I knew at school, 2 of them got A*AA or higher in literature subjects at A-level - one of them speaking English as a second language. There was one Jamaican guy who came to school high and did not complete A-levels, and finally there was one ditsy girl who did A-levels but only got average grades. As for myself, I got A*A*A*A in maths, further maths, Physics and one other subject. I also got an A in English Lit AS, had the second highest IQ in my year group of 130 pupils at (134) and I also got 10 a* at GCSE. (The teachers had a list of all the pupils IQs). Note, I am mixed-race. I suspect my IQ is higher now that I have become a lot better at maths in recent years- to the state where I was just getting the pass grade required on Cambridge mathematical exam papers.
With regards to Asians, I don't think they are any more intelligent than whites. They have just done so much more maths back in China and usually have an upbringing that stresses the importance of learning. This brings about their success in maths exams and IQ tests. The Asians in my further matsh class told me how they would be studying about 10 hours a day in China, and that Britain was much more relaxed. They have to work harder because their futures are pretty much determined by an exam they take when they leave school- and there are also ties with this culture of learning and the mandarin style of examination that has gone on for centuries in China. Studies are ingrained into their society, and I can easily see this system as producing a 10 point increase in average iq.
Furthermore, the Asian on my further maths class did not seems as creative, in speech or good humour, as most of those with a british or black upbringing. They just knew how to recite what they had been taught- which I am also sure is a by product of their system of education that stresses rote-learning (I have met a few really creative Chinese outside of school though). Their language is a lot more pictographic than ours which could help contribute to their higher visio-spatial IQ. The syllables of each word much shorter, and that might occasion the lower verbal IQ that the researches have documented. I think it was seeing some of the Asians in my maths class- their lack of creativity but high logical capacities- coupled with the fact that Asians are claimed to have a purportedly much higher IQ, that made me completely turn against the validity of IQ tests.
I have met so many really clever Nigerians. For instance, my cousins are better at mental mathematics and are more humerous than me though I like to think I'm pretty good with both the laughter and the Lagrangians. The chairman of Credit-Suisse is a Nigerian, so is Slash the musician. We have a nobel prize-winner for literature, and there are black guys who have been to Oxford and Cambridge studying scientific subjects. My mum, who is Nigerian- is also better at countdown than me if that counts for anything
. Ironically despite scoring highly in IQ tests, I deeply distrust and resent them. This is because the scientists who use them implicitly assume IQ is intelligence, that intelligence is immutable, and that those who have had 3-7 years of education should score as highly as Westerners. Frankly, it's all bull****. If you had been to Africa and seen the general standard of living/ education there, then you would know.LOL
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by Blutooth
Why bother?
It's worth noting that this analogy deviates from the issue of 'race', as sex is a biological fact, whereas 'race' is a social construct.
I prioritise whoever is strongest based on their appearance, as strength is highly mutable. There are weak men and strong women, so I would choose on their individual traits. For both intelligence and strength, I can't conceive a situation where you would have to judge the two on sex and ethnicity alone.
I don't know if the women who have applied are physically superior or equal to the men who have applied, so I'll still have to judge individually.
This doesn't preclude women from attaining the strength required for an average strength-based job.
Original post by NB_ide
I can think of numerous practical examples where anyone, surely including yourself, would make a decision based on averaging, among groups, of mutable characteristics.
Take, for example, physical strength of some sort. You have a manual job that needs doing and a group of 100 workers, 50 male and 50 female. Who do you prioritise? The men, presumably. Because even though some women are stronger than some men, the average man is stronger than the average woman. And unless you're going to conduct tests on every individual to determine how they rank, which is utterly impractical in most cases, you're best off just choosing the men and getting on with it.
Take, for example, physical strength of some sort. You have a manual job that needs doing and a group of 100 workers, 50 male and 50 female. Who do you prioritise? The men, presumably. Because even though some women are stronger than some men, the average man is stronger than the average woman. And unless you're going to conduct tests on every individual to determine how they rank, which is utterly impractical in most cases, you're best off just choosing the men and getting on with it.
Whatever sort of strength or fitness this task requires can surely be improved, by either sex, through correct training. So this variable is mutable, but mutable by anyone, so we arrive back at the same position of knowing men are more likely to be better at it (indeed in this case women are less likely to have trained for it anyway, but the opposite may be true with other skills).
This works because the higher strength exhibited by men is inextricably linked to the very fact that they are men. It goes hand in hand with it and in a way forms part of the definition of it (following from the genetic differences that distinguish the sexes). It's not just a coincidence that all those men-sorts seem to usually be stronger than the women-sorts, and something we should disregard.
Original post by NB_ide
Why bother?
Original post by NB_ide
You are brilliant - want to make some bets with me?
Bring plenty of cash.
Bring plenty of cash.
Original post by justmyopinions
No everyone is equal 
why did I get neg for this? I didn't mean everyone, I meant each race.
Original post by NB_ide
Why bother?
Because everyone- including scientists- have their prejudices of the world. And it is from these prejudices that they develop their models and test their theories. Some might call them inklings, clues or hypotheses but until they are validated they are just prejudices. Sometimes these prejudices are validated by facts and elevated to the state of a scientific law, but other times the scientists have setup models that are so riven with prejudice that any experiment will validate their opinions. I believe this is the case with most of the literature on IQ tests and race.
As I am no genetic scientist, I feel I may as well offer my own prejudices an opinions to bring to bear on the issue and persuade as many who are willing to listen.
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by whyumadtho
It's worth noting that this analogy deviates from the issue of 'race', as sex is a biological fact, whereas 'race' is a social construct.
Yes, we've left that behind while we deal with your unique "nothing can be predicted about anyone" policy.
I prioritise whoever is strongest based on their appearance, as strength is highly mutable. There are weak men and strong women, so I would choose on their individual traits.
And if you couldn't inspect and trial each individual first? How would you choose, to have the very best chance of getting as many of the strongest people.
For both intelligence and strength, I can't conceive a situation where you would have to judge the two on sex and ethnicity alone.
Nor can I, but our answers to these hypothetical questions tell us what we think about the groups in question.
I don't know if the women who have applied are physically superior or equal to the men who have applied, so I'll still have to judge individually.
What are the chances of that, though? Is it likely? Unlikely? Impossible to say incaseyouoffendsomeone?
This doesn't preclude women from attaining the strength required for an average strength-based job.
That's not the issue, though - it's about how they compare to the men in the group, when you want to select the strongest individuals from it.
Original post by whyumadtho
Because individuals are the central unit in this discussion.
I don't think we have room for 7 billion anecdotes, unfortunately.
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If the Russell Group was now a fair representation of what it still claims to beLast reply 2 weeks ago
TSR Goes Green: How important will the environment be in this year's election?Last reply 2 weeks ago
Research Rankings of universities if you add Research Quality & Intensity percentagesLast reply 1 month ago
Is University of Birmingham prestigious and respected well enough in UK ?Trending
Last reply 3 days ago
Why is the political left now censorious and authoritarian??Last reply 3 days ago
Is it true that British unis are prejudiced towards degrees from Scottish unis?Last reply 3 days ago
If the Russell Group was now a fair representation of what it still claims to beLast reply 2 weeks ago
TSR Goes Green: How important will the environment be in this year's election?Last reply 2 weeks ago
Research Rankings of universities if you add Research Quality & Intensity percentagesLast reply 1 month ago
Is University of Birmingham prestigious and respected well enough in UK ?
