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So who else thinks race doesn't ultimately determine your intelligence?

Seeing the documentary "Science's Last Taboo: Racial Intelligence" on Monday and I pretty much agreed with that documentary that your intelligence is mostly based on the way you were brought up. I don't think that having a different gene based on your race has that much an impact on your intelligence.

And what about Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences? What do you think about IQ tests? Would IQ tests really be a true measure of your overall 'intelligence'? I think not but that's only my (maybe misguided) opinion. :biggrin:

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Reply 1

ByronicHero

almost noone is stupid enough to think it ULTIMATELY does.

Many people may beleive it matters in terms of averages but this is different.

Reply 2

Advanced Subsidiary

I agree, race doesn't determine your intelligence. It's how you were nurtured.

Reply 3

Rule Britannia

Nobody said race ultimately decided intelligence - only between populations are there discernable variations in intelligence. They are very different claims.

Who cares about theories of multiple-intelligences? The whole problem with that area is using the word intelligence - it's imprecise and does not have a well defined meaning. Arguing over semantics is really pathetic. The theories that do not take into account multiple-intelligences are just as valid just are probably starting from a different definition of intelligence.

They're all arguing that the sky is blue - they just can't agree on what the sky is. It is a meaningless debate.

Reply 4

Xenopus

Race doesn't determine intelligence in the same way that no single gene controls intelligence. Intelligence is controlled by hundreds of genes, and we don't know what they are. What we do know, is that intelligence to a degree is genetic, in the same way that athletic potential is, in the same way that some diseases are, and in the same way that appearance is. All these things are different for different races; each race has a different and characteristic appearance, a different average height, a different average skin colour, a different average physique, and a different average intelligence. There are always going to be members of each race that are less or more intelligent, athletic, tall, or whatever, but it is ignorant to say that every race is the same, on average, in any attribute, to all the other races.

Reply 5

apocalipse117

didn't watch the documentary...but yeh, i can't see how it could affect your intelligence. a lot of indians are very good at maths, not just because they're indian, but because a lot of emphasis is put on maths at school.
IQ tests...no, don't like them! some very intelligent people don't necessarily have high IQ. it depends on how you define intelligence; academic? social? musical? physical?

Reply 6

Aphotic Cosmos

Intelligence is not defined by race, since there's no such thing. There's one "race" of humans.

Reply 7

Tefhel

I don't think anyone made that claim did they? They said that on average some races were more intelligent than others, not that by being born xxx race you are inherently smarter/less smart than another race.

But yeah, I think it's just genes that sets your intelligence 'potential' as it were, and your home environment determines whether you reach this potential or not.

Reply 8

username246000

There is only the human race I'm afraid.

Reply 9

d123

I didn't see the programme. I don't think it does though; there are intelligent and less intellligent people from all races.
One interesting theory I heard is that social prejudices can sometimes affect how well people perform; some Asian people perform very well academically and this could be partially as a result of prejudice making them work harder or something.

Reply 10

Mr_Steve_Stifler

Nurturing/Culture determine it.

Reply 11

Xenopus

Aphotic Cosmos

Intelligence is not defined by race, since there's no such thing. There's one "race" of humans.

There isn't one race of humans, there is one species. Race is a sub species grouping based on identifiable physical characteristics, the direct equivalent in dogs being breeds. One breed of dog is noticeably different and identifiable from another breed, yet all are the same species. Human races are the same as dog breeds. The phrase "human race" is the problem behind all this race denial, humans are not technically a race, we are a species, and are subdivided into races, which is a valid scientific term, with set meanings.
The only difference between the dogs in my analogy, and human races, is that breeds of dogs have been made on purpose, while human races have been created by natural adaptation to the physical environments they have found themselves in. Other species aside from dogs, non-domesticated ones, have races also, but race is a term used when purposeful breeding hasn't been involved.

Reply 12

SkinnyKat

I'm not sure on this one.

It's clear that intelligence is more than just an inherited trait, but as controversial as it is - I can't believe that whilst there are clear physical differences between races, there are no internal differences.

If there are external differences, then why not internal ( ie, the brain) differences?

Reply 13

Xerophelistica

Wow, people saying there are no races in the human species have been watching too much Disney it seems. How can you look at an olympic athletics track or swimming pool and still honestly believe that?

Reply 14

pina.Love

This whole intelligence debate is idiotic.

The brain is the ultimate organism that scientist cannot understand, because it is too complex. So how on earth can you measure intelligence?

It is completely shocking on the other thread that 25% of the people that voted thought that black people are genetically unintelligent....

Reply 15

Tsukuyomi

Although i agree that 'intelligence', is to do with the way you were brought up, the show was rather biased

Reply 16

Haeron

I think the problem was that the program seemed to take 'IQ' as some holy measurement device that determined your intelligence objectively, absolutely and 4EVA.
The fact is, you can learn to pass that kind of thing, and we are brought up with the sort of challenges it asks us to solve. Other cultures are not. Hence, on paper, we see variation in 'intelligence' based on IQ scores, when all it measures is level of disconnection with our society (you could say so, at least).

Reply 17

Chi019

"So how on earth can you measure intelligence?"

People who score better on tests have different brain characteristics as recent neuroscience shows.

This includes, cortical thickness, gray matter & white matter volume, myelination (which affects processing speed) and efficiency in terms of glucose used while doing basic tasks.

There is a summary of this with images showing the areas of the brain, here by UCLA Neuroscientist Paul Thompson and Yale University Psychologist Jeremy Gray.

www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/PDF/nrn0604-GrayThompson.pdf

People saying it is all due to nurture are also incorrect. In the latest MIT Technology Review Robert Plomin discusses the results of several twin studies. Genetic influence increases as you get older:

"My team, for example, has discovered that the genetic influence on IQ becomes more pronounced during development. In a study of 11,000 pairs of twins from four countries, we have recently shown that the heritability of IQ increases linearly from childhood (about 40 percent) to adolescence (about 55 percent) to young adulthood (about 65 percent)."

In terms of the initial question, race per se doesn't determine your intelligence just as it doesn't determine your sprinting ability. However, groups do differ on average.

People saying race doesn't exist also are unaware of recent genetic studies.

there are readily identifiable clusters of points, corresponding to traditional continental ethnic groups: Europeans, Africans, Asians, Native Americans, etc. (See, for example, Risch et al., Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268–275, 2005.)

This clustering is a natural consequence of geographical isolation, inheritance and natural selection operating over the last 50k years since humans left Africa.

But it is these distributions that are measured by the metric we defined earlier. Two groups that form distinct clusters are likely to exhibit different frequency distributions over various genes, leading to group differences.

This leads us to two very distinct possibilities in human genetic variation:

Hypothesis 1: (the PC mantra) The only group differences that exist between the clusters (races) are innocuous and superficial, for example related to skin color, hair color, body type, etc.

Hypothesis 2: (the dangerous one) Group differences exist which might affect important (let us say, deep rather than superficial) and measurable characteristics, such as cognitive abilities, personality, athletic prowess, etc.

A standard argument against H2 is that the 50k years during which groups have been separated is not long enough for differential natural selection to cause any group differences in deep characteristics. I find this argument quite naive, given what we know about animal breeding and how evolution has affected the (ever expanding list of) "superficial" characteristics. Many genes are now suspected of having been subject to strong selection over timescales of order 5k years or less. For further discussion of H2 by Steve Pinker, see here.

The predominant view among social scientists is that H1 is obviously correct and H2 obviously false. However, this is mainly wishful thinking. Official statements by the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association even endorse the view that race is not a valid biological concept, which is clearly incorrect.

Finally, it is important to note that group differences are statistical in nature and do not imply anything about particular individuals. Rather than rely on the scientifically unsupported claim that we are all equal, it would be better to emphasize that we all have inalienable human rights regardless of our abilities or genetic makeup.

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2007/01/metric-on-space-of-genomes-and.html

Reply 18

Chi019

You can see how population groups cluster genetically here. This shows the progress over the past 40 years.

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/06/genetic-clustering-40-years-of-progress.html

Reply 19

DCalfine

Tsukuyomi

Although i agree that 'intelligence', is to do with the way you were brought up, the show was rather biased

Haeron

Yeah, I saw that too. The show was quite biased in presenting that IQ determined your OVERALL intelligence and nothing else. It's unfortunate they didn't look at other aspects of intelligence, which could've made it a little more interesting. Although if they did, I doubt they would've come up with the same result as this documentary did....