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by paganel8 hours ago |
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upvoteby pingou7 hours ago|
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I don't think many people dispute the fact that the environment plays a role in intelligence. Not even many people dispute that there is some heritability to intelligence. What is in dispute is whether that heritability means that some races are on average genetically more intelligent than others (and another problem is how to define intelligence).
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upvoteby graemep5 hours ago|
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How do you define races? As I said in another comment definitions shift and they are different in different countries. I have an encyclopedia from the 1950s that defines South Asians as "Caucasoid". Some East Africans were also defined as "Caucasoid" historically.If we define races on the basis of genetic similarity then almost everyone whose ancestry is from Eurasia is the same "race", but people whose ancestry is African belong to multiple races.
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upvoteby pigpop1 hours ago|
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Race was only ever a stand in before we had an accurate understanding of genetics.
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upvoteby doodlebugging44 seconds ago|
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It's a bit like the old adage that we should not judge a book by its cover. The outside often does not provide any clues into the content or worse, it could bias an observer's opinions about what they would find inside if they chose to engage with the material.

Its akin to judging a man by the color of his skin instead of by the content of his character.

Thanks for your comment that clarifies how genetics provides a much more granular window into an individual than any physical characteristic taken by itself can provide.

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upvoteby logicchains6 hours ago|
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If we define intelligence as IQ then the evidence is overwhelming that the average differs among races. Even in Singapore, which has a very high standard of living, nutrition etc., we still see Chinese Singaporeans perform significantly better than Malay Singaporeans on various measures of intelligence, with Indian Singaporeans somewhere in the middle. The same pattern is seen among Chinese, Indians and native Malaysians in Malaysia, and globally when we compare the mean IQ scores of China, India and Malaysia.
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upvoteby pingou6 hours ago|
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That could also be explained by cultural differences, I don't think the evidence is overwhelming.

Or it could be discrimination. There are studies that show that black and white mixed races children did not score any higher than children with two black parents, while white people score higher than black people on average, which may point to some discrimination impacting IQ.

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upvoteby JuniperMesos5 hours ago|
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Discrimination against whites in favor of blacks doesn't lower white IQ.
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upvoteby graemep5 hours ago|
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There are significant cultural and economic differences between those communities. These will be similar between Singapore and Malaysia. The Chinese and Indians are sufficiently recent immigrants for their culture to still have a lot in common (they speak the same language, follow the same religions, have inherited attitudes) with the places their ancestors came from.
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upvoteby thin_carapace7 hours ago|
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I don't understand how the precedents could lead to any question regarding the disputed conclusion
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upvoteby card_zero8 hours ago|
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Right, but the equation of workings of the brain to intelligence is the tricky bit. That's like equating the workings of my bicycle to my decision to ride to a particular place.
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upvoteby paganel8 hours ago|
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> workings of the brain to intelligence is the tricky bit

I don't find it that tricky, intelligence does come from the brain.

> That's like equating the workings of my bicycle to my decision to ride to a particular place

Both one's brain and one's "intelligence" belong to the same person, like, physically and materially, which is not true when it comes to your bicycle example. More to the point, I find the comparison itself kind of self-describing, it's like deciding to "outsource" intelligence to some other external, non-ethereal entity (like a bicicle that is physically separate from a human being) in order to avoid those hard questions the OP was alluding to (hard questions that oftentimes also involve the political side of things).

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upvoteby card_zero7 hours ago|
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Now I want to say that your ideas don't come from your brain. But of course they do, as a result of interaction with other people's ideas, some of which were written down. (Don't worry, I'm not a dualist.)

The thing is that no matter how fancy your bicycle, I can still ride my shitty bicycle to a university, and you can ride your lubricated carbon fiber bicycle into a ditch, and then you're not so smart. If what you call intelligence is how fast your bicycle typically goes into the ditch, then sure, it can be measured on a scale and you have more of it.

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upvoteby defrost7 hours ago|
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You, as a dualist, is the least of the fears we hold.

There are other notions about the transfer of ideas: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/06/memory-transfer

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upvoteby card_zero7 hours ago|
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I'm not a dualist! Fumes

Wait, cannibal worms that eat memories? My my.

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upvoteby defrost7 hours ago|
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I for one thank our AI overlords that weight training avoided that path not taken :/
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upvoteby jstanley6 hours ago|
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If you think any brain can be just as intelligent no matter how it works then why not extend that to things that aren't brains? If everyone's brain is equally good then isn't a rock just as good as well?
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upvoteby card_zero5 hours ago|
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Sure, if the rock has good ideas.

(Rocks don't have ideas.)

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upvoteby vintermann6 hours ago|
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A lot of HN is currently about rocks that we've made very smart, in case you haven't noticed. I don't want archeology polluted by generic academic culture war stuff, so can we please leave "intelligence" out of it?
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