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  • teleological genetics

    ''Fat, diabetic, and heart-disease genes may have evolved to survive the cold. '' Well, that certainly explains the propensity for obesity in the people of oceania (Samoa, Hawaii, etc.)
    Posted to Human Nature by gzuckier on February 20, 2008

  • What is intelligence

    The problem with all the arguments about IQ and race is that we can't really measure IQ and we don't really know what it is. Until we can, arguments are meaningless. I am certainly more knowledgeable than the President, but am I smarter? Could I have made it to the Presidency with his advantages? I don't know, but I doubt I have his ...
    Posted to The Dilettante by chuck on December 4, 2007

  • Re: Blacks are genetically superior in...

    Your sports analogy completely blows up when you look at a sport that controls for both heredity and environment -- soccer. In that sport, the world's top athletes come from a wide variety of ethnic, socio-economic and geographic backgrounds. The world's current best player, Kaka, is an upper-middle class white Brazilian with obvious European ...
    Posted to The Dilettante by jfurf on December 4, 2007

  • Race does not exist

    Metcalfe's article is very good so far as it goes, but unfortunately it doesn't go far enough. The key point is that 'race', in the sense used by Saletan, is nonsense. The genetics and history are fairly simple. Black and white Americans are the product of several hundred years of population mixing. The way it goes is that some of the genetic ...
    Posted to The Dilettante by anarch on December 4, 2007

  • Re: "the within-group heritability of IQ scores is irrelevant"

    The answer to the question whether the quality of the crops would revert to equal is yes. There is a ''natural experiment'' in the UK population which demonstrates this. Prior to the Second World War the disparities in quality of diet and of other living conditions between the working class population and the rest of society were very great. There ...
    Posted to The Dilettante by kenc on December 4, 2007

  • Re: The need for detail

    He might have been a better writer to have replaced ''those Nigerian babies'' with ''these babies'' because after all 5% of the babies of European descent lack the gene(s) too. Thanks for reminding us of the context of Saletan’s quote. Of course there is a lot more to it than that. Firstly: It is not 5% of all babies of European descent ...
    Posted to Human Nature by brerlou on November 30, 2007

  • Re: Neither Race or IQ Scientifically Valid

    BJ&TheBear: In walks the science: In one of the most extensive of these studies to date, considering 1,056 individuals from 52 human populations, with each individual genotyped for 377 autosomal microsatellite markers, we found that individuals could be partitioned into six main genetic clusters, five of which corresponded to Africa, ...
    Posted to Human Nature by gzuckier on November 29, 2007

  • Neither Race or IQ Scientifically Valid

    Who said IQ was a true measure of intelligence anyway? It only measures a certain kind of mental ability. There is growing evidence that diet and environment can play a huge role in brain development. Also, differences in lifestyle can cause certain genetic traits to be expressed. Someone with poor nutrition, neglected and abused by parents, poor ...
    Posted to Human Nature by curiousgemini on November 28, 2007

  • Rational Racism

    Perhaps Saletan is here founding a new movement (at least a new movement to give an old movement a respectable public face): Rational Racism. I suspect that what resonates as most existentially aggravating about thinking such as Saletan displays here, to those of us it rubs wrong, lies below the threshold of any reified logic: we intuit a ...
    Posted to Human Nature by mcdonald on November 26, 2007

  • Basketball Anyone?

    It seems that most people assume something terrible happens as a result of the discovery that genetics play a part in IQ. This hand wringing is pretty ridiculous. Is there anyone who doubts that people of African descent are as a whole more athletic than people of European descent? I daresay there are few who could really profess to believe ...
    Posted to Human Nature by cbreland25 on November 19, 2007
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