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Genetics and Race


TahoeHorn

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This is a good article on the taboo topic:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/denying-genetics-isnt-shutting-down-racism-its-fueling-it.html

"You can't talk about that.  Lalalalala.  I'm not listening."

It's the modern day McCarthyism.  Scream "racist" loudly and attack the author not his ideas.  It'll scare other people from defending him.

But one day science will win out.

I don't know what truth is.  I do know that many people are afraid of the pursuit of truth.  It's a topic they don't want studied.

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The fallacy is in equating "race" with "distinct subpopulations."  Oh, and I read the whole article.

All "black people" are not the same subpopulation.  Same with all "asians" or "white people."

For example, the white subpopulation that has developed in Norway since the Vikings settled down may indeed have some genetic strength with respect to standard IQ testing.  The white subpopulation that has developed in, for example, Alabama, has not.

Chuck the concept of "race."  It's an outmoded, stupid, intellectually limited and lazy way of looking at genetics.

The fact that this idea is championed loudest by people like Tahoe even further discredits it.  Yes, it does.  Kind of like how I laughed on the West Mall when I walked by the "legalize hemp" table.  These guys were great at explaining how it was totally NOT about legalizing marijuana as a drug, and hemp is awesome, you can make rope, and clothes, and it will be great for farmers.  Great....but, ummm....if it's totally NOT about legalizing weed, then why were those guys ALWAYS total stoners?

If it's totally NOT about race....than why is it always old white guys from Alabama pushing this shit?

Because they want to reinforce their own lazy thinking.  If you'd have said "genetics and genetically distinct subpopulations," you might have a smidgen more credibility here.  There are folks who do genetic research that ties to subpopulations.  There are others who want to revive the thinking of Samuel Morton.  You know which group you fall into.  it's lazy jackasses like you who are actually the greatest impediment to such in-depth genetic research, because you wait ravenously in the wings, drooling at the prospect of extracting each and every data point that validates your pre-existing prejudices.

Edited by Brisketexan
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8 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

It's a topic (((they))) don't want studied.

Fixed.

This is the perfect shitty Tahoe thread. Vague, outraged, full of strawmen, only-slightly-hidden racial resentment.

I did the thing I highly doubt Tahoe did: I read all of the pieces involved in the story.

The original David Reich piece in the NYT has seemingly nothing to do with Andrew Sullivan's. Sullivan cites Ezra Klein's "encyclical" as an example of LIBERALS freaking out. (Klein blasts Sam Harris, justifiably because Harris (like Sullivan) is an idiot.)

Here's what Ezra Klein had to say about Reich's article:

Quote

 I do not find this column as troubling as Harris seems to think I will.

So the liberal menace in all this, Ezra Klein, was fine with Reich's piece. But the white Right is so eager to feel victimized that they pretend that Klein was freaking out even though Klein was shrugging his shoulders.

The reality is that there is nothing at all forbidden about studying genetics and race. Reich has done it for years unmolested. Many other genetic scientists do it without a herd of ANTIFA lesbians overturning their bunsen burners and smashing their beakers.

The only thing "forbidden" is trying to use narrow scientific discoveries to create grand sweeping statements about racial difference.

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1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

The fallacy is in equating "race" with "distinct subpopulations."  Oh, and I read the whole article.

All "black people" are not the same subpopulation.  Same with all "asians" or "white people."

For example, the white subpopulation that has developed in Norway since the Vikings settled down may indeed have some genetic strength with respect to standard IQ testing.  The white subpopulation that has developed in, for example, Alabama, has not.

Chuck the concept of "race."  It's an outmoded, stupid, intellectually limited and lazy way of looking at genetics.

The fact that this idea is championed loudest by people like Tahoe even further discredits it.  Yes, it does.  Kind of like how I laughed on the West Mall when I walked by the "legalize hemp" table.  These guys were great at explaining how it was totally NOT about legalizing marijuana as a drug, and hemp is awesome, you can make rope, and clothes, and it will be great for farmers.  Great....but, ummm....if it's totally NOT about legalizing weed, then why were those guys ALWAYS total stoners?

If it's totally NOT about race....than why is it always old white guys from Alabama pushing this shit?

Because they want to reinforce their own lazy thinking.  If you'd have said "genetics and genetically distinct subpopulations," you might have a smidgen more credibility here.  There are folks who do genetic research that ties to subpopulations.  There are others who want to revive the thinking of Samuel Morton.  You know which group you fall into.  it's lazy jackasses like you who are actually the greatest impediment to such in-depth genetic research, because you wait ravenously in the wings, drooling at the prospect of extracting each and every data point that validates your pre-existing prejudices.

Gould published a good take down of Murray's work (parroted by racists like Sully) back when the Bell Curve first published.  

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/topics/curveball.html

Of course, none of this really about intellectual freedom in the pursuit of scientific discovery as it's about establishing a defense for racial inequality.

 

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10 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

The fallacy is in equating "race" with "distinct subpopulations."  Oh, and I read the whole article.

All "black people" are not the same subpopulation.  Same with all "asians" or "white people."

For example, the white subpopulation that has developed in Norway since the Vikings settled down may indeed have some genetic strength with respect to standard IQ testing.  The white subpopulation that has developed in, for example, Alabama, has not.

Chuck the concept of "race."  It's an outmoded, stupid, intellectually limited and lazy way of looking at genetics.

The fact that this idea is championed loudest by people like Tahoe even further discredits it. ...

The Harvard geneticist didn't equate race with distinct subpopulations.  Andrew Sullivan didn't and I don't.

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16 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

I wonder who will read the article before commenting on it.  Some will only read the headline.

I wonder why you feel the need to post the article.  What do you think this adds to the conversation on race?  Do you think this helps race relations in this country?  On the Surl?  But, that's right, you're just "asking questions."  

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The Harvard geneticist didn't equate race with distinct subpopulations.  Andrew Sullivan didn't and I don't.

 
Interesting thread title choice.
 
I get the impression that you're doing more than just bringing the donuts to some of your meetings, Tahoe.
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15 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

The Harvard geneticist didn't equate race with distinct subpopulations.  Andrew Sullivan didn't and I don't.

Your thread title choice says differently.

It says it in bold fucking type.

People who think they're clever are really sad fucking people.

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24 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

The Harvard geneticist didn't equate race with distinct subpopulations.  Andrew Sullivan didn't and I don't.

Thread Title: Genetics and Race

haha fuck off

 

[edit]

too fast for me, brisket

Edited by bad_teammate
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Being a little more serious, everything that needs to be said on this topic has already been addressed in the past few days in other articles (Ezra Klein's is good) and on twitter. However, as to Tahoe's hysterical "this is the new McCarthyism!" nonsense, this is the obvious response:

Charles Murray has been anything but silenced; he's built a very lucrative career out of peddling some really shoddy race science. His problem is not that his conclusions are offensive, it's that the quality of his analysis is absolutely laughable:

 And let's not forget the fact that he literally burned a cross in his hometown in the 1950s, which I'd say is a pretty good indicator that he's racist. But Tahoe will continue to pretend that any criticism of him is simply political correctness run amok, same as he'll probably shortly start a thread about the backlash against The Atlantic hiring Kevin Williamson, who advocated for the genocide of a quarter to a third of all women.

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35 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Fixed.

This is the perfect shitty Tahoe thread. Vague, outraged, full of strawmen, only-slightly-hidden racial resentment.

I did the thing I highly doubt Tahoe did: I read all of the pieces involved in the story.

The original David Reich piece in the NYT has seemingly nothing to do with Andrew Sullivan's. Sullivan cites Ezra Klein's "encyclical" as an example of LIBERALS freaking out. (Klein blasts Sam Harris, justifiably because Harris (like Sullivan) is an idiot.)

Here's what Ezra Klein had to say about Reich's article:

So the liberal menace in all this, Ezra Klein, was fine with Reich's piece. But the white Right is so eager to feel victimized that they pretend that Klein was freaking out even though Klein was shrugging his shoulders.

The reality is that there is nothing at all forbidden about studying genetics and race. Reich has done it for years unmolested. Many other genetic scientists do it without a herd of ANTIFA lesbians overturning their bunsen burners and smashing their beakers.

The only thing "forbidden" is trying to use narrow scientific discoveries to create grand sweeping statements about racial difference.

This is pretty much how I felt about it. If Tahoe wanted to have a real conversation about science, he would've linked the original Reich piece from the NYTimes where it was explicitly stated that the genetic study showing a propensity for greater intelligence included only a European population and that, yes, a set of genes was related to certain individuals going to school longer (and, therefore, duh) scoring higher on tests. They also seemed to put off having kids at a later date. This flies in the face of Sullivan's immediate jump to the defense of the fucking "Bell Curve."

Here's what the actual scientist said on this type of lazy thinking:

Quote

 

Another high-profile example is James Watson, the scientist who in 1953 co-discovered the structure of DNA, and who was forced to retire as head of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in 2007 after he stated in an interview — without any scientific evidence — that research has suggested that genetic factors contribute to lower intelligence in Africans than in Europeans.

At a meeting a few years later, Dr. Watson said to me and my fellow geneticist Beth Shapiro something to the effect of “When are you guys going to figure out why it is that you Jews are so much smarter than everyone else?” He asserted that Jews were high achievers because of genetic advantages conferred by thousands of years of natural selection to be scholars, and that East Asian students tended to be conformist because of selection for conformity in ancient Chinese society. (Contacted recently, Dr. Watson denied having made these statements, maintaining that they do not represent his views; Dr. Shapiro said that her recollection matched mine.)

What makes Dr. Watson’s and Mr. Wade’s statements so insidious is that they start with the accurate observation that many academics are implausibly denying the possibility of average genetic differences among human populations, and then end with a claim — backed by no evidence — that they know what those differences are and that they correspond to racist stereotypes. They use the reluctance of the academic community to openly discuss these fraught issues to provide rhetorical cover for hateful ideas and old racist canards.


 

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It seems to me Sullivan doth protest too much in creating a strawman about "the Left" and librulz being scientifically incurious so as to support a PC agenda.  

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The question is whether serious geneticists can study a serious genetics topic which has racial implications without being attacked personally.  So far we know they can't.

Sullivan's position, and my position, is not advocating any particular conclusion.  It is advocating the scientific study of genetics and any implications it might have on genetic differences in humans - race, gender, whatever - be treated as scientific study.  Rebuttals should be scientific rebuttals.  Today "we" treat this topic as a political taboo and attack practitioners as racists.

Think of it like a First Amendment argument.  There are times when you argue for the fair treatment of a speaker, while not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing.  I do not understand the science of Reich's work.  I'm sure it doesn't profoundly change what we know about human differences.  But I do know it's a subject that many don't want studied.  And there is pushback.  My point is about the politics of it.  My position is to treat it as science.  Let scientists study and publish asrticles.  Let science go where it goes, searching for the truth wherever it is.

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14 minutes ago, bolverk said:

... If Tahoe wanted to have a real conversation about science, he would've linked the original Reich piece from the NYTimes where it was explicitly stated that the genetic study showing a propensity for greater intelligence included only a European population and that, yes, a set of genes was related to certain individuals going to school longer (and, therefore, duh) scoring higher on tests. They also seemed to put off having kids at a later date....

You can't read.  Neither Sullivan nor I want to discuss the science.  We want to discuss the politics of letting serious scientists do science in the area where genetics may show genetic differences in humans.

 

Do you support letting Reich and others do work in this area without a bunch of ad hominem attacks?

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4 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

The question is whether serious geneticists can study a serious genetics topic which has racial implications without being attacked personally.  So far we know they can't.

Evidence for this bullshit statement?

Which serious geneticists are under attack and by whom? Be specific.

Quote

Do you support letting Reich and others do work in this area?

Who has ever either stopped him or advocated stopping him? Phantom demons in your pathetic and dying mind.

Edited by bad_teammate
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1 minute ago, bad_teammate said:

Evidence for this bullshit statement?

Which serious geneticists are under attack and by whom? Be specific.

He can't.

And the language he uses tells us that he can't, and he's not interested in doing so.

There ARE geneticists who are studying genetic information from distinct subpopulations.  For fuck's sake, almost all human genetic study involves some element of this.  Correlating it to "race" is where the fucking stupidity takes over, and tells us all about a person's motivations.  It's the third word in Tahoe's thread title.  That wasn't a mistake.  It was the truest thing he's ever written.

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2 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

You can't read.  Neither Sullivan nor I want to discuss the science.  We want to discuss the politics of letting serious scientists do science in the area where genetics may show genetic differences in humans.

 

Do you support letting Reich and others do work in this area?

First, its pretty funny that the guy's name is Reich.  Second, Brisket has it right.  One can study genetic variation between subpopulations if we abandon the antiquated idea of skin-tone based race. 

The real danger with "letting" someone like Reich do work isn't from scientists like Reich.  Its from those like Tahoe who want to use it to suppress the rights of individuals who happen to belong to a subpopulation that has been identified as "inferior".   So that Bubba from Bama can have a leg up on Neil deGrasse Tyson since Bubba earned it from his genetics.

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14 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

The question is whether serious geneticists can study a serious genetics topic which has racial implications without being attacked personally.  So far we know they can't.

Sullivan's position, and my position, is not advocating any particular conclusion.  It is advocating the scientific study of genetics and any implications it might have on genetic differences in humans - race, gender, whatever - be treated as scientific study.  Rebuttals should be scientific rebuttals.  Today "we" treat this topic as a political taboo and attack practitioners as racists.

Think of it like a First Amendment argument.  There are times when you argue for the fair treatment of a speaker, while not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing.  I do not understand the science of Reich's work.  I'm sure it doesn't profoundly change what we know about human differences.  But I do know it's a subject that many don't want studied.  And there is pushback.  My point is about the politics of it.  My position is to treat it as science.  Let scientists study and publish articles.  Let science go where it goes, searching for the truth wherever it is.

The funny part is that now with how genetic mapping is being conducted and the rise of the various analytics techniques, I can already start designing a way to dive into the analysis without ever using race. Just start with the end product of multiple intelligence tests and then do clustering or other aggregation techniques back until you get a consistent set of subset predictors and then start using that with the overlays of "race" or "subpopulaiton" categorization and some simple Bayesian statistical techniques  or conditional probabilistic approaches.

It will take a massive amount of computing power and a large set of mapped genetic data tied to several intelligence metrics, but it would help at the bare minimum solidify boundaries of the debate.

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Just now, Laxtonto said:

The funny part is that now with how genetic mapping is being conducted and the rise of the various analytics techniques, I can already start designing a way to dive into the analysis without ever using race. Just start with the end product of multiple intelligence tests and then do clustering or other aggregation techniques back until you get a consistent set of subset predictors and then start using that with the overlays of "race" or "subpopulaiton" categorization and some simple Bayesian statistical techniques  or conditional probabilistic approaches.

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24 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

You can't read.  Neither Sullivan nor I want to discuss the science.  We want to discuss the politics of letting serious scientists do science in the area where genetics may show genetic differences in humans.

 

Do you support letting Reich and others do work in this area without a bunch of ad hominem attacks?

You don't want to discuss science in a thread about genetics, but you are interested in fighting phantom strawmen who are purportedly trying to suppress scientific discovery.

Let's see a show of hands from the evil libs who are opposed to this research.

ANYONE? anyone? anyone? anyone? anyone? anyone?

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25 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

You can't read.  Neither Sullivan nor I want to discuss the science.  We want to discuss the politics of letting serious scientists do science in the area where genetics may show genetic differences in humans.

 

Do you support letting Reich and others do work in this area without a bunch of ad hominem attacks?

Pretty obvious redirect of the focus from a cross burner to a guy nobody has complained about.

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1 hour ago, SmokeyBear1861 said:

Same thing as the marshmallow test. Ability to delay gratification for kids, linked to IQ.

Incorrect. Ability to delay gratification for kids, linked to success in life, NOT intelligence.

 

 

1 hour ago, Message Board User said:

Within-group differences are much greater and wider than between-group differences.

yep.

 

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7 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

Incorrect. Ability to delay gratification for kids, linked to success in life, NOT intelligence.

 

Is success in life linked to intelligence?

http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/04/02/attention-and-intelligence/

delayed gratification isn’t really about gritting our teeth or exerting willpower: it’s about controlling the spotlight of attention. Likewise, intelligence isn’t just about remembering abstract facts – it’s about controlling what thoughts we’re thinking about in the first place. (To put it another way, being smart is not just about having a larger working memory – it’s about having more precise control over what’s in working memory.)

https://news.gsu.edu/2018/02/08/chimpanzee-self-control-related-intelligence-georgia-state-study-finds/

 

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5 minutes ago, SmokeyBear1861 said:

Of course success in life is linked to intelligence.

Success in life has been linked to the ability to delay gratification. I am passingly familiar with the studies.

I'm not denying either of those facts.

I'm saying that "IQ" and the ability to delay gratification are not the same thing. Maybe they are linked, sounds reasonable, I'll read  your links if I get a chance, but they are not the same thing.

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Come on, guys - admit it. You know there are differences between the races, and the dark-skinned folks are better at some things and worse at others. If those leftists would just stop preventing respectable scientists from studying the issue, we'd be able to prove it. Then everyone would know their place and we wouldn't have all these problems like we've been having the last 150 years or so. It's not racist to notice these things, because it's science.

-- what I imagine a Tahoe thought bubble to contain when he starts these threads

 

 

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20 minutes ago, SmokeyBear1861 said:

Addiction and drug use goes up as intelligence goes up too. That knocks many off the success track.  ADHD is also more prevalent, so others don't finish what they started or have difficulty buckling down and applying their intelligence to a long term task. As far as success in America goes, perseverance is really the key. Intelligence plus perseverance while avoiding temptations is the golden goose. 

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It must allow for the truth of genetics to be embraced, while drawing the firmest of lines against any moral or political abuse of it. When that classical liberalism is tarred as inherently racist because it cannot guarantee equality of outcomes, and when scientific research is under attack for revealing the fuller truth about our world, we are in deep trouble.

 

Quote

Black children grow up in a country that, over and over again, signals that it expects less of them, believes less in them, and fears more from them. This is, in part, the result of deep-seated racism in American life — a racism that often manifests less through hatred than through underestimation and dismissal; a racism that draws on centuries of belief in black inferiority.

Summary of each article from themselves.  The critique against the science seems to be that it cannot be performed as stated in the first article "drawing a line against abuses."  Klein thinks the research is abusive itself - being both tainted by subliminal racism of the scientists and having an inherently racist effect despite intentions.

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19 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

Of course success in life is linked to intelligence.

Success in life has been linked to the ability to delay gratification. I am passingly familiar with the studies.

I'm not denying either of those facts.

I'm saying that "IQ" and the ability to delay gratification are not the same thing. Maybe they are linked, sounds reasonable, I'll read  your links if I get a chance, but they are not the same thing.

We're also just at the very beginning of understanding how to match genetic markers to certain traits (including but not limited to "intelligence," which in and of itself is difficult to define -- certain cognitive abilities are often characterized as intelligence, but that fails to account for the ability to communicate effectively, or to persuade, or to connect to emotions of others in a social context, etc. etc.).  In other words, we have some pretty weak and narrow definitions of "intelligence," and we have an even weaker idea of how genetics connects to same.

Hell, there are a crapload of genetic factors that tie to things like hair and eye color, but also seem to have secondary effects that we don't have the foggiest idea what they are.

Sure, these things should be studied.  And, umm, they are.  But in terms of making any sort of broad conclusions -- well, we know the Tahoes of the world will do so, and will want to do so.  Tahoe, good news, though -- "Crania Americana" is a rare volume, so your copy is worth a LOT of cash.  

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38 minutes ago, SmokeyBear1861 said:

I guess it depends on your definition of success, and how you're measuring intelligence.

Are Donald, Eric, Ivanka and Don Jr. more intelligent than, say, Brisket?  I'd say no, not by a long shot, but they are probably more successful in terms of net worth.  Is the guy with the highest IQ at your company also the CEO?  I doubt it.

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