Jarda

David, then I can only express my hope that your dissaproval is based on your own assessment and not because far left falanga poissoned and tabuised the whole topic in the past. :wink:

Jarda

eublues, it is your opinion and I've no problem with it. But what I would like to see is getting his arguments refuted and not getting him fired out from the university as far as the people going after him are concerned.

David Holland

[quote="Jarda"

David, then I can only express my hope that your dissaproval is based on your own assessment and not because far left falanga poissoned and tabuised the whole topic in the past. :wink:[/quote]
It is my own assessment because i) I think it is difficult to measure intelligence it is like saying who is the best sportsman Andrew Flintoff or Johnny Wilkinson ii) Someone's skills are partly genetic partly environment therefore I think it is difficult to determine racial differences iii) I have never read any scientific reasoning about why one race should be clever than other (eg different genes) etc.

I have an open mind although as a scientist I feel that I am better able to judge than this lecturer.

__________________
More people + no new homes = housing shortage.

Besoeker

There seems to be a body of evidence supporting differences in IQ. Here are a few links and excerpts:

http://www.cpsimoes.net/artigos/bell_mainstr.html
The BELL CURVE for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the BELL CURVE for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100 the BELL CURVES for Jews and Asians are centered.

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/knowledg.html
There is no doubt that American Negroes obtain lower average scores on standard intelligence tests than do American whites (Tyler, 1965, p. 306; Garrett; 1969). In fact the differences found are often so large and so regular in their incidence that this might be held to be one of the most impressive uniformities in the whole of psychological measurement.

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/em_wrm.html
The empirical evidence for racial differences is strong, although seldom discussed in the academic literature, being often dismissed as due to stereotypes. Levin deals with the stereotype issue, asking why over the centuries certain beliefs about race have prevailed. The simplest answer is observation; the traits have been repeatedly observed. A summary of the data on intelligence describes the differences between races.

Here are the Bell Curves.


Once again, I'm just the messenger.
I have no hang-ups with any race. My only point is that we can make legislation that is the same for everyone. We can't legislate to make everyone the same.

David Holland

Evidence against :-
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-IQgapgenetic.htm

Some of the evidence :-
'A genetic study took advantage of the fact that African-Americans genes are about 20-30 percent European, and that Africans and Europeans differ just enough in their genetic blood groups to determine the degree of "Europeanness" in an individual. If intelligence were indeed genetic and favored in Europeans, we might expect blacks with greater Europeanness to be more intelligent. However, a study of 288 young blacks found almost no relationship between Europeanness and intelligence: the correlation was a trivial and nonsignificant .05. (6)

Another genetic study examined the correlation between IQ and European blood groups (as opposed to the estimated Europeanness of individuals based on blood groups). In one sample of blacks, the correlation was a trivial .01, in the other a nonsignificant -.38, with higher IQ being associated with the more African blood groups. (7)'

__________________
More people + no new homes = housing shortage.

Besoeker

Fair enough.
A couple of points though.

1. Reference is made to more prevalant poverty in the black population being a factor. Is that cause or effect ?

2. Can conclusions drawn from a sample of 288 out of a population of about 40,000,000 really be considered significant ?

Mikeuk

There is a danger with these investigations that you lose the wood behind the trees.

If you compare European society, culture etc with their African equivalents it is difficult not to conclude that European structures are significently more 'advanced'.

Why should this be? It has always seemed to me that the most obvious reason - which may or may not be correct - is that on average Europeans are, at the present time, more highly developed intellectually than Africans.

The fact that this explanation may please the BNP and/or the KKK does not mean that it is incorrect. Anyway we are talking about averages, so the explanation does not exclude the obvious fact that there are some very clever Africans and a lot of very stupid Europeans.

It is a purely empirical deduction but many great thinkers of the past have come to exactly the same conclusion for the same reason, Hume, Kant and Hegel among them.

Until relatively recently this was the mainstream view of anthropologists also. The more common position today seems to owe more to ideology than science.

Besoeker

Indeed.
But don't confuse area/nationality with race.
Not all Africans are black (negroid) and not all Europeans are white (caucasian).
Dr. Christian Barnard.
Frank Bruno
I'm sure you see.

David Holland

[quote="Mikeuk"]There is a danger with these investigations that you lose the wood behind the trees.

If you compare European society, culture etc with their African equivalents it is difficult not to conclude that European structures are significently more 'advanced'.

Why should this be? It has always seemed to me that the most obvious reason - which may or may not be correct - is that on average Europeans are, at the present time, more highly developed intellectually than Africans.

/[quote]
What about climate and geography ? I remember meeting some very miserable Singaporean students at uni. They said ' How do you survive in such an extreme climate ? Now we know why Europe invented modern civilisation'.
One example Hammerfest in northern Norway was the first town in Europe to have electric lighting. Why do people think it was there ? Because the Norwegians are better at this than other Europeans ?

__________________
More people + no new homes = housing shortage.

Mikeuk

You then have to ask why the descendants of Caucasians who settled in Africa did not in some way 'regress'.

I'm sure that living among Europeans brings out the best in the most intellectually able people of African stock, but that relates to a minority - often the very visible minority frequently on TV as announcers etc.
If that's correct, the underlying reason was probably sheer necessity at that latitude. (BTW I believe that Godalming was the first town in England to be lit by electric light in the 1880s?)

Norwegians are very nice people but I believe the Swedes crack Irish-style 'thicko' jokes about them. Interestingly, they are blood-brothers of the Danes rather than the Swedes, or at any rate their language is closely related to Danish.