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Post 20

Friday, November 4, 2011 - 5:23pmSanction this postReply
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Ed, thanks for the data.  Now all we need for for the positer of the claim to explain what "race" is and one tests for it in order to produce a falsifiable theory of it.

Luke, in "Race... Social Construct" my Post 107 included this:

Dataset 2: Familial correlations for IQ

Expected results versus actual results. 

Expectation comes from classical “single polygenic model.”

Relationship

Sample or Population

Predicted

Actual

Monozygotic twins raised together

4672

1.00

.85

Monozygotic twins raised apart

65

1.00

.67

Dizygotic Twins Reared together

5546

.50

.58

Siblings reared together

26,473

.50

.45

Non-biological sibling pair (adopted/natural)

345


.00

.29


Non-biological sibling pair (adopted/adopted)

369

.00

.31



My data for the paper came largely from the Minnesota Twins study.

 


Post 21

Friday, November 4, 2011 - 7:55pmSanction this postReply
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Unless Brad's ultimate, dream-come-true goal is the sterilization of "undesirables,"  I can't for the life of me see the point in any of this. 

Post 22

Friday, November 4, 2011 - 8:04pmSanction this postReply
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Lol I agree with you Teresa hence my post #10 whether Ed was able to woo Praxgirl with his keen intellect and charm!

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Post 23

Friday, November 4, 2011 - 8:57pmSanction this postReply
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What a gene pool! ;)

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Post 24

Friday, November 4, 2011 - 9:34pmSanction this postReply
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One point might be... that if you want intelligent children, then the results of this debate would determine whether it is necessary to look for the smart one (because your mate's intelligence has significant consequence), or that you might as well go with the good looking one (because your mate's intelligence has no significant consequence). Or in the future as we look into genetic engineering, can we improve human intelligence by including or excluding certain genes?

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Post 25

Saturday, November 5, 2011 - 7:35amSanction this postReply
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If that were the goal, Dean, then I would expect Brad to be spending more time exploring the traditions of Judaism, which does encourage people to find intelligent mates.  

Post 26

Saturday, November 5, 2011 - 9:13amSanction this postReply
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In engineering terms, there is also a "trade space" or "feasible region" within which the partners can "optimally" choose each other based on their own uniquely weighted valuing of intelligence, appearance, desire to have children, etc.

The world today offers many more such choices than it did to our ancestors.

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Post 27

Saturday, November 5, 2011 - 10:00amSanction this postReply
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Jules,

Lol I agree with you Teresa hence my post #10 whether Ed was able to woo Praxgirl with his keen intellect and charm!
I haven't seranaded the woman yet. Upon sufficient 'seranadation', she should be sufficiently mesmerized so as to accept a date with yours truly. After that, I would report back here with at least a generic review of my initial contact with the exquisite temptress. I'll keep you posted ...

:-)

Ed


Post 28

Saturday, November 5, 2011 - 10:04amSanction this postReply
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Mike,

Now all we need for for the positer of the claim to explain what "race" is and one tests for it in order to produce a falsifiable theory of it.
Good point. In absence of a stated standard, one envisions that skin tone (% melanin) may be Brad's standard for race, so that -- under Brad's assumptions -- albinos would be the smartest people on the planet, and those with the most melanin would be the least smart. It begs the question whether the smartest people -- Ashkenazi jews and northeast asians (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) -- have the least melanin.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 11/05, 10:08am)


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Post 29

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - 9:35amSanction this postReply
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It is not "genetics" but "epigenetics."  I just watched a PBS Nova, Ghost in Your Genes and took notes.  The human genome has perhaps only 20,000 to 25,000 genes - "between a chicken and a grape" - not enough to explain our complexity.  It seems that chemicals binding to the genes or their histones cause suppression or allow activation of genetic action, the manufacture of chemicals handling stress, for instance.  It appears that in some cases, at least, what happens to the maternal grandmother in the womb will affect the grandchild as an adult, whereas the same event must occur in the paternal grandfather's early childhood.  In short, environment effects heredity.  

It is clear that the old 19th century racialisms are as crude as medieval physics with its theory of "impetus."
... 20,000-25,000, a surprisingly low number for our species (7). Consortium researchers have confirmed the existence of 19,599 protein-coding genes ...
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/genenumber.shtml
By one count, humans have 23,333 genes, but estimates vary.
Most estimates place the human gene count in the neighborhood of 22,000 genes ...
"Human Gene Count: More Than a Chicken, Less Than a Grape"
http://news.discovery.com/human/human-gene-count.html
PBS NOVA "Epigenetic Therapy" here.

Most significant are the differences between twins.  Also, a two different disorders - Angelman and Prouder-Willy - are the result of the same missing genetic material in Chromosome 15, but it depends on whether the inheritance is from the father or mother.  In other words, specifically, nominally identical genetic characteristics have markedly different somatic consequences.  This, alone, is enough to falsify any theory linking intelligence to genetics in the absence of any other causal factor(s).


Post 30

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - 1:41pmSanction this postReply
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See also Body by Science by Little and McGuff for more on epigenetics and how it plays a role in influencing not only one's own response to exercise, but that of one's offspring.

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Post 31

Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - 12:16pmSanction this postReply
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Earlier studies:

----------

The multiple risk index predicted substantially more variance in the outcome measure than did any single risk factor alone, including socioeconomic status. High-risk children were more than 24 times as likely to have IQs below 85 than low-risk children.

----------

Although it is well established that family members resemble each other in intelligence , the extent to which this results from either shared genes or a shared environment remains controversial, perhaps especially since the relevant evidence presented by Burt has been shown probably to have been fabricated.

-----------

1) that methods of quantitative genetics concerning intelligence are not applicable to human populations ; 2) that the results of studies on adoptions and on twins do not permit one to estimate the respective roles of environment and heredity ; 3) that this division of variance had no heuristic value in the study of human intelligence.

------------

Available data indicate that, for unrelated foster children reared together, the broad heritability (h(2)) may lie between 0.0 and 0.5. This estimate does not apply to populations composed of children reared by their biological parents or by near relatives. For such populations the heritability of IQ remains undefined. The only data that might yield meaningful estimates ot narrow heritability are phenotypic correlations between half-sibs reared in statistically independent environments. No useful data of this kind are available. Intervention studies like Heber's Milwaukee Project afford an alternative and comparatively direct way of studying the plasticity of cognitive and other behavioral traits in human populations. Results obtained so far strongly suggest that the development of cognitive skills is highly sensitive to variations in environmental factors. These conclusions have three obvious implications for the broader issues mentioned at the beginning of this article. 1) Published analyses of IQ data provide no support whatever for Jensen's thesis that inequalities in cognitive performance are due largely to genetic differences. As Lewontin (8) has clearly shown, the value of the broad heritability of IQ is in any case only marginally relevant to this question. I have argued that conventional estimates of the broad heritability of IQ are invalid and that the only data on which potentially valid estimates might be based are consistent with a broad heritability of less than 0.5.

-----------
Ed


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Post 32

Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - 3:51pmSanction this postReply
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In the quote pulled from the 2nd study listed above, a reference is made to a scientist named "Burt" who likely falsified data in order to propagate a pet theory (of the inheritability of IQ). The man in question is Cyril Burt, and here is an excerpt from the Wiki-entry on him:

Shortly after Burt died it had become known that all of his notes and records had been burnt, and he was accused of falsifying research data. The 2007 Encyclopædia Britannica noted that it is widely acknowledged that his later work was flawed and many academics agree that data were falsified, though his earlier work is often accepted as valid.[17]

From the late 1970s it was generally accepted that "he had fabricated some of the data, though some of his earlier work remained unaffected by this revelation."[17] This was due in large part to research by Oliver Gillie (1976) and Leon Kamin (1974).[18][19] The possibility of fabrication was first brought to the attention of the scientific community when Kamin noticed that Burt's correlation coefficients of monozygotic and dizygotic twins' IQ scores were the same to three decimal places, across articles – even when new data were twice added to the sample of twins.
Ed


Post 33

Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - 4:37pmSanction this postReply
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Ed you should be making money doing this! Your tenacity in digging up the truth of a wide variety of subjects is very impressive.

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Post 34

Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - 6:43amSanction this postReply
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Thanks, Jules!

Ever notice the similar behavior of man-made global warming enthusiasts and IQ heritability enthusiasts? They each tell you that

1) there is this idea
2) that it cannot be precisely estimated but that that shouldn't be a problem
3) and what is more important for us is to implement the political policy changes that the idea requires (without getting bogged down into the question of whether the idea is a fully rational response to a full immersion into all of the relevant data)

I find the similarity striking.

Ed


Post 35

Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - 8:21amSanction this postReply
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Political tried and true fear tactics same pattern different pile of elephant dung.

Post 36

Saturday, April 28, 2012 - 2:36amSanction this postReply
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Identifiable population groups that correspond with racial labels are referred to by sensible people as "races." Denying that these population groups exist if referred to as "races" or insisting they be called "social constructs" instead are examples of linguistic sophistry designed to confuse and befuddle rather than clarify and enlighten.

What is social construction? Philosopher Paul A. Boghossian answers as follows:

"To say of something that it is socially constructed is to emphasize its dependence on contingent aspects of our social selves. It is to say: This thing could not have existed had we not built it; and we need not have built it at all, at least not in its present form. Had we been a different kind of society, had we had different needs, values, or interests, we might well have built a different kind of thing, or built this one differently. The inevitable contrast is with a naturally existing object, something that exists independently of us and which we did not have a hand in shaping.

"...If the preceding considerations are correct, social construction talk does not cogently apply to the facts studied by the natural sciences."

If scientists who study the genetic, skeletal, and neurological differences among human populations that evolved separately from one another for tens of thousands of years are engaged in “social construction,” then so are geologists who study rock formations. Call everything from galaxies down to sub-atomic particles “social constructs” if you want to, but doing so won’t make race any less real than anything else in the natural sciences.

The goal of “race as a social construct” dogma, as originated by leftist Richard Lewontin, was to undermine both the scientific study and common-sense understanding of race. It is corrupt terminology – or at least a corrupt application of it. “Social construct” talk is inapplicable to biology per se, including human biology and variations within it as expressed in the form of identifiable races.

The only possible referent of "social construct” is something that is actually constructed socially. Black History Month is a social construct since it can only be created by social forces. It is a cultural, not a biological, phenomenon. Black people are not social constructs, since their distinguishing biological characteristics exist independent of any social category ascribed to them.


 

Lewontin's Fallacy

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2008/06/lewontins-fallacy.html 

 

"What is not correct is the inference that race is  therefore a meaningless concept. This point has  been clearly made by the distinguished Cambridge  geneticist A. W. F. Edwards in the recent paper called ‘Human genetic diversity: Lewontin’s fallacy’.  R. C. Lewontin is an equally distinguished Cambridge  (Mass.) geneticist, known for the strength of his political convictions and his weakness for dragging them into science at every possible opportunity. Lewontin’s view of race has become near-universal orthodoxy..."

 -Richard Dawkins

 

Scientists Call for End to Race Denial

http://sciencefocus.com/forum/scientists-call-for-end-to-race-denial-t530.html

 

Do Human Races exist? [MrHerrIQ]

http://youtu.be/U7oUlegomQ4

 

Politically incorrect, biological truths about race. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqfNpGf7-r0

 


Post 37

Saturday, April 28, 2012 - 7:43amSanction this postReply
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Brad,

I am going to call you "one-subject Brad" -- because there's only one subject that you ever talk about. If I didn't know better, I'd claim that you suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder (I'd claim that you are mentally ill).

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 4/28, 9:44am)


Post 38

Saturday, April 28, 2012 - 7:49amSanction this postReply
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He once opened a thread about Anarchism.
(Edited by Kyle Jacob Biodrowski on 4/28, 7:50am)


Post 39

Saturday, April 28, 2012 - 9:43amSanction this postReply
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Okay, Kyle, fair enough.

He's a two-subject man -- with heavy emphasis on the one subject.

Ed


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