Can we have an honest discussion about race?

[thepixelmonk]

17 minutes ago, The0Self said:

Surprised none of us have deleted this thread yet. Oh well — we’re adults, after all.

It was initially locked but Leo re-opened it.

4 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Anybody care to catch me up to speed? Who's winning?

There's some merit to open discussion but our little racist here has of course failed to produce anything of remote substance.

[Epikur]

55 minutes ago, Consept said:

I second this, I havent been able to find any scientific research that confirms and can say for sure that one race is innately more intelligent than another but im curious to see if there is actually any evidence to back this up. As i said before it is so hard to get a study thats completely independent of environmental factors it could be near on impossible to find. Maybe if you had children of all races growing up together in the same environment maybe a foster home or orphanage and then tested their intelligence and one race always stood out that could maybe be something. But I can imagine anything that proves this will be very difficult to find if it exists, but always open to changing my mind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study

[Heart of Space]

Here's a legitimate study on the difference in skeletal muscle between races.  As you'd expect African Americans have a much higher amount than other races.  What does everyone think accounts for this skeletal muscle gap?  

I'm just curious what people think.  Is it environment or genetics?

There's a long list if aggregate biological differences between the races including the obvious superficial phenotypical traits of hair and skin color.  How are all these differences and gaps explained and accounted for?  

If its genetics, based on what y'all are saying is that the genetic differences completely stop at the brain?  

Edited October 27, 2022 by Heart of Space

[Topspin715]

I think a more interesting discussion is in which ways IQ is not a good measurement of human potential or more holistic intelligence.  It tells us something but it really isn't nearly as important as many people belief.  It is very important for some technical fields (I guess StEM - science, tech, engineering, math) but Richard Feynmann was a groundbreaking physicist that won the Nobel Prize and only measured at about 125 IQ.  

[thepixelmonk]

22 minutes ago, Heart of Space said:

If its genetics, which it is, I guess based on what y'all are saying is that the genetic differences completely stop at the brain?  Do you not see how silly that perspective is?

Do we need to start typing in bolded all caps or something? Or do you just not understand english? Everybody here has AGREED that there ARE genetic components to intelligence MULTIPLE TIMES. That alone does not link it to race. Direct quote from Leo earlier:
 

Quote

Dude, I clearly told you above that genetics strongly influences intelligence.

THAT DOES NOT MAKE YOUR RACIST NARRATIVE TRUE.

Genetics also makes people midgets. That does not mean blacks are midgets.

It seems like you're, ironically, genuinely too low IQ to even comprehend this point, as it has been said multiple times by multiple people and you're still sitting here saying stupid shit like we think genetic differences stop at the brain.

Edited October 26, 2022 by thepixelmonk

[thepixelmonk]

7 minutes ago, Topspin715 said:

I think a more interesting discussion is in which ways IQ is not a good measurement of human potential or more holistic intelligence.  It tells us something but it really isn't nearly as important as many people belief.  It is very important for some technical fields (I guess StEM - science, tech, engineering, math) but Richard Feynmann was a groundbreaking physicist that won the Nobel Prize and only measured at about 125 IQ.  

This is of course an infinitely more interesting discussion but that doesn't help our little racist here further his agenda so.

[Heart of Space]

Here's an interesting study I found characterizing brain differences between races.  What do you guys think?  

I think being open minded to the genetics explanation as at least a fraction of the whole explanation is very reasonable.  Anything else is wishful thinking in my opinion.  

Edited October 26, 2022 by Heart of Space

[AtheisticNonduality]

1 hour ago, Consept said:

I second this, I havent been able to find any scientific research that confirms and can say for sure that one race is innately more intelligent than another but im curious to see if there is actually any evidence to back this up. As i said before it is so hard to get a study thats completely independent of environmental factors it could be near on impossible to find.

It's not perfect, so it could be explained by either side of the debate; but there were twin adoption experiments related to race by this principle.

[zurew]

I honestly can't tell anymore, whether you are actually serious or you are just a massive troll.

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by zurew

[thepixelmonk]

3 minutes ago, zurew said:

I honestly can't tell anymore, whether you are actually serious or you are just a massive troll.

I just had the same thought myself.

[Topspin715]

24 minutes ago, thepixelmonk said:

This is of course an infinitely more interesting discussion but that doesn't help our little racist here further his agenda so.

I don't know what his agenda is.  I haven't read through the entire thread.  He doesn't seem to be so interested in pursuing truth, seems mostly interested in denigrating other people or maybe trolling others on the forum.  I am not sure what I would do with this kind of speech if I were running this forum.  It possesses at least some element of hate and it is harmful, but it is mostly off point.

 

At best, OP is an above average IQ nerd because a person with character wouldn't want to say these things.

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, Heart of Space said:

If its genetics, which it is, based on what y'all are saying is that the genetic differences completely stop at the brain?  

That could go either way, but you would have to substantiate it with specific empirical data (research about the brain specifically). It's not necessarily the case that you can generalize from differences in skeletal muscle to differences in brain functioning. The brain is an extremely complex organ, and there are reasons to believe that the hardware itself has become less important over time as we became cultural creatures around 30-50k years ago (when we had barely started moving out of Africa).

For example, one weird thing is that the hardware that made this leap possible were in place many thousands of years in advance, and it's a mystery why the leap happened when it did. Another is that there are studies claiming a reduction in brain size during the last Ice Age, a possible explanation being, well – culture:

Quote

“Our dating does not support hypotheses concerning brain size reduction as a by-product of body size reduction, a result of a shift to an agricultural diet, or a consequence of self-domestication. We suggest our analysis supports the hypothesis that the recent decrease in brain size may instead result from the externalization of knowledge and advantages of group-level decision-making due in part to the advent of social systems of distributed cognition and the storage and sharing of information.”

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.742639/full

 

Whether or not these studies are valid, you would still be hard-pressed to make any strong statements about racial differences in brains without any specific empirical data yourself.

Edited October 26, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[Heart of Space]

@zurew

Basically, I just showed you that there are measurable differences in brain structures and skeletal muscle between African Americans and the other races.  These are two NCBI studies from the United States National Library of Medicine.  There are a lot more where that came from too.  

It seems rather obvious, considering the massive number of measurable differences, that gene expression is different between the races.  I'm starting to believe some of you would explain brown skin as African people just getting really, really, really tan (but only from the sun, not genetics)(cause that would be racist, otherwise).  

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by Heart of Space

[zurew]

7 hours ago, Heart of Space said:

Basically, I just showed you that there are measurable differences in brain structures and skeletal muscle between African Americans and the other races.  These are two NCBI studies from the United States National Library of Medicine.  There are a lot more where that came from too.  

It seems rather obvious, considering the massive number of measurable differences, that gene expression is different between the races.  I'm starting to believe some of you would explain brown skin as African people just getting really, really, really tan (but only from the sun, not genetics)(cause that would be racist, otherwise).  

If someone wants to look up the study about brain structures, here is a link to it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964318/

I guess you purposefully didn't give us the link to that study, because it would have made your point look worse. If you read the methodology you find this:

Quote

The sample consisted of 77 individuals, 44 of which were Caucasian and 33 were minority representatives. Of those 33 individuals, 25 were African-American, 1 was Native American, 6 were Asian, and 1 self-identified as biracial (mixed African-American/Caucasian ancestry). For this study, we included only the Caucasian and African-American subjects.

We are talking about an incredibly small sample size, and I don't think you can grab that and then use that to correctly represent the difference(s) between whole groups and races. 

Even if we were to take all this for granted, you are still very far away from proving your original point. Your study talking about African Americans having smaller total cerebral volume than Caucasians. However, even if that is all true and this study is representative of the races, here is a thing you have to consider:

Quote

In healthy volunteers, total brain volume weakly correlates with intelligence, with a correlation value between 0.3 and 0.4 out of a possible 1.0. In other words, brain size accounts for between 9 and 16 percent of the overall variability in general intelligence.

You have to demonstrate how the difference in certain brain structure would manifest in reality when it comes to intelligence and how would it manifest when it comes to IQ. 

Find a study that contains more than 77 individuals because that sample size is like a drop of water from the ocean.

This is from your study and I guess you didn't read these parts:

Quote

Study limitations include self report of race. We did not acquire more detailed ancestral background which may be relevant (such as a Mediterranean versus Scandinavian background), nor did our assessment account for unrecognized racial heterogeneity in one's ancestry.

Finally, our sample size of 69 individuals was small, although comparable to other neuroimaging studies examining structural differences between different racial populations [5]. We also conducted multiple comparisons between the small groups, which increases the risk of a Type I error. Had we instituted a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons, the alpha would change to 0.004; at this alpha, only the cerebral volume and left OFC volume would have remained significant.

Our findings have neither clear clinical implications nor clear implications for differences in brain function. 

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by zurew

[Heart of Space]

@zurew  I actually tried to link both studies on my phone at work, but my copy past function just failed to work.  

Your criticism of the size and scope of the study is somewhat valid, although that is the nature of a sample size; it's representative of the larger population it studies.  They can't measure 7 billion humans.  The other study uses 1000's of people.  

Brain structure does manifest in various behavior patterns and expressed attributes like intelligence, or like increased or decreased impulsive behavior.  This is uncontroversial accepted science at this point. 

You know, at this point you'd think that you guys would stop accusing me of intellectual dishonesty and racism considering I've engaged every point the best I can, included modern peer reviewed studies, and have been polite throughout.   All while working a busy serious career job, 12 hour shifts.  I feel like I've mostly won the argument.  

Edited October 27, 2022 by Heart of Space

[zurew]

18 minutes ago, Heart of Space said:

although that is the nature of a sample size; it's representative of the larger population it studies.  They can't measure 7 billion humans.  The other study uses 1000's of people.  

The other study isn't relevant, because we aren't talking about skeletal muscle, we are talking about intelligence and brain, unless you can magically connect the two. When it comes to sample size, of course they don't need to measure 7 billion people, but having less than 100 people participating in your experiment is very problematic, especially, when it comes to a subject like this, where you are talking about neurology and intelligence and both fields are extremely complicated.

Trying to confidently isolate certain variables with a sample size like this is impossible.

 

Also your study talking about environmental factors having effects on the brain and on the development of the brain, but when it comes to this experiment results, the methodology don't accounts any of that. These people were self reporting their ethnicity, we don't know anything else about them. This study doesn't controll for any of the environmental factors that are known and that could affect these results.

18 minutes ago, Heart of Space said:

Brain structure does manifest in various behavior patterns and expressed attributes like intelligence, like increased or decreased impulsive behavior and such.  This is uncontroversial accepted science at this point. 

This point is still remained to be demonstrated between whites and blacks.

Edited October 27, 2022 by zurew

[something_else]

@Heart of Space You would also have to consider how environmental factors affect brain growth and size. Maybe the size of your brain is affected by the quality and quantity of nutrition you receive when you are a young child and your brain is still growing, and if certain races are less privileged on average, the quality and quantity of nutrition they received as a child would likely be worse/lower.

So even if there were differences in brain size on average between races, you still don't know that's down to a race's genetics.

It would be very hasty to come to any strong conclusions based on that study, let alone one with the implications of yours. And the fact you hadn't even read that study before strongly taking the position you have slightly concerns me as well, because it means your position is based pretty much entirely on bias. If that is the best you can come up with, you should at most conclude that "maybe the structural brain differences between races are worth investigating more"

Edited October 27, 2022 by something_else

[Consept]

The more i think on this topic the more murky it seems to me in terms of how you even judge intelligence. A persons intelligence is adapted to whatever the environment is around them, for example African or South American tribes that were around a few 100 years ago, must have had incredible intelligence in terms of their environment, they would know what slight changes in the wind meant, been able to hunt, how to track etc etc. These wouldve evolved and wouldve been learnt over 1000s of years, to then suddenly rip them out of this habitat and judge them as intelligent based on a world they had never experienced is almost insane. It wouldnt even work the other way, any of us now who had to live in that envioronment probably wouldnt last very long. 

So it stands to reason that the ancestors of these tribes maybe at a slight disadvantage within the western world, however the adaptability of humans is phenomenal as there isnt much difference in iq and this is shrinking as conditions improve.

But its even more murky considering how mixed up everyone is, especially in America, most white people will have african dna and vice versa. As well most south Americans will have european DNA so to separate the races and say one is more intelligent than another really seems kind of an impossibility. In reality the more interesting questions are things like, what affect does poverty have on intelligence? or what parenting style produces more intelligent kids? Are there certain areas that have higher IQ and what might be the reason for this?

[Heart of Space]

Well, even with the difficulty of being banned I'm glad I made the thread.  I never got to properly express my argument due to the thread closure and having to work.  I'm still glad that the topic was discussed in what seems like a mature and respectful manner from most of the posters.  

Unfortunately, for me to have a meaningful discussion both sides of the discussion need to have a reasonable level of intelligence and understanding of science.  Some of you I believe are too young, or too uneducated on the topic to really have meaningful dialogue.  Having to explain basic widely accepted facts, or having to answer the same things over again makes this monotonous.  

I didn't get to share everything, but hopefully people have gotten enough from me to see that there is a lot of ambiguity on the subject enough to allow for my opinion to be based on a genuine intellectual curiosity rather than motivated by hate.  

And no, not one of you moved me even a millimeter from my position.  And the best evidence was never even posted.  If your lucky maybe I'll dig up the big one.   

Edited October 27, 2022 by Heart of Space

[thepixelmonk]

"never got to express my argument" ... "maybe I'll dig up the big one" LOL what an absolute complete joke. nobody here believed for a second we were gonna move you a millimeter. Your position is not based in science or reason it is based in racism, and you are not just going to suddenly change who you are. at least we're finally done with this round of your nonsense. wonder what you'll shit out next time.