EPTOn April 21 2012 01:18 khaydarin9 wrote:
At risk of derailing this thread further: the point is, that both the concepts of "race" and "superior" are arbitrary cultural constructions that have no natural value. So you could get away with saying that with people with dark skin are more resistant to melanoma, but when you start applying cultural values to that statement in the form of race and judgement, you are making a racist comment.
That would be a problem if the value of those judgements were questionable, but it isnt. It is not questionable whether dark skin performs better under high UV level conditions. It is measurable, and its ability to less easily get burned fits the concept of general superior welfare.Show nested quote +
On April 21 2012 00:17 storkfan wrote:
Here you claim that i am using inductive reasoning, aka dark skin -> african race. Im not doing this. My argument is PURELY deductive, no induction used.
It is african race -> dark skin; european race -> light skin; dark skin superior to white skin -> african race superior to european race
Again, replace "race" for ethnicity or native or whatever you prefer if you dont like it, it doesnt change the validity of the argument.
On April 20 2012 23:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Because race is a loosy concept that has nothing to do with skin colour.
"We caution against making the naive leap to a genetic explanation for group differences in complex traits, especially for human behavioral traits such as IQ scores"
"Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogeneous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past.-p.714"
source: The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics
http://genomebiology.com/2008/9/7/404
While biologists sometimes use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is often used in a naive or simplistic way. Among humans, race has no taxonomic significance; all living humans belong to the same hominid subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Scientists consider biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits (wikipedia)
If you have black skin, you are better protected against the sun. If you have big ears you also may hear better. Skin colour doesn't make a race, as much as size of the ear doesn't make a race either.
There is one race, which is the human race, and each of us has billion of genes that can be combined in any way possible, including genes that determines our melanin rate and therefore our skin colour.
You want to establish an equivalence between skin colour and intelligence. Don't try to use science in order to back up your racist ideas.
Sorry, saw that after posting
On April 20 2012 22:52 storkfan wrote:
Skin color is related to race. So you can say the black race is superior to white race in the UV example, which would constitute an example of racism. Blacks have an intrinsic capability to better withstand such situations. So how is it not racist, how does it not meet the definition of racism?..
On April 20 2012 22:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
"Racial realism", interesting. I am sure Hitler did think he was a "racial realist".
As for the color of the skin, of course it is proven that if you have more melanin, your skin is darker, and you have a better protection against the sun. It's a bit different than saying that Africans are less intelligent or more brutal or whatever, which is at most backed up by pseudo scientific datas usually misinterpreted.
On April 20 2012 22:40 storkfan wrote:
Also, so if you believe blacks' darker skin protecting them from sun makes them superior in high UV level situations you are racist?
On April 20 2012 21:31 Biff The Understudy wrote:
I'm not trying to be nice or excessively rude.
If you believe that African people are inferior and naturally less intelligent than white people, well, you are a racist, or I don't know what racism is about.
Racism is generally understood as either belief that different racial groups are characterized by intrinsic characteristics or abilities and that some such groups are therefore naturally superior to others (wikipedia)
... as for sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the belief that a characteristic inherent in one's sex necessarily adversely affects one's ability, even if that characteristic does not have that effect.
I think you wouldn't disagree?
Maybe you have a lot of "evidences" to back up your claim (but who doesn't?), so you are a very rationnal racist, but a racist nonetheless. There are worse things on earth than being a racist I am sure, but that's one of the criterias on which I judge that discussing with someone is useless.
Posting studies that, once again, make a correlation between factors without establishing a causal factor doesn't help. have a nice day.
some call it racial realism.On April 20 2012 21:18 Zaqwe wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +
That's not very nice. I consider myself a rational thinker and base my opinions on what evidence is available. I am always prepared to change my opinions if I see new evidence.
And brain/skull size does have something to do with intelligence, as mentioned in my previous post. I am not sure why you ignored that.
It seems you are the irrational one. Your emotional attachment to equality is clouding your judgement, like a fear of death which drives people to faith in heaven.
+ Show Spoiler +
On April 20 2012 21:03 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Well maybe IQ is a fucking dumb measure, sweety. You know you can raise your IQ in two weeks dramatically with appropriate exercizes? For a measure that's supposed to calculate your "intelligence" that's a pretty big flaw.
And even though, you don't think environment is quite a big factor in our intelligence? And that Africans have typically a different environment than the average white guy?
And don't you think that the size of the skull has nothing to do with your intellectual potential, as proven by a zillion studies despite the stuff you throw there that seems to make no difference between correlation and causality? Because see, whales would be quite fucking clever.
You believe africans are less intelligent, and that women can't think rationally. Well, look, you are a racist and a sexist, and I'm off this discussion, because see, I have experienced many times that racists and sexist are unable to think rationally, and not very clever. Bye.
Show nested quote +
On April 20 2012 20:57 Zaqwe wrote:
One hundred years of research has established that East Asians and Europeans average higher IQs than do Africans. East Asians, measured in North America and in Pacific Rim countries, typically average IQs in the range of 101 to 111. Caucasoid populations in North America, Europe, and Australasia typically average IQs from 85 to 115 with an overall mean of 100. African populations living south of the Sahara, in North America, in the Caribbean, and in Britain typically have mean IQs from 70 to 90.
Discoveries using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which creates a three-dimensional image of the living brain, have shown a strong positive correlation (.44) between brain size and IQ (see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for a review). And there is more. The National Collaborative Perinatal Project on 53,000 children by Sarah Broman and her colleagues, showed that head perimeter at birth significantly predicts head perimeter at 7 years — and head perimeter at seven years predicts IQ. It also shows that Asian children average a larger head perimeter at birth than do White children who average a larger head perimeter than do Black children.
Racial differences in brain size have been established using a variety of modern methods. Using endocranial volume, for example, Beals et al. (1984, p. 307, Table 5) analyzed about 20,000 skulls from around the world. East Asians averaged 1,415 cm3 , Europeans averaged 1,362 cm3, and Africans averaged 1,268 cm3 . Using external head measures to calculate cranial capacities, Rushton (1992) analyzed a stratified random sample of 6,325 U.S. Army personnel measured in 1988 for fitting helmets and found that Asian Americans averaged 1,416 cm3, European Americans 1,380 cm3, and African Americans 1,359 cm3. Finally, a recent MRI study found that people of African and Caribbean background averaged a smaller brain volume than did those of European background (again see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for review).
On April 20 2012 20:27 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Yeah I know people desperately want to justify social order and inequalities with science. That's even a constant in science history.
So let me first tell you that most human science researcher absolutely back up my claims. And don't forget that in the XIXth century, very serious scientists were calculating that the size of the skull of "nigers" was smaller than the one of white people and that was the reason why they were less intelligent and subject to be colonized or put in slavery. Things don't change. Tomorrow we will smile at today's scientists attempts to justify sexist prejudices the same way that now we smile at yesterday's scientists trying to justify racist prejudices.
I am not saying men and women are biologically speaking exactly the same. But to claim that women can't compete with men at something like chess because of genetical disposition is just a fancy way to repeat the most obscene of sexist prejudice: that women are less intelligent. Anyway, explain me a little why they were no women scientist or philosophers until we started to question the dumb prejudices you are defending and as sonn as we did DADA!!! we started to have Marie Curie and other Hannah Arendt? Answer: because when we started to change women education / environment it appeared they were just as smart as men while everybody were certain during six thousand years they were dumb as fuck and unable to think rationally. They were no women scientist because women didn't have the possibility to be a scientist in yesterday's society.
Education and gender issues (gender =/= biological sex) are the reason we behave differently. They are not based on nature, they are a social construction.
On April 20 2012 19:39 Zaqwe wrote:
You should watch Hjernevask (Brainwash), a Norwegian science documentary. Particularly episode one, "The Gender Equality Paradox.
What you have said is complete nonsense based on wishful thinking and an emotional desire to see everyone as equal.
Gender differences are observable immediately after birth. Female babies are more socially inclined and prefer to look at human faces, while male newborns are more mechanically inclined and will look at machines longer.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=327138
The example of the Polgar family that you used itself seems to be strong evidence that genetics is the key factor in becoming a chess grandmaster.
Everything Biff said is wrong.
On April 20 2012 17:53 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Yeah fine, that's absolutely true, most of the top 100 chess players are males. In fact 99 of them are males since Judit Polgar is the only one to have ever broken into the top 100. Why? It's not science rocket. It's statistic:
Male dominate chess because chess is socially a male activity. The little boy is put to play chess and the little girl is put to dance or whatever. Go in a chessclub and you will see the junior section with basically only little boys. It's even worse in countries that actually produce most of champions: Russia, Azerbadjan, etc... You just won't see a little girl in a chess club because parents don't put them at chess.
The three Polgar sisters are exception because they had an environment that was devoted to make them great chess players. Their father was a grand master and luckily he didn't have any of these silly prejudices. And he designed their education to make them brilliant players. And without surprise, they all became elite players, regardless of their gender.
SC2 is just the same. Boys play Starcraft, Girls play the Sims. That's the way people are being raised, because boys have blue rooms and girls pink rooms, that boys are offered GI Joe and girls Barbie doll, boys are dressed with sport clothes and girl with dresses etc... It has absolutely nothing to do with the intrinseque capacity of each gender, but about stereotypical education that we all get, that generates the kind of sensibility we have, the way we think and what we can do.
Now, about chess, the Polgar family (keep in mind, they were three sisters, they all became grand master, that's a 100% success rate in the family) is enough to shut the mouth of everybody who pretend women can't compete at the highest level. They can, if they are given the environment from their youngest age, which is unfortunately incredibly rare.
There were no women composer until the mid XXth century. NOT ONE except for "wives of": Clara Schumann, Alma Mahler and Fanny Mendelssohn, period. So it was supposed to be a male activity, and women were discourage to compose. You would be told the same crap than we are being served in this thread, you know, about male qualities, the genius, creativity, whatever, backed up with the facts: 100% of male composers and the fallacious argument: there must be a good reason. Surprise, now that most (not all as we can see) of those stereotypes have disappear, we have a good 50% of women in contemporary composers.
Feminism has a long way to go.
One last thing: you can say the exact same thing and that becomes evn more obvious with skin colour. Take Fields medal laureates. Surprise! Everybody is white. That means nothing about racial differences. It just says that when you are white you are a zillion times more likely to have the environment to become a great mathematician. And yet you still have racists using these kinds of datas to prove white men are more clever.
On April 20 2012 01:11 qrs wrote:
Without making speculative statements about why males thus far have the competitive edge in chess and in Starcraft, it's hard to deny that currently they do—and one proof of that is that people still feel the need to hold separate female-only events. With regard to chess, Judit Polgar is the exception that proves the rule: yes, she cracked the overall top 10 for a while—and she's the only female ever to come close to doing so. With regard to Starcraft—well, look at how the OP, even as he theorizes that there ought to be no disadvantage to being female, admits that, Scarlett aside, no girl has actually been "good enough to be considered a competitor in her own right".
And as for Scarlett, well, Scarlett is transgendered, and without getting into questions of etiquette, I don't think you can entirely ignore that fact if the discussion is about comparing female gamers to male gamers. Whatever the reason is that males have generally dominated the top of the Starcraft scene, it's certainly the case that they have—and so long as that remains an unexplained fact, I don't see how you can blithely assume that someone born male (and perhaps still biologically male? I don't know), with all of the biological and cultural things that go along with that is wholly representative of people born female, with all of the biological and cultural things that go along with that. The pronoun you use to refer to Scarlett is one thing; the inferences you draw from Scarlett's success are something else entirely. In my opinion, you won't be able to prove something about the legitimacy of the non-transgender female scene until a non-transgendered female has had a legitimate level of success.
On April 19 2012 23:00 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Yeah well, people used to have the same machist idiotic reasoning in chess, and then came Judit Polgar (and her sisters), who has demolished everybody since she is 6, has been one of the greatest prodigy child in history of chess and has been ranked as high as world number 8, having defeated world champions or former world champions Karpov, Anand, Kasparov, Spasky, Smilsov, Topalov, Ponomariov, Khalifman and Razhimdzdhanov.
Yes, then came Judit Polgar, and then came...who? Yifan? Not yet, at any rate.On April 19 2012 19:32 Zanno wrote:
Of course it undermines the point you're trying to make
There's a large body of literature out there that shows that the male brain and female brain develop differently and as a result there are certain problems that males are better equipped to deal with and certain problems that females are better equipped to deal with
Undergoing sex reassignment surgery does not magically undo two decades of the human body's growth as a male and if you are going to ignore this then I don't know what to say
On April 19 2012 19:23 Ruscour wrote:
Scarlett is female. I am aware she is transgendered. There is absolutely no advantage gained in StarCraft from being male, therefore there is no reason why she couldn't be considered a success for the female SC2 scene.
EDIT: This will be the only reply I make about this issue. Please don't discuss it here, it undermines the point I'm trying to make.
On April 19 2012 19:20 Zanno wrote:
you are aware Scarlett is a dude right
that's not even a rumor
i do not have any bias against transgenders at all but i do not think Scarlett qualifies as a victory towards female recognition in competitive starcraft
you are aware Scarlett is a dude right
that's not even a rumor
i do not have any bias against transgenders at all but i do not think Scarlett qualifies as a victory towards female recognition in competitive starcraft
Scarlett is female. I am aware she is transgendered. There is absolutely no advantage gained in StarCraft from being male, therefore there is no reason why she couldn't be considered a success for the female SC2 scene.
EDIT: This will be the only reply I make about this issue. Please don't discuss it here, it undermines the point I'm trying to make.
Of course it undermines the point you're trying to make
There's a large body of literature out there that shows that the male brain and female brain develop differently and as a result there are certain problems that males are better equipped to deal with and certain problems that females are better equipped to deal with
Undergoing sex reassignment surgery does not magically undo two decades of the human body's growth as a male and if you are going to ignore this then I don't know what to say
Yeah well, people used to have the same machist idiotic reasoning in chess, and then came Judit Polgar (and her sisters), who has demolished everybody since she is 6, has been one of the greatest prodigy child in history of chess and has been ranked as high as world number 8, having defeated world champions or former world champions Karpov, Anand, Kasparov, Spasky, Smilsov, Topalov, Ponomariov, Khalifman and Razhimdzdhanov.
Without making speculative statements about why males thus far have the competitive edge in chess and in Starcraft, it's hard to deny that currently they do—and one proof of that is that people still feel the need to hold separate female-only events. With regard to chess, Judit Polgar is the exception that proves the rule: yes, she cracked the overall top 10 for a while—and she's the only female ever to come close to doing so. With regard to Starcraft—well, look at how the OP, even as he theorizes that there ought to be no disadvantage to being female, admits that, Scarlett aside, no girl has actually been "good enough to be considered a competitor in her own right".
And as for Scarlett, well, Scarlett is transgendered, and without getting into questions of etiquette, I don't think you can entirely ignore that fact if the discussion is about comparing female gamers to male gamers. Whatever the reason is that males have generally dominated the top of the Starcraft scene, it's certainly the case that they have—and so long as that remains an unexplained fact, I don't see how you can blithely assume that someone born male (and perhaps still biologically male? I don't know), with all of the biological and cultural things that go along with that is wholly representative of people born female, with all of the biological and cultural things that go along with that. The pronoun you use to refer to Scarlett is one thing; the inferences you draw from Scarlett's success are something else entirely. In my opinion, you won't be able to prove something about the legitimacy of the non-transgender female scene until a non-transgendered female has had a legitimate level of success.
Yeah fine, that's absolutely true, most of the top 100 chess players are males. In fact 99 of them are males since Judit Polgar is the only one to have ever broken into the top 100. Why? It's not science rocket. It's statistic:
Male dominate chess because chess is socially a male activity. The little boy is put to play chess and the little girl is put to dance or whatever. Go in a chessclub and you will see the junior section with basically only little boys. It's even worse in countries that actually produce most of champions: Russia, Azerbadjan, etc... You just won't see a little girl in a chess club because parents don't put them at chess.
The three Polgar sisters are exception because they had an environment that was devoted to make them great chess players. Their father was a grand master and luckily he didn't have any of these silly prejudices. And he designed their education to make them brilliant players. And without surprise, they all became elite players, regardless of their gender.
SC2 is just the same. Boys play Starcraft, Girls play the Sims. That's the way people are being raised, because boys have blue rooms and girls pink rooms, that boys are offered GI Joe and girls Barbie doll, boys are dressed with sport clothes and girl with dresses etc... It has absolutely nothing to do with the intrinseque capacity of each gender, but about stereotypical education that we all get, that generates the kind of sensibility we have, the way we think and what we can do.
Now, about chess, the Polgar family (keep in mind, they were three sisters, they all became grand master, that's a 100% success rate in the family) is enough to shut the mouth of everybody who pretend women can't compete at the highest level. They can, if they are given the environment from their youngest age, which is unfortunately incredibly rare.
There were no women composer until the mid XXth century. NOT ONE except for "wives of": Clara Schumann, Alma Mahler and Fanny Mendelssohn, period. So it was supposed to be a male activity, and women were discourage to compose. You would be told the same crap than we are being served in this thread, you know, about male qualities, the genius, creativity, whatever, backed up with the facts: 100% of male composers and the fallacious argument: there must be a good reason. Surprise, now that most (not all as we can see) of those stereotypes have disappear, we have a good 50% of women in contemporary composers.
Feminism has a long way to go.
One last thing: you can say the exact same thing and that becomes evn more obvious with skin colour. Take Fields medal laureates. Surprise! Everybody is white. That means nothing about racial differences. It just says that when you are white you are a zillion times more likely to have the environment to become a great mathematician. And yet you still have racists using these kinds of datas to prove white men are more clever.
You should watch Hjernevask (Brainwash), a Norwegian science documentary. Particularly episode one, "The Gender Equality Paradox.
What you have said is complete nonsense based on wishful thinking and an emotional desire to see everyone as equal.
Gender differences are observable immediately after birth. Female babies are more socially inclined and prefer to look at human faces, while male newborns are more mechanically inclined and will look at machines longer.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=327138
The example of the Polgar family that you used itself seems to be strong evidence that genetics is the key factor in becoming a chess grandmaster.
On April 20 2012 18:51 chocopan wrote:
I agree with more or less everything Biff just said. Yay.
I agree with more or less everything Biff just said. Yay.
Everything Biff said is wrong.
Yeah I know people desperately want to justify social order and inequalities with science. That's even a constant in science history.
So let me first tell you that most human science researcher absolutely back up my claims. And don't forget that in the XIXth century, very serious scientists were calculating that the size of the skull of "nigers" was smaller than the one of white people and that was the reason why they were less intelligent and subject to be colonized or put in slavery. Things don't change. Tomorrow we will smile at today's scientists attempts to justify sexist prejudices the same way that now we smile at yesterday's scientists trying to justify racist prejudices.
I am not saying men and women are biologically speaking exactly the same. But to claim that women can't compete with men at something like chess because of genetical disposition is just a fancy way to repeat the most obscene of sexist prejudice: that women are less intelligent. Anyway, explain me a little why they were no women scientist or philosophers until we started to question the dumb prejudices you are defending and as sonn as we did DADA!!! we started to have Marie Curie and other Hannah Arendt? Answer: because when we started to change women education / environment it appeared they were just as smart as men while everybody were certain during six thousand years they were dumb as fuck and unable to think rationally. They were no women scientist because women didn't have the possibility to be a scientist in yesterday's society.
Education and gender issues (gender =/= biological sex) are the reason we behave differently. They are not based on nature, they are a social construction.
One hundred years of research has established that East Asians and Europeans average higher IQs than do Africans. East Asians, measured in North America and in Pacific Rim countries, typically average IQs in the range of 101 to 111. Caucasoid populations in North America, Europe, and Australasia typically average IQs from 85 to 115 with an overall mean of 100. African populations living south of the Sahara, in North America, in the Caribbean, and in Britain typically have mean IQs from 70 to 90.
Discoveries using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which creates a three-dimensional image of the living brain, have shown a strong positive correlation (.44) between brain size and IQ (see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for a review). And there is more. The National Collaborative Perinatal Project on 53,000 children by Sarah Broman and her colleagues, showed that head perimeter at birth significantly predicts head perimeter at 7 years — and head perimeter at seven years predicts IQ. It also shows that Asian children average a larger head perimeter at birth than do White children who average a larger head perimeter than do Black children.
Racial differences in brain size have been established using a variety of modern methods. Using endocranial volume, for example, Beals et al. (1984, p. 307, Table 5) analyzed about 20,000 skulls from around the world. East Asians averaged 1,415 cm3 , Europeans averaged 1,362 cm3, and Africans averaged 1,268 cm3 . Using external head measures to calculate cranial capacities, Rushton (1992) analyzed a stratified random sample of 6,325 U.S. Army personnel measured in 1988 for fitting helmets and found that Asian Americans averaged 1,416 cm3, European Americans 1,380 cm3, and African Americans 1,359 cm3. Finally, a recent MRI study found that people of African and Caribbean background averaged a smaller brain volume than did those of European background (again see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for review).
Well maybe IQ is a fucking dumb measure, sweety. You know you can raise your IQ in two weeks dramatically with appropriate exercizes? For a measure that's supposed to calculate your "intelligence" that's a pretty big flaw.
And even though, you don't think environment is quite a big factor in our intelligence? And that Africans have typically a different environment than the average white guy?
And don't you think that the size of the skull has nothing to do with your intellectual potential, as proven by a zillion studies despite the stuff you throw there that seems to make no difference between correlation and causality? Because see, whales would be quite fucking clever.
You believe africans are less intelligent, and that women can't think rationally. Well, look, you are a racist and a sexist, and I'm off this discussion, because see, I have experienced many times that racists and sexist are unable to think rationally, and not very clever. Bye.
That's not very nice. I consider myself a rational thinker and base my opinions on what evidence is available. I am always prepared to change my opinions if I see new evidence.
And brain/skull size does have something to do with intelligence, as mentioned in my previous post. I am not sure why you ignored that.
It seems you are the irrational one. Your emotional attachment to equality is clouding your judgement, like a fear of death which drives people to faith in heaven.
IQ/g is best single predictor, mental or non-mental.
IQ/g usually predicts major life outcomes better than does any other single predictor in broad samples of individuals. For example, whether IQ predicts strongly (educational performance) or weakly (law-abidingness), it predicts better than does social class background. This does not mean that intelligence is the only important influence on people's life chances or that social conditions are unimportant. Rather, it means that any explanation of social and economic inequalities will need to consider the central role that general intelligence level seems to play.
Gottfredson, L. S. (2006). Social consequences of group differences in cognitive ability (Consequencias sociais das diferencas de grupo em habilidade cognitiva). In C. E. Flores-Mendoza & R. Colom (Eds.), Introducau a psicologia das diferencas individuais (pp. 433-456). Porto Allegre, Brazil: ArtMed Publishers.
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2004socialconsequences.pdf
IQ/g usually predicts major life outcomes better than does any other single predictor in broad samples of individuals. For example, whether IQ predicts strongly (educational performance) or weakly (law-abidingness), it predicts better than does social class background. This does not mean that intelligence is the only important influence on people's life chances or that social conditions are unimportant. Rather, it means that any explanation of social and economic inequalities will need to consider the central role that general intelligence level seems to play.
Gottfredson, L. S. (2006). Social consequences of group differences in cognitive ability (Consequencias sociais das diferencas de grupo em habilidade cognitiva). In C. E. Flores-Mendoza & R. Colom (Eds.), Introducau a psicologia das diferencas individuais (pp. 433-456). Porto Allegre, Brazil: ArtMed Publishers.
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2004socialconsequences.pdf
Survey of opinions on the primacy of g and social consequences of ability testing: A comparison of expert and non-expert views
Though some commentaries give the impression of controversy regarding the importance of cognitive abilities and the validity of ability testing, the results of this survey clearly demonstrate that there are areas of resounding consensus among experts. Our results indicate that there is consensus among experts in the science of mental abilities that g is an important, non-trivial determinant (or at least predictor) of important real world outcomes for which there is no substitute, and that tests of g are valid and generally free from racial bias.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2008.03.007
Though some commentaries give the impression of controversy regarding the importance of cognitive abilities and the validity of ability testing, the results of this survey clearly demonstrate that there are areas of resounding consensus among experts. Our results indicate that there is consensus among experts in the science of mental abilities that g is an important, non-trivial determinant (or at least predictor) of important real world outcomes for which there is no substitute, and that tests of g are valid and generally free from racial bias.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2008.03.007
I'm not trying to be nice or excessively rude.
If you believe that African people are inferior and naturally less intelligent than white people, well, you are a racist, or I don't know what racism is about.
Racism is generally understood as either belief that different racial groups are characterized by intrinsic characteristics or abilities and that some such groups are therefore naturally superior to others (wikipedia)
... as for sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the belief that a characteristic inherent in one's sex necessarily adversely affects one's ability, even if that characteristic does not have that effect.
I think you wouldn't disagree?
Maybe you have a lot of "evidences" to back up your claim (but who doesn't?), so you are a very rationnal racist, but a racist nonetheless. There are worse things on earth than being a racist I am sure, but that's one of the criterias on which I judge that discussing with someone is useless.
Posting studies that, once again, make a correlation between factors without establishing a causal factor doesn't help. have a nice day.
Also, so if you believe blacks' darker skin protecting them from sun makes them superior in high UV level situations you are racist?
"Racial realism", interesting. I am sure Hitler did think he was a "racial realist".
As for the color of the skin, of course it is proven that if you have more melanin, your skin is darker, and you have a better protection against the sun. It's a bit different than saying that Africans are less intelligent or more brutal or whatever, which is at most backed up by pseudo scientific datas usually misinterpreted.
Skin color is related to race. So you can say the black race is superior to white race in the UV example, which would constitute an example of racism. Blacks have an intrinsic capability to better withstand such situations. So how is it not racist, how does it not meet the definition of racism?..
Because race is a loosy concept that has nothing to do with skin colour.
"We caution against making the naive leap to a genetic explanation for group differences in complex traits, especially for human behavioral traits such as IQ scores"
"Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogeneous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past.-p.714"
source: The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics
http://genomebiology.com/2008/9/7/404
While biologists sometimes use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is often used in a naive or simplistic way. Among humans, race has no taxonomic significance; all living humans belong to the same hominid subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Scientists consider biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits (wikipedia)
If you have black skin, you are better protected against the sun. If you have big ears you also may hear better. Skin colour doesn't make a race, as much as size of the ear doesn't make a race either.
There is one race, which is the human race, and each of us has billion of genes that can be combined in any way possible, including genes that determines our melanin rate and therefore our skin colour.
You want to establish an equivalence between skin colour and intelligence. Don't try to use science in order to back up your racist ideas.
On April 20 2012 23:03 chocopan wrote:
This is a different thread. Please move your discussion there. Thank you.
This is a different thread. Please move your discussion there. Thank you.
Sorry, saw that after posting
Here you claim that i am using inductive reasoning, aka dark skin -> african race. Im not doing this. My argument is PURELY deductive, no induction used.
It is african race -> dark skin; european race -> light skin; dark skin superior to white skin -> african race superior to european race
Again, replace "race" for ethnicity or native or whatever you prefer if you dont like it, it doesnt change the validity of the argument.
At risk of derailing this thread further: the point is, that both the concepts of "race" and "superior" are arbitrary cultural constructions that have no natural value. So you could get away with saying that with people with dark skin are more resistant to melanoma, but when you start applying cultural values to that statement in the form of race and judgement, you are making a racist comment.
And race isnt arbitrary. Or well, any more arbitrary than any definition of anything, as all definitions are arbitrary if you want to be an asshole about this and not actually debate in substance but beating around the bush in circles with stealthy redefinitions, denialism and appeal to emotion as the common tools of the leftists are on "slippery" subjects where science is not on their side.
It is measurable, a common set of variables. Skull shape, muscle and bone structure, skin color etc. You can easily determine it. And more importantly, the claim that "racism exists" by itself assumes the existance of commonly agreed upon criterion of races, as otherwise we would not understand who racist words apply to.
It is absurd to claim at the same time that racism exists, and to deny races, because race is a necessary prerequisite of racism.
