Sex, Race And IQ: Off Limits?

I don't know if Sex and Race make adifference in Intelligence tests, but I do know that if there is ever a day when the scores of white males become inferior, then those tests would all of sudden be haled as absolute fact.

I am not going to make a claim as to whether IQ is race based or not, but I do know that any test of IQ does not control for the variable of environment differences and therefore cannot answer the question of IQ being race based or environment based. A person's score on a test (any test) is going to be influenced by how important education was in their childhood both at home and at school. An example of this is that my mother could not read until she was 13yrs old. The school she attended allowed children to progress without having basic literacy and her mother is at fault too. The city she was raised in allowed children to graduate from high school without being able to read. At 13 my mother taught herself to read and later graduated from college. I, her daughter, am now in medical school. If she had been given an IQ test around the age of 12 she would have performed miserably. There is no way to test IQ and control for environment. Even if you are testing people raised in the same household there will be IQ differences between the oldest child and the youngest simply because of the role their parents expected to play. Just my two cents

What is always suspicious about such studies or the discussion of them is how they inherently play to sterotypes. I wonder what they true reason for studying such differences really is. I doubt there are really any real scientific reasons, but the more prevalent excuses for racism.

If we ever finish figuring out how to cure cancer, epilepsy, or any of the other ravages of the HUMAN race, and then we solve poverty, war and global warming, and then we learn how to love and get along with each other, perhaps then, and only then should we be idle enough to explore such ridiculous wastes of human time and talent. And since we will probably never do 1/10 of the above, this conversation is mute.

One final comment... Just because you do or do not excel at a particular activity does not make you "smart" or an "idiot". Examples? Einstein. Why considered by many to be one of the smartest human beings that ever lived, he was well known for not being able to dress himself in the morning. "Freeway" Willy of notorious drug fame did not have a fourth grade education, yet succeeded for years selling drugs up and down the western seaboard, making millions in the process. While illegal, if any "Mensa" guys think they can just jump in and run a multi million dollar business, let alone an illegal one, I would like to see it as a reality show!

Football players are asked from high school on to memorize dozens, if not hundreds (or in the case of some pro NFL teams even thousands) of plays, not only knowing what the play is based on some random assignment of names and numbers 9essentialy a code), but they must be aware of where there teammates are, where they are going, and be aware of what his (and now her in some cases) opponent is going to do. This off course must be done in a matter of seconds, based off visual and verbal cues. Last time I checked, MOST people, regardless of race, can not do this.

The problem with this article and the responses it generated is that it???s easy to see innate genetic differences is that it fails to properly explain how limited and incorrect the idea of "race: is. It has been proven over decades ago that the genetic difference between all humans is so tiny that the biblical term "we are all brothers and sisters" have some basis in actual fact. The evidence is there that more then anything, environment and education is the main factor in intelligence. To argue that Asians are better at math because there Asian would be as idiotic to state as saying that the more of a "slant" you have to your eyes, the better your math skills will be, or the darker your skin is the better at sports you will be.

Major, major, points to our sports as an example of racial differences; however, I would point out a little fact that he is missing. Due to inherent racism in this country, in which minorities in general where kept from pursuing things like medical or legal careers, the way out of impoverishment for many minorities became sports. One could argue that a culture of excelling at sports as a way out for yourself and your family was encouraged. We now see that as sports like football and basketball spread to the rest of the world, more players are coming from other races. In the last ten years, I bet that the NBA has had more draftees from Europe and Asia then anywhere else. Why? Because basketball has garnered a huge fan base on those continents, and thus more people playing the game with eligible NBA size and talent. If it was simply that race was the best determinate factor, all the draft class for the NBA would be out of Africa, and ALL NFL lineman would be Samoan.

This article is right in one regard. More research needs to be done about the physical and mental effects one's environment has on I.Q, and what we as a society can do to make sure that I.Q increases across the board for ALL races. This research also needs to continue to disprove the scientist and/ or organizations determined to use science for political or racist reasons.

It's far past time that science stopped being used as a tool to push social or political agendas, especially when those agendas are to justify the disenfranchisement of minorities and women. (And while where at it, can we please stop saying minority as if Caucasians are the supreme group on the planet? In numbers alone they don???t even come close to those of Asians!) Its time we turned science to things of import... liek feedig the hungry and curing cancer and aids. This pseudo science of which group is smarter, or faster or better then another is childish, sad and a waste of resources better used for something important.

P.S. - I would hope someone willing to name-drop "second order differential equations," would have the mental aptitude to think a little more than to chalk apparent differences up to race.
P.P.S.- I can write you some code to solve second order differential equations - obviously its not TOO high a level of thinking...

Cyril Burt, after his death, was found to have committed scientific fraud by falsifying research data. Most of this research involved twin studies and led to the conclusion that intelligence was largely inherited. However, Burt's conclusions about the heritability of intelligence have been indepedently verified by many other researchers.

Cyril Burt never concluded that "genes make blacks and the poor innately less intelligent than whites and the wealthy."

Poverty does not equate to a lower IQ. My father went hungry as a child and was placed in foster care. The military IQ test gave him an IQ of 154, and Mensa requires an IQ in the low range of the 130's. He could read three books in one evening's span.

Possessing a high IQ can be a distinct disadvantage as the majority population is in the center of the bell curve, and the majority decide the societal voices, popular worldview and majority policy decisions. In many instances, the gifted are viewed as "different" as they possess a higher level of consciousness, a disparate worldview and suffer under a different paradigm of beliefs, vision and emotions. In many instances, the gifted do not run with the pack. The average IQ's rule the world and dominant worldview.

Let's use some cold hard scientific facts to show that academics, in general, lack the integrity to deal honestly with the truth. (Like we didn't already know that!)

Here's a chart of college degrees granted to women an men over the years. It's VERY disturbing.

http://www.fathersandhusbands.org/images/EdStat.gif

But the American Association of University Women have colluded with the educational establishment and the media to promote the widely accepted notion that this is NOT a problem.

How sick.

Let's use some cold hard scientific facts to show that academics, in general, lack the integrity to deal honestly with the truth. (Like we didn't already know that!)

Here's a chart of college degrees granted to women an men over the years. It's VERY disturbing.

http://www.fathersandhusbands.org/images/EdStat.gif

But the American Association of University Women have colluded with the educational establishment and the media to promote the widely accepted notion that this is NOT a problem.

How sick.

This discussion is so poorly framed. We should be striving for facts based repeatable observations and research methods. Political correctness should not play any role at all. We are comfortable accepting our differences when we can see them. Visual observation creates an undeniable truth. We know for instance that women are in general shorter than men. The data supports the conclusion and no one would argue otherwise. Of course, individual women may be much taller than individual men since we are looking at averages across an entire group. And when a woman is taller than a man, we don't try to pretend or claim that she is not.

But somehow when the subject matter is aptitude with a particular skill, people suddenly become irrational and abusive in their attempts to quash any discussion. I think this is just based on extreme fear that something "bad" will come from learning the truth. For example, what if we learn, as some research has suggested, that, in general, men have more aptitude with mathematics and women may have more aptitude with language? So what? Have we been irreparably harmed by the knowing truth? Does this mean that every woman is better at language than every man. Absolutely not. Would it help us cope with the differences? Yes, maybe it would. Maybe specific strategies would be employed as part of early education to compensate for the difference. Or maybe we could stop berating and pressuring young men who may lack good speaking skills and just accept them as otherwise intelligent thinking beings. Maybe we'll find other forms of communication coupled with language that are more effective with men. Whatever the truth is, we can handle it.

My son (almost 4) collected 13 Easter Eggs while my daughter (almost 3) collected 8 eggs in the same time and place. My daughter is far more verbal than my son. Both are good at colors, spelling simple words, counting etc.

Does one have more intelligence than the other? Is it better eyes? Or maybe just longer legs to outrun the other?

Either way, he shared with her the last egg they found together and that made me smile.

Fro this research, we need better definitions for this research of what "male" and "female" mean, for any given studied parameter. Mere inspection of physiology is a poor basis. It's clear that the "male" and "female" groups have a lot of overlap in regard to other supposedly sex-linked partly-physiological, partly-mental performances, such as sense of smell. Many observers would note that same mental-performance parametric overlap across a broad range of characteristics...particularly if sexual orientation is included in the equation.

And, we similarly need a different and probably much more complex definition of what "race" means if we're going to pursue any meaning at all from studies of parametric correlation. The old dominant-gene-skin-pigmentation definition has always been dumb, of course.

Thanks for the well rounded survey of the varying points of view on this issue.

A major problem with such articles and, indeed, the results of the kinds of IQ studies the articles seek to characterize, is the emotional and personal reactions generated by them. A more dispassionate and analytical view of the nature of IQ would be, dare I say it, more logical. An undergraduate course in statistics quickly gives a keen understanding of the mathematical nature of the term "IQ", in the sense of normative distribution. If one lacks an understanding of that mathematical concept and has not actually done at least some associated example computations, then the term "IQ" will usually have a pejorative connotation. Life is full of examples of thing thats people despise (or love) without any understanding of what they truly are or how they work. How many commercial airline passengers have ever even heard, let alone could explain, the principle of physics known as Bernoulli's Principle that actually makes an airplane be able to fly? Ignorance is bliss.....or in some cases, anger.

When I was in school many years ago, my IQ was tested at 126, not a genius, but certainly above average. Language arts come easy to me, but I am terrible at advanced mathematics (elementary algebra and above). But is this because I was expected to do well in one area, because I am female, and poorly in the other? I know I was never encouraged to do well in math, but I also admit I didn't try as much as I could have. High IQ doesn't necessarily translate to good common sense and street smarts.

We don't have scceptable deffinition of intelligence. It is nothing to disscuss.
In 1921 an academic journal asked 14 prominent psychologists and educators to define intelligence. The journal received 14 different definitions, although many experts emphasized the ability to learn from experience and the ability to adapt to one's environment. In 1986 researchers repeated the experiment by asking 25 experts for their definition of intelligence. The researchers received many different definitions.
The first level of intelligence is General Intelligence (capabilities) (inherited or built-in hardware and basic software) is a combination of learning and reasoning as mandatory capabilities (with more intellectual capabilities as optional) of a sentient system that enable it to direct and influence mental and physical behavior in accordance with a system external or internal goal.
General Intelligence defines capabilities opposite to abilities of the system. It determines capacity of the system to exercise its abilities. It can be evaluated indirectly through electrical and chemical brain (computer) activities that are measured by instrumentation or technical description of the AI system. A level of fuzziness determines a level of confidence.
The second level of intelligence is Knowledge-based intelligence can be defined as a knowledge-based general intelligence (or ability) of a domain-oriented system to act under existing constraints (limitations) and reach external or internal goals or decrease the distance between the start and the goal???s stages (intellectual adaptation). This is ???infancy??? level (8 months and older). This is different stages from early ???childhood to adulthood???. This level can be created from zero. In this case a system has to repeat the whole history of intelligence development (million years).
L. Polyakov, Prof.
Psychology and Structured Design of Artificial Intelligent Systems. Introduction to Artificial Intelligent System"s Mind, Aachanon Publishing, 2007