Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive planning issues

This is about ethnicity, social constructs of biology, and genetics, and nutrition, SES, and likely other things I haven't begun to consider. Hence, the muddle, as well as the variance, between scientific fields. I would challenge our resident editors to ask whether the Hutu or Tutsi groups of Ruwanda are differing in intelligence (as measured by, uhm, the evasive 'g'), and what would be the most *concise* way of presenting this example of a multi-factoral question of self-and-socially-defined race "groups" to a lay reader who lacks any background in anthro, biology, etc. Do we need to teach them the fundamentals of social definitions, economics, power of group, socially constructed metrics to elevate a power group, etc.? Ronabop 07:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think you have made a good summary of the reasons that it is difficult to get anyware using the word "race." One of the factors that made science a successful undertaking at the dawn of the modern age was the realization that scientists had to work out their vocabulary so that they all knew that they meant the same thing by a given word. If temperatures were involved then there had to be a common standard for two points on the temperature scale, e.g., 0 at the freezing point of water (and it had to be pure water) and 100 at the boiling point (and elevation/air pressure had to be taken into account).

The idea of [race] is considered useful by some researchers who regard it as a useful heuristic and research "lead-in" device. For instance, if some epidemic hits a major U.S. city, it might quickly become apparent that some [racial] group is being affected more strongly than any other. Then the appropriate thing to do might be to concentrate resources on people of that [race] -- without worrying for the moment whether the actual common factor is genetic, ethnic food preferences (maybe the problem lies in the kim chee not in the Korean genetics), physical environment (maybe Chinatown was the location of release of some biological weapon), etc. The trouble is that the impression that the average citizen may take away from a headline such as, "Little Taipei Hit by Mystery Cancer Epidemic" is that a certain intrinsically different group of people is involved when the true reason may be that the people of a certain group are being treated differently because of their perceived [racial] identity. P0M 15:37, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think when this article was created it was only considering the US. Because race is almost clearly constructed in the US and extensive studies have been recorded for more than half a century. Outside of the US this study becomes almost nonsensical because race is not consistently constructed, in some places one can argue it is not constructed at all(eg ethnically homogeneous societies). I really think this article needs some serious re-evaluation possibly even deletion.Muntuwandi 16:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your words describe the situation I found in Taiwan. Because of a passage in the Analects of Confucius they have the idea firmly in mind that "all men are brothers." So, on the one hand they are aware that all Chinese are genetically connected at some level, and on the other hand they know that even though the connections with other groups may be go back far in history if you are looking for a major nexus nevertheless the "outside people" are still brothers. People in Taiwan could be very passionate about their culture, politics and freedom, but I don't ever recall anybody being passionate about [race]. The aboriginal people living on Taiwan are remote from Chinese genetically and linguistically, and there is some level of discrimination involved, but I never heard the aboriginal people identified as belonging to a different race or identified as being materially different from Chinese in terms of intrinsic characteristics.

Which reminds me: What do we call the form of discrimination that was visited on the group given the derogatory term "Okies?" Those people were for the most part "white" and it was the poverty of the dust bowl era that set them apart. P0M 21:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing relevant is how race is actually used vis a vis intelligence discussion. For example, the fact that race on actual IQ tests is self-identified is relevant. How scientists understand race (self-identified? Or genetic?) when they do twin studies is relevant. How they think of race when they analyze IG data too is relevant. Let's stick to the topic. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At the top of this discussion page there is a recommendation that it "should be expanded to include a worldwide view of the subject." Muntuwandi suggests, correctly I suspect, that the article cannot be expanded so as to make it have worldwide relevance. Other places have other ways of establishing which people in society to dump on. P0M 06:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you and Mutuwandi agree that the article cannot be expanded to make it have worldwide relevance, this topic is now closed, right? there is no need for further discussion?Slrubenstein | Talk 10:37, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously Mutuwandi and I might be wrong, or perhaps someone will give a probabilistic/statistical definition of [race] that allows for comparisons of average intelligence over [races], in which case how particular societies have defined their own idea of what [race] is would not enter into the problem. If there is a connection between genetics and intelligence and that connection can be discovered, then one could do research on whether that genetic trait clusters with skin color, ability to digest asparagus, or whatever. P0M 05:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

the reason the article cannot be expanded is because only in a few countries, such as the US or Canada, is race defined. The majority of countries do not take any statistics on race. If you see the IQ charts from developing countries, the information is basically "guestimated" by authors of the report. Therefore only data from the US has some reliability, the rest is redundant. my proposal is thus to remove all the data based discussion and to turn this article into a theoretical one describing scientific racism with regards to intelligence.Muntuwandi 11:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see how you can do that without violating NOR. Be that as it may, this article has a clear objective and a number of people are working on it. Your proposal to change the page to something completely new is in my opinion futile or disruptive, although the page is under mediation and you are free to register your proposal there. Now, if you want to work on the article on scientific racism, why don't you just work on that article? Slrubenstein | Talk 12:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article is clearly biased. Have a look at the selection of differences in this template,

Their selection is almost deliberately designed to favour the white male and portray the Black Male unfavorably. Most of the articles are US centric, because that is the only way to achieve a bias. For example if one were to study race and crime in Russia or in China the results would be different. In addition there are several other group differences that have been ignored, eg Age and crime, Age and Intelligence, weight and intelligence etc. Only those differences that can portray the white male positively have been selected. This is Cherry picking.

The US cannot be used as a model for studying race because it has its own unique history. Without information from other countries the information becomes irrelevant because races live all over the world not just in the US.Muntuwandi 12:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Then add information to make the article less biased. however, if you want to make any major change (and completely changing the contents and title of the article counts as a major change) take it up with the mediator. If you are serious, you won't get anywhere leaving comments here, you need to involve yourself in the mediation. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it will be quite a huge undertaking to change the article, since a lot has been written. But it needs to be done, one possible solution is to rename it "Race and IQ in the US". In certain circumstances or countries IQ tests are even illegal. That is why a discussion of race and intelligence needs more thinking and analysis than simply presenting a probability distribution curve. We know that Humans have great plasticity, they live in the desert and in the North pole. we also know that knowledge or "intelligence" is not fixed, it can rise and fall eg (Flynn effect). The ancient egyptians and other peoples knew the value of Pi thousands of years ago and were making sophisticated calculations, yet much of their work was forgotten or lost. The subject of intelligence is a complex one, too complex for us to base it a few simple curves written by some controversial authors. Muntuwandi 22:40, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, then I gather you will indeed take this up with the mediator. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:04, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any alternative to saying that Professor A has this crazy idea about race and intelligence, Profeesor B has an alternative crazy idea about race and intelligence, and on and on and on? We are required to do no original research and to do no thinking, or at least that is what I keep interpreting Slrubenstein as meaning. I agree that there may be no justifiable grounds for deciding the truth of a theory -- even if it seems to be a crazy one. But it seems imperative to me that we tell the truth about what other people claim. We cannot do that if we do not respect the different meanings attached to the same word by different authors (or even the by the same author in different places). See Futurebird's remarks on 25 March -- which people seem to have sedulously disattended to. So at a minimum we should have a sort of "atlas of theories about race and intelligence" that clarifies the meaning of "race" and the meaning of "intelligence" for each researcher or school of research, and tell how the researcher says s/he can predict one's intelligence by looking at his/her [race].

Such a discussion could be virtually encyclopedic in itself, since it seems that researchers in this murky field are individually likely to have ideocyncratic definitions of both "race" and "intelligence," or else are likely to leave things undefined. Maybe enough people define "race" the same way that we could group some theories together, but I'm not optimistic about that possibility.

The next problem would be whether to arrange the theories at random, to alphabetize them according to the name of the principal researcher, to prioritize them according to how many "authorities" prefer them, to prioritize them according to the ferocity of negative comment. We might also consider arranging the theories according to whether they boil down to null hypotheses or whether there is actually some testable scientific results claimed.

I think Slrubenstein will see what I am driving at here. How can we avoid a higgledy-piggledy presentation without thinking. And I beg everyone's pardon in advance for daring to think about and even to waste space discussing the rationale for writing this article -- even if getting it wrong could have profound social effects for those "predicted" or condemned in advance to have an assumed low intelligence score. P0M 05:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One needs to be blind not to see the propaganda in all these articles. Wiki is a disgrace that is becoming a nest of white racialist propaganda.

It seems very difficult to make progress against ideas that some people love so dearly. It's like trying to rid the world of leprechauns. The only remedy I can see is to get the genetic basis of intelligence thoroughly worked out. Then there won't be an unsuported belief that somebody must be smarter than somebody else because of his/her [race]. People can just take a DNA sample, and the guy either has it or doesn't have it.

Look and see the obsession with comparing whites and blacks. Why no Asians and Whites, for example, since Asians are scoring higher that whites in IQ tests. Or why not concentrate on A. Jews that score much higher than other whites. Why not emphasize more that before the Flynn effect started in America whites scored 75 and now back Americans score 85, in spite of the fact of enjoying poorer socio-economic conditions? Some of this information is here, some is not, but just pay attention to the space devoted to each concept. 72.144.110.117 16:01, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The way to get answers for your "whys" would be to involve yourself with the phenomenon dynamically. Perhaps that approach would give you a clearer understanding of why any imbalances in content exist.Unfortunately I do not believe that balancing authority against authority will ever do much to remove the biases of the people participating in the balancing. Enlightenment rarely comes from people piling Buddhist sutras on the opposite ends of a teeter-totter. But that is all we can do here, and I am about to get slapped down once more for not restricting myself to that very pursuit. P0M 07:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It very clear that this article has lost its scientific integrity, race and intelligence originally had at least the 4 major races described but now it seems to have resorted to a crackpot dumping ground for fringe theories making no scientific cohesiveness. Maybe you should reclassified this article as fiction or return it to its original state To say the least this is a piece of Sh…….

Please sign your postings.

Please do not use bad language, even the kinds that leaves letters out. Putting in lots of affective content only makes it harder to get anything done. P0M 06:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I find it difficult to understand what you have written above. Why do you believe that the purported field of "race and intelligence" has scientific integrity? At what stage in the development of this article do you believe it had a (derivitive) scientific integrity? At what stage was the integrity lost, in your view? If we are required to report what purported experts in the field say, and to not think because to do so would constitute original research, then we are stuck with a lack of integrity whenever two authorities disagree. If you want integrity you must make yourself into a scientist and go after it. (Be sure to get published so we can quote you here.)