Of Genes and Genius
The rapidly evolving science of genetics and molecular biology offers great promise for improved quality of life and understanding about ourselves and the development of life on this planet. It is also presenting humanity with all sorts of moral and ethical dilemmas and testing our most cherished perceptions. Here's another quandary that the fields of genetics and psychology had been quietly keeping to themselves for years until Dr Watson let the cat out of the bag with his well publicized career killing faux pas in October:
http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/nav/tap3/
I've seen a flurry of articles on this recently, but few that cover the basic arguments being waged over the data (and the social implications of accepting either view) as concisely as Saletan does here.
-Ico
posted by The Iconoclast @ 9:55 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
There was a time when prima facie evidence sufficed and produced no further arguments. We now live in an age when our preconceived notions override empirical evidence. Thus, when faced with the obvious, we blame external factors to accommodate the data to our beliefs – and we stoop to questioning each others’ character.
The macro picture suggests that the author’s conclusions are indeed true. While humans first appeared in Africa, they still die younger, remain malnourished and generally live much worse lives (herein defined as lacking the basic accoutrements that would make life longer and healthier) there. South and Central America developed their infrastructures before the American experiment ever came into the picture; and yet, their people migrate North “en masse”, and not vice versa, in search of better lives. The Asians have proven, in South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia that, whenever artificial constrains related to failed political ideas are removed, their societies thrive in the basic criteria of longer and healthier lives.
When Murray and Hernstein published The Bell Curve in 1994, their work was dismissed and repudiated by the very same people who criticized Bloom’s 1987 Closing of the American Mind. Let’s hope that we have evolved sufficiently to have an informed debate on these matters. Gravity is quite inconvenient at times – but not discussing it does not make it go away.
“The biggest mistake is the belief that intelligence is defined by intelligent behavior.”
-Jeff Hawkins, “On Intelligence”
I do not doubt that one day in the future we’ll find inherent biological differences in the composition of brains of one race versus another. I also believe that some of these inherited differences might bias one race relatively more intelligent than another. Today, however, with the limited amount of knowledge we have on the functionality of the brain, it seems to me premature and irresponsible for highly regarded scientists, such as James Watson, to make such statements as he did on Oct. 14th:
[James Watson] …is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really"…
As in Jeff Hawkins statement above, defining a theory of intelligence through behavioral observation is like re-engineering a computer’s hardware by watching someone play an Xbox. After reading as much as I could understand of the linked article in Slate entitled “Thirty Years Of Research On Race Differences In Cognitive Ability”, it would seem to me that there is not enough substance given to the culture-only (0% genetic–100% environmental) versus the hereditarian (50% genetic–50% environmental) models of the causes of mean Black–White differences in cognitive ability.
I can conceive of a world dominated by bigot-fighting liberals who at the very mention of such genetic inferiority ruffle their feathers and viciously attack any potentially legitimate claim as blasphemy. Those same liberals are the ones who promote the culture-only model and believe that the only thing racially-diverse persons really need to prove their equal aptitude is a level playing field. Affirmative action, quotas, elimination of derogatory terms, etc. are all liberal tools used to “level the playing field” of the discriminated. Unfortunately, as any good free thinker knows, these tools only serve to enslave the discriminated in ignorance.
My personal belief is that nurture, from the second your cells start splitting to the second they stop, accounts for the vast majority of a person’s expressed intelligence. For now this is an immeasurable phenomenon as there are thousands of “nurturing variables” affecting you every second of your life. Basing social policies on intelligence is just as retarded as leveling the playing field. Man has done with neither for the majority of time and been better off.
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As the parent of three currently healthy, caucasian boys, I can only make the following statements on the basis of my very small sample size. In my opinion, the biggest factor in a person's IQ is genetics (i.e., they are born with it). I don't know about African Americans or Asians. I'm just speaking about my own family. Fortunately, we are blessed with three great kids that are all doing well in school. However, there is no doubt in my mind that one of them has more "horsepower" than the other two. This is not due to his environment, it's in his genes. I guess one could argue that since I have the opinion that he has more horsepower, that I subconsciously treat him differently. That is probably true, and if we were doing an official study, it would be a problem. However, for my opinion, it does not matter at all.
So, if this can happen in an individual family, why should we be surprised that it can happen in different racial groups that were separated from one another for thousands of years?
I agree that none of the studies I read about seemed very conclusive, but it did seem there is some smoke there.
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