The Gaming Den

In a funny coincidence, io9 had an article about Extinction Events just yesterday. Unless that was what sparked this conversation in the first place. Then it's not a coincidence at all, and I'm the funny one for being dense.

So. Herrnstein and Murray. Author of the Bell Curve.

Does anyone have access to some smoking guns that tear down some of the major arguments they make -- such as social intervention cannot raise IQ, IQ gains from education intervention are fleeting, and some races have genetically inferior IQs?

The message board I'm at seems to be attracting some 'racial realists' and I'm starting to get sick of 'em.

I think your best bet is to treat them as though they said the lizard people are coming from your fridge, then put them on ignore. Racists aren't going to change their worldview when you show them a refutation of their beliefs. And that's all that "racial realists" are.

If you wanted you could dig up the arguments for the 1924 immigration act - which were predicated on the idea that Poles and Italians had racially inferior intellects that would not and could not be modified by social intervention or education. Of course, basically Koumei is correct that there is essentially nothing you can do that will seriously dent the mental armor of pseudo-scientific racists.

But sure, go ahead and dig up the "racial realism" arguments against Italians from 1924. See how many of those assholes repudiate them and how many of them nod their head and claim that Italians are indeed racially inferior.

-Username17

I'm certain that some genetic combinations are more advantageous than others, including for IQ. All but the most extreme differences are swamped by how someone is nurtured though.

Tangentially related though: has anyone else noticed that 30-50 years ago, all the really expert professionals on TV were played by black actors? I don't have a deeper point there, besides wondering what changed.

fectin wrote:Tangentially related though: has anyone else noticed that 30-50 years ago, all the really expert professionals on TV were played by black actors? I don't have a deeper point there, besides wondering what changed.

No, I can't recall that being the case at all. Do you have any examples?

Mission impossible (most episodes). MacGyver (various episodes with secondary characters, like the one with the con men). I Spy (Cosby's breakout role). Even Star Trek had Uhura.

I haven't really watched an exhaustive list of shows from that era or anything, but it seems like anyone in what you might call a token black role was portrayed as a diligent professional.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Does anyone have access to some smoking guns that tear down some of the major arguments they make -- such as social intervention cannot raise IQ, IQ gains from education intervention are fleeting, and some races have genetically inferior IQs?

I don't have a source handy, but I thought that the first born child often clocks in a few points higher on average than other children in the family, and this is hypothesized to be caused by the parents having more time and resources to devote to the single child. Seems like a good indication of nurture influencing IQ.

fectin wrote:Mission impossible (most episodes). MacGyver (various episodes with secondary characters, like the one with the con men). I Spy (Cosby's breakout role). Even Star Trek had Uhura.

I haven't really watched an exhaustive list of shows from that era or anything, but it seems like anyone in what you might call a token black role was portrayed as a diligent professional.

Those all sound like supporting roles and the main characters are white, so I'm going to guess it's a case of token-black-guy.

Robby, you would be wrong in the case of I-Spy since Bill's character was one of the leads in that series.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058816/

Lago:

How much do you want? There's a genetics student who does some videos on YouTube.

Evogenvideos. He should have what you want in his Evolution vs. Racism series.

Here's a quick link to Rationalwiki's analysis on the Bell Curve. It's a good starting point to start putting together some arguments against that bullshit.

The quicker version is:

Race/subspecies is an actual scientific/biological concept.

It is not found in Homo sapiens.

A subspecies happens when a population has unique traits, specifically DNA, that are unique to that population, without it being so far gone from the original species to be a new one.

You can try to cite skin tones and all, but there is seriously not enough DNA difference among the various human populations, even if you divided it up by ancestry and skin tone, to warrant a subspecies like these folks try to argue.

Human development is not solely genetic. Genetics, at best, makes up a third of it, near as I can tell. You get genetics, environmental, and cultural/meme influences that shape us. By environmental, I mean shit like "Do you get enough food when you're growing" and "did you read much when you were young".

There was a study I'll dig up, that tried to analyze crack babies versus the general population, and they found out that poverty makes a bigger difference in your adult IQ and personality than your mother doing crack when you were in the womb. Seriously.

That should be plenty a starting point, Maxus, thanks.

I mean, in a lot of ways the lead-crime hypothesis forwarded by Rick Nevin extremely neatly explains racial differences in IQ among a ton of other things -- like crime rates. Nevin's work is so badass that he uses their own charts in the Bell Curve (along with standard international crime stats, of course) to support his hypothesis.

Even so, I'd like something to fall back on in case someone goes 'but even once blood-lead levels drop across the population, racial minorities will have a lower IQ nyeh nyeh'.

EDIT: Hell, just after writing this post I found this gem on Google: http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_ ... _Curve.pdf

RobbyPants wrote:

fectin wrote:Mission impossible (most episodes). MacGyver (various episodes with secondary characters, like the one with the con men). I Spy (Cosby's breakout role). Even Star Trek had Uhura.

I haven't really watched an exhaustive list of shows from that era or anything, but it seems like anyone in what you might call a token black role was portrayed as a diligent professional.

Those all sound like supporting roles and the main characters are white, so I'm going to guess it's a case of token-black-guy.

Two Of the four I listed are main characters. Three if you count Uhura. Regardless though, even of they were token characters, it's still a change to see all the token characters as pros.