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Goddammit Watson...
James Watson made some pretty brazen remarks about the intelligence of black people versus that of other races.
I'm sure many of you have probably seen this. A lot of people are calling this the end of his career and so forth.
For those who are unfamiliar, James Watson is half of the duo - Francis Crick being the other half - typically credited with discovering the double-helix structure of DNA. The reality of the situation is taught to young scientists as a warning of what the field is like; Watson and Crick took unpublished data from Rosalind Franklin, a female collaborator. That data turned out to be the crucial information they needed in order to figure out the structure of the DNA molecule. Watson in particular is infamous in the scientific community for being a bigot and an outright misogynist.
Essentially, he remarked that the future of Africa was grim, because Western policies towards the continent are based on the premise of equal reasoning ability, when "testing" indicates that this is not true. He made several choice statements, all in the same vein of scientific racism.
Now, there are some things to consider here. There certainly are genetic differences between various ethnic groups, but the notion of putting the concept of "intelligence" into those differences is dubious at best. It's generally impossible to really define what is meant by "intelligence," except to lay out very specific parameters in very specific tests. I suppose I could see a given ethnic group having a predisposition towards a particular shade of cognition, but performing well on, say, an IQ test doesn't necessarily mean anything.
The significance here is that you find people who believe in bullshit in all walks of life, even where they shouldn't be. One would think that scientists should be largely devoid of preconceived notions and opinions based on nothing, but this is unfortunately not the case. I can certainly say, from my personal experiences, that some of the most irrational people I have ever met in my life have held Ph.D.'s in hard sciences.
This is why we need to maintain skepticism and always question what we think we know. If even a world-renowned Nobel prize-winning scientist can believe such claptrap, it's all the more important for everyone else to keep examining what they know and question what others claim to know, to make sure that we're not all running around believing in some other batshit crazy notions.
Anyone have comments on this whole debacle?
I'm sure many of you have probably seen this. A lot of people are calling this the end of his career and so forth.
For those who are unfamiliar, James Watson is half of the duo - Francis Crick being the other half - typically credited with discovering the double-helix structure of DNA. The reality of the situation is taught to young scientists as a warning of what the field is like; Watson and Crick took unpublished data from Rosalind Franklin, a female collaborator. That data turned out to be the crucial information they needed in order to figure out the structure of the DNA molecule. Watson in particular is infamous in the scientific community for being a bigot and an outright misogynist.
Essentially, he remarked that the future of Africa was grim, because Western policies towards the continent are based on the premise of equal reasoning ability, when "testing" indicates that this is not true. He made several choice statements, all in the same vein of scientific racism.
Now, there are some things to consider here. There certainly are genetic differences between various ethnic groups, but the notion of putting the concept of "intelligence" into those differences is dubious at best. It's generally impossible to really define what is meant by "intelligence," except to lay out very specific parameters in very specific tests. I suppose I could see a given ethnic group having a predisposition towards a particular shade of cognition, but performing well on, say, an IQ test doesn't necessarily mean anything.
The significance here is that you find people who believe in bullshit in all walks of life, even where they shouldn't be. One would think that scientists should be largely devoid of preconceived notions and opinions based on nothing, but this is unfortunately not the case. I can certainly say, from my personal experiences, that some of the most irrational people I have ever met in my life have held Ph.D.'s in hard sciences.
This is why we need to maintain skepticism and always question what we think we know. If even a world-renowned Nobel prize-winning scientist can believe such claptrap, it's all the more important for everyone else to keep examining what they know and question what others claim to know, to make sure that we're not all running around believing in some other batshit crazy notions.
Anyone have comments on this whole debacle?
Comments
I'm probably under-educated on this subject, but if brains are like computers, then certain hardware is better and faster than others. AMD and Intel chips are both modern, but we do see a marked difference in performance, especially on certain types of processing.
It just shows you that no matter how great someone may be in one aspect, they are still a faulty, often shitty, human being. But of course, we knew that already. Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson, Hans Reiser, etc.
Omnutia: Genetics can certainly affect the operating potential of a brain; those born with mental retardation have a severely reduced overall brain function capacity. However, barring an obvious problem like retardation, most people's brains operate at roughly the same functional capcity.
Also, people use a small portion of their brain for what we typically consider the "higher" brain functions, like independent thought and all that jazz. That's that whole "people only use 10% of their brains" business. This is technically true, but only because the rest of your brain is busy doing all the other shit your brain needs to do, like directing your limbs and coordinating your body.
"Pull your brain"? You shouldn't try to over simplify things. Try and imagine the stress someone would be under if they had a brain equivalent to that of 25 people (assuming 100% capacity).
So what percentage do we use then?
I agree with the WhaleShark that we only use about 10% of our brains for concious, complex thinking. The rest if more basic and crucial life functions and imprinted (imitated) knowledge. E.g. Walking, you need to walk to get from point a to point b without getting overly tired (unless you have never walked in the past 20 years of your live for whatever reason). Walking is a basic reflex, you wish to walk, and voila, you start walking. As far as I can remember from Biology class, it's even a reflex at the bottom of your spine, your brains send the signal "WALK!" to the bottom of your spine, and a reflex starts moving your legs, no hard concious thinking required, yet crucial for living, controlled by your unconcious imprinted knowledge on how to do stuff. Same goes for digesting, breathing, making sure your heart keeps pumping blood through your body. Imagine how little we could do if we had to conciously force our body to inhale air, pump blood around, digest the hamburger you ate 20 minutes before.
Edit to prevent triple post: Okay, after having commented on what the last posts were in my previous post, and Omnutia who posted after I started typing the previous post, I've read the rest of this topic.
Intelligence is, if you ask me, the ability to have complex concious thoughts. Now, your brain consists of millions, if not billions or more, nerves. These are all somehow connected. The brain also has various areas which have developed to handle a certain part of our knowledge superb. Like talking, you have an area in your brain which has somehow stored knowledge which you call upon when you open your mouth, such knowledge could include stuff like pronounciation, meanings of words, grammar, all that stuff (we don't know for sure though, science has only shown that certain areas in the brain have 99% control over certain aspects of knowledge). Because a complex concious thought requires all sorts of knowledge, it needs information from numerous areas of your brain, thus if the nerves in your brain have formed a damn lot of connections with each other the faster you can gather, analyze and use information you know. In my opinion people with high IQ's have (genetically(?)) created a damn lot of these connections so that they can process information faster. People with a low IQ have less of these connections and thus cannot process information at the same speed as someone with an high IQ.
If you ask me, IQ only means that someone has the potential to have some degree of complex concious thoughts, the higher your IQ, the more complex thoughts you can potentially handle. The article linked shows that people with high IQ's can be equally stupid.
Now, the day we are able to tell how the brain stores knowledge, that will be the day we might be able to more accurately say how much of our brains we use, and how much more we could use.
The nerves ARE the connections or the wires / circuitry. A nerve has a body which has a number of short recievers for the different electrical polarisations it's recieving, which are negating, which are negative, which are positive, how strong they are and finally whichever way it is swayed it sends a positive or negative electrical charge down the long axon to the next recieving nerve body.
The brain also has various areas which have developed to handle a certain part of our knowledge superb.
"Knowledge" is right and wrong and more like loose rule sets but it is definately dynamic and you cannot simplify it to the point of computer memory storage, it is in no way analagous.
Like talking, you have an area in your brain which has somehow stored knowledge which you call upon when you open your mouth, such knowledge could include stuff like pronounciation, meanings of words, grammar, all that stuffTalking does not have a specialised filing cabinet but is more something that the outer cerebrum initiates in conjunction with thoughts that may or may not have been triggered by sensory input (from events i.e. someone has addressed a question to you, someone has looked at you a certain way, something has touched you. These afferent signals are interpreted and filtered by the Thalamus and efferent signals are then sent out to various parts of the brain to decide on what would be the best reaction. Talking itself is a process and skill as important as grammar but it is taken for granted because humans use it so often - thus there are shortcuts that the brain develops so that less processing is required and less centres have to be passed through allowing for efferent nervous signals to trigger muscles into allowing speech. The more one uses a skill, the faster it can be done as less processing centres need to be passed.
In my opinion people with high IQ's have (genetically(?)) created a damn lot of these connections so that they can process information faster.This is possibly your most incorrect statement. All the potential to grow nervous fibres for whatever tasks are required are present and can be grown for the length of time till the brain stops growing and has matured, this is completely controlled by external stimuli. Furthermore, certain actions and skills form shorter circuits, or quicker conduits to pass through, the more that skill is called upon or used. For example I was amazingly slow and uncoordinated when I first started picking up and using surgical tools in University but after a year of use, it became "easier" or "second hand" and is probably now taken for granted by me, there are shorter circuits in my cerebellum which have developed a superior coordination for using the surgical tools, this has been connected with less checks to my knowledge of what to do during surgery with these tools.
IQ tests are a load of bull because you can score quite differently on different exams, thus your knowledge on different topics is questionable and it comes down to a lottery for questions that you can answer quickly and correctly and those you can't, within a number of different topics, of which none are specific. e.g. You could sit an IQ one day, score highly, then come back the next day, not learnt anything new or forgotten anything and score lowly on another IQ exam. It is not reliable at all and should not even be given the distinciton of being named an "exam" as parameters are not put in place.
Biological/evolution theory prove. If humans only used 10% of their brains, and the other 90% was just there doing absolutely nothing. Why the hell did we evolve to have more brain mass?
Evolution theory disproves your understanding. The volume of brain matter is not indicative of intelligence, the brain isn't a container you fill with liquid. The higher the surface area of the cerebrum, the greater the skill set and pontential, so basically if you start off wiith a metaphorical section of a tree log - this would be a brain which had the lowest capacity, even if you double the volume, the potential for intelligence isn't increasing by much; But if you start chopping into it, you give it more surface area and with ever further incision you make into the log, the surface area and potential for intelligence rises dramatically. Hence why there are a number of animals with much larger brains than humans but they may not have the cognition of small monkeys with brains the size of egg yolks.
e.g. primitive pre-homo sapiens female sees pre-homo sapiens male with more brain mass and thus a larger head and thinks he's ugly and goes mating with a 'normal' pre-homo sapiens male. The majority of normal mating (that being mating outside of the skewed human understanding), has nothing to do with ugly but more to do with ability, if an animal has survived to maturity and has gained a status in a social hierachy high enough to mate multiple times, that individual is then more likely to be fitter to be survived by offspring (e.g. the cheetah's mating ritual usually has the male literally chase after the female, he may or may not be in competition with other males for the female, in the end, the female only chooses the one that was fastest).
Ummm, where to start with this? Putting aside any comments I may have about the hominids who came before Homo sapiens or how culture affects mate choices, let me stab right at the heart of the matter to clarify something most people misunderstand about evolution. Natural selection is NOT a competition between individuals. No. It's not. Really. The term "survival of the fittest" wasn't even used by Darwin - it was coined by a 19th century philosopher named Herbert Spencer, whose own twisting of Darwinian theory later became the basis for Social Darwinism, Nazi philosophy, and the U.S. Eugenics movement. The example you provided is not a valid example of natural selection, and the "survival of the fittest" you mentioned isn't how natural selection works. Just so you know.
As for James Watson - wow, way to go. More proof that despite the ideal of Weberian detachment scientists strive for, it is never entirely possible for them to extricate themselves from their cultural context. Beyond that, there really is no scientific basis or evidence for race as a biological category. There are no genes which one "race" has that another does not; it is also entirely possible for someone of one "race" to have more in common genetically with someone of a different "race" than someone in their own. The measurement of the human body doesn't reveal any evidence of biological race either - in the first half of the 20th century, anthropologist Franz Boas used anthropometry on immigrant groups to debunk race and Social Darwinist thinking. The only way race exists is as a social category. Grats2u, Watson, for using incorrect and long-refuted biological ideas to justify your own bigotry.
Pronunciation[uh-nal-uh-guhs]
–adjective
1. having analogy; corresponding in some particular: A brain and a computer are analogous.
That made me laugh. Never said it did. I said that a certain area of the brain could contain knowledge/information for speech, e.g. pronounciation, vocabulary. I said this based on a short bit of a documentary of a hospital. A (bilangual) woman needed brain surgery, so they opened up her skull, and (I don't remember why) poked around and asked her to say words, this way they found the area which controlled part of her speech ability (she couldn't speak anymore when they poked said area, all mumbo-jumbo) and thus made sure they didn't destroy that and thus she wouldn't lose speech abilities due to said surgery. I don't see what's so wrong about my statement. I said people with high IQ's have developed more of those shortcuts. You are saying the same. If it's the word genetically (which is between parenthesis, and a questionmark, for me not being 100% sure about) that is based somewhat on myself, before high school (don't know the American system, but we have 8 years (first 2 years learning nothing) before high school and then start counting from 1 again) I learned dick. We got the stuff we had to study a few weeks in advance. I looked it over on that day, then dumped it wherever, not to be seen again untill the day before the test, when I would find it, read it over again, dump it and went playing outside. Whereas a friend of mine studied hard. Really fucking hard. Everybody admired his determination to learn. The majority of times I scored higher then he did. I went to the highest possible route of high school (different system, can explain if you people want, not here though) and my friend, who works so damn hard to learn those things. Went to one of the lowest possible routes. I barely made connections by learning, he should've made numerous of them and score higher then me. Thus I say some of it is genetically. I know very little, and, not to (in Rym's 'famous' words) stroke my own ego, yet I manage to score above 130 on IQ tests, be they in Dutch or English. Okay, didn't know that. Assumed all brains are all folded and stuff and thus having huge surface areas. My bad. I gave that as example. I know every species sets other conditions on their mates, but lets face it. you'd prefer to do this woman over this woman. (note: I do not intend to make fun of anyone in these pictures, and they're (the pictures) on my photobucket to prevent undesired hotlinking) It's a competition between species. Species A does not want to be eaten by species B, thus gradually changes its skin/hair colour to match it surroundings as to hide from species B. This happens over time since all those who have a skin/hair colour which helps them blending into their enviroment survive, and those who don't, get eaten, and thus over time animals of species A will have a skin/hair colour which helps them in their enviroment. Africans have dark skins against the sun, put them in Scandinavia or Russia and they'll get vitamin D deficiency. That is, if my recall is correctly and vitamin D is the vitamin created when your are exposed to sunlight. I don't care who coined the phrase. Survival of the Fittest means that individuals within a certain species with a certain genetic difference from the average individual from their species which (might) affect their chances of having sex with a female/male of their species and thus their chances of passing on said genetic difference to a new individual of their species, changes.
Also, god what huge posts here! (edit) Ouch, and yet I forget to thank the comments. My English is bad and I lack any skill points on describing various things (read anything). So thanks for the comments, corrections, and notes of knowledge. sK0pe a surgeon. Wow.
Use of the word "genetic" is what really pushed me on the statement.
Short term study is worth nothing if we're talking about skill, I think alot of people are educated on these forums; all can stroke their egos. e.g. I finished both of my final year's high school maths courses in half a year because I could do the majority of simple algebra equations in my head. But I think this is because I forced myself to do so many quadratics mentally in year 8, thus year 12 maths was really easy for me but I laid down some of those short circuits for algebra 4 years earlier.
Another example, I did the entrance exam for Medicine half assed, no study etc. while someone I knew, was going really crazy and doing a lot of study, freaking out infront of the exam hall, he didn't pass even the first stage of the exam (written) while I was called in for an interview and psychological exam for entrance. It's primarily that most geeks can lay down the basis of examinations quite well during grade school and high school.
.I pay no heed to IQ results, I don't need a flawed exam to try and measure the immeasurable.
Also, oh god! Big input... never saw that thing.