Of "In-Group" & "Race"

[Foster Zygote]

Have you read the University of Utah research on the Ashkenazim and exceptional intelligence?

Haven't heard of it. I'll look into it tonight after the Munchkin has gone to bed.

For the record: I am not a huge of all the thinking behind 4.

Nor I. I mean, just think about dogs. Even in the working breeds that humans have manipulated for a specific purpose no one has ever created a breed that's better at being a dog in the dog's natural environment than the original dog, the wolf.

Steven

 

[Loss Leader]

The concept of race may be fuzzy and social, but it preserves bilogical utilitiy, as does many scientific concepts. Denying the existence of races is ridiculous.

Well, I'm glad you think that this is a settled point however I'm not quite ready to concede it. Actually, I think you are so far off the mark that the concept of human "races" is worthless.

First, "fuzzy and social" doesn't begin to describe the problems of categorizing humans into races. As has been pointed out, we are all remarkably mixed. Until 500 years ago, Africans held a major toehold on the European continent. All those sicilians got their dark hair from somebody. Asia has had European blood (in the form of Russians) mixing in for centuries. Even the southeast islanders have been interbreeding with Europeans since the 1600s at least. And don't even start with South America - nobody there is left with pure European, African or Native American blood.

In fact, just about the only way to determine race is through self-identification. I'm Jewish and we're pretty insular when it comes to interbreeding but ... um, we're not perfect. Also, our women used to get raped a lot. But I will self-identify as Jewish 10 times out of 10. So, I would argue there is zero biological utility in trying to test out differences in races.

Second, biology agrees with me. It has already been established that there is next to no genetic diversity in our species. 85% of all human diversity exists in any small ethnic group. There's not a lot left to test.

Third, there is no current definition of race that allows for the divisions among humans that you argue for. Every human can mate with every other to produce a fertile child. That's one race. We are less diverse than different dog breeds and dogs are all one race as well.

Last, such a study has no utility. We're not going to start selectively breeding people. We're not going to treat people differently based on race. We're not going to encourage Africans to start long-distance running at an early age because some of them may have a potential to be good at it. (We are going to keep encouraging Jews to go to medical school but that's our thing to worry about.)

I see no reason to even continue this line of inquiry.

 

[Dave1001]

Last, such a study has no utility. We're not going to start selectively breeding people. We're not going to treat people differently based on race. We're not going to encourage Africans to start long-distance running at an early age because some of them may have a potential to be good at it. (We are going to keep encouraging Jews to go to medical school but that's our thing to worry about.)

I see no reason to even continue this line of inquiry.

Perhaps such a study has no known utility. And of course we're not going to start to treat people differently based on race. Nobody in this thread suggested that, and Derbyshire's piece predicted that that would be brought up as a trope in discussions like this. Do you categorically think that all lines of inquiry with no known utility should not be continued? I'm a hardcore utilitarian, but even I don't go so far as to suggest that.

 

[blutoski]

Well, I'm glad you think that this is a settled point however I'm not quite ready to concede it. Actually, I think you are so far off the mark that the concept of human "races" is worthless.

I'm willing to hear other points of view, but obviously I disagree.

First, "fuzzy and social" doesn't begin to describe the problems of categorizing humans into races. As has been pointed out, we are all remarkably mixed. Until 500 years ago, Africans held a major toehold on the European continent. All those sicilians got their dark hair from somebody. Asia has had European blood (in the form of Russians) mixing in for centuries. Even the southeast islanders have been interbreeding with Europeans since the 1600s at least. And don't even start with South America - nobody there is left with pure European, African or Native American blood.

So? Again: I refer you to the logical fallacy of the corrupt continuum. My grandmother was a 'senior' when she died (96). She was a 'child' when she was young. Somewhere along the line, she was sort of a mix. Does this arbitrary boundary mean there is no such thing as seniors or children?

My wife's black. She's obviously black. Her recent ancestry is obviously from Africa. Any other interpretation is desperate, and black people are well within their rights to be offended when being told that they're not actually black. That it's their imagination or some fru-fru handwaving about social conventions, public discourse, &c.

The second problem with this statement is that in order to point out that there are populations of mixed race (technically called 'ethnoclines'), you have to actually discuss, well, the races that are mixed in the ethnocline. This very topic supports the concept of races.

In fact, just about the only way to determine race is through self-identification. I'm Jewish and we're pretty insular when it comes to interbreeding but ... um, we're not perfect. Also, our women used to get raped a lot. But I will self-identify as Jewish 10 times out of 10. So, I would argue there is zero biological utility in trying to test out differences in races.

That's just ignorance, though. There are medical conditions that are way more likely to occur in people with Jewish ancestry. It's useful for diagnosis. I'm thinking especially regarding Sephardic or Ashkenazi Jews. My wife is a black woman and an MD and race is diagnostically useful in her practice, which is in a black community that has historically had white doctors who were ignorant of this. An example is that race can help narrow down the diagnosis related to a presentation of numbness in the hand or forearm: in white people, this is most likely a mechanically damaged nerve blood supply or edema from an acute injury, whereas in a black person, it's more likely to be an occluded nerve blood supply from hypertension. (A North American phenomenon, interesting enough)

Our children are mixed, and one is white. The white kid needs to wear sunscreen while sailing: the others do not. The black kids need different hair-care products and techniques (that's very time-consuming hair). It's just asanine to suggest that race has no real-world implications.

Second, biology agrees with me. It has already been established that there is next to no genetic diversity in our species. 85% of all human diversity exists in any small ethnic group. There's not a lot left to test.

I'm sure that's true, and probably even an underestimate. I have read numbers more like 96%. It does not follow, however, that races are not a useful concept, just because there is plenty of genetic diversity within an ethnic group, or because there's only a few genes involved that are responsible for the distinctions. These are not incompatible facts.

Third, there is no current definition of race that allows for the divisions among humans that you argue for. Every human can mate with every other to produce a fertile child. That's one race. We are less diverse than different dog breeds and dogs are all one race as well.

No. You're confusing 'race' with 'species'. Dogs are the same species, but we can identify their different races pretty easily. Animal 'races' are called 'breeds'. Do 'Dobermans' exist? For that matter, dogs can mate with wolves. Do 'dogs' exist? Yes, these classifications are arbitrary. Hey: what's a 'planet'? Welcome to science.

Last, such a study has no utility. We're not going to start selectively breeding people. We're not going to treat people differently based on race. We're not going to encourage Africans to start long-distance running at an early age because some of them may have a potential to be good at it. (We are going to keep encouraging Jews to go to medical school but that's our thing to worry about.)

And this is the strawman part. There are other utilities for recognizing races than evil. As mentioned above, medical diagnosis benefits. As does affirmitive-action or other attempts to pursue justice. When these are taken away, minorities are impacted.

I see no reason to even continue this line of inquiry.

See the first line of this post.

 

[Dave1001]

What evidence can you point to that shows that membership in a certain population is a factor in ones intelligence? Which of these populations is indicated by genetics to to be intellectually superior/inferior to which? What is the hierarchy?

Steven

Let's drop "hierarchy" because it doesn't seem necessary to discuss your first 2 questions.

Also, I hope others feel free to contribute evidence too. This is a leisure activity for me, so I may not have time and inclination to dig up evidence on demand for this topic (or any other on the message board).

Let's start with the population of people who are severely mentally retarded due to genetic causes, and the population of people who are not. Would you agree that there is a difference in the intelligence between the two populations due to genetics (I understand that here we're not talking about multigenerational endogamous populations -at least not to my knowledge on this topic). I know I drew the lines of the populations and defined population to cherry pick an example that's hard to refute, but I do plan to expand to the messier gray zones. But I'd like to see if we can start with some extreme common ground that there are people that exist, who due in part to their dna, are less intelligent than other people.

 

[Dave1001]

4. More importantly, for me, was the question not raised, which seems to be coming up these days: at what point do we start deliberately and selectively breeding people for certain traits? We do it with animals of many sorts: dogs, cows, horses, cats. We do it with plants.

Socially, if not scientifically, any number of "desirable traits" inform the general breeding process. Smart. Pretty. Healthy. Fast. Strong. Nice hooters. Agile Whatever.

What list (and it would be thousands of items long, given the need for resistance to diseases and various syndromes and birthdefects) of attributes would a human need to be bred for to place its potential (still has to be raised and potential tapped) in the second and third standard deviation from the mean? the fourth? The fifth? (For whoever answers "one from Column A, two from column B," on the list, I'm a step ahead of you. )

How many generations would it take to move the mean one, two, or three standard deviations to the right? For all humans?

For the record: I am not a huge of all the thinking behind 4. That said, look at what pre natal procedures have developed into, and how invitro procedures allow a certain amount of discretion over "the old fashioned way." See also the use of so primative a technology as ultrasound to inform decisions to abort female fetuses (some news on that in the past decade, China and India). Hee hee, in twenty years, how are they gonna get a date? I can see it now: The Sex Wars, and the root causes of the Great Chinese Civil War.

I don't see there being some invisible barrier beyond which humans won't advance to gain greater control of the outcomes of the reproductive process. (Me, I'm all for getting a little wine, taking the missus out into the hills, and the two of us going at it under a full moon, but I wouldn't insist that a control freak feel bound to that regimen.)

The vulnerability to discrete diseases found in the Askenazim study h8ighlights, at least to me, one of the many hazards of pursuing the path of genetic manipulation.

DR

Great questions. Although if folks like (the ironically ashkenazi jewish) Kurzweil are correct about the singularity, breeding smarter humans in the 21st century may be as rational a way to expand our intelligence as genetically engineering super-fast horses would be to increase .. horsepower in our vehicles. According to his theory in well under 2 breeding generations the entire intelligence and problem solving ability of every human that ever lived through 2006 will be available for under a penny (in today's purchasing power) in a typical cell phone.

However, assuming there is some great error in his reasoning, I personally think using our resources to incentivize the creation of more Einsteins is a great idea. I've been meaning to start a thread about it, just haven't had time. Perhaps we should break one off from here.

My basic ideas on the topic:
1. Don't use coercion. We don't have to. Financial incentive structures should work fine.
2. Identify the greatest challenges humanity faces and the living, fertile people most effective at solving those challenges (of course, through cloning and dna extraction technology, we're not necessarily limited to fertile or even living proven problem-solvers). As obvious examples, the brightest young biomedical research scientists, near earth object avoidance theorists, etc. We could also have the option of targeting families with a likely demonstrated history of heritable genius, such as equvilents of the Huxley family of writer-scientists and the Bach family of composers.
3. Purchase as many of their sperm and eggs as we can, or if money is not an incentive for them, appeal to their rational self-interest and philanthropy for this project. Not all will participate in this project, but I think some will.
4. Using in vitro fertilization, create as many impantable embryos as we can with their sperm and eggs. This could be dozens per female participant and thousands per male participant.
5. Find surrogate mothers for the embryos to grow to infants. This is already a legal industry.
6. Find adoptive families for the infants. Of course, the better the quality of care and education they receive growing up, the better for them and for society.
7. Create trusts for each child to incentivize them to pursue an education and career in the areas where they seem most likely to help humanity make a difference. This is already done by people through their wills: they'll often have specific bequests in their trust, such as $10,000 if their benficiary finishes college, $20,000 if they go to medical school, etc.

If intelligence is as heritable (60-80%) as many believe, then this could be a great way to dramatically improve the problem-solving power of humanity, without infringing on free will or human rights much more, if at all, then we already do with surrogate parenthood, adoption, and trust and estate law.

It could be the difference of having 100 William Lawrence Braggs or George Thomsons, rather than just 1.

 

[Loss Leader]

6. Find adoptive families for the infants. Of course, the better the quality of care and education they receive growing up, the better for them and for society.

Not that your plan is really in the implementation stages, but your step 6 has some serious problems. My experience has been that adopted children are more likely to have behavioral and learning disabilities than children raised by their natural parents. Is this because adopted children are more likely to be born to poor women with limited health care, poor nutrition and even drug problems? Maybe that explains some of it. But if there is any corelation between being raised by genetic-strangers and physcho-social difficulties, it must be addressed before you go any further in your crazy genetic engineering plan.

 

[Dave1001]

Not that your plan is really in the implementation stages, but your step 6 has some serious problems. My experience has been that adopted children are more likely to have behavioral and learning disabilities than children raised by their natural parents. Is this because adopted children are more likely to be born to poor women with limited health care, poor nutrition and even drug problems? Maybe that explains some of it. But if there is any corelation between being raised by genetic-strangers and physcho-social difficulties, it must be addressed before you go any further in your crazy genetic engineering plan.

Regarding your concern about adoptive families, it may be valid, I can think of possible ameliorations, but I don't think this particular weakness (that adoptive families on balance may be less ideal developmental environments for kids than biological families) is one that would prevent this plan from significan successes. After all, many adoptive families are intellectually and emotionally rich environments, and many bright kids go on to outsized contributions to society despite being brought up by adoptive families that were less intellectually and emotionally rich than the modal biological family.

On a side note on the ethics of the adoption stage of this plan, I think these adopting families would have a particular interest in raising the kids. Not so different from fundies that adopt leftover blastocytes from reproductive clinics so they won't remain permanently frozen or be destroyed. As such, although no adoptive family is perfect, I don't see step 6 as lowering the ethical bar of current reproductive norms. If otherwise infertile couples can create blastocytes that other people end up adopting, I don't see why the activity I'm discussing is in any way less moral.

 

[Loss Leader]

After all, many adoptive families are intellectually and emotionally rich environments

No, you pretty much cancelled that effect out when you wrote:

Don't use coercion. We don't have to. Financial incentive structures should work fine.

You offer people money to raise superbabies, including establishing scholarships so they don't even have to pay for the kids' educations, and I guarantee you'll get a much different class of people looking to adopt.

 

[Dave1001]

No, you pretty much cancelled that effect out when you wrote:



You offer people money to raise superbabies, including establishing scholarships so they don't even have to pay for the kids' educations, and I guarantee you'll get a much different class of people looking to adopt.

I don't think I said the money would be offered directly to the family, but rather to the "superbabies" themselves, at various stages of legal adulthood. (when they graduate college, when the get their phD's, etc.). I don't think I even mentioned scholarships to pay for the kids' education. I described good behavior incentives such as already exist legally in trusts in common law legal systems.

However, I don't see anything wrong in principle with the separable concept of offering the adopting families money, including to pay for the kids' education. I don't see how that inevitably would result in the adopting parents not being ones that would create intellectually and emotionally rich environments. As it is, now, we can legally offer to pay for the education of kids who are adopted, and we can legally offer pay money to people who adopt kids. I don't know to the degree it occurs, but I do know all sorts of restrictive scholarships exist, including for the descendants of confederate soldiers and for left-handed people.

 

[Dazed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

 

[Foster Zygote]

I personally think using our resources to incentivize the creation of more Einsteins is a great idea.

It's already been done.

Steven

 

[Dave1001]

It's already been done.

Steven

That's a funny piece, in that the white vs. black intelligence trope appears yet again in it. Thanks for the self-restraint you showed in not pointing that out yourself.

I don't think what they tried comes very close to approaching what I'm suggesting. And their poor results with such a small population for their goal (producing top military pilots) is unsurprising.

Same thing with the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank. A slate author wrote about it, but it also had some pretty obvious defficiencies which I think I address in the hypothetical model described in earlier posts.

I haven't thought through the math rigorously, but if for example we wanted to have good odds of producing 4 people with the problem-solving intelligence (and desire to apply it to humanity's benefit) of Marie Curie and Albert Einstein, I wouldn't be surprised if we needed to start with 100 blastocytes with their combined genetic heritage. This is because the many things that will likely be suboptimal in each one's journey from blastocyte to productive adult relative to Curie and Einstein's probably inordinately lucky path. On the other hand, maybe it will take a lot fewer, such as less than 10 blastocytes, if this type of intelligence is as heritable (60-80%) as many suggest. Neither Pioneer Fund's project nor the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank put equal care into both gender's genetic contribution. Nor did they build up this type of scale.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Let's start with the population of people who are severely mentally retarded due to genetic causes, and the population of people who are not. Would you agree that there is a difference in the intelligence between the two populations due to genetics (I understand that here we're not talking about multigenerational endogamous populations -at least not to my knowledge on this topic). I know I drew the lines of the populations and defined population to cherry pick an example that's hard to refute, but I do plan to expand to the messier gray zones. But I'd like to see if we can start with some extreme common ground that there are people that exist, who due in part to their dna, are less intelligent than other people.

Rather than ask leading questions why don't you simply state your position, from beginning to end, as clearly and briefly as possible?

Steven

 

[Dave1001]

Rather than ask leading questions why don't you simply state your position, from beginning to end, as clearly and briefly as possible?

Steven

Because my goal is not a dialectic but a mutual search for enlightenment.

 

[Foster Zygote]

I haven't thought through the math rigorously, but if for example we wanted to have good odds of producing 4 people with the problem-solving intelligence (and desire to apply it to humanity's benefit) of Marie Curie and Albert Einstein, I wouldn't be surprised if we needed to start with 100 blastocytes with their combined genetic heritage. This is because the many things that will likely be suboptimal in each one's journey from blastocyte to productive adult relative to Curie and Einstein's probably inordinately lucky path. On the other hand, maybe it will take a lot fewer, such as less than 10 blastocytes, if this type of intelligence is as heritable (60-80%) as many suggest. Neither Pioneer Fund's project nor the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank put equal care into both gender's genetic contribution. Nor did they build up this type of scale.

I'm sorry, but I don't see this proposal as being any clearer in presentation than the one you made regarding the introduction of "useful" traits into a religion for the masses so as to make them more utilitarian.

Steven

 

[Dave1001]

I'm sorry, but I don't see this proposal as being any clearer in presentation than the one you made regarding the introduction of "useful" traits into a religion for the masses so as to make them more utilitarian.

Steven

Me either. I think I presented both about equally clearly.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Because my goal is not a dialectic but a mutual search for enlightenment.

This is beginning to sound like your exchange with Meffy regarding eugenics. (BTW The thread you started then, as I recall, was about a major aspect of eugenic theory so her query was not off topic.) I realize you are studying law, but in science many of the forms of advocacy tactics used in the practice of law are considered to be poor form. Please, state your position clearly and I will be happy to address it. If you persist in evasively, defensively playing your cards close to your chest I will simply move on.

Steven

 

[Dave1001]

This is beginning to sound like your exchange with Meffy regarding eugenics. (BTW The thread you started then, as I recall, was about a major aspect of eugenic theory so her query was not off topic.) I realize you are studying law, but in science many of the forms of advocacy tactics used in the practice of law are considered to be poor form. Please, state your position clearly and I will be happy to address it. If you persist in evasively, defensively playing your cards close to your chest I will simply move on.

Steven

I think this criticism is ironic, because I think you're promoting more of a anglo-american legal approach to discussion (2 adversaries battling it out from opposing positions), and I'm advocating an approach that the scientific community aspires to: that we collaborate together to figure out apparent reality. I'm not playing any cards close to my vest: I'm skeptical and doubting and interested in improving our models of reality on this topic.

So, back to my earlier question to you (which incidentally does reveal my "cards" on part of this topic):

Let's start with the population of people who are severely mentally retarded due to genetic causes, and the population of people who are not. Would you agree that there is a difference in the intelligence between the two populations due to genetics (I understand that here we're not talking about multigenerational endogamous populations -at least not to my knowledge on this topic). I know I drew the lines of the populations and defined population to cherry pick an example that's hard to refute, but I do plan to expand to the messier gray zones. But I'd like to see if we can start with some extreme common ground that there are people that exist, who due in part to their dna, are less intelligent than other people.

 

[Loss Leader]

I realize you are studying law, but in science many of the forms of advocacy tactics used in the practice of law are considered to be poor form.

As a lawyer, I can tell you that there is no difference between logic in a courtroom and logic in a lab. The only major difference as to what constitutes sufficient proof is that, in law, the bias of the witnesses is in question while, in science, one only attacks the arguments and not the motives of the arguer.

As my crim professor told us, eventually you have to settle on a theory of your case. If you can't create a theory, you will lose.