Agreed. Also salient is the reality that different groups within 'racial' categories seem to exhibit quite different general levels of societal 'intelligence'. Having said that, we are left with the task of developing a metric of societal intelligence, and then assessing the actual performance of different groups against it, to see if 'race' makes a difference.
I wonder if I am off the mark in guessing that differences between individuals in terms of primal/DNA intelligence are much greater than the differences among groups, and that probably any individual from any group can easily outshine the average intelligence levels of a large unselected group? -----Original Message----- From: Edmund Storms [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:10 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]: OT: Poetic "N" Justice As usual, the debate about which race is smarter misses the important issue. The so called "smarts" of humans is made of different features. Some people are smart at music, others are good at math, some are poor spellers but can write well. In other words, we each have many ways we are smart and dumb at the same time. Each race was genetically created under different conditions. These conditions generated the obvious characteristics, but they also caused the race, on average, to be smart in different ways from the other races. As a result, each race had the kind of talent needed to survive in its own birthing environment. When a person moves from this environment into a different one, the smarts that were useful may no longer apply. As a result, the person may not look as "smart" to other people in the new environment. Fortunately, we all can learn and can make up for some of this basic deficiency. The situation says nothing about which race is superior. It means only that all races were superior in the environment that created them. We, as individuals, only have to make the best of this situation when our environment changes. We can see the consequence of this effect in the US at the present time, when a significant number of people support obviously bad policy for really dumb reasons. It would be interesting to know where and why these genes were created. Ed Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: > > > Jones Beene wrote: > >> Jeff Fink wrote: >> >>> I read somewhere a long time ago that the offspring of interracial >>> unions >>> are, in general, bigger healthier and smarter than "pure breds". >>> Does any >>> one know the source of that, or if it has been proven. >> >> >> It's called "Heterosis" or more simply "hybrid vigor" ... if it were >> not true in the plant world, most of us would be starving today. >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vigor >> >> There are observers who will come close to repeating Watson's logical >> error with the premise that the world dominance of the USA is based on >> intellectual "vigor"; > > > Let's not forget that the entire human race has a microscopic fraction > of the genetic diversity found in almost every other species (cheetahs > being one notable exception). The races may look very different to > *us*, as humans (with our powerful evolved-in ability to distinguish > between individual humans), but from the point of view of the genome > we're all very similar. > > It's not at all clear that there's enough genetic diversity in humanity > to produce any kind of interesting "hybrid vigor" effect, regardless of > what representatives are chosen. > > There are also very few "purebred" humans, on any continent, and > certainly not anywhere on mainland Europe, where there's been trade with > the four corners of the earth for centuries out of mind. > >
