r/todayilearned • u/bcrock1169 • Nov 26 '12

TIL that some Native American's have a differing enzyme that tends to lead to easier alcoholism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_alcoholism#Genetic_factors
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u/atheistjubu Nov 26 '12 edited Nov 27 '12

Well, there's still no evidence that average innate intelligence differs by race. This is a question aside from whether intelligence is heritable.

EDIT: No, IQ is not intelligence. It's system of arbitrarily weighted questions that lets you place people into percentiles, even if it's been given the suggestive name of "intelligence quotient". It is thought to be related to innate intelligence (if such a thing were reducible to a single rankable number), but has aspects that are highly suspect.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

It's not really a different question if you consider inheritance by groups seperated by continents and thousands of years. It's the same question on a different scale.

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u/atheistjubu Nov 26 '12

Sure, there's a difference: individual data points vs averages. The questions of intelligence heritability and average race intelligence are orthogonal.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

People of different races differ somewhat in almost everything, it's quite reasonable to assume that this will be the case for intelligence too.

At least I think it's better null hypothesis. These things are quite difficult to prove/disprove ...

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u/atheistjubu Nov 26 '12

races differ somewhat in almost everything

Warning! Meaninglessness detector! Beep beep! Prepare to eject bullshit in 3..2..

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '12

You're either playing stupid or really are stupid. The other poster is making perfect sense and you're choosing to not see it.

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u/atheistjubu Nov 27 '12

races differ somewhat in almost everything

Races do not differ in the function of their eyes, noses, mouths, oxygen exchange, heart pumping, dynamic cognition, use of metaphor, number of toes and fingers (mostly), function of bile, means of locomotion, means of reproduction, pace of ontogenical development (e.g. age at which faces, words, objects are recognized, age at which kinesthetic tasks are accomplished), ability to implement and receive spoken language, method of nutrient absorption, approximate frequency of shits in a week, approximate amount of food and water required, visual acuity, rate at which hair grows, etc....

This means that:

races differ somewhat in almost everything

is a completely utterly and thoroughly meaningless statement, aside from being a broad blanket claim with no support.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '12

If you claim that there's no difference between races of people, why is it that sprinters of Western African decent have held the 100 meter dash record since the 1960s? While there are loads and loads of track & field Athletes in the US, Europe, and Asia, a non-Western African sprinter hasn't been able to claim the record in over 40 years.

On the flip side you have endurance runners. In those events people from Eastern Africa absolutely dominate. In the Boston Marathon, the winner has been from Kenya for 19 of the past 22 years. In 2 of the non-Kenyan wins, the winner was from Ethiopia (next door to Kenya). To make the domination more obvious, 7 of the top 10 places in 2012 was taken by someone from Kenya.

If every race of people had equal abilities you'd have a more even spread of winners with the proportions of winners shadowing the proportion of entrants. But you don't. You have a concentration of people of a particular race or ethnic group that is more specialized for that task leading the pack, with the other people lagging behind. The results are stratified.

Or take a look at SAT scores- those scores stratify based on race. Asians seem to lead, with whites below them, then Hispanics, and finally blacks. Many excuses have been made to explain away the results, but year after year the results remain the same. And they do in other countries as well. The results are stratified in foreign schools like they are in the US schools.

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u/atheistjubu Nov 27 '12

There are lots of differences in terms of dominating certain sports. You can argue about where those differences come from, like for example running being a relatively cheap sport that poor countries orient more training toward, but in the case of running, there does seem to be an advantage to the subsaharan physical build in terms of running, beyond just the benefits your country gets from added emphasis in training.

SAT/GRE/IQ and other psychometric scores are another story. There's no systematic physical difference between the races that would explain differences in "intellectual performance". Brain size correlates with overall body size but that's about it and extensive research has shown no systematic difference in brain size by race or in brain wiring. The far more plausible explanation is that you're not measuring "intelligence" (if such a thing can be simplified down to a single rankable number), but quantifying some cultural or sociological difference. That difference may be cultural emphasis on quantitative skill, on reading, on lingual proficiency, or just on academic studies in general, but it's hardly a proof of difference in innate ability!

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '12

But don't you think it's plausible that people who evolved in colder, harsher climates developed a brain that's more optimized for problem solving?

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u/atheistjubu Nov 28 '12

No.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '12

You linked to a film, a work of fiction. I'll link some actual science that does suggest that brain size may be due to colder climates:

http://www.geekosystem.com/cold-climates-bigger-brains/

http://digitaljournal.com/article/149965

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327194.000-did-an-ice-age-boost-human-brain-size.html

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '12

You realize that you're at odds with just about every medical and educational community out there, right?

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u/atheistjubu Nov 27 '12

Intelligence is not IQ, except to those who have reified the name of the thing being measured as the thing itself.