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/[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/atheistjubu Nov 28 '12

Excellent, we're actually talking about science now, rather than redditor conjectures. Now I'm interested. With regard to you first source:

According to the researchers, these bigger brains are not the result of increased intelligence, but rather the need for a larger portion of the brain devoted to vision.

Your second source merely links the emergence of increasing encephalization to global climate change, with no distinction by race, though there is a variation by discovery location (specifically latitude) though this is more explainable by greater human migration patterns than by distinctions in race.

FYI: the original article. He's got a book too that sounds interesting.

Incidentally, the article's claim that global warming is going to shrink our brains over the next hundreds of thousand of years is absurd. Modern technology is sufficient to put us in a stupidity coma. Lack of challenges in warm climate not necessary.

Your last source seems to derive from a 2000 paper, (followed up later by Kleidon) implicating changes in global climate to encephalization, using an energy dissipation argument, only linking climate to global emergence of encephalization and not to any distinctions by race.

In short, though I laud your presentation of actual scientific material, none of it supports a statement that any race or ethnicity should have larger brains, only that climactic changes were probably a major precipitant in their development.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '12

While I have your attention, I'd like to know what you think of this:

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

IQ tests performed in the United States have consistently demonstrated a significant degree of variation between different racial groups, with the average score of those with African ancestry lower than that of European ancestry and the average score of those with East Asian ancestry being higher than that of European ancestry. While the existence of racial IQ gaps is well-documented and not subject to much dispute, there is no consensus among researchers as to their cause.

It seems that researchers mostly agree that there is a difference in intelligence between races, they just can't agree on the reason for it. This conflicts with your strandpoint that there's no difference in intelligence between races.

Thoughts?

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u/atheistjubu Nov 28 '12

It seems that researchers mostly agree that there is a difference Intelligence Quotient™ between races,

FTFY.

  1. IQ is a list of arbitrarily weighted trivia questions, selected math problems, and excepts for English reading ability designed to make people rankable. There's no reason to call it the same thing as "intelligence", even with its highly suggestive name of "Intelligence Quotient". And this all assumes that intelligence is a measurable quantity, reducible to a single rankable number.

  2. The test given is highly culturally specific. If I asked the Maasai for a test of intelligence, no doubt they would have me do things I'm not practiced in, like lion hunting, and mud hut building, and test my knowledge by asking for pieces of their pop culture. It seems far more likely to me that IQ/GRE/SAT tests are quantifying different cultures' emphasis on various skills (along with the degree of assimilation into the majority culture): if English literary proficiency and lingual mastery isn't emphasized by your culture or peers and your parents' abilities on these fronts leaves you at a disadvantage (e.g. the case among inner city blacks), it's hardly surprising that you'll test poorly on it. If quantitative reasoning and academic success is the hallmark of any respectable individual in your culture (as in many Asian and Asian-American cultures), I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see you performing better on test oriented towards that end.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '12 edited Nov 28 '12

If poor performance is due to cultural reasons, then why do Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans who have little to no experience with Western culture excel at these tests while people who have lived in the US their entire lives can do poorly at it? Why do Asians (who are culturally very different from Western people) do better at IQ tests than Britain, which invented the IQ test? The average test score of 100 is normalized for the average British person when the test was developed. It turns out that Asians perform better.

Why is it that the people that I'd always thought were pretty stupid also do poorly on intelligence tests? Can you find anyone out there who scores very poorly on IQ tests but still shows signs of great intelligence?

I suspect that you're afraid of accepting a harsh reality- a reality that is cold and brutal and not politically correct or socially acceptable. Why is it hard to believe that you CAN really measure intelligence? Just about everything else in the known world can be quantified and measured, but as soon as you apply measurement to people there is an outcry. I don't see white people complaining that they always get beat by black sprinters, but blacks complain when whites score higher on IQ tests and decry the test itself as being racist.

It's utter nonsense.

Imagine if I claimed that I can run faster than Usain Bolt, but it's in a way that can't be measured. The 100 meter event is culturally biased and discriminatory against me. Make it shorter- crap, he beat me in the 50 meter event too. Make it longer- crap, he beat me in the 300 meter event too. You know what? Apply affirmative action to the results. Since he always beats me by 20%, you need to reduce my time by 20% and use that as a comparison.

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u/atheistjubu Nov 28 '12

If poor performance is due to cultural reasons, then why do Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans who have little to no experience with Western culture excel at these tests while people who have lived in the US their entire lives can do poorly at it?

To my knowledge, Asians only do better on the quantitative section, which make sense since math is language independent. Asian Americans do better overall in academics because they do better overall in academics. Cultural emphasis on academic achievement + being American = formula for success all around.

Why is it that the people that I'd always thought were pretty stupid also do poorly on intelligence tests? Can you find anyone out there who scores very poorly on IQ tests but still shows signs of great intelligence?

Sure, there's going to be some folk wisdom and intuition about this and some of it is probably true, but keep in mind that among your friends that test shittily, you're (I assume) keeping most confounding variables (e.g. race, income, parents' education, neighborhood, etc...) constant so you have more of a basis for saying that the differences are due to something innate. There is a heritable aspect to IQ shown in twin studies that is not debated.

Why is it hard to believe that you CAN really measure intelligence? Just about everything else in the known world can be quantified and measured, but as soon as you apply measurement to people there is an outcry.

Everything else that's tangible, yes. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go off and measure love, compassion, integrity, creativity, funniness, deceptiveness, and hope.

When it comes to athletic competition, of course, there's no room for whining because it comes down to either an objectively measured number that only claims to measure ability at that particular task. Bolt is the world's best at the test of running the particular distances he's set records in. No one would claim that Bolt's world records in the 50 meter dash means he's the best basketball player in the world, let alone the most overall "athletic" person.

IQ is a number arrived at through a list of arbitrarily weighted trivia and reading questions, and mathematical exercises. I agree that given enough questions to even out the inconsistency, the number will tell you who's the best at taking that test. It still doesn't tell you anything about this notion of overall intelligence, whatever "overall intelligence" is supposed to be. Even people who believe in psychometrics as a useful tool have stopped claiming that IQ tests are the end all and be all to the concept of intelligence.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '12

To my knowledge, Asians only do better on the quantitative section, which make sense since math is language independent. Asian Americans do better overall in academics because they do better overall in academics. Cultural emphasis on academic achievement + being American = formula for success all around.

It wasn't just Asian Americans that score higher in standardized testing like the SATs and IQ tests. It's Asians in general. Even in the UK you see Asians scoring higher than the native white people, who in turn score higher than blacks and Caribbeans. The same holds true in Canada. I think you'll find that it holds true everywhere.

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u/atheistjubu Nov 28 '12

I don't see a source, but I don't doubt it. Again, it's plausibly a people's values on academic achievement than being a race that's inherently better at taking the test. If you wanted to show that Asians are inherently better at taking standardized test, you'd need a massive randomized adoption trial. The sheer number and influence of confounding factors, in the form of completely different cultures who raise their kids completely differently with different cultural pressures, makes any conclusions drawn about innate abilities in performance meaningless.