James Watson's comments re: race and intelligence

[woot]

Originally Posted by UtahDan

Imagine that it really is true that Africa descent correlates to lower IQ. I have no reason to believe that, but assume for a moment that this is the case. Does any one really want to know that? I have a feeling that many are so ideologically committed to the idea that every is basically the same that no evidence would convince them the contrary is true.

I also think it is appropriate to ask what possible value that information could have. I can't think of any off hand.

My interest would be the implications it would have as far as the selective pressures operating on different groups of people over the last hundred thousand years or so. It should be noted that the term "race" is probably somewhat of a misnomer, due to the very close relationship between all Homo sapiens, and that any difference in intellect is unlikely to be large.

Also, even if they somehow figure out that the average black IQ is a couple points lower, there will still be a ton of black people that are smarter than the average white person, so it still wouldn't justify racism of any kind. I'm frankly more interested to know if there are significant differences in specific areas, such as spacial reasoning ability, sense of direction, communicative ability, etc., as it seems that absolute intellect would be more difficult to correlate with selective pressures.

I do agree that outside of academic interests, the average yokel learning this sort of information is probably not a good thing.

[SoonerCoug]

Comparing IQs among races is totally pointless. The potential harm far outweighs the potential benefit to humanity.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by UtahDan

Imagine that it really is true that Africa descent correlates to lower IQ. I have no reason to believe that, but assume for a moment that this is the case. Does any one really want to know that? I have a feeling that many are so ideologically committed to the idea that every is basically the same that no evidence would convince them the contrary is true.

I also think it is appropriate to ask what possible value that information could have. I can't think of any off hand.

I have no reason to believe it's true, either. But assuming it is true, would it be a surprise that the race that invented the IQ test would score higher?

[non sequitur]

Originally Posted by SoonerCoug

Comparing IQs among races is totally pointless. The potential harm far outweighs the potential benefit to humanity.

I agree that we shouldn't formally compare IQs. Why give the Jews and the Asians a reason to gloat?

[creekster]

I can't believe you guys. This has been studied a lot over the years. There are many studies that show the differences in 'races' (and Woot is right, it is a pretty much menaingless term genetically speaking) is negligible if it exists at all. There was a book that talked about this (although somewhat indirectly) a few years ago (look up The Bell Curve) that was thoroughly debunked. In fact, Jared Diamond's excellent book Guns, Germs and Steel is, in part, a response to the Bell Curve.

I am quite frankly disappointed that Watson's crackpot musings would be givien any credence here at all. He is senile and this is not the first time in recent years that he has said outrageous things.

[Indy Coug]

He just apologized

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe...ogy/index.html