18 replies to this topic

[Xalor]

Although you can define your intelligence by two methods, either by brainmass or by the level of activity in your mind, there is another method which takes in both amounts, by creating a ratio of brain matter to activity in each section of brain and then finding the ratios in left and right brains depending on the type of intelligence, either skill or memorizations. Its hard to actually test that. You can't generalize a race based on a few test subjects, there are deviations, and still racism is a horrible deed. Its wrong and immoral to say that you are better than a group of people over a couple of test results. Its the average intelligence which you are saying defines the actual racist, which I challenge.

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For instance DaVinci created his painting works based on this proportion and although Van Gogh never actually set out for the Golden Proportion, in his illustrations it was shown that when he first started his pencil sketches they were far "off" Golden Proportion, but after two years of development as an artist his sketches had become "very" close to those proportions.

Some researches did a study on Elizabeth Hurley and what they found were the proportions of her face closely resembled that of the rules set out in the Golden Proportion. This includes the proportion of body parts to each other not just facial aspects. Likewise the Fibonacci sequence is another example which illustrates the concept of perfectness contained in nature and art/design.

Thats is completely what I was trying to say. The actual intelligence is not based on the norms of society. You can't measure something that has limitless bounderies and is always changing. You can't measure something that excceeds your comprehension.

[kleong]

I don't think one race is smarter than the other. But without doubt, there is certain characteristics that is more prominent in one than the other. It is this characteristics that makes the race appear smarter than the rest. Beside this, there is the "window of opportunity" that exists for some races while it is definitely missing in the rest.

[linekill]

It isn't racist if it's true.

And as a science man, I don't believe that science is racist. Science is a systematized knowledge base on fact and observation. Whatever comes out to be the fact (based on a founded methodology), then is true. So if study shows that some race has more intelligence compared to some, then it's true. What we can question, though, is how the fact was gathered.

As for racism...we're in the era where everyone can be connected so maybe many years from now, it won't be a huge issue. Unless there's an alien invasion. A new racism will be born. But that's more District 9.

(It can't be helped. Trap17 members love the idea of an alien invasion...based on the threads I've read so far.. )

[mrdee]

Some people go away from the topic title.
With all the best intentions, some people on here quote scientific data and results of scientific research, that is fine in itself, but the topic title is "Is it racist if science shows one race has more intelligence than another?".

So, without trying to answer the question about the intelligence itself (I am leaving this to scientists, or I am keeping it for a more appropriate topic), I will, however, give my opinion on the topic question:

I do not think for one moment it is racist if science has those findings, and also makes those findings public (of course, backed up by the proper scientific data).

The problem, however, is, that the left wing, in other words, the political correct squad, always try to muzzle everyone who has different ideas than them, even if those ideas are fully backed up and properly founded.
They are always the first to come out with "freedom of speech", but, in their case, that means, "we are all for freedom of speech as long as you say what we want to hear, if not, you get your head kicked in", who said communism was dead?

They also do not hesitate to stop results from proper research to be published, or to alter them until they suit their political correct ideas.
If that does not work, they always resort to their magic word "racism" to try and shut people up.

It is an undisputed fact that racism exists, but the way the term is used and especially abused these days is really going too far, as is also the fact that, according to the same "thoughts police", racism only exists in a one way direction.
So, after my thoughts on the matter, my answer to the question is: if it involves proper and thoroughly tested research, showing a difference in ntelligence between different races is not racist, but realist.

[Bikerman]

No it isn't racist, but many of the people who have 'asked the question' have been. The problem with the question is that it seeks to correlate two concepts which are not well understood, or are, at best, questionable.
Intelligence is notoriously difficult to define, let alone measure. Standard IQ tests claim to do so, but they are always (if reputable) 'norm referenced' - that means that the actual scores are arranged in a distribution around a centre value of 100, so that 100 is always 'average' IQ,
Some 'absolute' IQ tests of different races HAVE been conducted and tend to indicate that Asians around the China region score highest, 'westerners' somewhere in the middle, and sub-Saharan Africans at the bottom. The problems with this are:
a) The tests used almost certainly test for things other than 'intelligence'. Imagine a genius who didn't know how to read or write. It is unlikely they would score very highly on most IQ tests because they would not understand the questions or how to answer them.

b ) The concept of 'race' is difficult to define with any degree of precision, and it is arguably a fairly useless way of categorising humans. When does an 'African' become a European? Is the child of Brazilian woman and English man South-american? European? Braziliian? English?
The question is largely meaningless because we are all a product of genes from many areas of the world - and ultimately we all share an African ancestor if we go back far enough (only a few tens of thousands of years),

So, whilst I think that it is fair enough to ask the question, I would be deeply suspicious of any answer one received and would examine it carefully to see how it defined 'race' and how it tried to avoid bias and secondary effects in measurements of 'intelligence'.

Edited by Bikerman, 16 March 2012 - 10:49 AM.

[darko100]

Since it insults the person , yes it's racist

Nobody would like to be named stupidier / has less intelligence. I mean , that makes a lots of problems and doesn't solve any problem in our world. Shouldn't scientific experiments be done to solve world problems?

But anyway , i don't think science can prove such a theory. I see it completely random... Even if it's proven , it doesn't mean anything. You can archieve anything even with lower intelligence.

[Bikerman]

darko100, on 19 March 2012 - 06:52 PM, said:

Since it insults the person , yes it's racist

Sorry but that is a fairly useless way to decide. If someone takes offence at something I say, that does not mean that I intended to offend and nor does it mean that they are justified in taking offence. People take offence far too easily in my experience.
Racism is the irrational belief in the superiority or inferiority of people based on race. The important word is 'irrational'. If the belief is rational - based on evidence - then it isn't racist, any more than saying that someone born in Japan will be, on average, slightly shorter than someone born in England. It WOULD be racist to make a generalisation - all blacks are stupid, all Japanese are short. Those are both stupid (irrational) statements that I would clearly consider racist.

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Nobody would like to be named stupidier / has less intelligence. I mean , that makes a lots of problems and doesn't solve any problem in our world. Shouldn't scientific experiments be done to solve world problems?

If people don't like it being pointed out that they are less intelligent then that is their problem, not the person making the claim. It may be considered rude, bad taste, insensitive, boorish, but NOT racist.
The notion that science should be restricted to solving problems is a very dangerous one. Who knows what problems the research done today will solve in future. Scientists should be free to pursue ANY line of enquiry they like and limiting academic freedom is a very bad idea indeed.

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But anyway , i don't think science can prove such a theory. I see it completely random... Even if it's proven , it doesn't mean anything. You can archieve anything even with lower intelligence.

Science can certainly prove such things. Either there is a correlation between racial origin and intelligence or there is not - the difficulty is in devising a measurement that does not introduce secondary factors.

Look, if anyone is interested in this, there is a video on my site which I suggest you watch which examines this issue seriously and in a little depth.
THIS LINK will take you there.

[Acidify]

There very definition of racism is the belief that one race is superior to another. The truth does not change whether or not a belief, theory, fact, or scientific law is racist or not. If you believe that race plays a factor intelligenc which contribute to making one race superior to another, you are racist. This does not say that racism will not become socially acceptable if science proves that one race is superior to another, but it will still amount to racism.

Of course racism and discrimination is two different issues. I think the problem though is that racism leds to discrimination. If you believe that an individual or group of people are inferior, you treat them differently. Human beings have not, and unfortunately, will probably never envolve to a leave where the belief of inferiority or supriority will not be explioted to the detriment of one or both parties. If someone presumably is inferior, it is easy to abuse that individual without it being socially unacceptable and outside of the social norms of society.

However, the very idea that intelligence based on race is relevant is quite problematic. Not only, as already mentioned, intelligence is difficult to measure, but how can the obtainment of intelligence be measured? How can other factors be caculated? How can family background, enviroment, wealth, education, and opportunity to factored in to decide if one race or another is inherently more intelligent then another? I personally do not believe that one race is natural superior to another. I do believe in superior, but I don't believe it is determined by race. No more than someone's inherent physhical strength or attractiveness is based on race. Some people, for one reason or another, are born with a stronger brain. Their skin color has nothing to do with the strength of their brain.

In addition, it would also be difficult to define race. If you didn't know, scientifically race does not exist. All people fall under one race, and that is the human race. Race was actually created around the time of slavery in order to justify the enslavement of other human beings on the basis of them being inferior. Even if we were to successfully define race on the basis of something such as color, how does that work? Do you put everyone side by side and measure the color of their skin? Do you go all the way back through their bloodline until the beginning of time to see how light or dark each member of their family was or to see what ethnic groups their answers were in. Do you take two guys with white skin and check to see how many guys with dark skin is in their ancestry.

[Bikerman]

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There very definition of racism is the belief that one race is superior to another.

No that is YOUR definition, not mine. I would accept it if it is qualified slightly 'the belief that discrimination is justified by differences in racial traits' or something along those lines. I do note that the use of the word 'superior' is itself a subjective term in most cases and COULD be the basis of racism, but not necessarily.
The FACT that, in general, some 'races' are 'superior' to others IN SOME SPECIFIC REGARDS is neither controversial nor, in my opinion, racist. It is a fact that people of the Japanese 'race' are, on average, shorter that people of the (say) caucasian 'race', and I do not accept that either the fact itself, or the statement of that fact, is in any way racist.
Now, if I then went on to say that 'because Japanese are shorter this means ......x,y,z' then I might well be making racist statements. For example, I could say 'because Japanese people are shorter, they should not play basketball'. Now that is clearly racist because it generalises in an unwarranted manner,