Gruss Gott wrote: > Nevertheless, you make many good points, however none of them explain > why it is not possible that intelligence is correlated with skin > color, which was Dr. Watson point. > > I'm just saying it's possible. That's all. To call it racist seems > to reject logic in favor of political correctness.
I don't think that anyone has categorically rejected the idea that it is possible that there is some factor that could link in some fashion skin tone and some measure of intelligence. But you are asking us to try and prove a negative. Why should I prove that intelligence couldn't be correlated with skin tone? The null hypothesis is that there would be no difference between "races" in intelligence measures. You've provided no good reason to believe that the null hypothesis is not true. We call it racist because the primary reason that people want to believe the null hypothesis is not true without a decent theory and evidence is because they are racists. Why would increased intelligence not be selected for in any culture? What mechanisms would limit the development in certain cultures? What genetic components of intelligence would be linked to skin tone? I'm willing to believe that there may exist some answers to these questions and some of them may indicate something like a higher frequency of a mutation in a gene that helps out with, say, spatial recognition within a group that historically represents an interbreeding population. As far as I am aware though, there is not any research that currently shows anything of the sort. And even that result would be far short of anything you could link to a broader measure of "intelligence" which encompasses many aspects that you'd be hard pressed to link to any small concrete set of genetic markers. You claim political correctness run amok because people don't want to admit the possibility of a link between race and intelligence. But you don't have a good definition of race or intelligence (at the genetic level) nor do you offer any plausible reason why there *should* be a difference. And hypothesizing, as Dr Watson does, that one racial group has less native intelligence than another without any evidence other than personal prejudice is, in fact, racism. Judah ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Check out the new features and enhancements in the latest product release - download the "What's New PDF" now http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/coldfusion/cf8_beta_whatsnew_052907.pdf Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:245388 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
