I believe that the recent thread concerning James Watson's
remarks about race and IQ needs to be looked at from an entirely
different point of view.

The great majority of people consider IQ to be a hereditary
characteristic of people. The only problem they see in
determining any individual's quantity of this inherited
characteristic is in finding a good way to test for it that is
free of cultural prejudice. The unspoken theory is that "raw"
intelligence, whatever that is, is established at birth and a
person either has it or doesn't.

But what if that's not so? What if _any_ kind of intelligent
behavior requires the acquisition of reasoning skills - skills
which some populations and cultures are very deficient in?

I think that, in fact, intelligent behavior requires such
acquired reasoning skills. Without such skills, a person will
not do well on ANY intelligence test, no matter how carefully one
attempts to remove cultural bias from the test, and no matter
what the person's hereditary makeup.

"Alan Meyer" yahoo.com> wrote:

...

Of course! BUT:

I believe that no one, not single person ever claimed that
IQ is *entirely* hereditary. All the data make it perfectly clear
that IQ does depend on environment.

"DK" no.email.thankstospam.net> wrote in message
news:ffo0pi$2qhl$1@darwin.ediacara.org...

Alan Meyer wrote:

In article darwin.ediacara.org>, "Alan Meyer" yahoo.com> wrote:

No doubt. But it is completely resonable, even based in this
single fact, to take heredity as one of the possibilities. To the
contrary, IMHO, to discount heredity as a non contributing
factor based on just this single fact, is completely unreasonable.

On Oct 25, 1:26 pm, "Alan Meyer" yahoo.com> wrote:

On Oct 24, 1:52 pm, d...@no.email.thankstospam.net (DK) wrote:

The poster who said this is wrong. Most people do not believe
this. Even the scientists who are being censured don't believe this.
However, I have met many people (none of whom I admire) who do
believe this. Ironically, I would have to say that the people who take
this extreme belief are not very smart. I have tutored many, many
mathematical imbeciles who take this position. Usually white, and
often Jewish. Most of them look down on people who are smart
mathematically, or even use logic. Apparently, being a racist is a lot
easier than acting intelligent.

How much is the ability to acquire these skills hereditary? ...

DK wrote:

"J.A.Legris" wrote:

WRT moderator comments, I disagree.

The point above basically boils down to whether there should be
limits to what we want/need/be permitted to know as far as evolutionary
biology of H. sapiens goes.

In that respect, the Nazi reference is entirely appropriate because
it does provide of a reference point of how science and pseudoscience
can be used and misused to become an accessory to the horrible
crimes.

"Tim Tyler" cyberspace.org> wrote in message
news:fg2i5g$1i64$1@darwin.ediacara.org...

I confess that I have no empirical evidence for my claim, nor any
for DK's - though the view that "not [one] single person ever claimed
that IQ is *entirely* hereditary" is, on the face of it, pretty
unlikely.