TIL 72% of black children are raised by single parents compared with 25% in the US population as a whole

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T17:59:02.209491+00:00

Yes, thank, you I forgot that is part of the debate. But I like to give that part the benefit of the doubt. You know why? Because even if we assume IQ is a good measure of some "general intelligence", the evidence so far suggests that social environment is more important than genes in explaining the Black/White intelligence gap.

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T12:31:32.304530+00:00

One hundred and fifty years of freedom seems like plenty of time for a group of people to assimilate into society.

I know, you'd think, right? Unfortunately, material wealth (or lack thereof) is extremely heritable. So inequality tends to persist in societies like ours where material wealth is more important than, say, social or somatic wealth (e.g., number of friends, your physical health). See this and related research for a view of how wealth inequality has likely been longrunning problem in human societies, and how material wealth is highly heritable: Smith, Eric Alden, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel Bowles, Michael Gurven, Tom Hertz, and Mary K. Shenk. Production systems, inheritance, and inequality in premodern societies: Conclusions. Current Anthropology 51(1): 85-94.

Material wealth interacts with other kinds of wealth (richer people tend to have better social connections and better health), exacerbating the problem.

Orientals and Jewish people, both of whom suffered intense discrimination, are currently at the top of the food chain.

I'll ignore the part where you called a very diverse group of people from Asia "Orientals" as if they are all middle class Japanese and Chinese people. Then I'll submit that the treatment of African American ancestors was much worse than the treatment of Jews and the Japanese in America during the same period (let's not bring the Holocaust into this, because (a) that's in Europe, (b) that is a very extreme even, and (c) many of the Jews who escaped to the States were the best and brightest). Furthermore, Jews have inhabited a -totally- different social niche than African Americans for -centuries-. You are comparing apples to oranges.

Just look at how black people are raised. Go to any United States public school and you are sure to find a dozen "gangsters" with their jeans halfway down their asses. The black culture is anti-intellectual. More and more negros are withdrawing from this norm, which bodes well for our society. However, anyone who blames their failure on yesterday's history is a loafer.

So the way people are raised has nothing to do with the socioeconomic status of their parents?

Also, is your name Michael Steele?

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T12:22:42.230444+00:00

The best evidence that environment probably explains things more than genes is a study done in the UK where they looked at the effect of the "dosage" of African ethnicity and intelligence. Not much of an effect. Yup, it's gotta be both environment and genes, because everything is environment and genes. But it's probably mostly the environment.

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T12:18:33.499265+00:00

The debate isn't about whether an IQ gap exists. The debate is about (1) why the gap exists (the best studies of this suggest that contribution of social environment to the variation in IQ appears to be much larger than the contribution of genes, but we actually don't know enough about the complex interaction between environment, genes, and development to say for sure what causes the gap), (2) if the IQ gap explains the income gap between Whites and Blacks (it probably doesn't, because IQ is not associated closely enough with income to explain the income gap, see an article by S. Bowles and H. Gintis), and (3) if the IQ gap justifies discriminating against Blacks (it sure as Hell doesn't).

There is a good treatment of this topic in a Biological Anthropology text book called "Human Biological Variation" by Relethford, Mielke, and one other author I forget. We discuss it in our classes from a reasoned, scientific point of view, and encourage others to do the same.

JJustKKidding · 2012-05-27T12:07:51.998486+00:00

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that cultural and biological evolution interact? I agree. That idea falls under the dual inheritance and niche construction paradigms. As for the "ultimate origin", the ultimate origin of what?

thediplomat · 2012-05-27T01:52:37.057149+00:00

You are among few.

JJustKKidding · 2012-05-27T01:50:46.606830+00:00

Culture could be defined as a set of ideas and beliefs that is socially transmitted (heritability). The transmission of cultural material occurs with some error, and innovation occurs (mutation). Often the ideas housed in people's skulls differ (variation). In short, culture is part of an evolutionary process. Furthermore, there is a cross-species comparative element to the OP's question, which makes good old-fashioned, genetic evolution completely relevant. That said, does anyone have a good answer for the OP's actual question?

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T01:44:50.660173+00:00

You're mistaking the whole purpose of statistical analysis. It is to understand the characteristics of populations, not individuals. It has nothing to do with you.

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T01:43:29.233196+00:00

No, you're an individual member of a sample from which statistics are calculated.

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T01:41:35.967975+00:00

The consensus among people who study this issue is not that discrimination alone causes the poverty trap, but that a host of other issues, such as the tendency of material wealth (or lack thereof) to be heritable, and the psychological consequences of living in poverty (increased risk-taking behavior). In short, placing blame on anyone, including two straw men, one White, the other Black, is unproductive. Instead, we should focus on causation and systems of poverty, which are myriad and complex. But to be sure, slavery and very intense discrimination in the past are what created the wealth inequalities that continue to be inherited by generations today.

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T01:36:00.994889+00:00

Affirmative action and reparations would help it to recover. But we don't want that kind of nonsense. We can't afford a marginal decrease in labor efficiency to help bring people out a poverty trap! GuffaH!

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T01:33:18.980638+00:00

Ah, yes, because all non-zero probabilities are a probability of ONE! There is zero uncertainty about whether a single parent is a gainfully employed hotshot who doesn't need any assistance! According to that article, at least...

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T01:24:10.875700+00:00

As a White person who studies sociology, I can confirm that there are places where you can discuss demography in a reasoned way.

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T01:19:12.756203+00:00

Ah, mistaking conditional for unconditional probabilities.

RichardWang · 2012-05-27T01:16:13.770891+00:00

The argument is that men are more intrinsically prone to take risks than women, and there is very weighty evolutionary theoretical and cross-cultural evidence to back this up. Whereas it is much more likely that Black men are extrinsically prone to take more risks than, say, White men, explaining their disproportionate representation in prisons (which, by the way, is due mainly to drug-related offenses). There is very little evidence to suggest that Black men would be intrinsically more prone to take risks than White men to justify the fact that they are disproportionately represented (for example) in New Jersey FOUR-FOLD. In short, it's not just political correctness that motivates the argument. It's FACTS and THEORY.

WhayupOnYourFace · 3 days

Read this and thought you wanted to talk to men who are workaholics. I was like, "Suddenly someone wants to know my story!"

Nope.

8ty9 · 3 days

Any research showing the people with deviated septum have reduced scent-tracking abilities?

heliotrop · 4 days

Yes, but you can plug your Skype account into Facebook and use it as a Facebook messenger service without all of the Facebook bullshit.

heliotrop · 4 days

Doesn't really matter. Most of its revenue comes from traditional click ads. And all that data is kind of like all the genetic data we are able to collect now: HOW THE FUCK DO WE ANALYZE IT?

heliotrop · 4 days

Sensationalist bullshit? Different from the content in the rest of the article? What article did you read? The title summarizes...no...it is the writer's thesis statement. And he's probably right. The social web craze is on shaky economic grounds in terms of sustainability. And Facebook is at the center of the social web craze. When the social real estate bubble bursts, and it will burst, it will take a huge chunk of businesses that depend on it with it. The social web will still exist (just as the web continued to exist after the dot com bubble burst), but a lot of programmers are going to go back to graduate school.

heliotrop · 4 days

Or get Skype and message people from Skype.

heliotrop · 4 days

On FB, some friends and I were having a conversation about this. Facebook is almost certainly a bubble waiting to burst, because its revenue and growth model is based on a mathematically impossible sack of bullshit and an idea that is not new...at all. I said as much. Another fella said something along the lines of, "Well, it will still be big, it's not going anywhere." I was like, "Well, housing isn't going anywhere either, because people need to live somewhere. But it's still a bubble that burst."

diddletapflamdiddle · 4 days

That is, unless the rejuv technology from Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga doesn't get invented.

jay4523 · 4 days

And born the same year as my wife. Anyone else out there have this weird, "Wait, I'm an ADULT?!" moments like I just did?

Peppe22 · 5 days

Well, I'm doing fieldwork in a rural village of a developing country where few people have any experience with computers. So the most computer illiterate moment I've had is hearing many people say the equivalent of, "Computers? Haven't the faintest clue how to use them, so f*ck it, I've got a farm to tend."

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