eric@snark.UUCP (06/17/87)
In response to my posting on the heritability of intelligence, an irate netter I shall spare embarrassment by leaving unnamed sent me a flame by e-mail. It unintentionally illustrates the exact points I moved this to talk.politics to see explored. I will quote it in its entirety here. >Perhaps you should stop to consider that the "data" you are basing your >intelligence postings on is based on Cyril Burt's fraud. I am well aware of Burt's fraud. You are making a completely unwarranted assumption here. More recent studies (cited in _The_Mismeasure_Of_Man_) have turned up the sorts of correlations I describe. Gould's attempt at refutation *doesn't* challenge the recent data; it depends on a philosophical criticism of factor analysis. [don't go away yet, this will get interesting in 4 paragraphs or so] > I also doubt that anyone >has a satisfactory definition of "intelligence" yet, let alone a method >for testing it--your postings have cleverly ignored most of the controversy >in this area as well. You should learn to pay more attention to what you read. I specified that the 'intelligence' I was describing was a statistical composite of the results of standardized acuity tests. Yes, I skipped over the details. This was not because of any reluctance to admit or debate the issues involved, just because it's been a while since I read anything in the area. >I suppose intellectual honesty is too much to expect from a USENET >poster--but it would make an entertaining change. I suppose a careful reading and reasoned reactions are much to expect from a USENET reader--but it would make an entertaining change. [here's where it gets interesting] Really now. That was gratuitous of you. It looks as though you saw 'intelligence' and 'heritability' in the same paragraph and charged like a bull at a red flag. Read my lips: I am not a neo-Nazi, nor an apologist for Cyril Burt and his sorry elitist ilk. I *am* a fascinated collector of Damned Things -- facts that the sciences (for which I have enormous respect) cannot acknowledge for political or social reasons. Biology is full of them. Here's another one (yes, this is a test of your mental flexibility). Do you know that matings between Kalahari Bushmen and non-Bushmen are generally infertile? And that the Bushmen have significant, grossly detectable morphological differences from homo-sap-elsewhere including a region in the gluteal muscles adapted like a camel's hump for storing water? Can you say 'different species'? There. I'll bet you're reacting to that as though I'd written 'inferior species'. Sigh. That's why that fact is a Damned Thing. Some people never learn... -- Eric S. Raymond UUCP: {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax}!snark!eric Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
alin@sunybcs.UUCP (Alin Sangeap) (06/21/87)
In article <126@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
. I *am* a fascinated collector of Damned
.Things -- facts that the sciences (for which I have enormous respect)
.cannot acknowledge for political or social reasons. Biology is full of them.
.
When you present such a collection, you have to know a whole lot to defend it.
I have great respect for those who collect, and present, and can defend.
.Here's another one (). Do you know that matings between Kalahari
.Bushmen and non-Bushmen are generally infertile?
.
Most matings between humans are infertile. It's because human females
don't go into heat, so when they mate they're mostly just fooling.
Also, Kalahari is a desert; the Bushmen probably can't afford to increase
their population without starving. They must have developed some methods
to reduce their fertility, else they would have died out. Your source,
did it test fertility for Bush-persons away from possible social and
chemical means to reduce fertility? Or was it just casual experimentation
--
Alin Sangeap SUNY Buffalo Computer Science
CSNET: alin@Buffalo.CSNET BITNET: alin@sunybcs.Bitnet
UUCP: {bbncca,decvax,dual,rocksvax,watmath,sbcs}!sunybcs!alin
NSA: please decode all secret cryptography ciphers; best of wishes, A.cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (06/22/87)
> In article <126@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: > . I *am* a fascinated collector of Damned > .Things -- facts that the sciences (for which I have enormous respect) > .cannot acknowledge for political or social reasons. Biology is full of them. > . > When you present such a collection, you have to know a whole lot to defend it. > I have great respect for those who collect, and present, and can defend. > > .Here's another one (). Do you know that matings between Kalahari > .Bushmen and non-Bushmen are generally infertile? > . > Most matings between humans are infertile. It's because human females > don't go into heat, so when they mate they're mostly just fooling. Everyone knows that; I doubt that's what the original poster meant. I was so surprised by this claim, however, that I went home and dug through the Encyclopedia Britannica to see if there was any mention of this infertility. I found nothing. I did find something really amazing. The Bushmen and Hottentots are closely related -- together they form the Capoid race. A study of Hottentots (Bushmen not yet studied) found 24% had more, and 23% had fewer, than 46 chromosomes. That's a total of 47% have a non-standard number of chromosomes. Can anyone see why there might be a fertility problem? > Alin Sangeap SUNY Buffalo Computer Science > CSNET: alin@Buffalo.CSNET BITNET: alin@sunybcs.Bitnet > UUCP: {bbncca,decvax,dual,rocksvax,watmath,sbcs}!sunybcs!alin > NSA: please decode all secret cryptography ciphers; best of wishes, A. My first reaction to the claim above about Damned Facts was, "Come on. This sounds like a conspiracy." But after reading the Britannica article, I'm a little amazed that the presentation of biology, genetics, and chromosomal abnormalities in high school biology doesn't mention a little "detail" like the Hottentot peculiarity. We learned that humans have 46 chromosomes. We learned about chromosomal abnormalities like Down's Syndrome, and Klinefelter's males. But we didn't learn about a population where HALF of the study group were not 46 chromosomes. I'm beginning to wonder how much high school science classes are tailored for political reasons. Clayton E. Cramer
yarak@bnrmtv.UUCP (Dennis Yarak) (06/23/87)
In article <1651@kontron.UUCP>, cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
* We learned that humans have 46 chromosomes. We learned about chromosomal
* abnormalities like Down's Syndrome, and Klinefelter's males. But we
* didn't learn about a population where HALF of the study group were not
* 46 chromosomes.
* I'm beginning to wonder how much high school science classes are tailored
* for political reasons.
* Clayton E. Cramer
While the last statement tantalizingly lets the individual imagination
run wild, and while I would be the last to dispute that high school texts
have been subject to severe content emasculation (mostly by the Texas
School Textbook Commission, or whatever its formal name is), I wonder
if Mr. Cramer might detail what "political reasons" he attributes to
this presumed deliberate witholding of information from him?
Dennis Yarak
{amdahl, hplabs}!bnrmtv!yarakcramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (06/25/87)
> In article <1651@kontron.UUCP>, cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes: > > * We learned that humans have 46 chromosomes. We learned about chromosomal > * abnormalities like Down's Syndrome, and Klinefelter's males. But we > * didn't learn about a population where HALF of the study group were not > * 46 chromosomes. > > * I'm beginning to wonder how much high school science classes are tailored > * for political reasons. > > * Clayton E. Cramer > > While the last statement tantalizingly lets the individual imagination > run wild, and while I would be the last to dispute that high school texts > have been subject to severe content emasculation (mostly by the Texas > School Textbook Commission, or whatever its formal name is), I wonder > if Mr. Cramer might detail what "political reasons" he attributes to > this presumed deliberate witholding of information from him? > > Dennis Yarak Racial difference doesn't mean racial inferiority -- but because studies of racial difference have frequently been used by various jerks promoting such attitudes, it seems as though the legitimate scientific study of human populations has been marked "unclean" by the left. If you want to argue that the population isn't smart enough to be taught things the way they are without drawing the wrong conclusions, fine. But don't tell me the population is then smart enough to have unlimited governing authority. And worst of all, pretending that racial difference doesn't exist suggests that who are doing the pretending have at some level accepted the idea of "racial difference == racial inferiority". Clayton E. Cramer
eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) (06/27/87)
In article <3728@sunybcs.UUCP>, alin@sunybcs.UUCP (Alin Sangeap) writes: > Most matings between humans are infertile. It's because human females > don't go into heat, so when they mate they're mostly just fooling. Some sort of sexist remark seems almost required here, but since I'm not a sexist (and wouldn't care to arouse the ire of the net's ferocious feminists if I were) I'll let that perfect straight line slide right by... > Also, Kalahari is a desert; the Bushmen probably can't afford to increase > their population without starving. They must have developed some methods > to reduce their fertility, else they would have died out. Your source, > did it test fertility for Bush-persons away from possible social and > chemical means to reduce fertility? Several people have asked me for an exact reference on this. I am very sorry I can't supply one. I recall reading the information; I even have exact visual memories of a cross-section diagram of a Bushman's head pointing out the lower density of cortical folding. The whole business startled and amazed me. I believe it was one of my college anthro textbooks. It's not the facts themselves that have been tabooed, just the clear implication that there is more than one species of genus homo on earth. The implication of my source was that the infertility was extraordinarily high and due to biological incompatibilities, so much so as to make hybrids unheard of or nearly so. This in itself doesn't establish speciation (there's a classic example of similar stuff going on between populations at opposite ends of the circumpolar range of a species of seagull) but together with the morphological differences it makes the case pretty strong. Of course, some biologists would take the easy way out: "So what's a 'species', anyhow?". They have a point -- life is a continuum. But if we're going to describe (say) wolves and dogs as different 'species' based on peoples' more-or-less intuitive notion of mutually-infertile-populations-with- gross-morphological-differences, it's time to write homo kalaharensis into the taxonomies. Personally, I'd like to see that shouted from the housetops -- it's time for us as a species for us to deal with the idea that the self-awareness, abstraction-handling and tool-using skills we're so proud of, and the vaguer qualities we call 'humanity', aren't restricted to beings with the DNA of a homo sap. Whales, dolphins, chimpanzees, gorillas and even some species of octopi and squid have demonstrated the ability to think, plan and handle abstractions in a rather humanlike way. Whales and dolphins have native languages of their own; chimps and gorillas can be taught language and use it creatively, and there's some reason to believe that the cephalopods do language-like things with chromatophore excitation patterns (though no one has caught them communicating abstractions yet). Chimps and gorillas make and use tools. One of the spookier data I have on this is that one gorilla who'd been taught language (Ameslan, I think), a female named Koko, expressed a primitive but unmistakable notion of afterlife when discussing the recent death of her pet kitten (I do have a source for this, but it was a 'new-age' magazine; you may not care to trust it). Eric S. Raymond UUCP: {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax}!snark!eric Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718