Race and IQs

[Anomalocaris]

Using your example, isn't "There is a difference in IQ between races" a claim?  And the null is "There is no difference in IQ between races" ?

I think, if I'm understanding this, the failure to demonstrate a difference between the null hypothesis fails to support the claim, but does not on that account thus support the null hypothesis.  It's a difference, if I understand things correctly, between accepting the null hypothesis ex hypothesi, and accepting it absolutely.

That’s right.

In many fields of science it is customary to establish a certain threshold for the probability of null hypothesis being true. If the calculated probability for the null hypothesis is below that, the original proposition is considered valid. Otherwise it is considered not valid. The threshold probability is heavily weighted towards the null hypothesis. Only a fairly small probability of the null hypothesis being true is sufficient to send the original proposition back for more work or directly to the trash bin.

[Pat Mustard]

Dr Richard Lynn, Dr Philippe Rushton, Dr Richard Herrnstein and Dr Charles Murray are leading scholars whose research has come to these conclusions.

So, it's The Bell Curve you're using. Explains so much.

That was obvious from the OP. It took me 30 seconds to realise it, 29.5 of which were trying to remember the name of the book.

[The Grand Nudger]

So I guess you're one of those liberals who think that everyone is equal. Interestingly, if you think the mean IQ's of different races are the same, the burden of proof is on you.

So you really that think then.  Nice to know that there's no point expecting rational and evidence based discourse from you.

There's a definite pattern to mahones posts, but I don;t think he's one of the completely lost deplorables, lol. 

Continuing further still.  If we're granting this idea of a race based locus for intelligence..then what of a competing theory?  Perhaps intelligence is accounted for..like so many other things in successful biology, by hybrid vigor?  That;d take a more comprehensive testing regime than "this guy looks pasty, lets put him in the white column!".  Was that done, or did they separate the "races" based on the color of their skin and regional dispersion?

[ohreally]

Using your example, isn't "There is a difference in IQ between races" a claim?  And the null is "There is no difference in IQ between races" ?

Yup.  To prove the assertion "there is a difference in IQ between races" correct, they would have to prove the null hypothesis "there is no difference in IQ between races" false.

And if someone wanted to prove the assertion "there is no difference in IQ between races" correct, they would have to prove the null hypothesis "there IS a difference in IQ between races" false.

With either claim, you (whoever is trying to prove one or the other) does the legwork, gathers the data, calculates all the statistics, etc.

And Jorm is correct - just because someone fails to disprove the null hypothesis doesn't mean the null hypothesis is necessarily true.  It just means that their efforts have not yet disproved the null hypothesis.  Like if some theist is unable to prove that god exists, that doesn't support the assertion that god does NOT exist, it just means that we lack proof for the existence of a god.  Or, just because I cannot disprove the null hypothesis of a number of gumballs in a jar being even, doesn't mean that the number of gumballs is actually even - we just can't prove that it's odd, right now, with the available evidence/methods.

If you could humor me or if you're bored.    So can I summarize what you said as the following:

Null Hypothesis A= "There is no god"  They do a test to find a god and don't find anything so the null hypothesis is not disproved yet there could still be a god.

Null Hypothesis B = "There is a god"  (so what test do we do here?  Exactly the same as A?) we don't find a god and disprove the null.

My thinking was that in either scenario above I'll never have evidence that there is no god, I'll just continually have no evidence there is one. And I'll never have evidence there is no relationship between IQ and race, I'll just continually have no evidence there is one.

[The Grand Nudger]

Further, supposing that there actually is some difference, it would be a difference -within- the races based upon selection of a hereditary trait.  The proposal that the "race" accoiunts for this is nothing more or less than the notion that the "white gene" or "asian gene" also accounts for intelligence.  Find me that gene.

Now...based upon this wonderful not-construct, which group gets my blisteringly high iq scores, and from which one of them did I inherit the race based smart gene?  My maternal grandfather is full blown crow off the rez, maternal grandmother was born in ireland.  My paternal grandfather was mixed, paternal grandmother was western european.  You see my avatar up there, lookin white as a freshly bleached bedsheet.  Two guesses as to which camp I;d get placed in, and your first guess doesn;t count.

I've got a whole lot of the lesser races blood in my veins, no asian, and a sparing amount of anything that a racist would consider caucasian.

-and for the coup de grace...let's ask a question above in the reverse.

Who gets my blisteringly -low- iq scores?  What happened there, if I was two hairs away from handicapped? Did I fail to inherit the whiter genes despite the presence (and overwhelming expression) of whiteness in my background?  Did I inherit those race based smart genes, but the other factors in my admixture nullified them?  Just how effective is this gene?

[Pat Mustard]

Why are so many people taking IQ tests.  I thought they were pretty much for identifying children with developmental disabilities.  With all of the standardized test scores (SAT, ACT, GRE) it doesn't seem like it has a point, again, outside of identifying special needs kids.

I went to a job interview once and the only thing they did was to give me an IQ test.

Many years later I was approached by a job agent about a job. I realised it was the same company so got him to ask whether they were still doing IQ tests. When he came back and said they were I told him I wouldn't bother.

On the other hand, I love interview processes where standardised testing has a big part. I ace them without even trying.

Interviews, however, bring me out in the cold sweats.

---

Entire race?

Where does one race end and another begin?

Dr Philippe Rushton says that race is more than skin deep. You can tell a person's race even from their bone or DNA. That proves that race is a meaningful concept, not just a social construct.

Rushton was also well known for refitting the evidence to his preconceived notions that black people were worse in every way than white people. Therefore his conclusions aren't worth a shit.

[paulpablo]

This doesn't seem right to me.  Maybe i'm totally wrong in my whole thought process.  Shouldn't the null be that there is no difference in IQ between races.  You either find statistically significant data and void the null or find nothing.

No, null hypothesis doesn’t intrinsically lean one way or another.  It is a devil’s advocate argument, not a argument from a specific position.

The claim that all races have an equal IQ would be a way more improbable claim than saying every race is equal in IQ.  

If you have any quantifiable value, especially with something as variable as IQ it's very unlikely an entire race would be equal to an entire other race.  

It doesn't have to be about race or about IQ.  It could be about any group of people, compare them to any other group of people in terms of their height.  It's very statistically unlikely the two groups will be equal in height.

Unless you believe IQ is unquantifiable, or it's magical and god given and not due to evolution in different environments and different cultures. 

 If every other variable like height, running speed, body fat percentage and so on isn't equal among not just races but cultures, nationalities and so on I don't see why a brain would be the magic organ that's considered to be precisely equal among any group of people

[Anomalocaris]

Yup.  To prove the assertion "there is a difference in IQ between races" correct, they would have to prove the null hypothesis "there is no difference in IQ between races" false.

And if someone wanted to prove the assertion "there is no difference in IQ between races" correct, they would have to prove the null hypothesis "there IS a difference in IQ between races" false.

With either claim, you (whoever is trying to prove one or the other) does the legwork, gathers the data, calculates all the statistics, etc.

And Jorm is correct - just because someone fails to disprove the null hypothesis doesn't mean the null hypothesis is necessarily true.  It just means that their efforts have not yet disproved the null hypothesis.  Like if some theist is unable to prove that god exists, that doesn't support the assertion that god does NOT exist, it just means that we lack proof for the existence of a god.  Or, just because I cannot disprove the null hypothesis of a number of gumballs in a jar being even, doesn't mean that the number of gumballs is actually even - we just can't prove that it's odd, right now, with the available evidence/methods.

If you could humor me or if you're bored.    So can I summarize what you said as the following:

Null Hypothesis A= "There is no god"  They do a test to find a god and don't find anything so the null hypothesis is not disproved yet there could still be a god.

Null Hypothesis B = "There is a god"  (so what test do we do here?  Exactly the same as A?) we don't find a god and disprove the null.

My thinking was that in either scenario above I'll never have evidence that there is no god, I'll just continually have no evidence there is one.  And I'll never have evidence there is no relationship between IQ and race, I'll just continually have no evidence there is one.

No hypothesis A doesn’t require you to provide proof that there is no god.

It is the devil’s advocate argument against the following proposition:

Proposition:  There is a god and here are the evidence of the said god.

Null hypothesis: there is really no god and such evidence as you’ve presented could still be there anyway.


Conceptually For proposition A to prevail it must show the probability that the evidence being presented for god does not have a reasonable probability of existing if there were no god, for some consistent and a priori defined threshold of reasonableness.

for proposition A to fail all that needs to be shown is such evidence as presented for existence of god could have a reasonable probability of existing anyway even without god, for some consistent and a priori defined threshold of reasonableness.

You can certainly have reasonable evidence that there is no relationship between race and intelligence. For example if the average intelligence of any randomly selected sample of people from different races always show difference in intelligence of less than magnitude of statistical uncertainty.

[CapnAwesome]

Just so people know, my IQ is 500,008

[Silver]

Just so people know, my IQ is 500,008

I have the low, low I.Q. of 140.