Gareth,
I don’t believe I specified a quantitive amount by which they would differ, just that they would differ. You’re right, normally (pun intended), the groups wouldn’t differ by much. That’s part of the point, isn’t it. Why care that they differ at all? There isn’t a useful reason to care that group X has a different average IQ than group Y. Does a particular group of dark skin people have a lower intelligence due to their skin color? Not likely. Other factors are much more significant. There’s no causual relationship between the two factors. The only reason it’s mentioned at all is because some people have a hang-up about defining themselves or others by the color of their skin.
If you took two groups. One group with high intelligence and a second group with low intelligence and genetically modified them to change only their skin color, would their intelligence change drastically as well? The point is that skin color is not a causal factor in determing intelligence, so it’s meaningless to use as a filter when presented with a sample size of one random individual with skin color X.
For a bunch of reasons, recent black immigrants from the East Indies in NY have a much higher average intelligence than blacks in NY with a longer US family pedigree (and a higher average intelligence than your average white in NY, for that matter) Does it matter to their intelligence what color their skin is? Apparently other factors matter a lot more. My point is that racial grouping is more arbitrary than most other groupings as a basis for making judgements and is only really used by people out of historical inertia. The groupings of people into “race”, whether done by individuals or by governments tends to be pretty damn unscientific compared to say, geneticly-based groupings. I don’t know first-hand about the UK’s classification schemes, but have you seen the racial categories governments in the US use?
TGGP,
Dividing the human population into two groups, male and female, does in fact result in one group having a higher average intelligence than another. Depending on your actually used definition of intelligence, you may decide that one group has a higher average than the other and which group that is may change over time. I suppose if you modify your definition of intelligence based on the actual level of that quality in males and females you might be able to come up with a definition that for an instant in time made the two groups equal, but the actual population changes quickly enough that your definition would also quickly become outdated and the two groups would no longer be equal in your proposed definition of intelligence.
On the question of if there is a usefully measurably large difference between the groups (as opposed to an actual difference), then I agree that it’s not useful to use male/female group membership as a filter or test for an individuals estimated intelligence, regardless of which of the popular definitions of intelligence that you subscribe to. The variance is way too high within the population to make it a useful indicator for practical purposes.
Again, that’s why the fact of there being differences should be as unremarkable as it is useless as a guide to decisions and policy.
Take a step back. Theoretically if someone divided the world population into two groups by randomly assigning each individual the letter “A” or the letter “Z”, you would have two groups that on average have a miniscule difference in intelligence, or athletic ability, or whatever you want to measure.
But practically speaking, knowing the results of the “A” and “Z” groups and also knowing which group your individual belongs to is useless as compared to a factor that actually has a casual relationship to what you are trying to measure that individual for.
No offense to the sociologists among us, but individual characteristics matter far more than group characteristics when making any sort of judgement or decision.
Gareth, I don’t believe I specified a quantitive amount by which they would differ, just that they would differ. You’re right, normally (pun intended), the groups wouldn’t differ by much. That’s part of the point, isn’t it. Why care that they differ at all? There isn’t a useful reason to care that group X has a different average IQ than group Y. Does a particular group of dark skin people have a lower intelligence due to their skin color? Not likely. Other factors are much more significant. There’s no causual relationship between the two factors. The only reason it’s mentioned at all is because some people have a hang-up about defining themselves or others by the color of their skin.
If you took two groups. One group with high intelligence and a second group with low intelligence and genetically modified them to change only their skin color, would their intelligence change drastically as well? The point is that skin color is not a causal factor in determing intelligence, so it’s meaningless to use as a filter when presented with a sample size of one random individual with skin color X.
For a bunch of reasons, recent black immigrants from the East Indies in NY have a much higher average intelligence than blacks in NY with a longer US family pedigree (and a higher average intelligence than your average white in NY, for that matter) Does it matter to their intelligence what color their skin is? Apparently other factors matter a lot more. My point is that racial grouping is more arbitrary than most other groupings as a basis for making judgements and is only really used by people out of historical inertia. The groupings of people into “race”, whether done by individuals or by governments tends to be pretty damn unscientific compared to say, geneticly-based groupings. I don’t know first-hand about the UK’s classification schemes, but have you seen the racial categories governments in the US use?
TGGP,
Dividing the human population into two groups, male and female, does in fact result in one group having a higher average intelligence than another. Depending on your actually used definition of intelligence, you may decide that one group has a higher average than the other and which group that is may change over time. I suppose if you modify your definition of intelligence based on the actual level of that quality in males and females you might be able to come up with a definition that for an instant in time made the two groups equal, but the actual population changes quickly enough that your definition would also quickly become outdated and the two groups would no longer be equal in your proposed definition of intelligence.
On the question of if there is a usefully measurably large difference between the groups (as opposed to an actual difference), then I agree that it’s not useful to use male/female group membership as a filter or test for an individuals estimated intelligence, regardless of which of the popular definitions of intelligence that you subscribe to. The variance is way too high within the population to make it a useful indicator for practical purposes.
Again, that’s why the fact of there being differences should be as unremarkable as it is useless as a guide to decisions and policy.
Take a step back. Theoretically if someone divided the world population into two groups by randomly assigning each individual the letter “A” or the letter “Z”, you would have two groups that on average have a miniscule difference in intelligence, or athletic ability, or whatever you want to measure.
But practically speaking, knowing the results of the “A” and “Z” groups and also knowing which group your individual belongs to is useless as compared to a factor that actually has a casual relationship to what you are trying to measure that individual for.
No offense to the sociologists among us, but individual characteristics matter far more than group characteristics when making any sort of judgement or decision.