Hi AJ. I wasn't going to waste another 350 word post on you until you stated your position. But this is your lucky day. Banjo Patterson (actually, Rodney Crisp) is a bit slow getting back to me, so I will waste a post.

I have no intention of debating with you until you clearly submit a position you are willing to defend. I am too experienced a debater to fall for that sneaky little ploy. Try it on a novice.

Since you have got Buckley's of debating with me until you do clearly state a position, my advice to you would be to just be what you are, a heckler. Or, perhaps you could be Rodney's advisor?

Thank you

Oh boy, LEGO. You really are slow.

<<I have no intention of debating with you until you clearly submit a position you are willing to defend.>>

I did:

“My position is that there is no evidence for your above claim.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330327)

I even defended it preemptively by linking you to a paper demonstrating why you’re wrong on the issue of race and intelligence. A paper I'm sure you're keen to avoid ever having to read, let alone address.

Now your turn. Why is it that I need to state a position beyond the above, and what is an example of what you’re talking about? Consider what I said on the other thread carefully before answering:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18530#330100

<<Since you have got Buckley's of debating with me until you do clearly state a position …>>

You mean, until I state precisely the position that your inadequately-sophisticated reasoning and debating tactics require for the purpose of deflecting attention from the above.

It looks to me like, after all these years, you’re finally giving up on trying to 'defeat' me (as you would put it) and are simply going to indefinitely delay ever responding to me by pretending that you require a position from me (without justifying why you need it), and that you’re not getting it. So much for ever having ripped me new one. But it’s alright if you refuse to respond to me. It makes my job a lot easier and your silence would be all I needed as vindication for my rebuttals.

In the meantime, you can accuse me of "heckling" all you like. All that's ever demonstrated in the past is that you have no idea of what the word means:

Heckle:
Interrupt (a public speaker) with derisive or aggressive comments or abuse. (http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/heckle)

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Dear LEGO,

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You wrote :

« White Scandinavians can easily be distinguished from black Zulus. They are different in appearance and physical abilities because their genetics makes them so. If they are different in physical appearance and physical abilities, there is no reason to think that they must be identical in either intelligence or personalities »
.

That is correct so far as appearance is concerned. But differences in physical abilities are due to different lifestyles and Zulus are neither more nor less intelligent than any other human beings. Modern Zulus have little in common with the Zulus who defeated the British at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879. There are no longer any pure Zulus and half the population now live in urban areas. More information here :

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Zulu.aspx

What is eminently true is that there are no two persons exactly identical. We are all different. Each individual is unique. According to recent research, even though so-called “identical” or monozygotic twins supposedly share all of their DNA, they acquire hundreds of genetic changes in early development. One twin may get cancer while the other stays healthy.

The image that comes to my mind is that of Mozart’s music. There’s a myriad of variations around a central theme which remains constant and immutable. Anthropologists tell us we branched off from our common ancestor with the chimpanzees about five to seven million years ago. Then, about 200 000 years ago, as homo sapiens (we were all black originally) we migrated out of Africa in search of new pastures and colonised the planet. Melanin in the skin that protected us from the fierce African sun, decreased in colder climates to allow greater intake of sunlight so that our bodies could produce vital vitamin D and remain healthy, hence brown, yellow, white, and red skin.

This process of natural adaptation to different environments and lifestyles did not affect the central characteristics of human beings - such as intelligence, for example.

As highly sociable beings, we humans generally accept our differences – both “lefties” and “righties”. We live together harmoniously.

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Hi Banjo,
In general I agree, but I'd like to muddy the waters a little by mentioning that humans aren't just the product of natural selection, we have also selectively bred ourselves, a process that still continues.

The Jewish people, for example, have selectively bred for some forms of intelligence over at least 4 millennia and it's not surprising that they are so disproportionately represented at the top of the tree in science and other intellectual arts. Sadly, black Americans were for a time the subject of some haphazardly selective breeding for certain physical traits and once again unsurprisingly, they dominate many sporting fields.

Having said that, there is no doubt that in any given random group of people there are some who are brighter than others and that skin colour or any other physical metric is not a good way to pick which is which.

Of course, if you like to play with toys, you might prefer white blocks to black ones...

Psychologists who measure human intelligence are called "cognitive metricians", and these scientists have been testing the US population for decades. The result of this research was analysed and published in "The Bell Curve." This indicated that human intelligence with any ethnic cohort varies according to a "bell curve" graph. Very few people have very low intelligence, and at the other end of intelligence, very few people have very high intelligence. Most people are in the middle of the curve.

It was discovered that all races can have people with very low intelligence, and people with very high intelligence. But the "curves" were different in terms of median intelligence. White Americans has a mean intelligence of 103, Asian Americans 106, Hispanics 95, and African Americans 85.

Some people criticise IQ testing as being akin to witchcraft or Phrenology. But IQ testing just happens to be the most reliable indicator of human success. Whereas I concede that some black people can have high intelligence, most of them have intelligence quotients far below those of whites and Asians. Sad though this may be, this seems to me to be a much more credible explanation for black dysfunction than endlessly blaming the white race for everything that ever went wrong with the black race.

You seem to be claiming that black people in general are just as smart as white people in general. If this was true, then a Nobel Prize awaits any cognitive metrician who uses statistics to prove that the black race is just as smart as the white or Asian races. Since proving the truth should be easier than propagating a lie, every left leaning psychologist would be chasing the dream of international recognition. But none of them are. I submit, that the reason for that, is because whatever their ideology proclaims, they know that "The Bell curve" was correct.

In the Northern Territory, 66% of the education budget is spent educating aboriginal children who represent 33% of NT pupils. The end result is that aboriginal children have a 90% failure rate in NAPLAN testing

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Dear Craig,

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You wrote :

« In general I agree, but I'd like to muddy the waters a little by mentioning that humans aren't just the product of natural selection, we have also selectively bred ourselves, a process that still continues.

The Jewish people, for example, have selectively bred for some forms of intelligence over at least 4 millennia and it's not surprising that they are so disproportionately represented at the top of the tree in science and other intellectual arts. Sadly, black Americans were for a time the subject of some haphazardly selective breeding for certain physical traits and once again unsurprisingly, they dominate many sporting fields »
.

Don’t worry, Craig, the two examples you mention do not “muddy the waters” any more than they already are. As I’m sure you are aware, they are both highly controversial. Like belief in the existence of a god or gods, in the absence of falsifiable empirical evidence, some are inclined to believe and others are not. I, personally, am not.

Before going into the details, I must say I’m a little surprised by your figure of 4 millennia as the time frame of alleged selective breeding. As the purported higher intelligence only relates to Ashkenazi Jews, I understand that the first historical trace we have of them dates from the 8th century AD. That would give us an historical time frame of less than 1.4 millennia.

This is the time frame on which the principal proponents of the selective breeding hypothesis have based their well-documented and scientifically-argued case. Here is the link:

http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf

Having read that, I think one should read the following two articles which place the subject in a slightly broader perspective:

http://www.aei.org/publication/the-2011-nobel-prize-and-the-debate-over-jewish-iq/?tfa_next=%2Fresponses%2Flast_success%26sid%3Dmpa7p9a9335jj0usr5uhuco3k2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence

As for the selective breeding of black Americans, it seems there may have been a few rare (futile) attempts for their physical traits but the chief motive was to produce slaves without having to buy them. Slavery was finally abolished in the United States in 1865, ending 246 years of transatlantic slave trade. The following articles are relevant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_breeding_in_the_United_States

http://www.popularsocialscience.com/2013/01/21/why-blacks-are-good-at-sports/

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