> Hi,
>
> "Michal Kulczycki" <88802@dawid.uni.wroc.pl> wrote:
> > Don't quit follow. Do you mean that there are no genetical
> > differences between Japanese and Pole? It is not a _false_
> > concept. I really don't know why is this matter so emotional.
>
> There are differences. This no one denies. However, I think that moving
> from this to concluding that "races" may be more or less intelligent than
> other races is a huge leap... we all possess roughly the same brain, after
> all. In evolutionary terms, races just are not separated enough from each
> other to have made a significant difference. And to finally settle the
> issue, I will quote Deborah Blum:
>
> "There's about a 15 percent genetic variation between any two
> individuals," according to science writer Deborah Blum. "Less than
> half of that, about 6 percent, is accounted for by known racial
> groupings... A randomly selected white person, therefore, can easily
> be genetically closer to an African than another white."
> -- "Race: many biologists argue for discarding the whole concept,"
> Deborah Blum, The Sacramento Bee, October 18, 1995, p. A12.
>
> > It is not directly about races but rather heritability of abilities.
>
> I'm very suspicious about this. Smacks a little of Lamarckism, me thinks.
>
> > I am not speaking about very close realtions. I think about
> > subltle similiarities. These one which cause Mongoloids (and
> > Jews) to achieve about 15 IQ pt. (one SD!) higher scores.
>
> Was the experiment done in such a way that all other factors which affect
> intelligence (e.g. education, exposure to literature, etc.) were
> controlled? I doubt it. My bet is that the results reflect the
> epidemiology of memes, not that of genes.
>
> > One more thing. I am not stuborn and rascist. I even do not want
> > to force stricte racial concept. I just suspect (not only suspect)
> > that there are complexes of genes that determine more abstract
> > way of thinging, which of course do vary in such population
> > according to Gaussian curve.
>
> You are almost certainly right that the structures of our brains affect how
> we think. However, let us not forget that how we think in our childhood
> also has a profound effect on the way our brains develop. Nature only
> takes one so far -- about as far as a cave man, I believe -- after that,
> all the rest of the development is due to nurture. If one race has (say)
> better spatial perception than another, that tells us that the culture he
> lives in values (eg trains for) that quality/ability more.
>
> To confirm my thesis, one need only point to adopted children -- as a
> class, do they show the aptitudes of their *biological* parents, or their
> *sociological* parents? My money is on the later.
>
> ERiC
>
See the identical twin 'separated at birth' studies done at the U.
of Minnesota (Research With Twins: The Concept of Emergenesis by
David T. Lykken, The Journal for Psychophysiological Research, Vol.
19, #2 {1982}). As a result of these studies, the "rule of two
thirds" was proposed; roughly 2/3 of our behavioral differences
(preferences, abilities, attitudes, aptitudes, moods, etc. ) are due
to genetics, 1/3 are due to environment.