Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!gatech!swrinde!pipex!uknet!festival!castle.ed.ac.uk!cam
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Re: RACE and IQ
References: <CyxswC.B4M@festival.ed.ac.uk> <jqbCyzE3w.6J9@netcom.com> <jqbCz0Lpz.KpF@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <CzDHyD.FJr@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@festival.ed.ac.uk (remote news read deamon)
Organization: University of Edinburgh
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 18:27:49 GMT
Lines: 34

I wondered a while back why people got so illogically steamed up about
this question, when it would be rather surprising if different races
did not have have different distributions of mental capabilities,
since they do differ in lots of physiological details. I recently
heard part of a radio programme which made it horribly clear that I
was very naive.

A professor of psychology, and some other academic big-wigs, were
asked to comment on the recent claim by some researcher that different
races were differently mentally endowed. *Everyone* agreed that:-

	a) Intelligence is a matter of practice, experience, and
culture, and all human beings of all races start out equal in the
cognitive skills race.

	b) All the scientists who have ever asserted differently have
been grinding right wing political axes, and their research has very
easily been shown to be flawed, or even, in some cases, fraud.

	c) These facts have been so well established by so much
authoritative research that anyone who now claims racial differences
in IQ obviously hasn't done their scientific homework and immediately
labels themselves as both ignorant and politically motivated.

Since there are definite differences in brain quality between
different people, this clearly means that intelligence has nothing to
do with quality of brain. Which means that artificial intelligence is
barking up the wrong tree, since AI depends a lot on quality of
computer.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
