i think it's pretty funny they are fuming at each other from a few feet away

COME OUT OF YOUR ROOM AND SAY THAT

NO YOU!

yeah this is exactly what i meant.  like i sort of wonder if they are just going to see each other in the kitchen in five minutes and pretend none of this is happening or give each other the silent treatment or what

-Race is a social construct and is not genetic. You might want to accept this if you want to get anywhere in life.
-Apparently, some people find a correlation between one social construct (race) and another (IQ). This is somehow genetic instead of a massive fallacy.
-Big brains means high intelligence, even though Neanderthals had bigger brains than any homo sapiens and didn't progress past 'hey-let's-eat-that-mammoth'.
-The fact that subsaharan people were little more than monkeys before they met the Great Aryan Race (or whatever you want to call yourself) is comparable to the fact that you were little more than dinner before you met the midwife. This case is the purview of the social sciences, not of biology.
-The brain develops according to environmental input, not according to some genetic plan. It's how we learn. It's how we're sapient. I thought people learned this in elementary school but evidently I was mistaken.

Oh, and then this:

The most likely reason why larger brains are, on average, more intelligent than smaller brains is that they contain more neurons and synapses, which make them more efficient. Haier et al. (1995) tested the brain efficiency hypothesis by using MRI to measure brain volume and glucose metabolic rate to measure glucose uptake (an indicator of energy use). They found a correlation of −.58 between glucose metabolic rate and IQ, suggesting that more intelligent individuals have more efficient brains because they use less energy in performing a given cognitive task. Several other studies supporting the brain-size/efficiency model were reviewed in Gignac, Vernon, and Wickett (2003). In any individual, however, energy use increases with the increasing complexity of the cognitive task.

I am laughing so bloody hard right now. First, more synapses means your brain is fundamentally slower, since signals have to pass, get this, more synapses, which takes time (it's also completely irrelevant). Second, neurons need glucose to live, not to function as neurons (it's also, again, completely irrelevant). It's actually suggesting smart people have less neurons (oh, and 'efficiency', what the fuck? How is that relevant, like, at all?).

Finally, if you could just point us to the IQ gene, the entire body of science would be eternally in your dept. If we have that, maybe then we could finally do some actual scientific study instead of crawling around in the festering pool that is statistics.

Genetics does not work that way. None of the studies you put forth have any genetic relevance. Any correlation might as well be caused by the tooth fairy.

4d are you sure about the synapse thing.

because I heard women have smaller brains but more synapses which made them smarter (indicating brain size has nothing to do with brain activity) so was that just wrong?

A synapse is the space between the axon of one neuron and the dendrite of another, and requires a transmitter to be released and that transmitter to bind to the receptor. The point is, synapses are mostly chemical, meaning slower, while conduction along an axon is mostly electrical, meaning faster. It's basically the difference between going down a water slide and falling down stairs. But it doesn't matter anyway since a higher number of synapses does not automatically cause a higher 'intelligence', e.g. kids have 10^16 synapses while adults have 10^15. It's like saying that because your lego castle is made out of more lego blocks that the other it's inherently better designed. Also, someone's brain might be active as fuck but it's not going to do him much good if all it's wired to do is counting to blue. A person who gives answers really quick, but always gives the wrong answer isn't most people's definition of intelligent, and basic 'processing speed' like that is all biophysics can reasonably be asked to cover.

i think it's pretty funny they are fuming at each other from a few feet away

COME OUT OF YOUR ROOM AND SAY THAT

NO YOU!

yeah this is exactly what i meant.  like i sort of wonder if they are just going to see each other in the kitchen in five minutes and pretend none of this is happening or give each other the silent treatment or what

Hahahha yeah its fucking ridiculous because I came out of my room like fifty times and argued it in person several times, I had just finished work so excuse me for eating dinner.
And nah we talked about it hardout and my other flatmates are checking the site (asians/lower beings). One thing that makes me feel like a faggot is when he calls me by my username on the internet and it was the wierdest thing ever when I woke up hearing him say "that magicial negro guy is a fucking idiot, he just insults people" hahaahha having gw that close to home is strange. 

I do think the community here jumped down his throat a little more than necessary. I feel that genetic differences do exist, but social factors are important. That seems to be in line with his original point, and I have to support it to some extent.

(On a sidenote, I was under the impression that IQ tests were more about measuring your potential to learn and not your actual intelligence. ie. A kid can learn quickly in school if he applies himself, but if he's getting baked and drunk all the time he'll probably do worse than someone with a lower IQ who studies.)

I've been lead to believe that parents with higher IQs generally have children with higher IQ's as well.

Now, as little a difference as I think "race" makes, the argument that genetic differences lead to varying levels of intelligence cant be ignored. Not black vs white or anything, but rather people with gene "a" might learn faster than gene "b". Just as people with gene "c" have six fingers, and people with gene "d" might have more enamel on their teeth. I think someone called them "clines" earlier in this topic.

If genes can influence so many factors inside someone's body, why woudln't they hold some level of influence over intelligence? The wrong genes can cause all sorts of problems in people. Issues like alzhiemer's and schizophrenia are more likely to occur in someone if their ancestor had the same problem. There must be an ideal set of genes to make the most potentially intelligent person. 

If for some reason these genes appeared in a European or Asian first, thousands of years ago, through selective breeding, infant survival rates, and sheer luck, it's possible that they became a little more dominant there than in other areas. Again, not say whites or asians are more intelligent, but rather people with gene "a" may have initally appeared in an area that has a lot people with a certain skin colour. People have spread out for thousands of years, so it is quite likely that some fellow (perhaps a Greek or Roman, they seemed to get around on a lot of the planet) ventured out to make kids and now these ideal genes for intelligence are in every possible "race".

Its also possible that these ideal genes are some sort of oddball chance or mutation, actually appearing even less frequently than other rare conditions. So my personal belief is that sure there might be a couple of ideal brainiacs floating around somewhere immune to their environment, but for the average person it is predominantly their environment which will lead to any sigificant variation in intelligence. If you seperated two twins at birth and threw one into a low income area with poor schooling, shtity medicine, a general lack of nutrition,  and the other one into an environemnt where he would be nutured and comfortable, they'd probably end up with different IQs. Or at the very least one would appear smarter because there was a low enough teacher to pupil ratio that a supervisor prevented him from continually eating the paste.

So I agree with him that genetics do play a small role in intelligence, but that the environment is just as, if not more, important. I can't agree that it's based on race, rather that it's about the cline. Gene "a" cannot be even remotely affiliated with skin or noses or hair or any other possible physical feature.
Your chances of being able to learn more quickly than others are somewhere between your chances of having blue eyes and sprouting a third arm. And even then if you go to a shitty school you'll probably end up in a shittier position than a priveleged person.


*edit* jsut finished reading one of the articles at slate.com and it seems to be in line with this, that genes cross the race barriers