Racial Equality?

[Almighty Colin]

I'm not saying that changing one changes the other. I'm not saying that increasing nurture increases or decreases nature. I'm assuming the opposite really; the assumption is that changing one's environment does not change one's nature. What I am saying is that
by assuming:

1. There is something called intelligence and that we can or will someday be able to measure it relative to each other.
2. There is only a nature and nurure component to intelligence
3. The variables are independent

(Dubiousness of assumptions noted)

We can conclude that if we could make everyone's environment equal all that would be left for us to measure is the nature component.

In a contrived example:
Initially: environment 50, nurture 50
Finally: environment 0, nurture 100

That's not to say that the effects of the environment become 0. It's saying that the relative effects of the environment become negligible in a perfectly egalitarian intellectual world. We would measure intelligence only in relationship to each other.

Sure, lots of assumptions. For example, there is an assumption that the pre-natal environment doesn't matter (it probably does). There is probably a random factor, maybe the particular way and pattern in which neurons grow.

It is obviously a result though. People wish to create equal opportunity education. One early idea we've hit upon is to remove the effects of income. In the US, we don't wish for only high income family children to attend our best colleges and we have achieved that. We don't wish for children of particular races to be excluded from public schooling and that was achieved. Now, the big attempt is on to make sure that low income schooling is equivalent to high income schooling. We are trying that. Long way to go there.

What will it all look like in the end? As best as possible we equalize all nurturing effects on education. What is left? Children with a genetic advantage will stand out even more.

I know the Cult of Tabula Rasa is strong. Are you saying you believe there is NO genetic component to intelligence?



Last edited by Colin at Sep 2 2003, 04:51 AM