No, it's actually the exact opposite, the differences are more than sufficient to explain the difference in outcome. The key thing you need to understand is something called memetic evolution. Now, everyone knows what an internet "meme" is, but few actually know why that term was coined. It was actually coined by Richard Dawkins in his book "The Selfish Gene", and actually represents a piece of information that can be mutated, reproduced, and propagated through a population. However, the context for this term was in relation to the feedback loop between memetic evolution, and brain evolution. Specifically, our brains have evolved to be "meme machines", in that we are designed to receive, interpret, and share information between each other. This process itself actually drives brain evolution, for example our ability to use language started out as grunts, and people that were able to create more complex grunts out competed the others, which propagated more specialized verbal structures in the brain, which caused more complex grunts, etc.
When we sailed top Africa in the 1500s, and interacted with Africans, we found that they had not invented agriculture, math, architecture, or even written language. They also had no future tense in their language. Because these "memes" were absent from their population, especially so late in human evolutionary history, we can conclude that their brains are not as adept for processing these "memes" as the other peoples of the world. And in fact, we can see morphological differences in the brain, such as much fewer cortical convolutions (which indicates less processing power), which support that conclusion. Even with better quality teachers, materials, and schooling, they will never be able to overcome the core issue of the brains simply not being designed to process information like ours are. This is also why you see them being so successful in other areas, such as music. Africans in Africa do have a rich music tradition, even though they didn't invent many instruments.
And yet, how does this explain absolute geniuses like Thomas Sowel?
I'll accept your argument about memes and brain development. I haven't studied that in quite awhile and don't have time to do the homework to confirm or counter. But what I'm suggesting is that what you describe explains why, as a whole, blacks fare worse than other races, it does not explain why so many can't do basic math.
I suggest there is a cultural issue, mainly tribalism, that contributed to the lack of Sub Saharan development. Your explanation might very easily be the cause of that lack of cultural development, but we've seen successful black people who grew up in middle class neighborhoods instead of the hood, and they do just fine. I call many of these good friends.
Again, I'm arguing for basic learning skills that 90+% of all races should be able to do.
John Locke was one of my heroes. He didn't understand the brain as well as you do, but he understood a lot of other things. The theory of Tabula Rasa helped shape the Western Culture all here are so proud of, and there's no room in there for saying some people are too stupid to learn.
Instead, I agree with studies that show blacks in America have a wider range of outcomes, but can reach similar heights and depths as other races. Whites tend to cluster a lot more around the average.
Well, there are a few reasons. First off, we're talking about populations, not individuals. What can be said to be true about a population, doesn't necessarily apply to individuals. For example, even if the average black person is much less intelligent than the average Asian, it doesn't change the fact that intelligence is normally distributed about that mean, so there will be exceptional individuals in that population, just much less than the other races. For example there may be 1 genius for every 100,000 black people, but there might be 10 for every 100,000 Asian people. The second reason is that most African Americans have a bit of white in them, which actually increased their IQ relative to native Africans.
I suggest there is a cultural issue, mainly tribalism, that contributed to the lack of Sub Saharan development.
Culture is a reflection of genetic predisposition, not an overlay on top of it. It's actually a matter of environment more than culture. In Africa, food is available year round, and it's always warm enough to be comfortable. This means that there is no evolutionary pressure to create memes like agriculture, as you always have food. Conversely, our ancestors evolved in the frozen north, meaning that food isn't available for 6 months out of the year. This actually induces things like the invention of agriculture, and even further developments such as writing. Writing originally came about to pass down information around agricultural learnings (like the best time to plant, superstitious rituals, how to store food without it becoming rancid or toxic, etc). It has nothing to do with culture, they just never had the need to invent such things, so they didn't.
I don't disagree with your main point and find some of what you said extremely interesting.
I'm not 100% with you on food being available year-round in Africa - not sure what you mean, can you expand?
Secondly, I love the idea of environmental restriction breeding human development, but if that were unilaterally true, why aren't the indigenous Eskimo populations proportionally more advanced than European-evolved humans as the latter are toward African populations? Certainly they evolved amongst the most difficult conditions, no?
No, it's actually the exact opposite, the differences are more than sufficient to explain the difference in outcome. The key thing you need to understand is something called memetic evolution. Now, everyone knows what an internet "meme" is, but few actually know why that term was coined. It was actually coined by Richard Dawkins in his book "The Selfish Gene", and actually represents a piece of information that can be mutated, reproduced, and propagated through a population. However, the context for this term was in relation to the feedback loop between memetic evolution, and brain evolution. Specifically, our brains have evolved to be "meme machines", in that we are designed to receive, interpret, and share information between each other. This process itself actually drives brain evolution, for example our ability to use language started out as grunts, and people that were able to create more complex grunts out competed the others, which propagated more specialized verbal structures in the brain, which caused more complex grunts, etc.
When we sailed top Africa in the 1500s, and interacted with Africans, we found that they had not invented agriculture, math, architecture, or even written language. They also had no future tense in their language. Because these "memes" were absent from their population, especially so late in human evolutionary history, we can conclude that their brains are not as adept for processing these "memes" as the other peoples of the world. And in fact, we can see morphological differences in the brain, such as much fewer cortical convolutions (which indicates less processing power), which support that conclusion. Even with better quality teachers, materials, and schooling, they will never be able to overcome the core issue of the brains simply not being designed to process information like ours are. This is also why you see them being so successful in other areas, such as music. Africans in Africa do have a rich music tradition, even though they didn't invent many instruments.
And yet, how does this explain absolute geniuses like Thomas Sowel?
I'll accept your argument about memes and brain development. I haven't studied that in quite awhile and don't have time to do the homework to confirm or counter. But what I'm suggesting is that what you describe explains why, as a whole, blacks fare worse than other races, it does not explain why so many can't do basic math.
I suggest there is a cultural issue, mainly tribalism, that contributed to the lack of Sub Saharan development. Your explanation might very easily be the cause of that lack of cultural development, but we've seen successful black people who grew up in middle class neighborhoods instead of the hood, and they do just fine. I call many of these good friends.
Again, I'm arguing for basic learning skills that 90+% of all races should be able to do.
John Locke was one of my heroes. He didn't understand the brain as well as you do, but he understood a lot of other things. The theory of Tabula Rasa helped shape the Western Culture all here are so proud of, and there's no room in there for saying some people are too stupid to learn.
Instead, I agree with studies that show blacks in America have a wider range of outcomes, but can reach similar heights and depths as other races. Whites tend to cluster a lot more around the average.
Well, there are a few reasons. First off, we're talking about populations, not individuals. What can be said to be true about a population, doesn't necessarily apply to individuals. For example, even if the average black person is much less intelligent than the average Asian, it doesn't change the fact that intelligence is normally distributed about that mean, so there will be exceptional individuals in that population, just much less than the other races. For example there may be 1 genius for every 100,000 black people, but there might be 10 for every 100,000 Asian people. The second reason is that most African Americans have a bit of white in them, which actually increased their IQ relative to native Africans.
Culture is a reflection of genetic predisposition, not an overlay on top of it. It's actually a matter of environment more than culture. In Africa, food is available year round, and it's always warm enough to be comfortable. This means that there is no evolutionary pressure to create memes like agriculture, as you always have food. Conversely, our ancestors evolved in the frozen north, meaning that food isn't available for 6 months out of the year. This actually induces things like the invention of agriculture, and even further developments such as writing. Writing originally came about to pass down information around agricultural learnings (like the best time to plant, superstitious rituals, how to store food without it becoming rancid or toxic, etc). It has nothing to do with culture, they just never had the need to invent such things, so they didn't.
I don't disagree with your main point and find some of what you said extremely interesting.
I'm not 100% with you on food being available year-round in Africa - not sure what you mean, can you expand?
Secondly, I love the idea of environmental restriction breeding human development, but if that were unilaterally true, why aren't the indigenous Eskimo populations proportionally more advanced than European-evolved humans as the latter are toward African populations? Certainly they evolved amongst the most difficult conditions, no?