May 29, 2009

"Why Steve Sailer is wrong"

One of the odd side effects of the Ricci case is that it continues to inspire a lot of watery commentary about me.

For example, Tyler Cowen blogs on Marginal Revolution:
"Why Steve Sailer is wrong"

That's a request I received and probably the reader is referring to IQ and race.Let me first say that I am not the Steve Sailer oracle. On such a sensitive matter I don't wish to misrepresent anyone, so I'll simply tell you what I think of the issues, without suggesting that he or anyone else necessarily disagrees.

In other words, this post is going to be about a straw man.

If anybody is actually interested in what I have had to say about IQ and race, well, in 2007 I published FAQs on IQ and race.
There is a belief that progress in genetics will resurrect old, now-unpopular claims about race and IQ, namely that some races are intrinsically inferior in terms of IQ. I very much expect that we will instead learn more about the importance of the individual genome and that variations within "groups" (whether defined in terms of race or not) are where the traction lies. So I don't expect "old style eugenics views" to make a comeback as applied to race, quite the contrary. On that point, here is more.

I also think that IQ will be shown to be more multi-dimensional than we now think. If you wish to understand the role of IQ in human affairs, you would do better to study autism and ADHD than race (by the way, I discuss the importance of neurodiversity in much greater detail in my forthcoming book Create Your Own Economy.)

You may know that some nations -- basically the wealthy ones -- have higher IQs than the poor nations. But IQ is endogenous to environment, as evidenced by the Flynn Effect, namely the general rise in IQ scores with each generation. It is sometimes noted that some racial IQ gaps are not closing but I find it more significant that scores can continue to rise. For instance it is quite possible that groups with higher measured IQs simply have been on an "improvement track" for a longer period of time. More generally I think we should consider the Flynn Effect a bit of a mystery and that suggests an overall tone of caution on these issues rather than polemicism.

Most importantly, there is a critical distinction between hypocritical discourse on race and racism itself. Hypocritical discourse on race is harmful and often Sailer does a very good job skewering it. But racism itself is far, far more harmful, whether in the course of previous history or still today. It is fine if a given individual, for reasons of division of labor, spends his or her time attacking hypocritical discourse about race rather than attacking racism itself. (For instance we shouldn't all focus on condemning Hitler and Stalin, simply because they were among the most evil men; there are other battles to fight.) But I still wish that specified individual to ardently believe that racism is the far greater problem. Insofar as that individual holds such a belief about racism, I am much happier than if not.

The comments section is for discussion of the issues in a mature way; if you want to attack any particular individual, that is for elsewhere.

Addendum: If you are looking for another perspective, here is William Saletan on Steve Sailer.

Ho-hum.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

133 comments:

notuswind said...

Steve Sailer,

In addition to Cowen, did you see how McWhorter called you a professional racist in the latest diavlog on BloggingHeads.tv?

Anonymous said...

A little human biodiversity anyone?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qefaY5yStpU&feature=related


Watch 7 foot 2 inch, 330 lb Hong Man Choi knock out a suprisingly valiant 6 foot 4 inch, 255 lb Jose Canseco.

Canseco, a big guy, looks like a midget next to Choi. We can accept that one man is physically superior to another can't we?


We cannot apparently accept a twerp of a man like Jean Paul Sartre is intellectually a giant compared to either of the men in the ring though. It pretty much all comes down to that. No reason at all South Korea is South Korea and the Adamantine Islands are what they are. M

bjdouble said...

Doesn't Cowen have important things to be doing, like reviewing Thai restaurants? I think he said somewhere that he spends 20 minutes a day on his blog. Sounds about right. He rarely makes sense or bothers to make an argument.

Anonymous said...

"...did you see how McWhorter called you a professional racist..."

Mc-Whor-ter, then, is a professional prostitute!

Anon said...

did you see how McWhorter called you a professional racist in the latest diavlog on BloggingHeads.tv?

That would be here: Examining race and standardized tests.

He did use the phrase "professional racists like Steve Sailer" (10:49).

I am not a lawyer, but that's probably actionable, i.e., you could sue his intellectual-coward arse. (Of course, since truth is an adequate defense in American libel law, you'd have to get the court to understand that what he's said is untrue. Time to call in your favors from academic supporters, etc.)

Still, "no such thing as bad P.R." And if they're already publicly using the "R-word" without caveat, what have you got to lose (aside from legal fees)?

pouffiassei said...

McWhorter's casual bile is here.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you are truly an iconoclast. No one is more universally reviled than the person who threatens to overturn the conventional wisdom. You are rapidly approaching Copernicus status.

Anonymous said...

I just read the Cowen piece. Is this guy usually this devoid of intellect for God's sake, so weak in his reasoning?

I was glad to see many of the commenters took him to task.

McWhorter has disappointed me. I thought he'd be more intellectually honest or, unable to do that, I'd have hoped he'd remain silent, at the very least.

Anonymous said...

Well, I reckon that the punditariat recognizing your existence is at least a step in the right direction.

Anonymous said...

"Well, I reckon that the punditariat recognizing your existence is at least a step in the right direction."

Kind of related to this, but about the conservative blogs. I rarely visit right-liberal sites like redstate or hotair, but took a look over yesterday and the day before.... I thought a lot of Steve and the Steveosphere as many bloggers went and made fools out of themselves in a very public way due to being innumerate. For those who don't know what I'm talkin about, I'm referring to the meme that Obama targeted for GM business closures Republican donors. Lots of anecdotal evidence with no controls or anything approaching a valid scientific analysis. Audacious, inductivist, half sigma, and the car man himself, Steve, could have cleared this up immediately. As it was, Foxnews found no there, there and put the kibosh on this embarassing incident.

Anonymous said...

"I just read the Cowen piece. Is this guy usually this devoid of intellect for God's sake, so weak in his reasoning?"

No, as is often pointed out, talking about IQ and race will decrease IQ in the average academic by, oh, 30-40 points or so.

TCU said...

At around the 20:10 mark of that Bloggingheads diavlog with McWhorter, the woman speaking with McWhorter seriously criticizes testing by saying that "When I'm taking a test I'm in a happy place, and other people when they're taking a test are in a really bad place."

PeterW said...

Cowen's usually a pretty thoughtful guy, and indeed his post is more nuanced than most. The only problem is that he has a flawed understanding of the genetics of race and the genetics of IQ, and underestimates the importance (and deleteriousness) of disparate-outcomes ideology in public policy. All things being equal though, even if we cannot convert him, Cowen would be a far better enemy than most.

Anonymous said...

Steve
this is from the Marginal Revolution site -
I think the argument here makes a lot of sense - there is no sense arguing against the importation of tons of cheap labor - instead point out that 20 million illiterate impoverished people from china will work just as cheaply as the 20 million illiterates from south of the border. Why argue with every middle class person in america that wants cheap labor? Instead make sure the 20 million people that come in are from China. Future generations will thank us since the USA with a massive number of Chinese will be a much better place than a usa with massive numbers of latins. Again, let's fight a battle we can win


_

The Chinese that moved here 120 years ago overwhelmingly have offspring that earn above average incomes and pay above average taxes. These folks have far above average IQs

the latin americans that moved here 120 years ago overwhelmingly have offspring that earn below average incomes and pay below average taxes. These folks have far below average IQs

Does it really matter whether the low IQs of the latin americans living in america for 120 years are due to genetics or culture or what? I put forth that it doesn't matter.

We as a nation have a clear simple track record of turning Chinese immigrants in to successes.

If the powers that be in this country demand 20 million new immigrants who will work for low wages, and the feminist professors that share the faculty lounge with Tyler insist on millions of new immigrants willing to work as nannies and house cleaners for low wages (and they do, for obvious reasons) then there is no way that anyone can win an argument against immigration. Don't fight a battle you can't win.

The fix is in - there is a concensus of the powerful in America, both left and right, Democrat and Republican, that there will be a massive inflow of cheap immigrant workers.

The only question is, where will those cheap immigrant workers come from? If we as a nation import 20 millino impoverished North Chinese peasants, the powerful folks in America will get their cheap nannies, gardeners, and cleaning women. But the children of these Chinese will eventually go to medical school and engineering school, and they will NOT be a burden on our welfare system

If instead we import 20 million impoverished latin americans, we get generation after generation of high school dropouts and people who take more in government services than they pay in taxes.

This has nothing at all to do with african americans. Speaking as an african american man, I just can't understand why the people who understand the truth about race and iq are bothering with african americans. I mean there is no debate - there is no group arguing for 20 million more blacks to move to america. The IQ of african americans is just not relevant.

What is relevant is, powerful whites want 20 million cheap servants. The powerful whites WILL get what they want. It is in the interest of black american citizens and of white american citizens to make sure that the 20 million new immigrants come from China and not from latin america.

All of us, black and white, are on the same side here. Or we should be on the same side. This is our country, we built it together. We can't fight the powerful in their desire for 20 million cheap servants. Let's not even try. But let's make sure the 20 million new americans are chinese peasants and not latin peasants

sj071 said...

'You may know that some nations -- basically the wealthy ones -- have higher IQs than the poor nations.'

Steve, we all agree that there is a world of difference between various gene pools but, trouble is that 'some' nations are BROKE! (Spot the Similarities!) while savvy ones are victims of our laughable Propaganda

Money qoute: 'In truth, such funds are nothing for Americans or Europeans to fear. If anyone should worry about them, it’s the people whose governments are amassing them. That’s because governments tend to be terrible at managing money that is best left in the hands of private citizens.'

Quick! Emperor's bum is showing!

Ed Campion said...

John McWhorter : "professional racists like Steve Sailer"
Glass half-full: at least you're a professional.
Sidebar: McWhorter's co-blogging-head Farai Chideya wrote one of the towering masterpiece's of statistical innumercay caled Don't Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans; this Harvard magna-cum-laude couldn't find a standard deviation if it bit her on the nose. I had to read it for corporate diversity indoctrination.

Chief Seattle said...

The HBD critics don't realize that the alternative explanation is even worse - White Americans are such subtle and powerful racists that they can prevent Black achievement without even trying.

Mencius Moldbug said...

If I do say so my self, it's definitely been a rough week for the George Mason School...

Kevin Jaeger said...

I just read the Cowen piece. Is this guy usually this devoid of intellect for God's sake, so weak in his reasoning?
No, he is usually smart, rational and offers well-informed, reasoned arguments on most topics. But like much of academia and the chattering classes in general they recognize when they are approaching crimethink and turn their brains off.

Babbling incoherently or going silent on certain topics is the price of admission in his milieu, so a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do. I'm not sure why he posts on the topic at all - every time he does his commenters point out how stupid he sounds.

testing99 said...

After Jeremiah Wright, "Wise Latina Woman" Sotomayor, President Obama's attendance at Trinity and with Wright for more than 20 years, Father Eminem/Pfleger, ACORN, Attorney General Eric Holder ("All White people are racist cowards") ...

The charge of racism or being a racist is as meaningless as being an Albigensian Heretic.

Anonymous said...

The point of intellectual debate should be to honestly address the issue. It may not be what we want to hear, ex IQ differences among races. It should be considered more vile to cheat the discussion than to tell unpleasant truths. It's not. McWhorter probably thinks of himself as a teller of harsh truths so he should have a little respect.

Unknown said...

Steve needs a legal defense fund or really good lawyers with steel cajones willing to work pro bono.

His deadliest opponents have no interest in the truth, only in winning and making/keeping him a pariah like David Duke. That he has no malevolent intentions doesn't matter.

Lenin's maxim is one they fight by:
'In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent's argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth.'

OneSTDV said...

In about 95% of articles arguing against the hereditarian side, they mention the Flynn Effect as the one of the most promising ways of reducing the racial gap.

Do any of them realize the Flynn Effect hasn't been observed in since the mid-90's in industrial countries (and began reducing significantly about 40 years ago)?

Anonymous said...

"No one is more universally reviled than the person who threatens to overturn the conventional wisdom."

...or the prevailing liberal paradigm.

headache said...

More of the same old babbling by Cowen to make himself feel morally superior. Amazing what lengths some people go to in order to get the moral edge. Why not just come out and say that "I want to be morally superior to you because it boosts my ego, so I will call you a racist because that works best nowadays".

Anonymous said...

Actually, that is not a very objectionable comment by Cowen. He was asked to say "Why Sailer is Wrong" and, after first protesting that he was unqualified for the task, made a rather weak series of points and said that Sailer did a good job of skewering hypocrisy. It's a long way from calling Sailer a professional racist.

Anonymous said...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/30308959/?slide=16

That's interesting. The #1 debtor nation is Ireland, which owes 8X GDP (a whopping $550k per capita).

A lot of people have been using the recent "Irish miracle" to disprove stereotypes about the Irish. But what if it's actually built on sand and borrowing...and the stereotypes have something to them?


Also -- with the exception of Hong Kong, the top 15 nations are basically the US + Northwestern Europe! I expected France, Germany, Spain, and the UK -- but it's pretty amazing to see Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway up there.

And Hong Kong's debt doesn't matter because China is likely the #1 creditor.

The West is coasting on fumes. It is pushed way beyond the breaking point on all kinds of indexes. I'm not sure when the inflection point will be, but definitely within the next 30 years or so the world will belong to China.

Anonymous said...

I'm publishing this as anonymous just because I think it's probably not a great idea for me to be as publicly sympathetic to your thinking as I'm about to be here.

I'm not a conservative. I'm decidedly to the left on most issues. Virtually every black believes that they even today encounter not insignificant prejudice in the world and I am willing to take them at their word. Putting an African American sounding name on a resume leads to inferior outcomes. I believe some level of affirmative action is appropriate.

I am skeptical of science that shows large cognitive differences across racial groups. I am skeptical for the same reason that many are skeptical of the science showing global warming. Climate scientists and racial psychometricians have both cried wolf in the not to distant past.

I am skeptical but I am not dismissive. And this is where I grow deeply uncomfortable with the left and center. This is not how science works. 'Race realists' for all their faults provide a well researched parsimonious explanation for inequality of outcomes.

These arguments should be engaged on the level of their merits. I am unconvinced by the arguments at this point (I admit that I am probably overzealous in the level of proof I demand), but they are not ridiculous, and the fact that it is taboo to even engage in arguments for such an obvious explanation is stifling.

I suspect that others micro-expectations about intellect has a large impact on intelligence. Maybe this is true, maybe this is not, but it's difficult to determine when serious inquiry is impossible because of taboos. Everything becomes like a drug effectiveness study sponsored by the drug makers where the wrong result will just be disposed of.

keypusher said...

Actually, that is not a very objectionable comment by Cowen. This comment (by me) is stupid, I now realize. I followed the link back and I see that Cowen actually selected "Why Steve Sailer is wrong" from a long list of topics to address provided by his readers.

Why he chose this topic when he had nothing to say about it is still a mystery, though.

tommy said...

Comments have been closed on MR, but I would have liked to say:

I very much expect that we will instead learn more about the importance of the individual genome and that variations within "groups" (whether defined in terms of race or not) are where the traction liesVariations within groups are already acknowledged. That's what the normal distribution is all about. Questions such as whether the bell curve of group A is shifted further to the left or the right than group B or whether group A or group B has a "flatter" or "sharper" bell curve are what interest racialists. These are strong predictors of collective outcomes in education and the economy.

I also think that IQ will be shown to be more multi-dimensional than we now think.I think you are implicitly saying that g doesn't mean much in the real world. Since it isn't that important, IQ minimizers need to come up with an explanation as to why it is almost impossible to find people with low IQ scores in diverse fields that everyone would acknowledge require some kind of brains. You will not find below average IQ scores--or even IQ scores that are merely a few points above average--among physicists, mathematicians, hedge fund managers, English Lit professors, economists, computer programmers, Fortune 500 CEOs, geneticists, chess grandmasters, doctors, or lawyers. These are all very different professions and yet those other yet-to-be-identified factors you mention don't seem to compensate for not having a sufficiently high IQ.

But IQ is endogenous to environment, as evidenced by the Flynn Effect, namely the general rise in IQ scores with each generation.The evidence for the Flynn Effect and its meaning is much debated. I recommend reading GNXP, Chris Brand, and Linda Gottfredson for some alternative takes on the subject. Needless to say, critics don't find Flynn's evidence for a real rise in g compelling.

But racism itself is far, far more harmful, whether in the course of previous history or still today.This hasn't been proven. High IQ minorities like Chinese-Americans have prospered even in the face of racism and with minimal government assistance. Low IQ minorities like Mexican-Americans have failed to succeed while facing less blatant discrimination and while receiving tremendous assistance from the government.

Svigor said...

Again, let's fight a battle we can win

Worst Idea Ever (your concept of victory is upended). Not only are NE Asians far better equipped than mestizos to displace whites, the churn (need to import new slaves to replace the upwardly-mobile ones) would be far higher.

But it DOES make sense from a black POV, since mestizos are direct competitors, and NE Asians aren't.

The charge of racism or being a racist is as meaningless as being an Albigensian Heretic.

'Cept the Albigensians aren't facing a crusade, and we are.

A lot of people have been using the recent "Irish miracle" to disprove stereotypes about the Irish. But what if it's actually built on sand and borrowing...and the stereotypes have something to them?

All I know is I started out admiring the Irish, and Irish-Americans, and after going through the politics gauntlet since 2001, I can't stand them. And this is NOT due to WN or Euro ethnic nationalist writing, which all seems to give them a pass. No, it's from personal observations.

Right-minded Irish, Irish-Americans, and Americans of Irish ancestry (God bless their poor souls) excepted.

FD: 1/4 Irish here.

tommy said...

Probably the least insightful comment among many strong contenders is the one from "Ed" claiming that he gets to know every black person he encounters on an individual basis and, therefore, nobody should care about group differences in intelligence. Either Ed doesn't have any kids or he is claiming to have met every black family in his child's school district.

My favorite comment comes from Glaivester:

"By the same token, we will realize that global warming is a silly thing to worry about, because the amount that the climate will warm is much smaller than the day-to-day variation in temperature in any particular place."

Very true and maybe Tyler believes that IQ doesn't matter because the quality of his own reasoning seems to vary significantly from topic to topic.

Anonymous said...

A lot of people have been using the recent "Irish miracle" to disprove stereotypes about the Irish. But what if it's actually built on sand and borrowing...and the stereotypes have something to them?


The Irish are genetically close cousins to the Scots (the Irish settled Scotland about a thousand years ago) and slightly more distant cousins to the English. So the only thing built on sand is the sterotype that the Irish are genetically inferior stock. I'm afraid you'll have to find a different rationale for your sterotype.

ben tillman said...

"By the same token, we will realize that global warming is a silly thing to worry about, because the amount that the climate will warm is much smaller than the day-to-day variation in temperature in any particular place."

Priceless. Ii wish I'd thought of that.

Anonymous said...

Hello "race-realists" I have come over to this blog from the Tyler Cowen blog because he seems to have shut down the comments on his "Why Steve Sailer Is Wrong" piece.

Cards on the table time. I am a liberal progressive (at least I hope that is the right translation into American because I am British and we don't use those terms in the same way) BUT I am more than happy to deal with this issue of race and IQ head on (unlike poor Tyler).

It is obvious that intelligence, like everything else, has a genetic component. But what I would like to understand is the exact nature of the claims that you are making so I can make my mind up about them.

Nobody seems to dispute the longstanding difference in the IQ scores of "blacks", "Asians" and "whites" in the USA. So we are left to explain it. Your claim, as I understand it, is that this represents genetic differences between these populations. So in simple terms (most?) whites and Asians have the "smart gene" or genes and (most?) blacks don't.

The alternative view is that people came out of Africa X thousand years ago and haven't changed much since. Differences in IQ are therefore accounted for by socio-economic factors. The main (only?) basis of your argument against this seems to be the persistence of the gap in IQ tests between blacks and whites in the US. So as I understand it your theory is that at some point AFTER people came out of Africa certain populations in Europe and Asia came under selective pressure for intelligence.

Fair enough, that is an empirical claim and we will see (or do some of you believe that someone has already discovered the underlying genetic basis of these differences?). But how do these theories stack up against the facts as we know them now?

For example in the UK, achievement on school test results (I imagine this would correlate with IQ) does show a clear relationship with ethnicity/race. Children of Indian origin do best, then African, white, West Indian, Pakistani with the worst results by poor whites. My point is that presumably Indians and Pakistanis and Africans and West Indians, and definitely middle class and poor whites are from the same "race" according to you guys? So on your theory what explains the big differences in outcomes of the groups in the UK?

And in the US, my understanding of race would be that the original inhabitants of the Americas have a NE Asian origin. So why do Latin Americans have lower scores than Chinese in the US?

Anonymous said...

(continued)

And as we are talking about long time scales I wonder whether Romans would have scored higher on IQ tests than the German tribes then living in the forest? And what about German and Italian immigrants to the US in the early 20th Century?

Let's take next the Olympics 100m sprint which is dominated by "black" runners. If you were simplistic you would say "blacks" were better at running. But this is not true. Genetically a certain susbset of people of West African origin (the slaves taken to North America and the West Indies were taken from specific places in West Africa) have genes which give them more fast twitch muscle fibres. So if trained as Olympic athletes they can run the 100m in 9.7 seconds instead of 10 seconds.

Conversely "blacks" also dominate the distance events. But here there is another very specific population involved. For example, in the Boston Marathon (the premiere world marathon) It is not "blacks" but Kenyans and a very specific group of Kenyans from the Kalenjin region along the western rim of the Great Rift Valley, adjacent to Lake Victoria that have won it since 1990. So there are specific genetic explanations for certain specific outcomes, but I don't see this kind of explanation in your theory.

Here is a theory for you. As the home of homo sapiens, Africa is the most genetically diverse continent. Therefore the people with the genetic potential to be the fastest or indeed the smartest or the "anythingest" will be found somewhere in Africa.

Lastly there are lots of things which I do not understand about what you think is happening genetically right now. Let's take the example of mixed race children. As I understand it their IQs are the average of white and black scores. But don't you find that interesting? There are very few genetic traits that work like that. If you have a blue eyed and brown eyed parent you don't get bluey-brown eyed kids. Why shouldn't mixed race kids inherit the "smart gene" from one side or the other and cluster to one side or the other?

What about the Flynn effect (whether it has stopped or not)? How do you explain that whites in 1950 score lower than whites in 1990? Is selection for intelligence happening now? And if so are black Americans and white Americans not living in the same environment under the same selective pressures? And if not, are you not admitting that environmental effects are more important.

So while I agree that this debate is surrounded in hypocrisy, you guys are actually having an easy time of it because people are too scared to engage you in this whole debate. I simply don't understand the argument you are making in genetic terms. You are just correlating a score on a specific test with a very loose population category. Until you find the "gene or genes for IQ" and their distribution you need to admit that all you have is a theory, and it seems to me, a theory based on a very specific socio-economic context.

To me, it seems as idiotic to rule out the obvious socio-economic factors in all of this as it is to ignore the IQ test results. So please prove that you are not simply redneck racists dressing up your arguments in pseudo-science.

Anonymous said...

(sorry my post was too long so missed a bit in the middle which was)

In world terms do Bangladeshis or Indians have lower scores than Koreans or Japanese? What about Malaysians and Phillipinos? It seems like you guys have a lot of explaining to do about exactly which populations came under selective pressure when and where. Did the smart gene get selected for in one place and then spread, or in several places? Are Chinese people smart in a different way based on different genes to Europeans?

Anonymous said...

But what I would like to understand is the exact nature of the claims that you are making so I can make my mind up about them. You seem like an intelligent and open minded person. Rather than hash everything out in a comment section, I would suggest you read this one paper:

http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/PDF/nrn0604-GrayThompson.pdf

When the smoke clears, I don't think all of Richard Lynn's data will hold up. But I do think the magnitude of the relationship between brain imaging and IQ is very compelling and hard to refute.

Josh said...

Anonymous

"So we are left to explain it. Your claim, as I understand it, is that this represents genetic differences between these populations."

I think recent research suggests that 7% or more of all our genes are mutant versions that replaced earlier variants through natural selection over the last tens of thousands of years. There was little gene flow between continental clusters ("races") during that period, so there is circumstantial evidence for group differences beyond the already established ones (superficial appearance, disease resistance).

What seems to be true (from preliminary studies) is that the gene variants that were under strong selection (reached fixation) over the last 10k years are different in different clusters. That is, the way that modern people in each cluster differ, due to natural selection, from their own ancestors 10k years ago is not the same in each cluster -- we have been, at least at the genetic level, experiencing divergent evolution.

For example, you see new versions of SLC6A4, a serotonin transporter, in Europeans and Asians. There’s a new version of a gene (DBA1) that shapes the development of the layers of the cerebral cortex in east Asia.

There is a recent of some recent papers here:

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/005501.html

jOSH said...

Anon,

I'd also recommend this interview series with Greg Cochran authoer of 'The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution'.

2B: You and Henry assert that populations that adopted agriculture were much influenced by the development, and in non-insignificant, deep-in-the-biochemistry sorts of ways. What would your favorite examples of those adaptations be?

GC: Metabolic/diet changes like lactose tolerance, many changes in genes involved with defense against infectious disease, many changes in genes that affect hearing and smell, changes in neurotransmitters and related genes that most likely influence personality, changes in genes involved with the regulation of nerve connections and brain growth.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous British Progressive,

Is there something more specific you can tell us about the ethnic background of those groups? Do you have any observations of the fine-grained nature of achievement, groups that strike you as uncommonly successful or the opposite?

Anonymous said...

Differences in IQ are therefore accounted for by socio-economic factors. The main (only?) basis of your argument against this seems to be the persistence of the gap in IQ tests between blacks and whites in the US.


I disagree with this description. The black/white IQ difference in the US is only one tiny part of the evidence for racial IQ differences. That these differences are persistent across socio-economic boundaries is seen by the fact that some of the highest IQ populations, Asians, are rather poor by Western standards.

In other words, you are arguing against a strawman.

The evidence for racial IQ differences is vastly more conclusive than that for, e/g. global warming.

Now, I think some of the IQ "true believers" hang too much on their (correct) premises. It is not obvious to me that IQ measures anything which is of particular value. For all their high IQ, Asian nations are not noted for their creativity, or for constructing the sort of society which even Asians desire to live in. I don't think that IQ is the measure of man, as some of the IQ fetishists here seem to.

But they are correct about the basic facts of racial IQ differences.

Anonymous said...

please prove that you are not simply redneck racists dressing up your arguments in pseudo-science.


Please prove to us that you are worth our time talking to.

Moronic remarks such as this argue against it.

nsam said...

steve

2009 may be the year when you finally and deservedly get wider attention.

to newcomers: Welcome to the steveosphere. You will gain much by spending serious time/effort reviewing and understanding points made on this blog over the last few years before repeating the obvious or spouting nonsense (and people usually wont even bother to tell you that).

Steve is a very friendly guy who is gifted with (or attained)a strong dose of lateral thinking and isn't afraid to tell it like he sees it. Its not really about liberal vs. conservative here.. its more about reality vs. wishful thinking.

I am fairly sure that the average IQ on this blog is north of 115 (but I expect it to come down in the coming months as Steve gains a wider audience).

Anonymous said...

Let's take the example of mixed race children. As I understand it their IQs are the average of white and black scores. But don't you find that interesting? There are very few genetic traits that work like that.


Again, remarks like this suggest to me that you are not intellectually equipped to have this discussion. The majority of racial traits work "like that", which is why American "blacks" are brown compared to African blacks.

Contrary to what you seem to think, none of this is racist pseudo-science. Humans have been using these principles for thousands of years to create all the different breeds of dogs, for example. The same is true for the horse and all the other domesticated animals. We can, and do, breed other species for intelligence. It would be scentifically peculiar if humans were not subject to the same genetic rules.

Anonymous said...

In world terms do Bangladeshis or Indians have lower scores than Koreans or Japanese?



Yes, they do. In future, do your own research.

It seems like you guys have a lot of explaining to do about exactly which populations came under selective pressure when and where.



Why? Why don't you have a lot of explaining to do about the fact that different peoples have different IQ's, in defiance of your theory that they should not have?

B322 said...

Dear Wordy Anonymous:

You wrote, "I am a liberal progressive (at least I hope that is the right translation into American because I am British..." If you are drawn to the Lib-Dems or new Labour than "liberal progressive" describes you nicely. You could also say "center-leftist", but most Yanks will scratch their heads if you say "moderate Fabian".

This article at GNXP may answer a lot of your questions, probably better than what I'm about write.

The best and most concise explanation I've had for the connections between IQ, genetics, and geography is: a few-century history of evolution in cold environments tends to raise IQ somewhat, but much more the denser the population is. Modern urban population densities are not required - just a population that is too dense to be fed by subsistence farming or even by simple direct sale by farmers at market places. Modern cities are unprecedented in complexity, but a medieval city is more of a feat to keep alive over a winter. Warm climates simply lack the vicious culling of the dim by nature.

This explains why Eskimos are the third smartest of the ten clusters - it's cold up there and a lot of planning is required - but they aren't very near Europeans or East Asians. Not all of East Asia is population-dense, but the areas that aren't (north of Manchuria, basically) are extremely low in population density ... thus the Yakuts and Mongolians are more or less overwhelmed by the Han and Manchus.

Nature's vicious culling is backed up by mate-selection patterns, in which the personality types which tend to freeze or starve in the winter time become disfavored as spouses. Mate-selection (arranged or not) tended to be quite distinctive in high-pop cold areas.

B322 said...

My point is that presumably Indians and Pakistanis and Africans and West Indians, and definitely middle class and poor whites are from the same "race" according to you guys?I'm not sure what you're getting at here ... if you're just reasserting that environment plays its role, no one is arguing with you. Races are genetically quite distinct from each other, and subgroups of a given race are genetically somewhat distinct from each other. I would expect Caribbean blacks to have somewhat higher IQ than West Africans, because the former are both more admixed with Europeans and indigenous people, and because the former haven't had as many harsh famine-causing civil wars in the recent past.

Until you find the "gene or genes for IQ" and their distribution you need to admit that all you have is a theory, and it seems to me, a theory based on a very specific socio-economic context. There are a tremendous number of genes that influence IQ. Razib knows like a hundred times more about this than I do.

To me, it seems as idiotic to rule out the obvious socio-economic factors in all of this as it is to ignore the IQ test results.Sure. I hope you study modern views of IQ enough to see that no race-realists are doing this.

And as we are talking about long time scales I wonder whether Romans would have scored higher on IQ tests than the German tribes then living in the forest?I don't think we have any real idea about IQs back then; according to my pet theory it would be a tossup because the Germans survived in harsher environments but the Romans had to organize themselves to allow their farmers to feed comparatively large urban populations.

If you were simplistic you would say "blacks" were better at running. But this is not true. Genetically a certain susbset of people of West African origin (the slaves taken to North America and the West Indies were taken from specific places in West Africa) have genes which give them more fast twitch muscle fibres.Are you basing this on the idea that it's mainly African and Caribbean blacks who dominate sprinting, not the current populations of West Africa? I think this is wrong. I think Angolans, Nigerians, etc. are strongly represented among sprinters.

Here is a theory for you. As the home of homo sapiens, Africa is the most genetically diverse continent. Therefore the people with the genetic potential to be the fastest or indeed the smartest or the "anythingest" will be found somewhere in Africa.Okay, a fine theory, but you can't find any African countries with high IQs, or any sub-Saharan countries with moderate IQs. Immigrants to the UK are never going to be a reasonable representation of their nations of origin. They must have some wealth/ education/ connections to make the trip, i.e., they are high-caste. The reason the high East Asian IQ assertion is considered robust is that Chinese-Americans and other EA immigrants to the US share high IQs with the current populations of China, Korea, etc. The same can't be said for the children of central African diplomats, etc.

Explaining away low IQs in SSA by environment is going to be pretty hard until you can show that there environments are harsher than, say, Cambodia/Laos in recent decades, the Yukon at any old time, Eastern Europe while the Jews were growing their big IQs and getting burned out of house and home, etc.

Let's take the example of mixed race children. As I understand it their IQs are the average of white and black scores.... If you have a blue eyed and brown eyed parent you don't get bluey-brown eyed kids. Why shouldn't mixed race kids inherit the "smart gene" from one side or the other and cluster to one side or the other? Too many genes affect IQ. The Razib post at Inductivist is pretty clear on this one, especially with me in the role of (ignorant) Socratic student.

AMac said...

Anonymous Progressive Brit who posted here on 5/30 after coming to iSteve from Tyler Cowen's MR site --

Thanks for the open-minded approach you bring to the human biodiversity (HBD) issue. I won't presume to answer your many good queries, but here are a few pointers.

As to intelligence, "g", people working in the field seem rather clear that it is largely inherited and largely the result of environmental influences. Say about half and half. This is anathema to the prevailing Blank Slate orthodoxy, which argues that intelligence must not and therefore does not have a significant heritable component.

One thing to keep in mind in this debate is that how influences on "g" (or any trait) are apportioned is greatly influenced by the characteristics of the sample under study. At one extreme, intra-identical-twin differences are almost entirely environmental. Differences between Australian Aboriginals and Finns (etc.) could be expected to have a larger heritable basis.

It is clear in general that "g" is not a characteristic that is controlled by one or a few genes. There are dozens to hundreds of genes that each contribute. Further, the contributions may not be additive, such that allele A1 of gene A might lead to (slightly) higher "g" in the presence of allele B1 of gene B, but (slightly) lower intelligence in the presence of allele B2. One should thus be skeptical of "Aha!" news stories that claim that "the intelligence gene" has just been discovered. Unlikely.

There may be exceptions to this general rule, such as the theory floated by Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending that a some recent mutations may account for a significant proportion of the high IQ character of the Ashkenazi Jewish population. Wikipedia link to sources here. Their assertions are readily translated into testable hypotheses; whether the Blank Slatists will allow/fund such observational experiments remains to be seen. This has been lucidly discussed in the comments of the blog GNXP; perhaps another reader can direct to that Haloscan page. GNXP's posts labeled 'IQ' may offer helpful background in general.

Other useful background for considering theories about the distribution of "g" in various groups may be provided by Nicholas Wade's book Before the Dawn, though it only discusses the topic in passing. The recent book The 10,000 Year Explosion offers provocative theories about human evolution (including but not limited to "g") since the first invention of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent.

Your comments about the distinction between East African and West African runners' records will not surprise iSteve readers. Sailer's many articles on the subject can be accessed here. In my opinion, explanations for these performance profiles that embrace HBD are more sensible and parsimonious than those that do not.

Geneticist Danial MacArthur has blogged on the ACTN3 gene's influence on running, here.

For a typical doubleplusgoodthink intellectual's perspective on this subject, see Greg Laden's post. Note how difficult it is for many HBD denialists to discuss relevant topics without playing their "racist" trump card.

Hope these sources help you investigate this subject.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

To me, it seems as idiotic to rule out the obvious socio-economic factors in all of this as it is to ignore the IQ test results."

This comment is disingenous. It is the socio-economic factors that have been assumed to be the ONLY possible factor for the last forty years. It is this explanation which is the ONLY possible explanation that one is allowed to consider in our societies. And this is the ONLY factor which governments take into account when considering solutions to the many problems which some racial minorities always seem to have.

The possibility that some disparities between the races are genetically determined is the one factor which is not allowed to enter the conversation. And what many of us here have realized is that it actually has more explanatory and predictive power than all that tired old sociological clap-trap that you refer to.

But just consider this: if there is no intrinsic difference in the civilizational capacities of blacks, for example, relative to whites - absolutely none - then where in the whole wide world is that majority-black, black-run polity (city or nation) that you would want to live in. Name them. This exercise alone might provide you with some reason to suspect that there is more at work than just socio-economic considerations.

"So please prove that you are not simply redneck racists dressing up your arguments in pseudo-science."

Gosh, that's mighty generous of you. You mean we get the chance to submit our beliefs to the court of your opinion, and if Your Grace is so obliged, you will absolve us of the crime of racism.

Thanks, but shove it, pal.

Perhaps you should provide us with some evidence that you are not just an effete euro-leftist wiener.

Svigor said...

"By the same token, we will realize that global warming is a silly thing to worry about, because the amount that the climate will warm is much smaller than the day-to-day variation in temperature in any particular place."

Yeah, that's very good. I may rob you blind on that one Glaivester.

Mr Tripartite Anonymous, I hope you don't invest much ego in your arguments. I only read a few sentences, but something tells me "no". If yes, this is going to hurt.

B322 said...

What about the Flynn effect (whether it has stopped or not)? How do you explain that whites in 1950 score lower than whites in 1990?I explain it the same way everyone else does - improvements in prenatal care and micronutrients in typical diets.

Is selection for intelligence happening now?

Anti-intellectualism drives people away from smart mates. Pro-intellectualism has the opposite effect. Herrnstein & Murray talk in much more detail about cognitive stratification in The Bell Curve, which is usually delivered in a brown paper bag to make people think it's hardcore pornography.

And if so are black Americans and white Americans not living in the same environment under the same selective pressures?Largely the same environment, completely different cultures, which affect mate selection, which affect genetics in the future.

And if not, are you not admitting that environmental effects are more important.The Flynn Effect doesn't really get you anywhere. The B-W gap remains in IQ scores. Given poor enough nutrition, white kids will score as low as well-nourished black kids. I'd like to think that this is only a tongue-in-cheek suggestion for shrinking the B-W gap, but affirmative action does have the effect of reducing income in white families, so maybe the "impoverishing white nutrition" thing is at least an unconscious strategy on those who care more about the gap than they do about making things better. (My guess is most white families impoverished by AA will still feel their kids pretty well though.)

OneSTDV said...

"As the home of homo sapiens, Africa is the most genetically diverse continent."

This is a spurious claim from Marxists. This only applies to junk DNA. It's pretty obvious if you think about. In terms of physical characteristics, it's rather obvious blacks don't range the entire spectrum of hair color, eye color, skin color, hair texture, etc.

"What about the Flynn effect (whether it has stopped or not)? How do you explain that whites in 1950 score lower than whites in 1990?"

IQ tests don't just measure 'g' or innate intelligence. It has some measure of environment. So the increasingly technological tasks required of people in the 90's allow them to score betetr on the more rudimentary tasks. Fruther, the gains have largely unaffected the higher reaches of the Bell Curve, clearly implying the increases are not 'g' related. Put whites from the 50's in the 90's and the same stubborn 1 STDV gap will appear.

Lucius Vorenus said...

Svigor: All I know is I started out admiring the Irish, and Irish-Americans, and after going through the politics gauntlet since 2001, I can't stand them...

Care to elaborate?

ben tillman said...

Here is a theory for you. As the home of homo sapiens, Africa is the most genetically diverse continent. Therefore the people with the genetic potential to be the fastest or indeed the smartest or the "anythingest" will be found somewhere in Africa.Here is your argument:

Premise 1: Africa is the most genetically diverse continent.

Premise 2 (implied): The most genetically diverse continent must include ALL genetic diversity.

Conclusion: Therefore the people with the genetic potential to be the fastest or indeed the smartest or the "anythingest" will be found somewhere in Africa.

Premise 2 is false. Your argument is unsound.

i love science said...

in reply to " Anonymous said...Hello"

Let's step all the way back to the beginning of your comment. Forget about evolutionary explanations for group differences. Forget even about the question of the contribution of genetics to group differences. Start with the following:

1. Group differences exist in test scores.
2. Differences in test scores between groups (like differences within groups) reflect differences in g and other aspects of cognitive ability. That is, the differences are "real".
3. After a very young age, IQ becomes very resistant to environmental change, and becomes very stable over the rest of a lifetime.
4. After a young age, group differences become stable and are not amenable to environmental change.
5. Differences in cognitive ability have important and far-reaching real-world importance.

If you accept all 5 of these propositions, then you're pretty much done. Taken together, these 5 points mean that differences in outcomes between groups in a variety of measures are at least in part attributable to differences in cognitive ability. Seemingly most of the educational test score differences between groups are due to differences in cognitive ability. Likewise with differences in occupational outcomes. A lot of social pathologies seem to be explained in part by differences in cognitive ability, but not all of it.

The stability of these differences mean that most conceivable methods of social engineering will fail to eliminate these differences. Even if the root cause could be suddenly eliminated, there would be a many decades long lag as the effect worked its way through the population.

Note that all of these consequences do not depend at all on any discussion of genetics or evolution. These topics are mostly debates of academic interest, although they do attract popular attention which should be more rightly directed towards the points highlighted above where there is little if any disagreement on the science.

ben tillman said...

In world terms do Bangladeshis or Indians have lower scores than Koreans or Japanese? What about Malaysians and Phillipinos? It seems like you guys have a lot of explaining to do about exactly which populations came under selective pressure when and where. Did the smart gene get selected for in one place and then spread, or in several places?

There is no "smart gene". Many genes affect intelligence. But why do we have to explain anything about Malaysians? Or Bangladeshis?

ben tillman said...

So in simple terms (most?) whites and Asians have the "smart gene" or genes and (most?) blacks don't.

The alternative view is that people came out of Africa X thousand years ago and haven't changed much since. Differences in IQ are therefore accounted for by socio-economic factors.


"Therefore"? How is your last statement supposed to follow from your prior statements? You've left out one or more dubious premises. And where do "socio-economic factors" come from? Don't they come from genes?

Anonymous said...

To Liberal Progressive Brit:

A lot of the points you raise are either incorrect (e.g., most complex traits like intelligence or height are not mendelian in inheritance like eye color, but result from the interaction of many different genes and are distributed roughly normally in a population) or irrelevant. You will find that "race realists" believe that ethnic gaps result from the same sources that cause intragroup differences (i.e., genetics and environment) and that the emergence of differences in the ability distributions of different human groups is quite probable and logically follows if one accepts standard darwinian evolutionary theory. I recommend you read the following and then come back:

Steve's FAQs on race and IQ linked on Tylers site.

books:

The g-factor by Arthur R. Jensen (great intro to psychometrics as well as dealing with racial issues)

The 10,000 Year Explosion by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending (a good intro to population genetics and demonstrates how populations can change genetically in a relative short time - and summarizes the evidence therefor)

A Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clarke (an economic history that deals in part with the possibility of recent human evolution)

Also, look at the following articles:

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL2.pdf

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/Intelligence%20and%20How%20to%20Get%20It%20(Working%20Paper).pdf

http://www.bible-researcher.com/murray1.html

anything by Linda Gottfredson:
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/index.html

ben tillman said...

For example in the UK, achievement on school test results (I imagine this would correlate with IQ) does show a clear relationship with ethnicity/race. Children of Indian origin do best, then African, white, West Indian, Pakistani with the worst results by poor whites. My point is that presumably Indians and Pakistanis and Africans and West Indians, and definitely middle class and poor whites are from the same "race" according to you guys?

Sorry, you're not making sense.

Anonymous said...

"The Irish are genetically close cousins to the Scots (the Irish settled Scotland about a thousand years ago) and slightly more distant cousins to the English. So the only thing built on sand is the sterotype that the Irish are genetically inferior stock. I'm afraid you'll have to find a different rationale for your sterotype."


Actually, there's a lot more in the Scots background than Dalriadic Scots from Ireland. In fact, Irish settlement was much greater in the Highlands, which have never been the intellectual heart of Scotland. In any case, gene frequencies can shift rapidly due to selection caused by cultural changes. It quite possible for the frequencies of genes influencing g and time preference to change over the course of centuries and this has been posited in the case of the British and Europe in general (Clarke, Cochran and Harpending). As a relative cultural backwater, it is quite possible that Ireland did not undergo this process to the same extent during the middle ages and early modern times.

ben tillman said...

Is selection for intelligence happening now?

In some populations, and not in others.

And if so are black Americans and white Americans not living in the same environment under the same selective pressures?No.

And if not, are you not admitting that environmental effects are more important.

No. How would that follow?

Tom V said...

Anonymous:

Here is a theory for you. As the home of homo sapiens, Africa is the most genetically diverse continent. Therefore the people with the genetic potential to be the fastest or indeed the smartest or the "anythingest" will be found somewhere in Africa.

Your theory is clearly wrong. Africans do not have "genetic potential" (whatever that means) to have the lightest complexion or the straightest hair. But ah, those just superficial traits that only racists care about. Intelligence is different, or so sayeth the God of liberal creationism.

Your theory also fails in logic as well as in practice. Even assuming for the sake of argument that Africa is truly the "most diverse" continent (which is something of a red herring, see the last item in Cavalli-Sforza II: Seven Dumb Ideas about Race), it is less diverse than the sum of humanity the world over. Therefore, groups outside Africa should be superlative in some traits. I mentioned two above.

Your half-baked notion of "genetic potential," of which you assume that the original population has more, is the reverse of my understanding of random mutation and natural selection. Why stop at Homo sapiens, then? Since we all evolved from single-cell organisms, would you say that they have the "potential" to be fastest and smartest and anything'est? All that's keeping those critters down is poverty and lack of education, right?

I could go on, but it's pointless. According to you, when blacks are fastest, they're genetically gifted, but when they score the lowest, they are socio-economically disadvantaged, plus the onus is upon me to prove that I'm not an (Asian) "racist redneck." Why should I bother? I cannot reason you out of the conclusion that you were never reasoned into.

HJ said...

@Anon,

please read this article by Richard Lynn on the UK and immigrants IQ.
http://www.vdare.com/lynn/090520_race_differences.htm

"So while I agree that this debate is surrounded in hypocrisy, you guys are actually having an easy time of it because people are too scared to engage you in this whole debate"

If our arguments are so pitiful then why has no one challenged us?

Lol, lets give Steve Sailer a microscope and lab equipment. Its up to us to find genes for IQ. This sort of research doesn't take place b/c people know that they might find something to support race differences in intelligence, not that our arguments are faulty.

"In world terms do Bangladeshis or Indians have lower scores than Koreans or Japanese? What about Malaysians and Phillipinos? It seems like you guys have a lot of explaining to do about exactly which populations came under selective pressure when and where."

We have. Read anything by Charles Murray, Arthur Jensen, Linda Gottfredson, Richard Lynn, Rushton, etc. I highly recommend IQ and the Wealth of Nations by
Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen and The G factor by Arthur Jensen. Both are available on Googlebooks or Amazon.com.

Anon is obviously angry and therefore going to nitpick. Kenyan dominance of marathon running does not mean other sub-Saharan Africans have equal athletic qualities with Europeans and Orientals. It just means that within the sub-Saharan continuum, Kenyans are the best.

HJ said...

"Lastly there are lots of things which I do not understand about what you think is happening genetically right now. Let's take the example of mixed race children. As I understand it their IQs are the average of white and black scores. But don't you find that interesting? There are very few genetic traits that work like that. If you have a blue eyed and brown eyed parent you don't get bluey-brown eyed kids. Why shouldn't mixed race kids inherit the "smart gene" from one side or the other and cluster to one side or the other?"

Oh my God this is awful. Mixed race kids might not have hazel eyes but they are obviously a shade between white and black. Was that so hard?

Steve,
people are motivated by emotions. Its gotten to the point where too many people are emotionally invested in multiracialism in the West. There are tens of millions of non-whites and biracial people in North America and most of them come from 100> IQ stock(certain Orientals being the only exception). We might not have the genes which prove intelligence is unevenly distributed by race but should that matter? Would people do a complete 180 degree turn, throw up their hands if Nature magazine published something claiming this tomorrow? Or would people like Tyler Cowen continue to nitpick? What about the Minnesota Adoption Study? Isn’t that damnable evidence enough?

tommy said...

"So in simple terms (most?) whites and Asians have the "smart gene" or genes and (most?) blacks don't."

That is pretty simple. Many of us suspect that a tremendous percentage of the genome is involved in slight, difficult to measure variations in intelligence. Intelligence is too valuable to be invested in one or even a few dozen genes subject to mutation.

"The main (only?) basis of your argument against this seems to be the persistence of the gap in IQ tests between blacks and whites in the US."

No, certainly not only. There are differences in intelligence between Ashkhenazic Jews and Europeans, differences between Africans and African-Americans, differences between Asians and whites, differences between whites and Hispanics, and so forth.

"So on your theory what explains the big differences in outcomes of the groups in the UK?"

This is called the normal distribution (i.e. the bell curve). What race realists claim is that there are mean differences between, as Sailer would put it, those extended families we call races. We can of course divide any group of individuals into smaller groups given a criterion (like class, geography, ethnic groups, etc.). That doesn't change the fact that the differences between our original groups still exist.

The reason Indians and Pakistanis differ probably has to do with their different origins. Indians in the UK tend to be drawn disproportionately from the upper castes of India. The Pakistanis come disproportionately from the rural lower class of Pakistan.

"And in the US, my understanding of race would be that the original inhabitants of the Americas have a NE Asian origin. So why do Latin Americans have lower scores than Chinese in the US?"

That's a bit like asking why American Indians don't often have slant eyes...they're NE Asians after all! Therefore, almond eyes must not really exist. The thrust of your argument in both your UK and Indian-Chinese examples seems to be that because there are intra-racial differences, we can't really say anything at all about racial differences. Think about that.

"And as we are talking about long time scales I wonder whether Romans would have scored higher on IQ tests than the German tribes then living in the forest? And what about German and Italian immigrants to the US in the early 20th Century?"

Until we unravel the genetic basis of intelligence and then dig up some Romans and Goths, we cannot possibly know. We can be reasonably certain that the cognitive load faced by an average individual two thousand years ago was a lot lower than that faced by a denizen of modern civilization. Ancient civilizations probably were less dependent on a population with a high mean intelligence for their upkeep than today's industrialized nations. We might then assume that geography, climate, and historical peculiarities dictated which people were civilized and which were barbarous to a greater extent than they do today.

tommy said...

"Let's take next the Olympics 100m sprint which is dominated by "black" runners. If you were simplistic you would say "blacks" were better at running. But this is not true. Genetically a certain susbset of people of West African origin (the slaves taken to North America and the West Indies were taken from specific places in West Africa) have genes which give them more fast twitch muscle fibres. So if trained as Olympic athletes they can run the 100m in 9.7 seconds instead of 10 seconds."

At least you accept racial differences in athletic ability...

Many times I've encountered the fallacy that we cannot assert that group A is more X than group B because a member of group B is more X than any member of group A. This is the first time I've encountered the argument that we cannot assert that group A is more X than group B because there is a member of group A who is more X than other members of groups A or B. That's something new. It's fallacious, of course, but very novel!

"Here is a theory for you. As the home of homo sapiens, Africa is the most genetically diverse continent. Therefore the people with the genetic potential to be the fastest or indeed the smartest or the "anythingest" will be found somewhere in Africa."

That would explain why sub-Saharan Africa has such a diversity of eye color and hair texture. I suggest Rushton's "Race, Evolution, and Human Behavior" for an explanation as to why Africans' athletic abilities are linked to their cognitive deficiencies.

"There are very few genetic traits that work like that. If you have a blue eyed and brown eyed parent you don't get bluey-brown eyed kids."

I refer you to my comment as to why a large percentage of the genome is likely involved in intelligence. The expression of intelligence is certain to be more continuous than the expression of eye color.

"What about the Flynn effect (whether it has stopped or not)? How do you explain that whites in 1950 score lower than whites in 1990?"

Uggh...must we go through this one again....

"Is selection for intelligence happening now?"

Very possibly and probably not in the best direction.

"And if so are black Americans and white Americans not living in the same environment under the same selective pressures?"

No, not exactly.

"So while I agree that this debate is surrounded in hypocrisy, you guys are actually having an easy time of it because people are too scared to engage you in this whole debate."

Every argument you've made has been addressed numerous times. I refer you to Murray and Hernstein, Jensen, Rushton, Gottfredson, Seligman, and the rest.

"To me, it seems as idiotic to rule out the obvious socio-economic factors in all of this as it is to ignore the IQ test results.

FIrst of all, hereditarian arguments tend to make the case for 50% (or better) nature and 50% (or less) nurture.

To us, it seems idiotic to rule out heredity in explaining socio-economic factors.

"So please prove that you are not simply redneck racists dressing up your arguments in pseudo-science."

Please read the literature before proving you haven't read the literature.

"Until you find the "gene or genes for IQ" and their distribution you need to admit that all you have is a theory,"

Were Mendel's predictions about peas merely conjecture until we had isolated the specific genes that caused brown and green peas?

"and it seems to me, a theory based on a very specific socio-economic context."

The entire world could be included in your "very specific socio-economic context."

"It seems like you guys have a lot of explaining to do about exactly which populations came under selective pressure when and where."

The explanations have already been provided. Seek and you shall find.

Udolpho.com said...

wow, cowen's commenters seem as narrowly educated as he does...not going to answer a bunch of questions already well-covered in Steve's FAQ and elsewhere, but I did have one question for you: why do you spend time following a blog written by an economist who seems roughly representative of that profession's intellectual isolationism

Truth said...

"Africans do not have "genetic potential" (whatever that means) to have the lightest complexion or the straightest hair."

Of course they do, and it's been proven; it just takes 30,000 years in a cold environment.

Soul Searcher said...

To the British Liberal deemed Anonymous and Others,

I think some of you are mistaken about the extent of African genetic diversity. I'm not sure if I want to track the leg-work that has researched where all populations of slaves arrived after the Middle Passage, but I think that research will be very important in convincing those who still buy into the myth that Lynn, Jensen, et. al use skin-color as their primary proxy for race in their studies. Anyway, I believe the 'averaging' of IQ statistics in multi-ethnic national populations and the fact that much of Africa doesn't possess the governmental infrastructure for much specificity in psychometric data masks the previous hypothesis. I also think the Bantu population expansion and their southward migration alongside their intermarriage/replacement of different groups might hide some of the diversity present. But I could be wrong, I'm not sure about the controversies. One of my textbooks believes that greater human diversity in Africa is a key prediction required by the out-of-Africa hypothesis. You also can't just toss away the objection by calling those differences "junk DNA", because because we are finding out that much of what was previously termed "junk DNA" has structural roles in myriad processes like DNA replication, mechanisms of alternative splicing, lots of epigenetic interactions that we are only beginning to uncover.

There is an amazing book written to learn from that I use, Human Evolutionary Genetics, by Jobling, Hurles, and Tyler-Smith, and it is excellent. Did you know that the claim that "there is no such thing as race" is basically, completely arbitrary? The criterion for this judgment is that the F_st, also known as the fixation index, and a measurement of diversity, should be greater than 30%, because that is a handy baseline in a lot of other animal populations. But that measurement doesn't tell you anything about the practical importance of those differences in modern economies! Humans are much less genetically diverse than other animals, YES, but our socities also extremely complex and single mutations (lactose tolerance) might "ripple" outward and cause huge cultural divergences between groups.

Svigor said...

Care to elaborate?Sure. I exaggerated. It's not that I can't stand them, it's more like they're this incredibly exasperating wayward child that won't grow up and seems determined to screw over his own family.

But I know that wasn't the kind of elaboration you wanted. :)

What I mean is, I read far too many Irish surnames in the wrong places. I'm not going to criticize this stuff when Jews do it, and pretend not to notice when Irish-Americans do it too.

Svigor said...

The evidence for racial IQ differences is vastly more conclusive than that for, e/g. global warming.

This kind of point doesn't get enough play, I think. Blank-slaters erect a constant barrage of disingenuous BS and you've pointed to a particularly large, er, patty. Blacks poor? Welfare will fix it! No evidence needed. Blacks poor? Discrimination! No evidence needed. Blacks discriminated against? AA will fix it! No evidence needed. Blacks have low mean IQ? The sole cause is nurture! No evidence needed. Racial differences in IQ largely nature, not nurture? The mountain of evidence is insufficient. We must have ironclad, irrefutable proof (and looking for that proof is immoral and will get you fired and ostracized), and should you find such proof, any attempt to even discuss policy ramifications will result in a trial for heresy.

The left has owned the goalposts for so long, they actually believe our kicker sucks, when in fact hitting moving targets all the time has made him the best there is.

When you step back and look at the wider picture, you can start to see how dishonest/self-deceptive these people really are. When it suits their purposes, they need no proof at all. Hell, they can string together two (discrimination/AA above) or more of these conspiracy theories and pump tens, hundreds of billions of dollars of our money into programs that take them as gospel. Again, when it serves their purposes, we have to prove everything, every step of the way. I wouldn't be surprised if we did so, then blank-slaters responded with "there's no proof for anything; prove we aren't living in the Matrix!"

Why? Why don't you have a lot of explaining to do about the fact that different peoples have different IQ's, in defiance of your theory that they should not have?

More in the same vein - we have to prove that differing environments led to varying selection pressures (the default assumption for any sane observer), but they don't have to prove that differing environments led to identical selection pressures (the default assumption of all blank-slaters, and no one who pays attention to Darwin).

Eastern Europe while the Jews were growing their big IQs and getting burned out of house and home, etc.

Eastern Europe while the Jews were growing their big IQs to figure out better ways of ruthlessly exploiting the peasantry without getting burned out of house and home, etc.

Fixed that for you.

This only applies to junk DNA.

I would add to Soul Searcher's points on diversity in Africa the fact that recent research is claimed to show that "junk DNA" is not. And the observation that bottlenecks tend to decrease diversity.

I cannot reason you out of the conclusion that you were never reasoned into.

Excellent pithy phrase, I'll be stealing that too.

"So while I agree that this debate is surrounded in hypocrisy, you guys are actually having an easy time of it because people are too scared to engage you in this whole debate"

If our arguments are so pitiful then why has no one challenged us?


Actually, we have it easy because we're choosing the right side of the argument. I've found that an excellent way to punch in a higher weight class. And there's a strong southpaw effect; the average race-realist has read far more blank-slate theory, and argued with far more blank-slaters, than vice-versa. So in a way, I agree. We're like the Maytag guy. I wish we could do something about that, but it's pretty hard. When you're banned/deleted/locked no matter how gently you approach the task, it becomes difficult to find intelligent opposition. But that's what happens when your tactics revolve ENTIRELY around marketing. Kinda disingenuous to whine about a circumstance made indispensible by your own tactical choices.

Anonymous said...

Irish settlement was much greater in the Highlands, which have never been the intellectual heart of Scotland. In any case, gene frequencies can shift rapidly due to selection caused by cultural changes. It quite possible for the frequencies of genes influencing g and time preference to change over the course of centuries ..


So, long story short, you're gonna believe what you darn well want to believe, evidence be damned. Got it.

Anonymous said...

What I mean is, I read far too many Irish surnames in the wrong places.


That's a surprisingly silly way to conduct analysis, for a super smart guy like you. The fact is that the political class as a whole loves open borders. You can "prove" that any ethnic group under the sun favors them, simply by looking at the surnames of politicians. You're making a basic logical error.

The two most damaging open borders advocates of recent times have been named Bush and McCain. This does not "prove" that Anglo-Americans and Scots-Irish are pro-open borders as a whole.

You can do better than this. It's almost like this is cover for your criticism of Jews. (Which is much more on point.)

Anonymous said...

In any case, gene frequencies can shift rapidly due to selection caused by cultural changes.



I'm inclined to think this is the case, although it's not as certain as you make it out to be.

Assuming it's true, it undermines a lot of the case that gets made here for genetic determinism.

The Scots shifted from being a benighted cultural backwater to being on the cutting edge of European intellectual life in the span of a century. (Arguably the same thing occurred with Jews.) Who's to say the same won't happen with American blacks or Hispanics?

Of course it would be foolish to change the ethnic composition on the assumption that it will happen. And their are considerations of equal or greater importance than IQ. But things are not as set in stone as some here suggest.

flex05 said...

Hello again "racial realists". First, apologies for my rather rambling three posts late last night. And thanks for the replies, even the sarcastic and contemptuous ones ;). I have read many of the links posted. They should allow me to express my points more clearly now.

So my main point is this: if the difference in IQ between one person and another is approximately 50% heritable it is still logically false to conclude that the difference between the average IQ of blacks, Asians and whites is due to genes. As I hope I already made clear I regard that as an empirical matter that will be proven or disproven. Nearly all of you give the impression that you regard this matter as closed.

Rightly or wrongly, the views you have require you to adopt a higher standard of rigour than those who hold other views. In general many of you seem to do this. That makes it all the more jarring when others of you mix speculation, theory and fact.

It seems to me that it is very hard to disentangle socio-economic and genetic factors. For example, several of you looked directly for a socio-economic explanation for the clear differences in educational attainment between children of Indian and Pakistani origin in the UK and in fact there is an obvious one. For various contingent historical reasons Indian immigrants to UK tended to be professionals while Pakistani immigrants tended to be poor and rural textile workers. So I don't therefore see how you could rule out a similar type of explanation with the white colonial and black slave populations in the US unless you assume the racial differences that you are trying to prove beforehand.

I hope that most of you would agree that saying that all current black populations have lower IQ scores than whites does not resolve the question as we don't have a socio-economically advantaged black population as a control. Now, some of you draw the obvious conclusion that these things are linked but again this is a hypothesis. The IQ and the wealth of nations data seems to support the socio-economic theory at least as much as racial theories especially as all poor countries have a low IQ while not all poor countries have the same racial composition (far from it).

Similarly my questions about the IQ scores of various different nationalities and different genes for different athletic abilities was an attempt to understand at what level you aggregrate at. Unfortunately reading Steve Sailer's piece on race did not enlighten me. He seemed to say that you could aggregrate at any level you wish, which is fine, but why then keep agregrating at the level of "black"? You wish to separate Malaysians and Chinese because they score differently on IQ tests but you wish to lump all "blacks" together when it is obvious even in external appearance that there are very different populations in Africa.

And moving onto more specuative matters I am interested in why some of you seem to believe that cold climates would select more for intelligence. Didn't homo sapiens from Africa decisively out compete Ice Age adapted Neanderthals? And my reading of work on prehistory implies that homo sapiens struggled at first to adapt after the Ice Ages and all that easy big game. What I have read also leads me to believe that prehistoric Europe seems to have been a particularly rich and varied environment. In fact you could just as easily argue that rich and varied environments would select more for intelligence, although of course you would again run into those "annoying" socio-economic factors.

B322 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tommy said...

What I mean is, I read far too many Irish surnames in the wrong places. I'm not going to criticize this stuff when Jews do it, and pretend not to notice when Irish-Americans do it too.I agree with you. Irish Catholics are a strange breed and while I enjoy a great many of them personally and recognize a good number of exceptions to cynical and often whiny Irish-American leftism, I suspect they've been a net minus for the white America.

Josh said...

"When the smoke clears, I don't think all of Richard Lynn's data will hold up."

Most of Lynn's critics seem to have gone into hiding since the TIMSS data came out. Seems Lynn's figures were spot on.

Rindermann, H. (2007a). The g-factor of international cognitive ability comparisons: The homogeneity of results in PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and IQ-tests across nations. European Journal of Personality, 21, 667-706.
Rindermann, H. (2007b).

At the macro-social level cognitive competence is more important than economic liberty for the economic growth of nations (Rindermann, 2008a) and it is more important than wealth for the democratic development of countries (Rindermann, 2008b). And intelligence seems to be a sensible measure of development up to indicating failing societies.


Rindermann, H. (2008a). Relevance of education and intelligence at the national level for the economic welfare of people. Intelligence, 36, 127-142.

Rindermann, H. (2008b). Relevance of education and intelligence for the political development of nations: Democracy, rule of law and political liberty. Intelligence, 36, 306-322.

Rindermann, H. (2008b). Relevance of education and intelligence for the political development of nations: Democracy, rule of law and political liberty. Intelligence, 36, 306-322.

Josh said...

Anon,

I referred to an interview series with Greg Cochran which discussed recent human evolution (in the context of the book he co-authored 'The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution'). Here is the link to the five part series. It's very interesting.

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/01/5-part_interview_with_greg_coc.php

juandos said...

Hmmm, I'm guessing that Tyler Cowen isn't a fan of Charles Murray either...

I'm guessing that Tyler Cowen wouldn't want to deal with these two Murray commentaries either...

The Inequality TabooWe Can't All Make the Grade

B322 said...

flex05 -

You may be interested in this. Note that sorting students into Eligible and Not eligible sorts the socioeconomically - the black and Hispanic kids from wealthy backgrounds did not score as well as the white and Asian kids from poor backgrounds.

Let us know your opinion.

AMac said...

flex05 / Brit progressive --

Thanks for coming back with the followup. I don't have time to respond much (traveling). Judging from the wealth of insightful responses your earlier queries generated, you may get some more this time.

-- So my main point is this: if the difference in IQ between one person and another is approximately 50% heritable it is still logically false to conclude that the difference between the average IQ of blacks, Asians and whites is due to genes. As I hope I already made clear I regard that as an empirical matter that will be proven or disproven. --

Of course it's an empirical matter. Beyond that, your phrasing isn't very illuminating. Have you taken in the material at the links supplied earlier in this thread?

-- Rightly or wrongly, the views you have require you to adopt a higher standard of rigour than those who hold other views. --

A bit schoolmarmish, but other than that your point is unclear. "Required" to convince Pres. Obama? To secure funding from blank-slatist-dominated institutions? To sleep well at night? To convince you?

-- In general many of you seem to do this. That makes it all the more jarring when others of you mix speculation, theory and fact. --

Recall that this is the *comments section* of a *blog*. For tightly-argued essays, refer to the books, articles, and interviews linked to supra.

Anonymous said...

To Anonymous British bloviator:

"So please prove that you are not simply redneck racists"

Your use of the racial slur "redneck" demonstrates your anti-White racism.

Toadal said...

Tyler:More generally I think we should consider the Flynn Effect a bit of a mystery and that suggests an overall tone of caution on these issues rather than polemicism.
...

Ha! The Onion formulates a better response to explode Tyler's hastily constructed rumination than I can in the 20 minutes I can devote to it.
...

"Gah! It's calmly and evenhandedly deflecting everything we're throwing at it. Our deductive fallacies are only making it stronger! Wait…what on earth is it doing now? Oh, no, it has sources! My God, it's defending itself with ironclad sources! Someone stop the citing! Please, please stop the citing!"...

Matthew Barnes classic Onion piece Oh, No! It's Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run! even deflects the 'bad person' label flung at opponents our typical liberal Border Collie uses to muster the flock.
...

Quickly! Hide behind self-righteousness! The ad hominem rejoinders—ready the ad hominem rejoinders! Watch out! Dodge the issue at hand! Question its character and keep moving haphazardly from one flawed point to the next!

All together now! Put every bit of secondhand conjecture into it you've got!

Toadal said...

Tyler:More generally I think we should consider the Flynn Effect a bit of a mystery and that suggests an overall tone of caution on these issues rather than polemicism.
...

Ha! The Onion formulates a better response to explode Tyler's hastily constructed rumination than I can in the 20 minutes I can devote to it.
...

"Gah! It's calmly and evenhandedly deflecting everything we're throwing at it. Our deductive fallacies are only making it stronger! Wait…what on earth is it doing now? Oh, no, it has sources! My God, it's defending itself with ironclad sources! Someone stop the citing! Please, please stop the citing!"...

Matthew Barnes classic Onion piece Oh, No! It's Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run! even deflects the 'bad person' label flung at opponents our typical liberal Border Collie uses to muster the flock.
...

Quickly! Hide behind self-righteousness! The ad hominem rejoinders—ready the ad hominem rejoinders! Watch out! Dodge the issue at hand! Question its character and keep moving haphazardly from one flawed point to the next!

All together now! Put every bit of secondhand conjecture into it you've got!

Udolpho.com said...

flex05 comes back with another round of disingenuous or falsely premised questions, seeming to have understood just enough of the subject to have developed wildly wrong views...get back to us when you really have done your homework and have something more than politically correct talking points by way of Stephen Jay Gould...

Tom V said...

Flex05:

It seems to me that it is very hard to disentangle socio-economic and genetic factors. For example, several of you looked directly for a socio-economic explanation for the clear differences in educational attainment between children of Indian and Pakistani origin in the UK and in fact there is an obvious one. For various contingent historical reasons Indian immigrants to UK tended to be professionals while Pakistani immigrants tended to be poor and rural textile workers. So I don't therefore see how you could rule out a similar type of explanation with the white colonial and black slave populations in the US unless you assume the racial differences that you are trying to prove beforehand.

You sound confused about what constitute "socio-economic" and "genetic" factors. So let me get this straight:

1. Socio-economic = nurture = a child of Indian professionals and one of Pakistani textile workers adopted by the same English family turn out to have the same IQ.

2. Genetic = nature = they turn out different because of different genetic endowments.

Note that by "genetic," we're not talking here about race, just lineage. Race is lineage writ extra-large, so there's more variation. Race is genetics, but genetics is not always race.

Now assume that we agree that No. 2 is the predominant factor (if not, stop now and google "IQ twin adoption studies"), what does that say about about White colonists and black slaves in America? Even if we assume, as you seem to be doing, that the colonists are the cream and the slaves are the bottom of two races with the same intellectual endowment, so what? There would still have been a actual gap between the two races in colonial America, whether or not that gap had a racial origin. And after 300 hundred years of relatively little miscegenation, the gap becomes racial (or ethnic, if you prefer) as far as America is concerned. And, no, we're still not allowed to talk about it.

But is your assumption true? Even if the American colonists were selected to some extent for enterprise and intelligence, Europe didn't seem to suffer any noticeable brain drain. It continued to develop and enjoy more or less the same standard of living as America did. Likewise, Africa was a wretched place before the slave trade, and continued to be afterwards. So I'd say that the colonists and slaves were roughly representative of their respective races in terms of intelligence. No rigging there. (In fact, modern-day American blacks have higher average IQ than their African counterparts, but probably thanks to better diet and white admixture rather than selective shopping for smart slaves.)

Tom V said...

In fact you could just as easily argue that rich and varied environments would select more for intelligence, although of course you would again run into those "annoying" socio-economic factors.

There you go again, hopelessly confused about the term "socio-economic." "Select for" is a Darwinian term and thus genetic,* okay? For your purpose of disputing the genetic origin of racial IQ gaps, there's no reason whatsoever to favor the "varied environment" over "cold climate" as the selection pressure. Whatever selection pressure caused Europeans and Asians to develop higher IQ, it didn't happen to Africans. Or if it did, they responded in a different way. Penguins, as you'll note, didn't develop big brains to deal with the cold. Evolution is one big random, path-dependent just-so story. I don't know precisely what myriads of factors caused racial (i.e. genetic) differences in various parts of our bodies, but they happened. If you want to argue that they make an exception for the brain (presumably because evolution is loving and kind, like God), you've got to do much better than you've done so far. Start with trying to understand all the fancy terms that you've been mindlessly spouting.

* A true socio-economic factor would boost IQ in an individual, rather than select for it in a group. A stimulating environment can do that, up to a point. But that point is nowhere near closing the IQ gap. Just ask the American education establishment.

Svigor said...

Another data point is the similarity between Jewish and Irish victim narratives. Irish ethnic identity is like Jewish-lite.

Svigor said...

It seems to me that it is very hard to disentangle socio-economic and genetic factors.

Indeed (though I think you're off target with the 50-50 split there friend).

But, call the cause what you want. I'm not particularly interested in the cause.

I'm more interested in the fact that the "problem" is persistent and attaches to the usual suspects.

If my house blows up EVERY SINGLE TIME Joe comes over, pretty soon I'm not going to give a rat's ass if it's Joe's culture, or Joe's genetics, or even if it really is Joe or someone out to make him look bad; pretty soon, Joe's going to be disinvited from my house.

flex05 said...

Blode0322, what I see in these and similar figures are scores that improve in the same way across race/ethnicity with some races starting from a lower base. I am sure you don't need me to tell you the many socio-economic reasons why black people in your country might start from a lower base.

Amac: "Of course it's an empirical matter."
Agreed. You better tell your friends.

Anon: "There is no shortage of socio-economically advantaged blacks in America."
I thought your theory was that low IQ precluded being socio-economically advantaged.

"You don't know what you are talking about."
Nice come back.

"If your theory was true we'd expect to see at least one low IQ country which is wealthy."
That is exactly what you would not expect to find under "my" theory that the more a country develops the more the IQ of the population will increase.

udolpho, thanks for all your "input", every blog needs followers as well as leaders I suppose.

B322 said...

Blode0322, what I see in these and similar figures are scores that improve in the same way across race/ethnicity with some races starting from a lower base. I am sure you don't need me to tell you the many socio-economic reasons why black people in your country might start from a lower base. - flex05

Sorry, I just don't understand your reply. Do you believe that the socioeconomic sorting for the National School Lunch Program was valid or invalid? If it is invalid, why?

If it is valid, then don't these data show that affluent black and Hispanics are no brighter than poor whites, Asians, and Pacific Islanders? Does it matter that this is true for both fourth and eighth graders?

If you learned that blacks of a given IQ have a higher average income than whites of the same IQ, would that change your thinking about this whole subject? If not, would learning anything change your thinking on the subject?

If the answer is no, I have absolutely no problem with that, because I don't have a problem with any religious belief. I do not, however, condone people claiming that their religious beliefs are based on social science.

B322 said...

That is exactly what you would not expect to find under "my" theory that the more a country develops the more the IQ of the population will increase. -flex05

What if the IQs there were determined largely by genes and partly by intractable cultural practices? In that case, mountains of foreign aid, loans, investment, and what have you would result in little development, no IQ increase, and notions from the left about "dependency theory" alleging that foreign aid, loans, investment, and what have you have been causing underdevelopment.

It seems to me that if the people in ultra-poor low-IQ countries were so improvable, stacks of cash and IMF auditors would be able to do it. But then again, if the low IQs of the people the aid is going to cause them to misuse aid in ways that defeat the purpose of raising IQs ...
then cultural factors in low IQ are about as intractable as genetic factors, and the left is going to have give up its social engineering for that reason
... which I've only been saying for like twenty years.

Anonymous said...

I thought your theory was that low IQ precluded being socio-economically advantaged.



Here is a suggestion. Why don't you stop talking and start listening? Assuming you are capable of listening. That way you would not constantly be confused as to what other peoples positions are.

It's pointless for people here to keep trying to explain things to you when you point blank refuse to listen.

Anonymous said...

"Anon: "There is no shortage of socio-economically advantaged blacks in America."
I thought your theory was that low IQ precluded being socio-economically advantaged."

You really, really haven't read your homework, have you? Affirmative Action in America provides the (generally low IQ) minorities with their socio-economic advantage in America-- at the cost of Whites (through taxes and foregone job opportunities.)
In those socio-economically advantaged, minority areas, the low IQ demonstrates itself in the children's school performance.
Example: Shaker Heights.

http://books.google.com/books?id=lKNB4asR5oIC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=shaker+heights+high+school+sat+scores&source=bl&ots=4z5u2h365s&sig=gZ7AlEWBR_Kfr0G3f7YM-JCmDCg&hl=en&ei=buAlSsrZEp70tQOL_LSbBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

..."The mean SAT scores of Shaker Heights blacks in 1996 was 485 verbal and 471 mathematics.
..."Black students in Shaker Heights were not performing academically like their White counterparts in Shaker Heights."

The Shaker Heights' blacks' avg. SAT scores of 956 are not sufficient to, honestly, qualify them for Appalachian State College. "The average incoming freshman has a high school grade point average of 3.67, an SAT score of 1122, and an ACT scorer of 25." Appalachia, of course, is the stereotypical area of low-IQ, poor Whites in America.

Read more: http://appalachian.stateuniversity.com/admissions/index.html#ixzz0HKb1GQGF&B

flex05 said...

Gentlemen, some of you seemed to have got carried away with all this talk of high IQ. It is an average and sorry to say that you as individuals could still be thick as pig sh*t. There is no excuse for being nasty with it though.

Tom V, I would be happy to use the terms nature and nurture or genetic and non-genetic factors. However I have been using "socio-economic" because a lot of you seem to have a very narrow concept of nurture or the potentially applicable non-genetic factors. I shouldn't need to tell anyone that socio-economic = the effects of society and the economy, in other words a wider notion than just the family environment. The studies I have seen suggest that about half your IQ is inherited. Less than a fifth is from the environment you shared with your siblings - your family. So thanks for trying to clear that up for me.

Also, you are the ones that need a "just so story" to explain why you believe that Europeans and Asians got "high IQ genes". Others are happy to accept that IQ is a result of the interaction between genes and environment at the level of the individual (Lewontin). On this basis a group with a low average IQ score must have something different about its environment. And that is clearly true for US blacks. It is only people with a prior commitment to the concept of race who need to look for another explanation. And this is not just a matter of the facts speaking for themselves. You have to make a major unsupported assumption that large numbers of genes co-vary between groups of people, contra-Lewontin (NB please don't send me that paper which says Lewontin was fallacious - it doesn't show that at all. It shows Lewontin assumed no co-variance when it is possible that there is co-variance. That is NOT the same as proving that there is co-variance). So you are right that I am confused, but only about your position.

And, I'm afraid that the little foot note didn't help either. You seem to believe in group selection as an evolutionary mechanism? Oh dear...

Blode0322, please take note of the above as you seem to think that what somebody has on their sandwiches constitutes their total "environment". As for your "what if" scenario, all I can say is so what? Maybe.

Anon: "You really, really haven't read your homework, have you? Affirmative Action in America provides the (generally low IQ) minorities with their socio-economic advantage in America-- at the cost of Whites (through taxes and foregone job opportunities.)" You really, really haven't thought through your view of the world have you? According to you the world is a simple matter of high or low IQ. But it turns out that you believe it is members of the high IQ group that is causing the real problems. So however you explain that you would have to admit that the world is not really as simple as high or low IQ is it?

B322 said...

Blode0322, please take note of the above as you seem to think that what somebody has on their sandwiches constitutes their total "environment".

If you don't understand the US school lunch program, just look it up. That's what I do when there are aspects of British society that I don't understand.

I talked about cultural factors in the post that you ignored, just as Herrnstein and Murray talked about nutrition, etc., in parts of The Bell Curve that the anti-white left ignored. If I were paid to do it, sure, I'd research and write more about it, but as we've seen, it doesn't matter, since all of your arguments are based on your unwillingness to learn anything.

So, you either blame the failure of black women to breast feed on white people, or you don't. Which is it? You blame the anti-intellectualism of black culture on white people, or you don't. Which is it?

As for your "what if" scenario, all I can say is so what? Maybe.

Not good enough. Blacks from wealthy backgrounds have lower IQs than whites. Blacks from all backgrounds have higher self-esteem than whites. Blacks of a given IQ make more money than whites of the same IQ. Blacks admitted to a given college have lower SAT scores than whites. Blacks with a given amount of time in Congress having authored no major legislation are taken more seriously as Presidential candidates than whites with a similar record. I would provide citations for these if there were a chance in Hell you'd follow any of the links. There is not.

Affirmative action is designed to hurt and divide white people. If it is not designed to hurt white people, please explain what it is designed to do. If it is not designed to divide white people, then why did you use the term "rednecks"?

Tom V said...

Flex

Please answer the following questions.

1) You said:

In fact you could just as easily argue that rich and varied environments would select more for intelligence, although of course you would again run into those "annoying" socio-economic factors.

How would the selection process happen without genetics? How would this scenario disprove the genetic origin of racial IQ gaps in any way?

2) You said:

Blode0322, what I see in these and similar figures are scores that improve in the same way across race/ethnicity with some races starting from a lower base.

What would constitute that "base" and how would it pass from one generation to another? How would the Obamas pass on their starting "base" to their daughters and white working-class "rednecks" to theirs in such a way that the latter start from a higher base than the former?

3) You said:

Also, you are the ones that need a "just so story" to explain why you believe that Europeans and Asians got "high IQ genes".

Do you think that I was talking about your theory? You may look at what I wrote again, carefully.

4) You said:

Others are happy to accept that IQ is a result of the interaction between genes and environment at the level of the individual (Lewontin). On this basis a group with a low average IQ score must have something different about its environment. And that is clearly true for US blacks.

Blode gave you stats of privileged blacks vs. disadvantaged whites. Do the former put their kids in a worse environment than the latter? At the individual level, no less?

5) What, if anything, would satisfy you as the same environment for a given pair of black and white kids? Black Upper Class exists in America and has existed for some time now. They may not live as well as their white counterparts, but they sure live at least as well as the White middle class and a heck of a lot better than "rednecks." If you can always blame their ancestors' environment (or base, or socioeconomic status) from generations back for their kids' sub-par IQ today, then "environment" ceases to be what we mortals understand it to be. It becomes something that runs in the blood. Like genes, actually.

Anonymous said...

It's about humiliation and despair. White people are sliding into despair - that's what Powell's decision in University of California v. Bakke was designed to do. Don't go there! Don't despair! That is what the left wants. They prove it over and over by disingenuously claiming they want to discuss important matters, when all they really want is the chance to insult white people.

Leftists love it when white people are unemployed or forced into humiliating jobs.

Mike Alexander said...

Sailer appears to be a racist. Here's why:

He connotes IQ and intelligence and ignores glaring problems with doing this.

Blacks have an average IQ about one standard deviation below whites. If we set the average IQ of whites as 100, this would put the average IQ of blacks at 84. My daughter's (white) boyfriend has an IQ of about 75. He is as dumb as a post, too stupid to be able to hold a job and receives disability because of his inability to hold a job.

Now if I was to equate IQ with intelligence, as Mr. Sailer apparently does, thid would mean some 29% of black people would be like my daughter's boyfriend, too stupid to hold a job. Some 20% of black people would be mentally retarded (IQ < 70). Are 7% of American blacks retarded? The figures I have seen say 1.5%.

I recall reading that Muhammed Ali's IQ was 70. How many retarded white guys can you point to that have done what he did?

In your own daily interactions, are three out of ten blacks you meet day to day morons? Do 9 out of 10 blacks not get jokes you tell?

Sailer is implying that the majority of backs are dull and a plurality are abject morons. Sure he keeps saying that individual exceptions always exist. This is nonsense. If IQ is really a proxy for intelligence, given the prevalence of blacks in the population then bright black folks (IQ 130) would be about 2-3 times less common than near-genius white folks (IQ 150). I am married to one of the latter, and have encountered perhaps one other (white) peer in her class in my lifetime. If Sailer is right then I should have encountered at most one bright black person in my lifetime. Most bright white folks would likely have *never* encountered a black person who was bright in their lives.

That has not been my experience. Has it been yours?

Anonymous said...

If you're still reading, Mr. Limey, maybe I can clear something up for you.

In the US, there is an a priori assumption is that there is no genetic basis for differences in intelligence that might cause disparate outcomes in testing or life.

Therefore, any such outcomes are evidence of discrimination.

Evidence of discrimination against NAMs or women is justification for expensive interventions and discrimination against Asians, whites, and men.

That's what all this is really about. That's why people are so het up about it. Productive whites and Asians must subsidize members of other races, give up merit-based admissions and promotions, and never, ever, ever question the morality of this requirement.

You are right, there is not an ironclad scientific case for hbd. Oddly enough, neither is there an ironclad moral case for providing the descendants of African slaves and Mexicans with advantages at my expense (my family didn't even get here until 1909.) There is some evidence for hbd, however, just like there are some arguments to be made about the benefits of white privilege. (I'm not sure what case anybody can make for the anti-Asian discrimination though.)

Do you get it now? Hbd is not even on the table as a possible explanation. The official explanation is 100% simon-pure unadulterated NURTURE, and if that nurture is producing bad results, that is whitey's fault! And whitey must pay!

Wouldn't you be cranky?

B322 said...

Kanazawa debunked that racial pay discrimination hurts blacks.

Anonymous said...

I thought your theory was that low IQ precluded being socio-economically advantaged.



Now you're just being dishonest. This is turning into a complete waste of everyones time.

Mr. Anon said...

" Mike Alexander said...

Sailer appears to be a racist. Here's why:

He connotes IQ and intelligence and ignores glaring problems with doing this."

Mike Alexander appears to not know the difference between "connote" and "conflate" - two entirely different words, with different meanings.

"Blacks have an average IQ about one standard deviation below whites. If we set the average IQ of whites as 100, this would put the average IQ of blacks at 84. My daughter's (white) boyfriend has an IQ of about 75. He is as dumb as a post, too stupid to be able to hold a job and receives disability because of his inability to hold a job."

First of all, shouldn't you be trying to straighten your daughter out rather than wasting your time trying to straighten us out?

Your post is disingenuous and poorly thought out. You have no problem invoking the IQ of your daughter's idiot (white) boyfriend as evidence that he's stupid, but say that somehow black people with comparable IQs are not stupid? So, which is it - Does an IQ of 75 make one stupid or not?

"Now if I was to equate IQ with intelligence, as Mr. Sailer apparently does, thid would mean some 29% of black people would be like my daughter's boyfriend, too stupid to hold a job."

Uh, consider the combined incarceration, unemployment, and welfare dependency rates of blacks.

"If IQ is really a proxy for intelligence, given the prevalence of blacks in the population then bright black folks (IQ 130) would be about 2-3 times less common than near-genius white folks (IQ 150). I am married to one of the latter, and have encountered perhaps one other (white) peer in her class in my lifetime. If Sailer is right then I should have encountered at most one bright black person in my lifetime."

No, if Sailer is right than a person chosen at random from the white population would have that experience. You are not a person chosen at random. You are a self-selected sample of one. I have no idea what circles you move in, or what kind of people you routinely encounter in everyday life. Very few if any people, deal with a representative sample of the population of the area in which they live, let alone the whole U.S. population, on a daily basis.

"Most bright white folks would likely have *never* encountered a black person who was bright in their lives.

That has not been my experience. Has it been yours?""

For a poor white person who lives around poor black people this is very likely true. For an educated white person who moves among educated people, they will probably encounter a handful of bright black people. But that's about all. And that HAS been my exprience. I have enountered far, far fewer bright black people than would be expected if their intelligence was distributed the same as that of whites. I have also encountered many blacks in positions that were way above their abilities (such as for example, a masters student in computer science who did not know how to write a program).

B322 said...

Now if I was to equate IQ with intelligence, as Mr. Sailer apparently does, thid would mean some 29% of black people would be like my daughter's boyfriend, too stupid to hold a job.

Mr. Sailer is joined in this by some other folks. But the "smartest enough to have a romantic affair, too dumb to hold a job" is a category I haven't encountered before. I would expect that he could do a lot of janitorial tasks, no? He may have been too immature to come to work....

Some 20% of black people would be mentally retarded (IQ < 70). Are 7% of American blacks retarded? The figures I have seen say 1.5%.

Why "retarded"? Why is the comparison always made between average black adults and retarded whites? MR typically affects more than IQ, it also results in serious neurological deficits, socializing problems. The obvious comparison is between average black adults and average white teenagers or older children.

Average white children:
- can hold jobs at age 14 or so
- can socialize at 2 or 3
- can find their way across town at maybe 8 or 9?
- know to be gentle with babies (although not always with other children) at 2 or 3
- could drive automobiles if their limbs were long enough at 8 or 9
etc. (The ages are off-the-cuff estimates, nothing precise.)

Our way of sheltering children is shaped by the differing sizes of adults and children. Unsupervised, we expect larger children to prey on younger children.

Past a certain age, we expect children to avoid foul-tasting poisons (so no one locks up the laundry detergent to keep a 9-year-old away), but not the sorts of substances with pleasant initial affects but negative long-term affects. We expect the child's short time-horizons to amount to a stumbling block. I've heard it explained to adolescents a million times that sweet beverages and snacks make it harder for them to concentrate and therefore, to learn. (My graduate school classmates were typically very health-conscious; my college classmates weren't.)

We don't make the best 15-year-old busboy into a restaurant manager because we don't expect him to have the maturity to hire and fire, or the abstract reasoning to keep books scrupulously.

Age is still one type of diversity we are allowed to recognize. When exceptions to age rules abound, we make exceptions, fine. Children can be skipped ahead grades; younger teenagers can go to college, etc.

I recall reading that Muhammed Ali's IQ was 70. How many retarded white guys can you point to that have done what he did?

How many successful white athletes have a childlike worldview, difficulty controlling their impulses, no apparent understanding of abstract information or logic, a history of poor grades...?

In your own daily interactions, are three out of ten blacks you meet day to day morons?

I don't know about passersby, but easily three out of ten of the blacks I've worked with have had trouble understanding essential job tasks.

Do 9 out of 10 blacks not get jokes you tell?

Absolutely.

flex05 said...

Anon: "You are right, there is not an ironclad scientific case for hbd."

Thank eff for that! That's all I have been wanting somebody to say! I already said in the first post I wrote on this blog that it is obvious that there is a genetic component to intelligence. I have only been arguing with those who believe that it has been proven that the reason for different average IQ scores of different races is genetic. That has not been proved. All the rest I don't care about. Argue with the people who have those issues not me.

Blode0322 and Tom V, you both take a very narrow view of what non-genetic factors may be at work. So Blode0322 let's take your intractable cultural practices. For example, what if Group A got screwed over by Group B for about 500 years and Group A therefore decided not to cooperate with Group B, including in the matter of those stupid tests Group B sticks in their faces every now and again. Not all or even most of Group A would need to have this attitude for it to reduce the average score for Group A in tests (doing well in school is acting "white"). So call that kind of factor whatever you like. It's not genetic but for a group it could certainly have a cross generational effect on the average score of that group. And NB in this example it would be the IQ score being affected not the actual IQ.

On the "rich and varied" environment of Europe my point was this. IF you want a genetic theory of higher IQ for Europeans then Europe's "rich and varied" environment might be a better one than this cold climate crap. So that was me trying to help you. Remember I don't need to invent this kind of story. I simply have to say that the environment of Europe is better than Africa hence humans living there can achieve their full potential in higher IQ scores. So rich and varied works for me. As I understand it you think Europe needs to be a harsher environment than Africa. I don't know why. It also doesn't fit with the very high death rates of European colonists in Africa, basically they couldn't live there except for the temperate southern tip. Whereas they could live everywhere else on Earth. What does that tell you?

Anon: "Knock off the passive aggressive crap and learn some rudimentary manners."

What, like introducing yourself?

"What does a Brit like you know about what life is like for US blacks?"

I have been to the US many times but I am happy to say that I know very little directly about what life is like for US blacks. But given the voluntary apartheid system you have over there I am quite confident that you know very little about what life is like for US blacks too. When I went to Washington DC I didn't see any blacks even though there is a large concentration of them living there, kept out of sight. So what is your point?

"Large groups of genes do vary between different groups of people. This is why different groups of people are different groups of people. It is why there are racial disparities in skin color, height, strength, and assorted other physical traits between different populations."

Are you joking? This is the crux of the whole debate. Of course we know that some genes vary between groups. But most geneticists argue that most genes vary more between individuals than between groups. If you can prove different then go and get yourself off to your beloved Sweden for a Nobel prize. Don't go without the evidence though as the Swedes really are socially advanced and wouldn't like you much.

duhling said...

"My daughter's (white) boyfriend has an IQ of about 75."

Lynn and Jensen point out that whites with IQs below the 80 mark tend to be noticeably retarded and usually exhibit abnormalities of gait, appearance, and social interaction. Their deficiencies preclude normal social adjustment. In the case of blacks, an IQ this low does not mean physical or chromosonal abnormalities. They are normal and interact socially in a normal way, or at least in a way we think of as normal for blacks. I'm not being facetious here--anyone who inhabits areas with a lot of blacks knows they act in ways that would be considered crazy or retarded for whites. A metro ride in the dc area around school-let-out would be educational.
Yet IQ means the same academically and in life outcome and mental ability, for both black and white. But it does seem to manifest differently as far as personal, social de elopment goes.
High IQ is abnormal for blacks. They are more isolated and misunderstood than whites.

As for your genius spouse, I met any number of whites with IQs in the genius range, and many who were extremely brilliant. Blacks--perhaps a couple. None who were truly brilliant. I guess they exist, just rare.
In any case, one doesn't need to rely on personal anecdotes and subjectie impressions. One only needs to look at what happens when blacks become a large percentage, be it a school, a shopping mall, a city or a country. The proof is in the pudding.
Muhammad Ali's IQ was 78, btw, not 70. Any number of similarly dim whites did pretty well in boxing, but that o er the top personality (which exudes better with low intelligence anyway--less reflecti e cringing), is what made him so entertaining. Actually you are probably right about that. A white with an IQ that low would not ha e been as good at being The Greatest. Wouldn't be as funny for one thing.

Svigor said...

"You are right, there is not an ironclad scientific case for hbd."

Thank eff for that! That's all I have been wanting somebody to say!


I pretty much said that already. Roughly nothing anyone ever argues about has an ironclad case.

HBD-denial is a molehill, and HBD is a mountain unclad in iron.

Svigor said...

For example, what if Group A got screwed over by Group B for about 500 years and Group A therefore decided not to cooperate with Group B, including in the matter of those stupid tests Group B sticks in their faces every now and again. Not all or even most of Group A would need to have this attitude for it to reduce the average score for Group A in tests (doing well in school is acting "white"). So call that kind of factor whatever you like.

Given all the data I've seen on your "hypothetical" groups, I'd say the attitude is genetic (or persistent and inherent, what you name it matters little) and move on.

I wouldn't bother mentioning Occam's Razor, but I might start developing a theory on pathological excuse-making.

Svigor said...

I have been to the US many times but I am happy to say that I know very little directly about what life is like for US blacks. But given the voluntary apartheid system you have over there I am quite confident that you know very little about what life is like for US blacks too.

Ah, you tipped your hand. Voluntary apartheid system? American whites don't know how American blacks live?

I grew up in a black neighborhood. Most of my non-school friends were blacks until I was in my teens. Slept over more times than I can remember. What was I, in sensory deprivation the whole time?

You've got to be kidding me with this shyte.

When I went to Washington DC I didn't see any blacks even though there is a large concentration of them living there, kept out of sight. So what is your point?

Kept out of sight? What are you, blind? Hire a cab and drive to the poor neighborhoods that form most of D.C., presto! Blacks everywhere. Spent a bit of time there, too.

But thanks for the American culture lesson, good stuff.

Svigor said...

most geneticists argue that most genes vary more between individuals than between groups.

What is this supposed to prove? There's more variation within sexes than between them, too. There's more variation within age groups than between them, too. If I had to guess, it's true of a hell of a lot of species, too.

What does this tell us about race that it doesn't tell us about sex, age, and species?

B322 said...

Blode0322 and Tom V, you both take a very narrow view of what non-genetic factors may be at work.

If you say so....

So Blode0322 let's take your intractable cultural practices. For example, what if Group A got screwed over by Group B for about 500 years and Group A therefore decided not to cooperate with Group B, including in the matter of those stupid tests Group B sticks in their faces every now and again.... It's not genetic but for a group it could certainly have a cross generational effect on the average score of that group.

Okay, so if there is little practical difference between intractable cultural factors and genetic factors, why do progressives take such vehement exception to the alleged mislabeling of the former as the latter? Maybe it is of academic interest, but I don't see why affirmative action is a good thing in one case and a bad thing in the other.

The point is that the anti-HBD "Horatio Alger" right has made a perfectly adequate case against affirmative action by pointing out that lowering standards for failed groups reinforces the (allegedly 100%) cultural factors that make them fail. They've pointed out that any number of immigrant groups started off as poor and as "screwed over" as blacks and have done better, due (entirely!) to their cultures.

So why are we talking about racial differences? Why do we care? Because affirmative action still exists. Does it seem odd that someone would care that it exists? Thomas Sowell says it has messed up every country in which it has been introduced.

And NB in this example it would be the IQ score being affected not the actual IQ.

Yes, and Group A's crime rates, college dropout rates, and on-the-job-injury rates would be measurably better than the stupid tests would predict. The psychometric world would take note of this, and something quite the opposite of:
"Actually, the tests slightly over-predict scholastic and workplace performance by blacks and are to that extent unfair to whites and Asians in competition for the same positions."

But most geneticists argue that most genes vary more between individuals than between groups. If you can prove different then go and get yourself off to your beloved Sweden for a Nobel prize.

A.W.F. Edwards didn't win any prize.

flex05 said...

As I already said I have not taken a position on affirmative action, the state of America, immigration etc etc so not sure why some of you are responding as if I have.

Svigor: "Hire a cab and drive to the poor neighborhoods that form most of D.C., presto! Blacks everywhere."

That was my exact point. Why should I have to take a taxi ride to the poor neighbourhoods to see the majority population of a city? Shouldn't they be everywhere in the city?

Blode0322: "A.W.F. Edwards didn't win any prize."

That's because he didn't prove anything. I will quote the relevant sentence from the article which YOU linked to: "The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population."

Svigor, you say you don't understand why it matters that genes vary more between individuals than between groups. I agree that it doesn't matter UNLESS you are making a claim about the importance of genetic differences between groups.

"if there is little practical difference between intractable cultural factors and genetic factors, why do progressives take such vehement exception to the alleged mislabeling of the former as the latter?"

Are both of you asking me to believe that you really think it does not have any practical consequences whether a group of people is a) naturally stupid OR b) embittered and alienated.

B322 said...

As I already said I have not taken a position on affirmative action, the state of America, immigration etc etc so not sure why some of you are responding as if I have.

I brought up affirmative action to explain what we care about and why. The classic sequence is:
-Leftist claims social engineering will dissolve race/class differences.
-Rightist disagrees.
-Leftist claims rightist has just said all important differences are genetic, and that rightist is wrong.
-Most rightists skip to giving evidence for genetic differences. I also paused to say that it is doesn't matter if all or just some differences are genetic, since the cultural ones aren't going away, since trying to make them go away constitutes WHITEY TELLING SOUL BROTHER WHAT TO DO which hasn't historically worked.
-Leftist asks why it matters anyway.
-Rightist answers why it matters.

That's where we are. All that matters politically is the national question: immigration, affirmative action, language. The civic stuff - whether or not white people hate themselves and/or allow others to hate them, matters more.

Blode0322: "A.W.F. Edwards didn't win any prize."

That's because he didn't prove anything. I will quote the relevant sentence from the article which YOU linked to: "The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population."

So, all you've shown is that when you a geneticist gives details and nuance, real information can be transferred.

A statement like "most geneticists argue that most genes vary more between individuals than between groups" lacks nuance and misleads the reader. I've known many Eurowhites who have had that repeated to them so many times that they believe each of them has more in common with the average Korean or Nubian than with each other. Back when most of my data on these topics came from verbal interactions, I would challenge that statement by asking how two people could belong to two different groups but still be the same individual. I reasoned that, if people were of two different groups then they must be two different individuals, and thus the genetic distance between people of different races must be greater than the genetic distance between people of the same race. By that point, the leftists had already gotten bored.

When I started reading about this stuff, I had one of those head-slapping moments: "Oh, is that all?! You mean all this confusion was created because people couldn't properly assemble the sentence, 'The genetic distance between people of two different races is less than twice the genetic distance between two people of the same race.' ????"

Very few people outside the HBD / race realist set would believe that a forensic scientist can place someone in the correct race based on a DNA analysis from e.g. a hair sample. That is why paraphrasing Lewontin is usually a fallacy - it robs the lay person of information.

B322 said...

"if there is little practical difference between intractable cultural factors and genetic factors, why do progressives take such vehement exception to the alleged mislabeling of the former as the latter?"

Are both of you asking me to believe that you really think it does not have any practical consequences whether a group of people is a) naturally stupid OR b) embittered and alienated.

(I don't know about Svigor; I'm pretty sure he thinks most of the differences lie in the genes.) If people are embittered and alienated enough over a long enough term that it perfectly simulates, through crime, dropout rates, illegitimacy, and job performance, the low scores they've produced on Stupid Tests that correlate with those things, then no, it doesn't matter. I don't care if it's a genius who threw the Stupid Test and then decided to steal parts off my bike even though they have no resale value, just to show he's embittered and alienated. The behavioral sciences really have no way of dealing with this possibility, though some religions may.

The leftist solution is that you should assume that a group of people that rapes, takes crack, and steals things of no resale value at higher rates than the general public are composed of people of thoroughly normal abilities. Then you should promote them faster than everyone else to show your respect for their inner normality.

I have argued against this, just not in ways that keep the leftists from getting bored.

NOTHING works. They said it was a self-esteem thing until it was proven that blacks have higher self-esteem. The leftists didn't admit that they were wrong. They said blacks made less money doing the same work; disproven. The leftists didn't admit that they were wrong. They said culturally-loaded questions made blacks look bad. Disproven. The leftists didn't admit that they were wrong. They said poverty drove blacks to property crimes, which was clever since Harper Lee has essentially made it impossible to discuss all the violence blacks commit. They say higher IQs among admixed blacks disprove a lot of this, since the one-drop rule, which no one accepts, means that no one is admixed. That one is too weird to really disprove.

B322 said...

Let me ask something to try to get a range of opinions:

If you have a bunch of blacks in a room, and their IQ ranges from 60 to 110 (mean 85), and a bunch of whites, and their IQ ranges from 75 to 125 (mean 100), would it be accurate to sum that up as:

"The IQ differences between individuals vary more than the IQ differences between groups."

To me, it is a matter of opinion. Some would say it is definitely accurate, because each group spans 50 IQ points, but the group mean difference is only 15. Or maybe it is not accurate because the group difference spans 65 points?

I'm not sure if anyone has figured out the mean difference between two black IQ scores, though it would certainly be doable. If that score, and the mean difference between two white IQ scores, were greater than 15, then I guess the statement would be correct. My guess is that this is not the case, because if it were, the establishment would have repeated:

"The IQ differences between individuals vary more than the IQ differences between groups."

so many times that no one would even think to look for IQ differences between groups any more.

B322 said...

... Let me add to my above comments that I don't think leftist dissembling is the only reason for Lewontin's Fallacy. Another important reason is simply that it is difficult to sum up fiendishly complex quantitative stuff in ordinary English. I gave the examples of pitfalls in comparing IQs, but even these are vastly simpler than genetic stuff.

Comparing individual differences to group differences is comparing a simple number to a comparison. As such it will always be difficult. We strive to do it anyway because, like sex on the mind of a puritan, race is always on the minds of Anglophones.

(I am going to try to look up how to figure the mean difference between to points on a single Gaussian distribution in one of my old stat textbooks, but if anyone knows, feel free to shout it out.)

Svigor said...

As I already said I have not taken a position on affirmative action, the state of America, immigration etc etc so not sure why some of you are responding as if I have.

Svigor: "Hire a cab and drive to the poor neighborhoods that form most of D.C., presto! Blacks everywhere."

That was my exact point. Why should I have to take a taxi ride to the poor neighbourhoods to see the majority population of a city? Shouldn't they be everywhere in the city?


I believe you were also making an implied "point" about how I grew up in an all-white gated community, imagining how blacks live, but that plank seems to have silently fallen out from under your platform.

Please explain why the poor should be everywhere. Hell, you can start by even explaining what that means. Then please explain what it means that D.C. didn't conform to your expectations.

Because right now you sound like a bit of a nut. You might as well have landed in NYC and wondered at the injustice of no Trump and Soros to greet you at the airport. Shouldn't the super-rich be everywhere after all?

Svigor, you say you don't understand why it matters that genes vary more between individuals than between groups. I agree that it doesn't matter UNLESS you are making a claim about the importance of genetic differences between groups.

What is this supposed to prove? There's more variation within age groups/sexes/many species than between them, too.

What does this tell us about race that it doesn't tell us about age, sex, and species?


Are both of you asking me to believe that you really think it does not have any practical consequences whether a group of people is a) naturally stupid OR b) embittered and alienated.

You're the one constructing hypotheses where culture is tantamount to genetics.

I say if it's persistent, intractable, and inherited, what's the bloody difference? This "culture" you're talking about cannot be changed and attaches to ancestry. What do I care if you "technically" call it culture or genetics? They're the same thing in practical terms. You may want to revisit the definition of the word "naturally." It does not mean "harder for me to wish away."

Svigor said...

That's because he didn't prove anything.

You can't prove anything, either. E.g., you can't prove that the transatlantic trade ever existed. You can point to some history books and artifacts, but proof? Ha!

Anonymous said...

Steve mentioned neurodiversity, the great unmentionable. Just as Africans have the most genetic diversity, Whites (esp. Northern Europeans) have the most neuro-diversity.

That is the greatest strength of the White race: neurodiversity. Asians may be smarter on average, but Whites produce more neuro- atypical creative geniuses. The worst race traitors are those Whites who persecute their neuro-
atypical brothers and sisters.

Curse government factory schooling for its bigoted neuroconformist crusade in the name of "equality".

flex05 said...

"they believe each of them has more in common with the average Korean or Nubian than with each other"

That's exactly what "even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population" means.

"Very few people outside the HBD / race realist set would believe that a forensic scientist can place someone in the correct race based on a DNA analysis from e.g. a hair sample. That is why paraphrasing Lewontin is usually a fallacy - it robs the lay person of information."

What's your point here? You can identify individuals from their DNA FFS! Most people surely know that. I suspect that you are mixing up DNA and genes...

"Comparing individual differences to group differences is comparing a simple number to a comparison."

Exactly!!!!!

"You can't prove anything"

True.

B322 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Svigor said...

"they believe each of them has more in common with the average Korean or Nubian than with each other"

That's exactly what "even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population" means.


How can you expect anyone with a three-digit IQ to take this seriously? Is it possible you're innumerate?

Anonymous said...

When I went to Washington DC I didn't see any blacks even though there is a large concentration of them living there, kept out of sight. So what is your point?





The point is that you don't know what you are talking about, as your moronic "voluntary apartheid" remarks confirm.

But I'm familar with people like you from my dealings with our domesic liberals, so I'm 100% ceratin that no shadow of doubt will ever or can ever cloud your conviction that you are both completely correct and completely morally virtuous.

Anonymous said...

Leave Flex alone, Svignor.

He can't help not visiting the less fortunate areas of the US, as he's been socialized by his Islamic masters in the UK and their "no go" zones!

Brutus

flex05 said...

Svigor, if you actually explained your higher thoughts then maybe us lower beings could benefit.

For example, I can't understand why I am a moron for saying that I do not know what it is like to be a black American... :)

And I don't believe in certain knowledge or objective morality, so don't expect any virtue from my side. ;)

Anonymous said...

For example, I can't understand why I am a moron for saying that I do not know what it is like to be a black American...




Just exhibit #642 in your catalog of dishonesty. You don't let your ignorance stop you from lecturing us on the topic of the supposed "socio-economic disadvantages" of American blacks, or the alleged apartheid" they live under.

B322 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Svigor, if you actually explained your higher thoughts then maybe us lower beings could benefit.

For example, I can't understand why I am a moron for saying that I do not know what it is like to be a black American... :)

And I don't believe in certain knowledge or objective morality, so don't expect any virtue from my side. ;)


If someone else asks me to explain I will, but for now I'm assuming you're the only one who doesn't "get it" and I doubt my ability to explain it to you.

If you're addressing someone else, your post makes sense. Otherwise it doesn't; most of your response is to points made by someone else.

(If you don't believe in certainty, you might've cited this fact before you started yammering about "proof" of this or that. Now you just look like a conniver.)

And yes, projecting your ignorance onto others makes you look like an ass, because in this case it's leftist boilerplate ( "racists" know nothing of NAMs). You just KNEW none of the white men here had any first hand knowledge of blacks or how they live.

~ Svigor

Anonymous said...

Wow, I find all of these comments really upsetting. I went to Harvard and they tell me I have a high IQ and I happen to be a mixed race person. But if this is how people who perceive themselves to be intelligent (read: superior) engage in intelligent conversation, I would rather opt out. Just the combative tone in general is a real turnoff.

Anonymous said...

I'm with anon. It's much more agreeable when our enlightened (read: superior) authorities engage in intelligent dictation, and the rest of us STFU and listen to our orders. I think the soporific part is when they tell us our children are born guilty and so must pay for that guilt, and the deeds of their ancestors. No no, I think I find the part where we pay and the elite reaps the benefits might be the most peaceful aspect. No, hold that, the most tranquil part is where we must smile as our civilization is destroyed. Or maybe the part where we're evil, yet the innocent follow us around en masse. Then again, it's hard to top the part where the elite minority with the most agency in our woes does in its own territory pretty much exactly what it forbids to us.

I'm about to take a nice, relaxing nap just thinking about it. Pretty much the opposite of combative.

The only thing keeping me awake is the grim knowledge that anon finds the comments here "upsetting." There's nothing worse than a tummy ache.

~ Svigor

Anonymous said...

"Since there is a one standard deviation difference on average in cognitive ability, only about one-third of blacks score above the white median, not four-fifths."

Correction: 16% of blacks score above the white median. (1-NORMDIST(100,85,15, 100)
25% of hispanics (1-NORMDIST(100,90,15, 100))

I know, I know. It's mind blowing but makes sense in comparison to the other exam results you quoted.