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There Is Such a Thing As a “Male” and “Female” Brain
2100 words
Towards the end of last year, it was said that “male and female brains don’t differ“. Male and female brains differ from the number of neurons to differences in g that affect intelligence, to differences in temperament and differences in the hormones testosterone and estrogen. Other than accounting for differences in physical appearance between the sexes, the differences between the sexes in the two hormones accounts for brain differences as well. This is yet another blank slate argument, years after cognitive neuroscience affirmed that behavior is rooted in the brain and that we are not in fact “blank slates”, these same old and outdated arguments keep being pushed, of course, in part due to the growing number of “transgenders” and an influx of non-western people who are abnormal to our societies. This attempt to have the general public to believe that we have minds of Silly Puddy (to borrow a phrase from Steven Pinker) is an attempt to have us accept all of the things that get pushed on us through the media.
You may have read that having a male brain will earn you more money.
Men do make more money than women, and this isn’t the cause of the imaginary gender pay gap. Even Thomas Sowell, the liberal icon has refuted this myth. Men make more money than women due to, which I will get to below, higher intelligence.
Or maybe that female brains are better at multitasking.
Anecdotal evidence suggests it. Evolutionary evidence suggests it. Studies suggest it. But ever since the Jewish feminist push in the 20th century, this strive for egalitarianism between the sexes became mainstream, which helps to still keep the notion of “blank slatism” alive.
The idea that people have either a “female” or “male” brain is an old one, says Daphna Joel at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “The theory goes that once a fetus develops testicles, they secrete testosterone which masculinises the brain,” she says. “If that were true, there would be two types of brain.”
Anyone else surprised that someone from Tel Aviv University is making these claims? Are we supposed to believe that testosterone doesn’t affect the brain? Are we supposed to believe that higher testosterone, higher estrogen and other biologic differences in brain structure don’t account for behavioral differences between the sexes?
We have data that this is the case, though:
Sex steroid hormones exert a profound influence on the sexual differentiation and function of the neural circuits that mediate dimorphic behaviors. Both estrogen and testosterone are essential for male typical behaviors in many species. Recent studies with genetically modified mice provide important new insights into the logic whereby these two hormones coordinate the display of sexually dimorphic behaviors: estrogen sets up the masculine repertoire of sexual and territorial behaviors, and testosterone controls the extent of these male displays.
Control of masculinization of the brain and behavior (Wu and Shah, 2010)
To believe that testosterone doesn’t cause masculinization of the brain will have to have one deny all of the literature out there. Why people believe that sex differences, as well as racial/ethnic differences, are rooted in experience and not biology is truly mind boggling.
“There are not two types of brain”
And below this, they basically say that the “gender fluid” phenomenon is ‘ok’. Differences between individual boys and girls and individual men and women are extremely evident just by casual observation, so to attempt to say that individual brains cannot be shown to have full-on male or female characteristics is insincere. The fact that, as shown above, testosterone mediates the masculinization of the brain, we can see that these differences in brain structure do exist, and are accounted for by exposure to testosterone invitro, which then cause the differences in the brains of men and women.
Although the team only looked at brain structure, and not function, their findings suggest that we all lie along a continuum of what are traditionally viewed as male and female characteristics. “The study is very helpful in providing biological support for something that we’ve known for some time – that gender isn’t binary,” says Meg John Barker, a psychologist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK.
Gender is binary. Female and male characteristics do exist. Males and females differ in certain structures of the brain as seen in a study reviewing over 20 years of the study of sex differences in the brain.
“Across all kinds of spatial skills, we find very, very few that are sensitive to sex,” says Hausmann. “We have also identified spatial problems where women outperform men – the black-and-white idea of a male or female brain is clearly too simple.”
The sex differences on spatial skills tests are rooted in brain structure. Researchers measured a 10 percent difference between men and women in overall amount of parietal lobe surface area. Since how we process information is obviously a result of cognitive processes in the mind, differences between the sexes in brain structure show how men and women can differ in certain cognitive tasks. Of course, some spatial problems can be women can outperform men on some spatial tasks, no one disputes that. However, what the average battery of tests shows is that men have higher visio-spatial intelligence than men.
Alexandra Kautzky-Willer, head of the Gender Medicine Unit at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, agrees that things aren’t so simple. “There are differences between men and women when you look in large groups, and these are important for diagnosis and treatment,” she says. “But there are always more differences within genders. We always need to look at culture, environment, education and a person’s role in society,” she says.
Just like there “is more difference within race than between them”, right? Culture is a product of genetics and IQ, we put ourselves into certain environments based on our genes, education is largely heritable, a person’s worth to society is based on IQ and the Big Five personality traits, which are at least 50 percent heritable, all of which are rooted in brain processes.. Those factors don’t prove that there are no differences between the brains of the sexes because all of them can be explained, in part due to genetic factors.
These findings, they claim, say that it’s impossible to say what features a person’s brain will have based on the known sex of the brain. With differences in gray matter, brain size and other regions in the brain, we can definitively say whether or not the brain is male or female. Sure some outliers will occur, but the overall bulk, we would see that the sex would be guessed with a super majority being correct.
Joel envisions a future in which individuals are not so routinely classified based on gender alone. “We separate girls and boys, men and women all the time,” she says. “It’s wrong, not just politically, but scientifically – everyone is different.”
Here we are with the point of this article: to attempt to normalize this trend of degenerate behavior that the media pushes which begins to permeate our society. Chromosomal differences between men and women show the sex differences. X means woman, Y means man. Some may point to some anomalies, but anomalies occur in nature all the time and are not a representative of the population.
This also shows with differences in brain size, that causes a difference in IQ between men and women. The study found that men had brains that were, on average, 8 to 13 percent larger than women’s. Since we know that the IQ/brain size correlation is .35, more often than not, men will have higher IQs than women due to having slightly larger brains. And the data is consistent with the finding that men and women have slightly differing IQ scores, which shows in the difference in average brain volume between men and women.
In JP Rushton’s refutation to Steven Jay Gould’s revised edition of The Mismeasure of Man, he states that Gould claims that when accounting for body size and age that the difference in brain size drops from 182 grams to 113 grams, then invokes unspecified age and body size parameters and that accounting for these differences then the sex difference in brain size will vanish. Ankney (1992) reexamined the autopsy data of Ho et al (1980) and found that uncorrected for body size, the difference between men and women’s brains was 140 grams; After correcting for body size, the difference between men and women was 100 grams. This shows that around 30 percent of the difference between men and women in brain size is attributed to body size.
In this review, Rushton did state that men and women had the same scores on tests of intelligence and that this provided a paradox due to the differences in brain size between men and women and similar IQ scores. However, Rushton and Jackson (2006) showed that men and women differ by 3.63 IQ points on average, among a multitude of other strong correlates with the difference in IQ scores.
Men have 23 billion neocortical neurons, women with 19 percent less, at 19 billion (Pakkerson and Gunderson, 1997). Seeing as cortical neuron activity moderates perception in the brain, the differences in neocortical neurons affect other processes and mental faculties in the brain as well.
All of these brain differences then manifest themselves in cultural achievement between men and women.
Charles Murray (2003), in his book Human Accomplishment shows differing societies’ human accomplishments and how these differences in human accomplishment have shaped our society today. He gathered data on women Nobel Prize winners from 1901-2000 and found this:
Murray states on p. 273, 274 and 275 that women have an underrepresentation in the sciences. You would figure, if this so-called “white cis male patriarchy” was out to have women be underrepresented, they wouldn’t have allowed the feminist movement to come full-swing in the early 1900s. Well, the numbers on women Nobel Prize winners from 1901-1950 is: 2 percent sciences total, 4 percent chemistry,2 percent medicine, 2 percent physics and 11 percent literature with a 4 percent representation in total. From 1951-2000, it was 2 percent sciences total, 1 percent chemistry, 4 percent medicine, 1 percent in physics and 8 percent in literature for a total of 3 percent.
Now, this does show women’s high verbal ability at play with regards to the number of literary Nobel Prizes’ they have, but this shows that after the Feminist Movement, that when they got ‘equality’, they failed to produce the same as men. This data corroborates what I noted earlier: that there is a significant amount of cortical neuronal difference between men and women, there is a 3.63 IQ point difference between men and women on average, and finally the data on Nobel Prizes corroborates this information.
The Defense Ministers of Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, and Germany embody what is going on at the moment in these countries with the ‘migrant’ crisis. We can see with Russia’s aversion to the scenario currently happening in Europe, that with their Defense Minister, these things that are currently happening in those aforementioned countries won’t happen in Russia.
This is shown in how men and women’s overall leadership capabilities, ability to lead meetings and differing managing strategies. All of these differences, of course, are due to brain differences between men and women.
Women are more emotional than men due to biology, so in times of war with a woman Defense Minister, since men and women differ in inductive and deductive reasoning traits, women won’t be deductive, which is a logical process in which a conclusion is drawn from multiple premises that are assumed to be true, which men excel at. Women, however, excel at inductive reasoning, which is making broad generalizations from specific observations. It seems that in war time, deductive reasoning would be better, seeing as the conclusion is drawn from things that are assumed to be true. Men make better leaders than women because, since, on average, men don’t think with their emotions while women do.
Men and women’s brains differ on the individual level, of course, like all things between groups, sexes, and individuals. The push to deny human nature, and in turn, invoke a blank slate argument even in the face of science is shown in the way that our society is headed. Between differences in brain size, scholastic achievement, IQ, brain weight, Nobel Prizes, neocortical neurons and other gender-specific differences, these innate differences in brain structure manifest themselves in society and the types of jobs women want and acquire. Women cannot lead as well as men and while they ‘lead differently’, the best type of leader to have is a man as men think with logic and facts whereas women think with emotion, on average.
Strong Evidence, Strong Argument: Race IQ and Adoption
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Commenter Salger brought this article to my attention, Weak Evidence, Weak Argument: Race, IQ, Adoption in which an environmentalist in the B-W IQ debate regurgitates the same old and boring long-refuted studies and the same long-refuted researchers, to attempt to prove that the gap in IQ is purely environmental in nature. I have written on this before, so his reasoning that there is “weak evidence” and “a weak argument on race and IQ” is clearly wrong, as we know the studies and researchers he cites have been disproven. Steele then references another discussion he had on the black-white IQ gap, speaking about people being “uninformed” about a position while arguing it.
My problem with this kind of data is as follows. It isn’t overly useful data in proving much of anything: small sample sizes, lack of effective controls and control groups, abundance of confounding factors, difficulty of replicability, etc.
Since he’s saying that there is a “difficulty of replicability” with IQ tests in transracial adoption studies, he hasn’t read the ones for the hereditarian argument and seeing how they show the biological origin of IQ or he’s just being willfully ignorant. I’ll go with the first one.
We know through other research that racial biases are immense in our society, and this other research tends to be of a higher quality than the adoption (and twin) research. Studies have found various forms of racial biases in a wide variety of areas, from education to policing. It’s well supported that this is systemic and institutional.
There are no racial biases in education nor policing. Police arrest less black offenders than are reported by the NCVS and affirmative action getting blacks ahead shows that the racial bias is for them, not whites. Saying that it’s “systemic and institutional” is a cop out since you know he doesn’t want to even entertain the idea of the hereditarian hypothesis.
It is also well supported that it is often internalized, and typically unconscious. Studies have shown that even minorities show prejudice against other minorities and that this is worse toward those with darker skin. Plus, studies show an internalized racial bias by way of stereotype threat, where the framing of a situation apparently causes the person to in a sense unintentionally sabotage themselves (because of added stress and cognitive load).
Stereotype threat, my favorite. ST can only be replicated in the lab. “Prejudice” doesn’t matter.
For any of these adoption (and twin) studies to be useful, it would require taking into account all the known confounding factors. I don’t know of a single study that does this or even attempts to come close to doing this. It would be ludicrously counterintuitive to presume that these endemic and internalized racial biases weren’t effecting the results.
All this leaves us is to speculate based on weak and probably misleading data. This means interpretation inevitably will follow ideology, as long as we limit ourselves to this data and ignore the larger context of data.
What other confounders could be controlled for that you think had a negative impact on the mean IQ of blacks at adolescence throughout adulthood? “Internalized racial biases” don’t matter since blacks have a higher self-esteeem about their physical attractiveness (Kanazawa, 2011), so “internalized racial biases” (which includes things such as one’s thoughts of one’s self physically) do not matter as they are more confident than are whites. This is due to testosterone, which makes blacks more extroverted than whites who are more extroverted than Asians (Rushton’s Differential-K Theory). If these racial biases were really to manifest themselves to actually sap 15 to 18 (1 to 1.2 SDs) IQ points from blacks, this would show in their self-confidence about themselves. Yet they are more confident, on average, than the other two major races.
All this leaves us is to speculate based on weak and probably misleading data. This means interpretation inevitably will follow ideology, as long as we limit ourselves to this data and ignore the larger context of data.
It’s been discussed ad nasueam. The data attempting to say that blacks are just as intelligent are whites are wrong, as I will show below. The data for the hereditarian hypothesis is not weak, as I have detailed on this blog extensively.
This is highly problematic, for the issues involved are complex. That is just the way reality is. If you want to deal with complex reality, you better find sophisticated ways of dealing with it. On that account, these studies fail in various ways. Still, they give us some possible insights in new directions to take with better research.
IQ has been tested for 100 years, and every time, whites outscore blacks 1 to 1.2 SDs.THAT is reality, not some made up, contorted view of reality for some egalitarian dogma.
In conclusion, my basic point is that all of this demonstrates how weak is the argument being made by hereditarians. As for those who prefer environmental explanations, they don’t need this data at all, since there is already plenty of other data that supports their position. Given what we know, all of the racial disparities, IQ or otherwise, can be explained without recourse to genetic determinism.
My basic point is that all of this demonstrates how weak the argument being made by environmentalists really is. What other data supports the environmentalist position that “they don’t need any data at all”? I’d love to see it. The gap is 80/20 genetics and environment respectively. From averaged correlations on subtests that correlate highest with g, we can say that the gap is around 80 percent genetic and 20 percent environment. Genetic determinism in terms of IQ, save extreme environmental factors, will always beat any environmental model.
This is an obvious statment, for the simple reason that race itself is a social construct, not a scientific fact. Social constructs and their social consequences need social explanations of social causes. The debate of the racial IQ gap is about as meaningful as attempting to compare the average magical intelligence of those sorted into each Hogwarts Houses by the magical sorting hat, if one were to base a society on such strange notions.
Race is not a social construct, but a biological reality. If this debate is “about as meaningful as attempting to compare the average magical intelligence of those sorted into each Hogwarts Houses by the magical sorting hat”, why waste youre time writing this post with tons of misinformation?
Steele cites Block (2005), a “philosopher of science”. Rushton and Jensen (2005, p. 279) say that those (Block) who say that gene-environment interactions are so hard to entangle, why then, do identical twins raised apart show identical signs of intelligence (among many other heritable items)?
Eyferth comes out, of course, which the study has been discredited. To be breif, 20 to 25 percent of the fathers to German women’s children weren’t sub-Saharan African, but French North Africans. 30 percent of blacks got refused in military service in comparison to 3 percent of whites due to rigorous testing for IQ in 70 years ago. One-third of the children were between the ages of 5 and 10 and two-thirds were between the ages of 10 and 13. Heritability estiamtes really begin to increase around puberty as well, so if the Eyferth study would have retested in the following 5 to 8 years to see IQ scores then, the scores would have dropped as that’s when genetic effects start to dominate and environments effects are close to 0.
He then cites Richard Nisbett, who I have discussed here, on the Moore study.
The study conducted by Elise Moore (1986) compared IQ scores of 23 7 to 10-year-old black children raised by middle-class white families and the same number of black children but raised in black families (normal adoption).The findings indicated that traditionally adopted black children raised by black parents had normal IQ scores (85), whereas those black children who were adopted by white families had IQs 1 standard deviation (100) above the black mean. Moore states that multivariate analysis indicates that the behaviors of black and white mothers were different in regards to how the black children were treated. She states that white adoptive mothers reduced stress by joking, laughing, and grinning. Whereas black adoptive mothers reduced stress in less positive ways including coughing, scowling and frowning. She also says that white adoptive mothers gave more positive reinforcement to their adoptive child’s problem solving whereas black adoptive mothers gave less (as I am arguing here, these traits are mostly genetic in origin, driven by IQ). She concludes that the ethnicity of the rearing environment exerts a significant influence on intellectual ability as well as standardized test scores. The sample sizes, however, are extremely small and to infer that the black-white IQ gap is environmental in origin because of a study with a small sample size is intellectually dishonest.
He cites a study of black children in the UK, but this is a case of super-selection, as only the most intelligent Africans emigrate.
Steele then cites this article:
These results make some common sense. We know that intelligent people tend to have intelligent children— but not always. Some studies have also suggested that intensive programs may make a large difference in disadvantaged children’s intelligence quotient (IQ) scores.
Headstart gains are temporary, and there is a fadeout over time.. Arthur Jensen was writing about this 50 years ago. IQ and scholastic achievement gains only last for a few years after Headstart, then genetics starts to take effect as the child grows older.
The article then mentions how European ancestry can be measured in American black populations. However, the studies fail to choose genetic markers with large allele frequencies between Europeans and African Americans (Jensen, 1998, p. 480).
He cites Lee Willerman and his colleagues who found that children with white mothers and black fathers scored higher on IQ tests than children with black mothers and white fathers. This is due to the mother being the best predictor of intelligence of the child. White mothers have a better prenatal environment than do black mothers.
He cites the Wikipedia article on Race and Intelligence, which brings up all the usual, Moore, Tizard (will address below) and Eyferth. The article cites Nisbett (2009) as claiming that Rushton and Jensen’s (2005) claim that the three aforementioned studies did not retest at adulthood, and that “heritability between ages 7 and 17 are quite small, and that consequently this is no reason to disregard Moore’s findings.”
That’s a lie. IQ heritability jumps from 40 percent at age 7 to 82 percent at age 18, with some studies showing heritabilities up to 90 percent.
From the same Wikipedia article:
Another study cited by Rushton & Jensen (2005), and by Nisbett et al. (2012), was Moore (1986) study which found that adopted mixed-race children’s has test scores identical to children with two black parents – receiving no apparent “benefit” from their white ancestry
As shown above, since the mother’s IQ is the best predictor of intelligence and the black-white IQ gap being 80 percent heritable, this means that the amount of white ancestry an American black has, the higher his IQ score will be.
Tizard (1972) observed 2 to 5-year-old black and white children in a nursery setting. The white and black children both had IQs at 102.6 and 106.3 respectively. She found no significant gap in the three groups tested (white, black and West Indian). However, she did note that the single significant difference was in that of non-white children. But that doesn’t mean anything as genetics doesn’t take full effect until around 18, where the IQ gap will be the largest.
Levin and Lynn (1994) disputed Weinberg et al’s conclusion with a hereditarian alternative. That the average IQ and school achievement scores of the black children directly reflected their amount of African ancestry. At both age 7 and 17, the adopted children with 2 black parents had lower average IQs and worse school achievement tests than those with one black parent and one white parent. So right here, in the MTAS, it shows that mixed-race people DO score better than just blacks, which is attributed to their white ancestry.
He then cites a bunch of quotes from Nisbett’s book Intelligence and How to Get It, yet Ruhston and Jensen have refuted this too.
Even with equalized environments these gaps still persist. Your allegations of supposed racism or any other factor you want to bring up for the racial gap in intelligence are unfounded. Environmental differences do not account for the 1.2 SD gap between blacks and whites; environment accounts for, at best, 3 IQ points, so you’ll need to explain what environmental effects cause that kind of IQ drop. In America, blacks don’t have the same environmental factors, i.e., parasitic load, bad nutrition and the high disease rate, so they can hit their phenotypic IQ, plus a bit more due to 22 percent white ancestry on average. Why you cite discredited studies and researchers to help prove your point is beyond me.
Stereotype Threat is false. Non-replicable studies outside of a lab setting, as well as a meta-analysis that looked at 55 published and unpublished studies that showed that Stereotype Threat is discredited. As shown above, blacks have higher self-confidence than do whites, so this imaginary “stereotype threat” doesn’t affect blacks taking real tests; it only affects them in a lab setting. Steve Sailer has covered stereotype threat as well.
This debate is meaningful, and environmentalist who thinks that they can attempt to explain everything away by environmental factors are being extremely disingenuous. Even giving blacks everything they want in a school system with having one of the highest budgets at 430 million dollars did nothing to close the IQ gap or do anything for integration. Why do we have to deny reality, all for egalitarian dogma based off of philosophical musings then taken by Franz Boas to deny the biological validity of race?
To quote the concluding paragraph in Rushton and Jensen’s refutation to Nisbett:
There is no value in denying reality. While improving opportunities and removing arbitrary barriers is a worthy ethical goal, we must realize that equal opportunity will result in equitable, though unequal outcomes. Expanding on the application of his “default hypothesis” that group differences are based on aggregated individual differences, themselves based on both genetic and environmental contributions, Jensen proposed “two laws of individual differences”—(1) individual differences in learning and performance increase as task complexity increases, and (2) individual differences in performance increase with practice and experience (unless there is a low ceiling on proficiency). We must recognize that the more environmental barriers are ameliorated and everybody’s intellectual performance is improved, the greater will be the relative influence of genetic factors (because the environmental variance is being removed). This means that equal opportunity will result in unequal outcomes, within-families, between-families, and between population groups. The fact that we have learned to live with the first, and to a lesser degree the second, offers some hope we can learn to do so for the third.
In Defense of Jason Richwine
3900 words
I came across two articles today, one from The Atlantic and the other from judgybitch.com. Both have attacked Jason Richwine’s dissertation in which he calls for a change to the US immigration policy to turn away low IQ immigrants and only accept high IQ ones. I agree fully with this (if it’s completely controlled, of course). This would drop crime as well as save us more money in welfare and other government programs that low IQ peoples take.
By 2050, 9 out of 10 people in the US will be obese or overweight and by 2020 80 percent of US men will be obese or overweight. This is due, in part, to an influx of those with lower IQs from South of the Border. Jason Richwine’s argument for testing immigrants will, in turn, lower obesity rates in America.
Dr. James Thompson noted how continued mass immigration from the South of the Border would decrease IQ, this is a real and pressing issue. A country is only as good as its majority population and by allowing all of these low IQ people into the country, our country will transform into theirs, which is ironic since that’s the exact thing they’re running away from. You cannot run away from genetics. The overall ‘Hispanic’-white gap is 10.2 points or .72 SDs. That will lower the average IQ of the country even more, and in turn, give us all a lowered quality of life. The average IQ of Mexico is 88 (Lynn and Vanhanen, 2002) so by allowing unfettered mass immigration without checking average IQs to see if they’ll be of any use to us as a country will lead to eventual irreversible effects if this isn’t stopped soon.
The first article I’ll look at is the one from The Atlantic:
Let’s start with the fact that there is no such thing as a direct test of general mental ability. What IQ tests measure directly is the test-taker’s display of particular cognitive skills: size of vocabulary, degree of reading comprehension, facility with analogies, and so on. Any conclusions about general mental ability are inferences drawn from the test-taker’s relative mastery of those various skills.
IQ tests test g or the general intelligence factor which encompasses all mental abilities. I guess the author of this piece has never heard of Raven’s Progressive Matrices. It’s a ‘culture free’ IQ test where the test is based on pattern recognition. No bias there.
Even then, if they don’t speak English and speak Spanish, they can get tests in their native language which are not biased. Gottfredson (1994) and 51 other eminent intelligence researchers signed a 25 point statement in which one of the statements was:
Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born, English-speaking peoples in the U.S. Rather, IQ scores predict equally accurately for all such Americans, regardless of race and social class. Individuals who do not understand English well can be given either a nonverbal test or one in their native language.
They will be given the nonverbal test (RPM, see below) or one in their native language, which still test the same underlying concept of the general intelligence factor.
They found that being raised by high-SES (socioeconomic status) parents led to an IQ boost of between 12 and 16 points – a huge improvement that testifies to the powerful influence that upbringing can have.
False. See below.
A study of twins by psychologist Eric Turkheimer and colleagues that similarly tracked parents’ education, occupation, and income yielded especially striking results. Specifically, they found that the “heritability” of IQ – the degree to which IQ variations can be explained by genes – varies dramatically by socioeconomic class. Heritability among high-SES (socioeconomic status) kids was 0.72; in other words, genetic factors accounted for 72 percent of the variations in IQ, while shared environment accounted for only 15 percent. For low-SES kids, on the other hand, the relative influence of genes and environment was inverted: Estimated heritability was only 0.10, while shared environment explained 58 percent of IQ variations.
Turkheimer was right that he did find gene x environment interactions that made genetic influences weaker and shared environment stronger for those from poorer homes in comparison to those from more affluent homes. Though most studies show no interaction effects, or interactions vary significantly.
Other studies have shown that heritabilities are the same both within as well as between white and black samples. That led Jensen to label this the ‘default hypothesis’. Researchers analyzed full and half siblings from the NLSY on three Peabody Achievement Tests. 161 black full siblings, 106 pairs of black half siblings, 314 pairs of full white siblings and 53 pairs of white half-siblings. with measures in math and reading. The best fitting model for all of the data was by which the sources of the sources of the differences between those within race and the differences between races were the same, at 50 percent genetic and environmental. The combined model (50/50) best explains it, whereas the culture-only and genetics-only models are inadequate.
IQ tests are good measures of innate intelligence–if all other factors are held steady.
This is wrong. IQ tests are fine all around the world. RPM is one of the best out there and correlates with g between .8 and .9.
But if IQ tests are being used to compare individuals of wildly different backgrounds, then the variable of innate intelligence is not being tested in isolation. Instead, the scores will reflect some impossible-to-sort-out combination of ability and differences in opportunities and motivations. Let’s take a look at why that might be the case.
Intelligence – g – is the same across every population in the world.
Comparisons of IQ scores across ethnic groups, cultures, countries, or time periods founder on this basic problem: The cognitive skills that IQ tests assess are not used or valued to the same extent in all times and places
This is why they get re-standardized.
Indeed, the widespread usefulness of these skills is emphatically not the norm in human history. After all, IQ tests put great stress on reading ability and vocabulary, yet writing was invented only about 6,000 years ago – rather late in the day given that anatomically modern humans have been around for over 100,000 years. And as recently as two hundred years ago, only about 15 percent of people could read or write at all.
Doesn’t matter. See Raven’s Progressive Matrices above. The general intelligence factor is the same in all populations around the world. There are ways to give intelligence tests, such as RPM, to those who don’t read or write.
More generally, IQ tests reward the possession of abstract theoretical knowledge and a facility for formal analytical rigor.
Abstract thought is linked with intelligence. Those with higher IQs are more analytical than those with lower IQs.
To grasp how culturally contingent our current conception of intelligence is, just imagine how well you might do on an IQ test devised by Amazonian hunter-gatherers or medieval European peasants.
I touched on this in my refutation of Robert Sternberg. The concept of g does not change over time. The more intelligent you are, the better chance you’ll have to survive in those places.
Such skills are used more intensively in the most advanced economies than they are in the rest of the world. And within advanced societies, they are put to much greater use by the managers and professionals of the socioeconomic elite than by everybody else. As a result, American kids generally will have better opportunities to develop these skills than kids in, say, Mexico or Guatemala. And in America, the children of college-educated parents will have much better opportunities than working-class kids.
Those skills are used much more in advanced economies because of higher average innate intelligence. The children of college-educated parents have much better opportunities than working-class kids because intelligence is strongly linked to socioeconomics status.
Among the strongest evidence that IQ tests are testing not just innate ability, but the extent to which that innate ability has been put to work developing specific skills, is the remarkable “Flynn effect”: In the United States and many other countries, raw IQ scores have been rising about three points a decade. This rise is far too rapid to have a genetic cause. The best explanation for what’s going on is that increasing social complexity is expanding the use of the cognitive skills in question – and thus improving the opportunities for honing those skills.
Let’s say Flynn is right. The average black now is as intelligent as the average white in 1945. That’s supposed to show that the race difference in IQ is environmentally caused because there hasn’t been that much genetic change in the white population and the IQ has allegedly gone up 15 points. So, you can have a 15 point difference created by just an environmental change, no one knows why. Some think better nutrition or malnourished brain, etc. That’s also a fallacy. Just because a change in one group over time is due to an environmental change, doesn’t mean, or even make it probable, that a difference between 2 groups at the same time is due to an environmental change. The Flynn Effect make’s that highly unlikely and here’s why.
The Flynn Effect, assuming it’s real, has been acting completely uniformly in every population. Any country you ask, the rate of increase is 3 per decade. That means it’s an environmental factor that affects whites and blacks the same way as well as the whole world. And as a result of this uniform environmental factor, you have a difference in IQ that’s being preserved. That would suggest that the response on the parts of blacks and whites is due to some non-environment factors, a genetic factor, which is making the difference in IQ remain constant as the Flynn Effect goes into effect.
What makes it even more unlikely, in the last 60 years, their environments have become very similar since segregation. These differences don’t exist now, they go to the same schools by court order, same TV shows, same movies, basically same environment for both, and yet, that increasing similarity in the environment, the Flynn Effect, the IQ gap has remained intact. Which means whatever counts for the gap is genetic and not environmental. The more and more similar the environment, the less and less of the difference can be due to the environment and the more and more it must be due to genes. So this 15 point gap surviving these changes in the environment, seems more and more likely to be genetic in origin.
So because this ‘Effect’ is the same across all populations and the gap didn’t close, that means it’s genetic. If the gap persisted even when IQs were rising 3 points per year, the B-W gap has still persisted, proving that it’s genetic.
That is why the Flynn Effect is irrelevant. This “Effect”, has been a slight upward trend in IQ, around 3 points per decade, which, in my opinion, has to do with the advent of better nutrition and an industrialized society. The rise in IQ started around 1880, almost perfectly coinciding with the industrial revolution in America. Along with a more industrialized society, it’s possible to give most citizens in the country good enough nutrition to where they are not iodine deficient (adding iodine to our salt boosted Americans IQs), as well as being deficient in zinc, iron, protein and certain B vitamins which the effects of not getting enough leads to the brain not growing to its full potential, which in turn leads to a lower IQ.
One more point on the Flynn Effect. The Flynn Effect does not occur on g, as it is not a Jensen Effect. Rushton defines Jensen Effect as follows:
Significant correlations occurring between g-factor loadings and other variables have been dubbed “The Jensen effect”.
…
Thus the secular increase in test scores (the “Lynn±Flynn effect”) is not a “Jensen effect” nor is this the first time the discriminating power of the Jensen effect has been shown.
The Flynn effect is acutely embarrassing to those who leap from IQ score differences to claims of genetic differences in intelligence.
Not at all, since it’s easily explainable by better nutrition since the beginning of the industrial revolution. It’s also not even on g so why this gets discussed is beyond me.
Specifically, it is based on the ahistorical and ethnocentric assumption of a fixed relationship between the development of certain cognitive skills and raw mental ability. In truth, the skills associated with intelligence have changed over time–and unevenly through social space–as society evolves.
The relationship exists and there is a strong correlation between cognitive skills and raw mental ability. More intelligent people have better functioning societies than less intelligent people. This is an objective fact.
But contrary to the counsel of despair from hereditarians like Richwine, those deficits aren’t hard-wired. Progress in reducing achievement gaps will certainly not be easy, but a full review of the IQ evidence shows that it is possible. And it will be aided by policies, like immigration reform, that encourage the full integration of Hispanics into the American economic and cultural mainstream.
Jason Richwine is correct. Progress in achievement gaps will not close, barring the continued dysgenesis that America is facing. Immigration reform will not change anything. They don’t want to assimilate; they want to come and leech off of our Welfare State. The denial of genetics and scholastic achievement won’t be able to be held for long. In this study in which Robert Plomin was one of the researchers, it was found that 60 percent of the difference between individual 16-year-old students in the UK could be attributed to genetic factors. We know that IQ is linked to academic achievement and since that’s heritable as well, we will soon see that race and ethnic differences in IQ and academic achievement are, without a shadow of a doubt, are real and do not exist because of any economic deprivation or some other kind of non-biologic factors.
For the second article, from judgybitch.com, in which she only says one correct thing in it and it’s:
Here’s a little pet theory of mine I’d like to throw out, just for the hell of it. I think humans prefer lighter skin and hair and eye colors because those tend to be the result of recessive genes. A man with darker tones who has a child with a woman of lighter tones will almost always see his genes expressed in the children. Dark tones tend to be dominant. The preference for lighter skin is a natural paternity test.
This is called sexual selection, which is natural selection which arises for selection of traits in the opposite sex. Selecting for certain traits which the opposite sex found appealing, for example, is how long hair got sexually selected for outside of Africa along with selection for hair, eye, and skin color. Selecting for these traits had them become more prevalent and they eventually stayed due to intense selection for them.
For example, Eurasian women got selected for beauty and Eurasian men who got selected for intelligence as men had to be more intelligent in order to hunt for food. Conversely, African women gathered and hunted for food and became slightly more intelligent than African men who became the more attractive sex (Fuerle, 2008).
But other than this she is wrong.
You know what IS linked very strongly to lower IQs?
Malnutrition.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041117005027.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2628311
http://www.nature.com/pr/journal/v5/n11/abs/pr1971371a.html
The idea is not even the slightest bit controversial. Children who are starved, especially in the earliest years of life, perform very poorly on IQ tests compared to peers who received adequate nutrition. Like, really poorly. IQ’s down around 60 (100 is average).
Let’s look at this world hunger map, shall we?
http://www.geographictravels.com/2008/07/world-hunger-map.html
Oh well now, would you look at that. Looks like it’s mostly black and Hispanic folks who are starving. And all those white folks are living life to the hilt, with full bellies and bright futures.
Must be a coincidence.
It’s not a coincidence. There is no coincidence that if you superimpose an IQ map over the world hunger map, that a super majority of the low IQ countries would have bad nutrition and be starving, whereas those higher IQ populations would have better nutrition and, therefore, higher IQs and lack of malnutrition and starvation. There are environmental factors involved in this, which I have gone through in my article IQ, Nutrition, Disease and Parasitic Load. Yes, those environmental variables decrease IQ; but in the case of Africa, if their full genotypic IQ were expressed in their phenotype, they would have an average IQ of 80, 9 points away from the lowest average European country which is Serbia at 89. They would then be able to have better functioning societies and not have to rely on outside aid. Though, their low IQs are the cause of evolution, those factors only cause about 10 points of difference (depending which of the variables I mentioned exist in those areas).
Let’s look at this map of food insecurity in the United States:
http://www.nextgenerationfood.com/news/food-insecurity-in-the-us/
Highest rates of food insecurity:
Mississippi
Texas
Arkansas
Lowest rates of food insecurity:
North Dakota
Massachusetts
Virginia
Gosh, I wonder where all the black and Hispanic people are? North Dakota, right?
According to the USDA, in a report titled Household Food Security in the United States in 2011, black and Hispanic families are more than twice as likely to experience food insecurity as white families (p. 11).
White 11.4% of families food insecure
Black 25.1%
Hispanic 26.2%
Gosh, I wonder where black and ‘Hispanic’ people are? Mississippi, Texas, and Arkansas right? What is the cause of the food insecurity? Lower intelligence. What is lower intelligence highly correlated with? Obesity.
If you keep in mind the fact that obesity (especially as the result of heavily processed, nutrient deficient junk foods) is also a form of malnutrition, it seems to me that there is an entirely different explanation for why certain racial groups might tend to perform lower on IQ tests.
Sure it is. A big cause for obesity is lowered intelligence (Kanazawa 2007). What he found was that those studies that concluded that obesity causes lowered intelligence only observed cross-sectional studies. Longitudinal studies that looked into the link between obesity and intelligence found that those who had low IQs since childhood then became obese later in life and that obesity does not lead to low IQ. The average IQ for an individual suffering from PWS is 65 (Butler, Lee and Whitman 2006, p. 13), so that is one reason they have a tendency to be obese. He states that those with IQs below 74 gained 5.19 BMI points, whereas those with IQs over above 126 gained 3.73 BMI points in 22 years, which is a statistically significant difference. Also noted, was that those at age 7 who had IQs above 125 had a 13.5 percent chance of being obese at age 51, whereas those with IQs below 74 at age 7 had a 31.9 percent chance of being obese. This clearly shows that those obese individuals who score low on IQ tests, more often than not, are obese because of their intelligence. The lack of ability to delay gratification is also correlated with low IQ (Mischel and Metzner, 1982).
Becoming obese is largely in part related to environmental factors, but there are correlates with obesity and genetic factors, as well as racial and ethnic differences in obesity, which are due, in part, to environmental as well as genetic factors. All of these factors fall back to a) lower intelligence, b) differing physiology and c) differing nutritional habits. Lower IQ is the main reason, though, for these differences which manifest itself as differences in scores of cognitive ability. Those with lower scores than have higher chances of having negative effects in life, such as low SES, higher chance of becoming obese and so on.
Correlation is not causation.
This is the liberals word phrase they use when they cannot contest data and know it so use the same old boring phrase. When you get the same result over and over using the scientific method, then it’s safe to say that the same results and conclusions that get brought up time and time again are real and cannot be explained away by the correlation does not mean causation line.
And furthermore, I haven’t read Richwine’s dissertation, nor do I plan to, so I don’t know if he offered any tentative explanations for his findings.
Didn’t even read it and is giving a critique of it. How does that work?
It looks to me like Richwine is a gigantic racist asshole, because he is using his findings to try and limit the opportunities for Hispanic people to come to the United States, because dumb spics.
Lower IQ people commit more crimes than do higher IQ people. This phenomenon is well-noted that those with lower intelligence commit crime, as the average IQ of a criminal in America, is 85, whereas the average IQ for a juvenile is 92. The average juvenile IQ is higher because more often than not, those who are habitual offenders in childhood become habitual offenders in adulthood, and at adulthood IQ drops from childhood where the environment was able to artificially boost their IQs.
What if I’m right? What if IQ differences are traceable to malnutrition? That would indicate a whole different set of interventions and policies than just turn them away.
You are part right, but that won’t put any big dent in any genetic/phenotypic IQ differences and still, mass immigration from South of the Border still wouldn’t be OK in the first place.
In shutting down the conversation about race and IQ, Harvard students are explicitly saying they don’t WANT to find a reason behind low performance on IQ tests amongst certain racial groups. They don’t CARE why some groups are not reaching their full human potential. They don’t give ONE SINGLE FUCK about anyone other than themselves. It could be as simple as making certain children have access to proper food and nutrition.
I at least give her credit for acknowledging the biological reality of race and the reality of IQ. But she thinks that malnutrition plays too big a part in the ethnic IQ gap than it does in reality.
As I have covered here before, people will do anything they can to deny the validity of IQ tests. However, their explanations cut it.
People who attempt to deny biological differences in intelligence because they strongly predict positive life outcomes will do anything to deny their validity. But that doesn’t change how strong a predictor they are in regards to predicting both positive and negative successes in life.
Those who attempt to deny any differences between races, like Chanda Chisala (I know you can see this Chanda, still waiting for a response to the criticism of your horrible article that “redneck genes” are the cause for the black-white IQ gap), who are wrong in their premises on the cause as well as how to fix the gap. They will do anything to attempt to explain away a gap which is, at least, 50 percent genetic in origin.
The attack on Jason Richwine is because, of course, he’s right. They don’t want to admit he is right so they do whatever they can to discredit his argument, by calling him a ‘racist’. But that doesn’t negate his data, and as seen above, any arguments against Richwine’s dissertation are unfounded.
Germany is going to begin IQ testing their immigrants, why can’t we?
“7 Reasons Why The Concept Of IQ Test Is Flawed”: Yet Another IQ denialist Refutation
1600 words
Yet another article from the camp of the IQ denialists that “IQ tests are flawed“. The past 100 years in psychometrics say otherwise. If IQ tests were so flawed, then it wouldn’t be illegal for employers to administer IQ tests to their applicants. If IQ tests were so flawed, then the Army and other branches of the US military wouldn’t use the ASVAB, and other similar tests like it, to see where to put people who join the military.
1. Criticism by Prof. Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard
Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionary biologist, paleontologist, and a historian of science, had spent a considerable amount of time as a professor at Harvard, denied the accuracy of IQ test in his book, The Mismeasure of Man (1981). According to the arguments put forward by Gould, the human intelligence is not just a single entity which could be measured in terms of mathematical number or be graded according to score.
It’s 2016, and people are STILL citing Steven Jay Gould? Yes, he may have denied the accuracy of IQ tests in his book The Mismeasure of Man, but he put forth ideas that Rushton refuted, and Jensen did as well. He attempted to assassinate the character of Samuel Morton saying that Morton fudged the data on his skull collection (which took 30 years to be officially debunked). Rushton refuted that point in his paper I linked above, 15 years before Lewis et al showed that Gould did show huge biases when remeasuring Morton’s skull collection (biased by his political views [Marxism]). By the time of Morton’s death, 867 skulls were collected. This quote says it all, really:
Having never bothered to check Morton’s measurements, Gould allowed his own perception—that Morton was a racist and therefore a suspect scientist—to influence his own analysis of Morton’s science! (emphasis mine)
2. Various factors may affect the performance in the test
An IQ test measures the intelligence of a person based on the result of the performance of the person on a particular day. The very next, the person may not perform well and there could be various reasons behind it such as emotional or health conditions or even the atmosphere of the test room.
Also, a person who is not educated will not be able to take the test the same way as an educated person.
Seeing as the correlation for retakes on IQ tests is .86, this claim is unfounded.
Let’s take a look at the link this person linked:
Socioeconomic status (SES)
Children who are raised in poverty are severely limited in their intellectual potential by their environment (Turkheimer, Haley, Waldron, D’Onofrio, & Gottesman, 2003).
IQ is the cause for SES.
Turkheimer did find gene x environment interactions that made genetic influences weaker and shared environment stronger for those from poorer homes in comparison to those from more affluent homes. Though most studies show no interaction effects, or interactions vary significantly. Rushton and Jensen have this to say about it:
The Turkheimer et al. study that Nisbett cites is an outlier. In Britain, the exact opposite of Turkheimer’s result was found in over 2,000 pairs of 4-year-old twins (N = 4,446 children), with greater heritability observed in high-risk environments. A re-analysis of the Hawaii Family Study of Cognition also found contrary results to Turkeimer’s. Nagoshi and Johnson found no reduction in the relationship between parental cognitive ability and offspring performance in families of lower as opposed to upper levels of socioeconomic status. In the 1,349 families they studied, the relationship remained the same across tests, ethnicity, and sex of offspring. (emphasis mine)
Heritabilities are the same, within or between race and ethnicity.
Ethnicity
Opponents of this view argue that scores on intelligence tests can be influenced by many nonintellectual factors, such as years of schooling, SES, and familiarity with the culture for whom the test was written. Researchers have in fact shown that when any one of these factors is manipulated, IQ changes (Grissmer, Williamson, Kirby, & Berends, 1998).
Not at all. How are years of schooling a nonintellectual factor? “Familiarity with the culture for whom the test was written” is not true. Hundreds of years of IQ testing attest to this. SES, well yes. On average if you test those from high SES homes, they will have higher IQs than those from lower SES homes as IQ is one of the best predictors of whether or not you’ll be high or low SES.
3. There is no such thing as a fixed IQ – the thing about Flynn Effect
Even if the results of an IQ test are considered as a means to measure a person’s intelligence, the IQ may not remain the same throughout his life. With some practice, the same person who has scored poorly now can score really well the next time he or she appears for the test.
However, the “standardized score” does consider the expected amount of improvement over time and discounts it in the next attempt.
Of course “IQ may not remain the same throughout his life”. Seeing as how at age 5, genetics accounts for only 22 percent of the variance, 40 percent at age 7 and 82 percent at age 18 (many more studies have shown heritabilities to be as high as .9 at adulthood).
The “Flynn Effect” does not occur on g and is unrelated to race differences.
“With some practice”, that will take away the g loadings, effectively making the IQ test useless because it doesn’t test true general intelligence.
4. Predicting the success of person on the basis of the IQ Test
Several institutions use the IQ test as a tool to gauge the capabilities of a student and how he or she is going to do later in life. However, in reality, an IQ test is not a very good indicator of vocational and socioeconomic success.
IQ is a great predictor of socioeconomic success. The correlation between IQ and monetary attainment is .33. With that much variation, of course you’ll have those who have low IQs who are rich and those with high IQs who are poor. But as I alluded to earlier, if IQ tests weren’t a good indicator of vocational success, the US government wouldn’t have made it illegal to test perspective employees for IQ, as well as the US military screening perspective soldiers for IQ to put them in the right job based on their IQ (the first Army aptitude tests were developed from IQ tests). Such a bad indicator, right?
5. The subjects are not enough to measure one’s intelligence
According to The University of South Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Studies, IQ tests fails to include many subjects which are crucial aspects of intelligence in a human being.
While subjects like mathematicians, comprehension, series and limits are important, an individual’s intelligence depends largely on creativity, social skills, and mechanics which are not included in the test.
These are personality traits.
6. It is detrimental to one’s growth
Not only is the test based on arbitrary standards, but representing the entire magnitude of a person’s intelligence into just a number is too simplistic. In many cases, assigning a number to a person’s intelligence can limit his or her aspirations.
I wouldn’t say that it’s “detrimental to one’s growth”, but there is a reason why children are never told their IQ score. No, the number is not “too simplistic”. IQ correlates with many positives as well as many negatives. Their own IQ limits their aspirations, telling them the truth doesn’t hurt them.
7. The role of cultural bias
Apparently, the IQ test is designed in a manner that emphasizes on skills that are important to certain societies. For instance, Australian Aboriginal children, raised in the deserts scored well on a test meant to assess visual memory but not in the IQ test.
Visual memory is more important for these people than anything else as they need to find their ways through the desert.
Galton first measured the IQs of Australian Aborigines in 1869, estimated at 68.8. Even if there was a “cultural bias” with the tests, the slow reaction times of Aborigines shows that they have lower IQ, as IQ and reaction time correlate highly, as well as showing the same 3-way racial pattern. (pg 244-245)
Australian Aborigines actually have a higher visio-spatial IQ than do Europeans. (Lynn, 2006, pg 72) Yes that’s how it evolved, to navigate the desert. The same with the Yup’ik children who had an extremely good memory to be able to navigate their surroundings. The same also holds true for the Eskimos as well as the Inuit. Perfectly natural, seeing the conditions all 3 groups evolved in.
The intelligence quotient test is based on arbitrary standards set by man and is not written in stone.
Sure it’s “set by man”, but sorry to burst your bubble, it pretty much is written in stone, save a lack of good nutrition along with an increase of disease and parasitic load and isolation, those are some of the only variables that can decrease intelligence.
When are people going to learn not to cite people who’s legacies have been tarnished to get their biases out, only to have them refuted 30 years later? While in debates about Gould and Morton, people have said to me “Gould isn’t here to defend himself, stop defaming him”. Oh, you mean like how Gould attempted to assassinate Samuel Morton’s character saying he fudged the data on his skull collection?
IQ tests are not biased. If people say they are, they’re either uneducated on the matter or have political as well as personal biases (see Gould and Lewontin) to depress the truth about IQ, IQ tests and what they mean for our societies as a whole.
Refuting Robert Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
2000 words
I came across this video today from commenter Animekitty on PumpkinPerson’s blog. Animekitty says:
I just happen to think that practicality could be considered a for of intelligence. And that maybe Africans have a form of practicality that is different than the practicality of whites.
Which, as Sternberg explains in the video, sounds a lot to me like visio-spatial intelligence.
His basic thesis is that differing cultures have differing ways in which they quantify intelligence. I will use the examples he uses in the slides in the video.
First, he brings up differing examples of the models of the relationship between culture and intelligence. He brings up Herrnstein and Murray’s model of intelligence, stating that if you want to do a cross-cultural study of intelligence, you would translate the tests of WISC scores between different cultures.
A second model is like Nisbett’s. Using the same translated tests, but the same tests might be involved with different structures and different processes. He says that in Nisbett’s model, differing cultures will see the same things in a differing way, i.e., someone from Asia will what you may see as the background, they may see as the foreground and vice versa.
The third model which Sternberg uses is that there is a common form of intelligence, meaning they have to see what is going on in their lives. Defining their problems, mentally represent them and then allocate resources for a solution, set up a strategy, solve it and model it after your solution. He says the tests you would use would differ in the age of the person.
In model four which is the extreme end of model 1, is that everything is relative. The structures and processes of intelligence and structures are different. Basically, wherever you go you have to start over with different tests between cultures.
- Children and adults may be able to do tasks in one cultural/biological context but not in another.
He cites the Nunes study, where Nunes noted that Brazilian street children show that in one context, kids could do the math on the street, but giving them the same thing in a different context, they can’t solve the problems.So it suggests what would seem to be a test depends on the given context.
This was also noted in a study by Lave (1988), who had housewives wherein they were given math problems in the supermarket and were able to do them correctly, but gave differing answers under a different situation.
Some good evidence here. This could also be used as evidence that ‘women aren’t really all that bad at math’. There is currently no evidence to support or refute his theory, but I’m pretty sure I can show where his thinking is due to renaming of processes that we already know.
2. Students may develop contextually important skills at the expense of academic ones.
He cites the study: The Relationship between Academic and Practical Intelligence: A Case Study in Kenya, in which he says:
We suggest that, among these villagers, time spent developing academic skills may be perceived as taking away from time that needs to be spent developing practical skills and vice versa. The result is that academic and practical intelligence can develop independently or even at odds with one another.
Seeing as those academic skills correlate highly with a nation’s success or lack thereof, it’s clear that they don’t have the brain power to understand academic things, and therefore gravitate towards something they can understand with their lower IQs.
He then references a study on Kenyan children in a village called Luo. They collected 91 plant remedies from mothers and found that it was shared knowledge that the elders also knew, as well as the children. They’re able to memorize a lot of natural remedies to combat parasitic diseases. He uses this study to say that intelligence is dependent on cultural contexts, and therefore cannot be measured between cultures due to differing definitions of intelligence in those certain cultural contexts.
He says that in our societies, knowledge of natural remedies has no basis in our society. Conversely, those children in Nigeria have to worry about surviving and not school. So Sternberg says that in their cultural context, intelligence is knowing natural remedies to parasitic diseases.
This next part made me laugh. One of the questions on the test was:
“A small child in your family has Homa. She has a sore throat, headache and fever. She has been sick for three days. Which of the following Yadh Nyaluo (Luo herbal medicines) can treat Homa?
i. Chamama. Take the lead and sniff fito (medicine up to nose to sneeze out the illness.)
ii. Kaladali. Take the leaves, drink and fito.
iii. Obuo. Take the leaves and fito.
iv. Ogaka. Take the roots, pound and drink.
v. Ahundo. Take the leaves and fito.
This reminded me so much of the B.I.T.C.H. IQ test (yes, that’s the real name). There are ridiculous questions such as:
“Alley Apple is”
“”I know you, shame” means”
“Main Squeeze means”
“A “handkerchief head” is:”
Which are ridiculous questions in terms of an IQ test. When people say that tests are ‘culturally biased’, I don’t think they mean to use complete gibberish and bastardizing the English language to show that there is a ‘cultural bias’ with IQ tests. There isn’t. Even then, Raven’s Progressive Matrices eliminates any so-called ‘cultural bias’.
Those questions are ridiculous and have nothing to do with intelligence. Of course if you use differing variables for all cultures/societies, you will say hey!! Everyone is smart, no one is dumb! Which has no basis in reality.
3. Students have substantial practical skills that go unrecognized in academic tests.
He cites a study done on a Yup’ik Alaskan community, in which he says that differing peoples will have differing academic and practical skills.
He shows a question from that test, which is similar to the one I have shown above about the Yup’ik villagers. He says that the point is, is what’s hard is in the context of how you grew up. That those who grew up in rural areas would know the answer to the question in comparison to those from urban areas. They found that urban students outperformed Yup’ik students on academic tests. But Yup’ik children outscored urban children on the Yup’ik intelligence test. The urban kids do better on the academic tests, where the Yup’ik kids do better on the practical intelligence tests. He says you have to know certain things for your certain environment you’re in.
The findings were that academic intelligence modestly predicted adaptive skills but not hunting skills in the urban and rural communities. On the other hand, practical intelligence modestly predicted adaptive skills and moderately predicted hunting skills in the rural communities but not the urban ones.
He says the Yup’ik kids know how to get from point A to point B that might be 100 miles away in the tundra in the winter and they’ll get there. If the teachers tried to do the same, they’d die. The kids have this tremendous skill set relative to their environment. To succeed in their textbooks, you don’t need to do those certain things in their environment.
This reminded me of the Inuit. They have the same brain size as East Asians, due to being one of the peoples from one of the 3 migrations from Siberia into the Americas, but they only have a 91 IQ despite living in one of the coldest climates in the world. Richard Lynn attributes this to them having a small population. Those who have bigger populations have more chance for certain mutations to arise and be selected for. People have marveled at their ability to track where they were and how they got around the tundra. This is visio-spatial ability at work.
It seems like he’s trying to say that there no fit or unfit individuals for any given environment, only what is defined as ‘intelligence’ is different in each society, but as I am showing you, they all go back to the g factor, or general intelligence.
4. Practical intellectual skills may be better predictors of health than academic ones.
Wrong. He says that practical intelligence is different in different places. Practical intelligence is just as good as academic intelligence in terms of health in his eyes.
Whatever the case may be, actual g, is one of the best predictors of your longevity in life.
5. Teachers evaluations of students are constrained by their concepts of intelligence.
He cites his study Intelligence and culture: how culture shapes what intelligence means, and the implications for a science of well-being. In which he says:
It is important to realize, again, that there is no one overall US conception of intelligence. Indeed, Okagaki & Sternberg (1993) found that different ethnic groups in San Jose, CA, had rather different conceptions of what it means to be intelligent. For example, Latino parents of schoolchildren tended to emphasize the importance of socialcompetence skills in their conceptions of intelligence, whereas Asian parents tended rather heavily to emphasize the importance of cognitive skills. ‘White’ parents also emphasized cognitive skills more. Teachers, representing the dominant culture, emphasized cognitive skills more than social-competence skills. The rank order of children of various groups’ performance (including subgroups within the Latino and Asian groups) could be perfectly predicted by the extent to which their parents shared the teachers’ conception of intelligence. In other words, teachers tended to reward those children who were socialized into a view of intelligence that happened to correspond to the teachers’ own. However, social aspects of intelligence, broadly defined, may be as important as or even more important than cognitive aspects of intelligence in later life. Some, however, prefer to study intelligence not in its social aspect, but in its cognitive one.
With the ‘Latino’ mention, he’s describing verbal intelligence, just like in the Yup’ik example, he was describing visio-spatial IQ. White parents emphasize cognitive skills more because they are wired to do so, on average.
6. Students learn mathematics if taught in a culturally relevant way.
He says when Alaskan Yup’ik kids were taught geometry using fish racks, they outperformed students who were taught the same concepts conventionally. This, again, back to visio-spatial ability. They are able to imagine their surroundings and remember where they were, giving them an advantage.
7. It is possible to assess in the US in ways that increase prediction and reduce multicultural differences.
He showed 2 different creative writing essays. He showed differing examples of creative writing and verbal ability. He says that in terms of predicting first-year GPA, with adding the of creative and practical, they doubled prediction of performance.
He then shows the amount of each measure that is predicted by racial/ethnic differences. He says Asians do better on the math section, whites do better on the verbal, all of which is known and is caused by differences in visio-spatial and verbal intelligence between the races.
On the analytical tests, blacks, ‘Latino’ and American Indian groups didn’t do as well, but the Native American groups did better on oral storytelling, which makes sense due to their culture and how they evolved.
8. How schooling got to where it is.
He uses some crazy example. Saying that if you only allow students by height into college, that if you do a study 30 years later, with the model of Hernnstein and Murray, you will find that height is correlated with IQ (it is). But that’s a really bad example to use here.
All in all, Sternberg attempts to generalize abilities that fall in the g factor and explain them away as something else entirely, not realizing that everything he is explaining is already explained by the general intelligence factor.
A few years ago when I first got in to race differences, someone I was talking to about this did say “well, based on cultural differences, intelligence is different depending on the context and situations you put it in”. So I thought it was funny that someone had a talk on it. Clearly, he’s wrong.
He’s attempting to say that in differing contexts, we’re all smart or dumb in some capacity or another. Which is true to a point, but the g factor says otherwise.
You could also explain Sternberg’s theory as not looking at intelligence, but looking at personality differences and how they manifest and help the intelligence in that certain culture/society.
All of the examples he cited fall on the g factor, not anything else.
Science Magazine: “Taking race out of human genetics”
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I always love these. Refuting race-denialists has become sort of a past time for me. It’s interesting to see either the same things all the time (more likely), or something new, but still bullshit (Chanda Chisala’s attempt to put the cause for low IQ and intellectual achievement for blacks to redneck whites). But most of what is said by race-denialists and the egalitarian Left are easily refutable.
Taking race out of human genetics
In the wake of the sequencing of the human genome in the early 2000s, genome pioneers and social scientists alike called for an end to the use of race as a variable in genetic research. Unfortunately, by some measures, the use of race as a biological category has increased in the postgenomic age. Although inconsistent definition and use has been a chief problem with the race concept, it has historically been used as a taxonomic categorization based on common hereditary traits (such as skin color) to elucidate the relationship between our ancestry and our genes. We believe the use of biological concepts of race in human genetic research—so disputed and so mired in confusion—is problematic at best and harmful at worst. It is time for biologists to find a better way.
Race is a great variable in genetic research. Just because the HGP says human races differ by .1 percent of the genome doesn’t mean anything. The genetic distance between species isn’t what matters, what matters is how those genes that differ are EXPRESSED, and not how much genetic distance is between them. The use of race as a biological category has increased because it is a useful indicator of certain diseases and other things. Inconsistent definitions don’t mean anything as self-identified ancestry was correct 99.86 percent of the time in this study by Risch et al. Self-identified ancestry is good enough to show that what “has an inconsistent definition” has a basis in reality. Skin color is a good proxy for race, but not the only factor. What other better way is there?
Racial research has a long and controversial history. At the turn of the 20th century, sociologist and civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois was the first to synthesize natural and social scientific research to conclude that the concept of race was not a scientific category. Contrary to the then-dominant view, Du Bois maintained that health disparities between blacks and whites stemmed from social, not biological, inequality. Evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, whose work helped reimagine the race concept in the 1930s at the outset of the evolutionary synthesis, wrestled with many of the same problems modern biologists face when studying human populations—for example, how to define and sample populations and genes (5). For much of his career, Dobzhansky brushed aside criticism of the race concept, arguing that the problem with race was not its scientific use, but its nonscientific misuse. Over time, he grew disillusioned, concerned that scientific study of human diversity had “floundered in confusion and misunderstanding”. His transformation from defender to detractor of the race concept in biology still resonates.
And these all don’t matter at all. Race does clearly exist in the biological sense.
Today, scientists continue to draw wildly different conclusions on the utility of the race concept in biological research. Some have argued that relevant genetic information can be seen at the racial level and that race is the best proxy we have for examining human genetic diversity.
Correct.
Others have concluded that race is neither a relevant nor accurate way to understand or map human genetic diversity
Incorrect. What is not relevant or accurate about seeing the genetic distances between populations that evolved separately for tens of thousands of years?
Several meetings and journal articles have called attention to a host of issues, which include (i) a proposed shift to “focus on racism (i.e., social relations) rather than race (i.e., supposed innate biologic predisposition) in the interpretation of racial/ethnic ‘effects’”; (ii) a failure of scientists to distinguish between self-identified racial categories and assigned or assumed racial categories ; and (iii) concern over “the haphazard use and reporting of racial/ethnic variables in genetic research” and a need to justify use of racial categories relative to the research questions asked and methods used. Several academic journals have taken up this last concern and, with mixed success, have issued guidelines for use of race in research they publish . Despite these concerns, there have been no systematic attempts to address these issues and the situation has worsened with the rise of large-scale genetic surveys that use race as a tool to stratify these data .
To see if there is a prevalence of certain disease in certain races/ethnicities seems pretty important to me. If it will better diagnose people and give faster care, that seems like a good thing to me.
It is important to distinguish ancestry from a taxonomic notion such as race. Ancestry is a process-based concept, a statement about an individual’s relationship to other individuals in their genealogical history; thus, it is a very personal understanding of one’s genomic heritage. Race, on the other hand, is a pattern-based concept that has led scientists and laypersons alike to draw conclusions about hierarchical organization of humans, which connect an individual to a larger preconceived geographically circumscribed or socially constructed group.
Seems to be the implication that there are no taxonomic differences between races. That’s funny. Hierarchal organizations of humans only exist really when you focus on certain traits, as all humans have strengths and weaknesses depending on the environment they evolved in.
Unlike earlier disagreements concerning race and biology, today’s discussions generally lack clear ideological and political antipodes of “racist” and “nonracist.” Most contemporary discussions about race among scientists concern examination of population-level differences between groups, with the goal of understanding human evolutionary history, characterizing the frequency of traits within and between populations, and using an individual’s self-identified ancestry to identify genetic risk factors of disease and to help determine the best course of medical treatments.
Population-level differences, race differences, whatever you want to call them, the effect is the same. Understanding human evolutionary history is understanding how and why races and ethnicities are so distinct from one another. As shown above in the Risch cite, self-identified ancestry is a good proxy to identify genetic risk factors to determine best medical treatments.
As a result, racial assumptions are not the biological guide-posts some believe them to be, as commonly defined racial groups are genetically heterogeneous and lack clear-cut genetic boundaries
They aren’t too heterogeneous. Ethnicities/races are homogenous enough to have enough as we evolved a level of genetic similarity to have us favor those more genetically similar to ourselves. Ah, the old ‘continuum fallacy’. Disregarded.
For example, hemoglobinopathies can be misdiagnosed because of the identification of sickle-cell as a “Black” disease and thalassemia as a “Mediterranean” disease
This is true. SCA isn’t just specifically an African disease. I covered SCA a bit on my disease, nutrition and parasitic load post. SCA comes up in populations in wet and warm climates. It’s from mosquitoes mostly. So those that live in those areas, for instance, Southern Italy, will be more susceptible to the disease. Though, these diseases are a pretty good proxy for racial identification.
Popular misinterpretations of the use of race in genetics also continue to fuel racist beliefs, so much so that, in 2014, a group of leading human population geneticists publicly refuted claims about the genetic basis of social differences between races.
A Troublesome Inheritance is a fine book.
Scientific journals and professional societies should encourage use of terms like “ancestry” or “population” to describe human groupings in genetic studies and should require authors to clearly define how they are using such variables. It is preferable to refer to geographic ancestry, culture, socioeconomic status, and language, among other variables, depending on the questions being addressed, to untangle the complicated relationship between humans, their evolutionary history, and their health. Some have shown that substituting such terms for race changes nothing if the underlying racial thinking stays the same.
The last sentence is right. you can call races ANYTHING you want. That doesn’t change the underlying reality of what is being spoken about. Call them red, blue and green. Call them any kind of weird name you can come up with, the underlying biological components do not change. This is what they don’t get. We can give you your definitions to certain words, but that doesn’t change the physiological/biological nature of HBD.
Having journals rationalize the use of classificatory terminology in studying human genetic diversity would force scientists to clarify their use and would allow researchers to understand and interpret data across studies. It would help avoid confusing, inconsistent, and contradictory usage of such terms.
Seeing as we have researchers like Risch et al doing the above, it’s clear that, no matter what you would like to call these clusters after DNA is sampled, that genetic variation among humans is 1) great and 2) extremely significant.
Phasing out racial terminology in biological sciences would send an important message to scientists and the public alike: Historical racial categories that are treated as natural and infused with notions of superiority and inferiority have no place in biology. We acknowledge that using race as a political or social category to study racism and its biological effects, although fraught with challenges, remains necessary. Such research is important to understand how structural inequities and discrimination produce health disparities in socioculturally defined groups.
It doesn’t matter!! Change the ‘historical racial categories’ if it will save your feelings, the fact that human biodiversity is still great among humans says otherwise. If you don’t want to group humanity into one of the things that make the most sense, it is you who’s being dishonest.
Biological effects between races are real and significant. I have covered them on this blog. How could ‘structural inequalities’ and ‘discrimination’ lead to health disparities?
The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine should convene a panel of experts from biological sciences, social sciences, and humanities to recommend ways for research into human biological diversity to move past the use of race as a tool for classification in both laboratory and clinical research. Such an effort would bring stakeholders together for a simple goal: to improve the scientific study of human difference and commonality. The committee would be charged with examining current and historical usage of the race concept and ways current and future technology may improve the study of human genetic diversity; thus, they could take up Dobzhansky’s challenge that “the problem that now faces the science of man [sic] is how to devise better methods for further observations that will give more meaningful results”. Regardless of where one stands on this issue, this is an opportunity to strengthen research by thinking more carefully about human genetic diversity.
The past and current identification of humans is clearly good enough for what we are discussing. Calling them anything else doesn’t matter and still doesn’t change anything in terms of this debate, whether it’s a Blank Slate argument, or anything like that, the repercussions of what is being discussed is still the same. The results we currently get are meaningful enough. Race clearly correlates with certain diseases and other mental and physical characteristics well enough to denote distinct racial categories.
Need I show what Sewall Wright, creator of the Fst (fixation index) has to say?
From my Race Is A Social Construct article:
Regardless of the method used in the analyses, all researchers reached estimated very close to that obtained by Lewontin: The differences observed by the subdivisions (populations, groups of populations, races) represented 10 to 15 percent of the total genetic variation found within the human species. Formally, these findings demonstrate, first, that the species is indeed subdivided into genetically definable groups of individuals and, second, that atleast some of these groups correspond to those defined by anthropologists as races on the basis of physical characters. They do not however, settle the arguments regarding the methods of racial classification. Unfortunately, Lewontin did not specify before initiating his analysis how large the difference has to be in order to call the groups “races”.
Consequently, the results of the studies have led population geneticists to two diametrically opposite conclusions. Lewontin called the observed differences trivial, and proclaimed that “racial classification is now seen to be of no genetic or taxonomic significance” so that “no justification can be offered for its continuance.” This view is echoed by authors of similar studies, who seem to be surprised that genetic variation within populations is greater than that between them. By contrast, Sewell Wright who can hardly be taken for a dilettante in questions of population genetics, has stated emphatically that if differences of this magnitude were observed in any other species, the groups they distinguish would be called subspecies.
One can extend Wright’s argument even further. The more than 200 species of haplochromine fishes in Lake Victoria differ from each other much less than the human races in their neural genes, although they are presumably distinguished by genes that control differences in their external appearances. The same can be said about atleast some of the currently recognized species of Darwin’s finches and other examples of recent adaptive radiations. In all these cases, reproductively isolated groups are impossible to tell apart by the methods used to measure differences in human races. Obviously, human races are not reproductively isolated (interracial marriages are common and the progenies of such marriages are fully fertile) but the external differences between them are comparable to cichlid fishes and Darwin’s finches. Under these circumstances, to claim that the genetic differences between the human races are trivial is a more political statement than a scientific argument. Trivial by what criterion? How much difference would Lewontin and those who side with him consider non-trivial?
By mixing science with politics, geneticists and anthropologists are committing the same infraction of which they are accusing other scientists, who they themselves label as racist. Even worse, by labelling the genetic differences as insignificant, they play into the hand of genuine racists who can demolish this claim and so further their own agenda. It is intellectually more honest to acknowledge and then point out that by no means imply supremacy of one race over others. This can be done by demonstrating that the differences are in genes that cannot be linked to any features that would be required for the preeminence of a particular race.
It’s clear that racial classification does exist. The creator of Fst, Sewall Wright, says that a Fst distance of .15 is more than enough for speciation (differing racial classifications). It directly refutes Lewontin, who put his political ideology of Marxism over science. Those cichlids in Lake Victoria are a perfect example though the definition of ‘species’ does change depending on which researcher you speak to, it doesn’t discount that there are real and physical genetic differences between races and ethnicities.
You can call race anything you’d like, the fact of the matter does not change that HBD is a real thing.
Refuting Agabond on Scientific Racism
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To set myself apart from other HBD bloggers, I decided to start a few series, one on Afrocentrism, HBD and Sports and refutations on how race isn’t a social construct. Agabond has a lot of untrue things to say, and I am here to refute them. Agabond, you can expect a lot of pingbacks from me on a lot of your posts, so get used to this.
Agabond wrote an article on the cons of Scientific Racism. The whole article is wrong.
According to race realism and the field of human biodiversity (HBD), the scientific racism of our day, the following are true:
- Race is genetic.
- Race affects intelligence.
- The races in order of intelligence are: Asians, Whites, Hispanics/Mixed, Blacks.
All of these are true.
Why this is wrong:
- Race is a social construct, created by the rules of society not by genetics.
My favorite saying from race-denialists. Yes, everything is a social construct. The Universe is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t actually physically exist. We have social constructions for EVERYTHING, does that mean that NOTHING exists because they are social constructs?
The above picture is a PCA graph showing how the different races cluster on the graph. This is actually scientific evidence that what we call ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ has an actual biological basis. You say that “it’s created by the rules of society not genetics”, but you can clearly see here that GENETICS shows that humanity CLUSTERS into distinct groups.
2. The differences between people from different parts of the world are too new and too slight to account for differences in IQ.
Not true at all. They are not “too new”, Agabond. Due to genetic isolation between populations for thousands of years, i.e., no population migrations between people with different genomes, this caused evolution to happen faster.
Faster evolution means more ethnic differences. This is due to, as I alluded to before, no migration of others with differing genes. Due to us moving genetically AWAY from each other and not genetically CLOSER from each other, shows that evolution is speeding up in the OPPOSITE WAY.
How are they too new and too slight to account for differences in IQ? Selection pressures varied depending on where those populations evolved. The more cognitively demanding Northern part of Europe, as well as the cognitively demanding parts of Asia that East Asians evolved in led to cooperation, which in turn led to evolutionary selection pressures, ala altruism. They also had to be smart with their food in regards to rationing. Along with more variables, over tens of thousands of years of genetic isolation, populations evolved to have distinct physical, as well as biological differences due to those certain selection pressures in those environments.
The less cognitively demanding parts of the world, along the equator, doesn’t foster high intellectual capabilities due to the lifestyle of the peoples there. They lived a mostly hunter-gatherer lifestyle (which was extremely difficult in Eurasia during the Ice Age). Evolution dictated the traits that it would enhance with Africans, e.g., longer limbs for better throwing and to cover more ground while running to get food, darker skin due to the climate, as well as their hair.
There are evolutionary reasons for everything. You should have done a bit more research here before writing this.
Your intelligence is determined not by your race but by where you were born, when you were born, a bit from your parents’s genes and the rest from what you make of it.
Yes, it is determined by your race, but I’ll get back to that later. Depending on where you’re born? Sure. If you’re born in a place with high rates of disease, parasitic load and bad nutrition, this will retard IQ. But for those born in first world countries, their IQ is at their genetic limit due to better nutrition. You said “where you were born”, do you even realize that “where you were born” means that you’re giving credence to the hereditarian hypothesis?
When you were born? Is this an epigenetic argument?
A bit from your parents genes, well more than a bit. Funny you say that. We know that the mother’s IQ is the best predictor of the child’s IQ. That being said, in studies of racially mixed black and white children, those with white mothers have higher IQs than those with black mothers. So yes, it is your parents genes. I assume you were going for the “individual variation in IQ is greater than between the races” is what you were going for. Not going to work.
The rest is what you make of it. I agree here. Even those with high IQs won’t be automatically successful, personality variables have a lot to do with it, which I will cover in a future post.
1. Correlation does not equal causation
Just because blacks in America have a higher crime rate or a lower average IQ does not necessarily mean the cause is mainly genetic. To come to such a conclusion you would have to assume that racism is pretty much dead, that American society is just so gosh-darn fair to everyone that genetics is pretty much all that remains to account for the differences.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard this since I jumped into the black-white IQ debate. Yes, we know that correlation does not equal causation, but with retesting what you tested before with the same variables and lab conditions, if you come to the same conclusions, it is not a correlation does not equal causation argument.
Higher crime rates and lower average IQs are inversely related. There is a negative correlation there. We can see here that the low IQ being correlated with crime argument holds up in studies.
Deborah Denno analyzed data from 987 African American school children in Philadelphia. Her data contained multiple measures of intelligence collected at ages four, seven, and thirteen as well as officially recorded criminal offenses. Chronic, violent offenders consistently had low IQ scores. For example, female chronic offenders were almost four times less likely to be in the top third of verbal-IQ test scores than female nonoffenders. Similarly, male violent offenders scored 10 to 17 percentile points lower on measures of vocabulary, reading, and language than nonoffenders.
In addition to finding a robust IQ-crime correlation, studies have turned up two other empirical regularities worth noting. The first regards two different types of IQ measures: performance IQ (PIQ) versus verbal IQ (VIQ). Performance IQ is measured with nonverbal tests of attention to detail, manual design construction, and visual puzzle solving. Verbal IQ is measured with tests of general factual knowledge, abstract reasoning, mental arithmetic, and vocabulary. Studies have consistently found that criminals have PIQ scores close to the general population but VIQ scores substantially lower. This PIQ > VIQ finding holds even when controlling for race, class, and reading ability (Moffitt), suggesting that verbal intelligence is a more important correlate of criminal behavior than other types of intelligence.
I also touched on black crime and correlates for crime here. No matter what you can say about this, low IQ is correlated with crime. There are countless studies on this. Juvenile criminals average 92, whereas adult offenders are at IQ 85, right at the black average in America.
Genetics does account for the difference though you seem dishonest enough to believe any other reasons for it.
2. Confirmation bias
Scientific racists notice the cases that prove their ideas while overlooking those that disprove them. But in science it is the exceptions that disprove the rule. That is why the law of gravity is still a part of science: no known exceptions!
Care to tell me what they overlooked that disproved them? Why did you not use any examples?
3. Lack of expertise
Look at the race realists and HBDers you hear about most:
- Steve Sailer, journalist/computer salesman.
His occupation says something about his knowledge on these subjects?
- J. Philippe Rushton, psychologist.
OK? What about him? He’s a Ph.D. in psychology. He cites what he says, obviously. Rushton is one of the most important psychologists of this generation. Have you ever read any of his books, or have you only read attack articles on him? He first began researching the study of altruism. This gives him credibility, in your eyes, to talk about racial differences, as well as HBD. Hell, altruism is how our complex societies formed. That is a part of HBD as well, but you seem to talk about things you don’t know.
- Francis Fukuyama, political economist.
First I’ve heard of him. Seems to get heat for his book arguing that we have almost reached the end of history. He says people have misunderstood his thesis, that “the French and American revolutions, and their underlying principles of liberty and equality, were the final resting point for human ideological evolution. So we need to consider whether Hegel, when he declared the end of history in 1806, was not right. My argument is concerned less with the world of real events and more with the world of ideas. Essentially the question I was trying to pose is whether there are any systematical ideological competitors left to modern liberalism.”
- Steve Hsu, astrophysicist.
I love Steve Hsu. It seems that, according to Agabond, you can’t have other interests outside of your field, and if you do have interests outside of your field and speak on them, that no one should listen to you. Things don’t work like that. Steve Hsu is actively looking for intelligence genes. He also shows the reality of human genetic variation.
Just because someone is interested in things outside of their field, does that mean they can’t become an authority on it?
- Richard Herrnstein, psychologist.
Same with Rushton. Are you telling me that psychologists can’t study IQ differences and behavioral differences between races? Hernnstein knows damn well what he’s talking about in terms of IQ. Are you trying to use Hernnstein and Murray as examples of people who talk about actual human genetics? Well, they don’t. They talk about IQ, and yea they talk about genetic causes for it, but they’re mostly concerned with the policy of the country that we are no noticing because we are ‘IQ blind’ so to speak.
- Charles Murray, political scientist.
Same as above. Murray has defended himself multiple times with attacks him and Hernnstein got on The Bell Curve. 22 years later, and the book is still not refuted.
- Arthur Jensen, psychology professor.
My personal favorite. He is THE AUTHORITY ON IQ as well as RACE DIFFERENCES IN IQ. Sure Rushton and Jensen bring up genetics sometimes, but they always cite where they got their information from.
Really bad arguments here.
You notice anything strange? No biologists or anthropologists, much less geneticists.
>some of the biggest names in HBD aren’t biologists, anthropologists (LOL), and geneticists
>means there are no HBD biologists, anthropologists (LOL) and geneticists
Nice fallacy.
Why in the world should we trust these people over biologists and anthropologists, the very people who study these things for a living? To leave no stone unturned, some biologists and anthropologists have even written books about race for the general public:
This is going to be good. Let’s see what “has been written for the general public by biologists and anthropologists”.
- “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, Jared Diamond, biologist
!!!! People still cite this?!?!??!?!?
I’ll say something on G,G&S then let Rushton take over:
So different levels of civilizations can be traced to environmental differences and not innate differences in races? Because physical environment can explain civilization differences does that mean all human brains are the same on average? Horrible strawman. No one says environment doesn’t matter.
We can look at 2 countries within Sub-Saharan Africa. Look at South Africa. Still one of the wealthiest countries in Africa. Economic freedom isn’t the only source of wealth, human capital and natural resources are important. The lack of proper resources for civilizations in the past isn’t why Africa is poor today since we can see actual African countries that are better of by simply having more economic freedom.
The poverty today in Congo isn’t dated back to the dawn of time. Diamond says New Guineans are probably smarter than white Europeans. So does he accept that all races are the same in the brain except New Guineans? So does he then accept that human brains can differ in environments? Jared Diamond’s work is irrelevant and does nothing to explain why the various races perform differently in Europe. You can say racism or lingering effects of oppression, but the reasons for Africa’s poverty is not relevant to the racial gaps in Europe and America.
If you think it’s caused by environmental poverty in the past, you still have to argue the facts on racial differences today, the evidence still exists.
Jared Diamond is a man who spent a lot of time in Papua New Guinea. I guess he grew to like the natives there and befriended some of them so he makes ridiculous leaps in logic to actually say they may be more intelligent than Europeans. Hilarious. Any intelligent person can see the ridiculousness of what he claims. I can’t even begin to think how, when faced with all of this evidence of differences, that you can possibly believe in some warped view of equality or egalitarianism.
Here is Rushton’s dismantling of G,G&S.
- “The Mismeasure of Man”, Stephen Jay Gould, biologist
Arthur Jensen refutation here.
- “Genes, Peoples, and Languages”, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, geneticist
What about it?
- “Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Human Race”, Ashley Montagu, anthropologist
Never heard of this book but from the Amazon review:
It presented a revolutionary theory for its time; breaking the link between genetics and culture, it argued that race is largely a social construction and not constitutive of significant biological differences between people.
Discarded.
These books are good to help you overcome the racist brainwashing of American society.
Let’s see. G,G,&S is trash. It has some cool tidbits of information, but it’s largely not true and is an egalitarians way of attempting to say that Europeans “got lucky” in regards to geography.
Mismeasure of Man is full of sidestepping and not addressing points, as well as wishful thinking mixed with lying about the truth and not telling his audience certain things. Sure, if anything, this book will make you MORE BRAINWASHED.
No idea why you cited Cavalli-Sforza.
A book that says race doesn’t exist. Wow, that’s a new one.
4. Conspiracy theories
The reason scientific racists give for trusting, say, Steve Sailer, a computer salesman, over Cavalli-Sforza, a professor of human genetics who has, like, studied race, is, wait for it, that people like Cavalli-Sforza secretly agree with them but are too afraid to say so in public! Have they gone mad?
What are you talking about? Are you talking about how Cvalli-Sforza uses terms like “population clusters”? That doesn’t matter. You can call the things what you’d like, but that doesn’t change the underlying biological reality of genetics, race and ethnicity.
If you’d have understood Cvalli-Sforza, you’d get that.
I know you got this pingback, Agabond. I’d love a response from you though I doubt it.
Blacks in Medieval Europe? Afrocentric Ramblings
1000 words
Came across this article today from a (totally not unbiased source) person who seems to believe in the myths of Afrocentrism.
I’m always amazed at how many people are so quick to argue that people of color did not exist in Europe during medieval times or that black people, for instance, weren’t around during the Greek and Roman eras. And to include said PoCs during such time periods would be unrealistic and another example of shoving a PC agenda down our throats OH-EM-GEE.
Not that it would be unrealistic, just that those ‘PoC’ get thrown into positions of power in the setting they’re portrayed in, which is not realistic at all. Sure the Romans had black slaves, but that doesn’t mean that any important Senators or Emperors were Negros. Just because they were “around” doesn’t mean they did anything of significance, or even had a large population in comparison to Romans and Greeks.
This usually comes up in medieval fantasy stories. Like say for instance, Guinevere in BBC’s Merlin. Actress Angel Coulby caught heat for daring to be a beautiful powerful black queen.
His last 4 words aside (Kanazawa’s studies say otherwise), what kind of ‘black queen’ was there ever in Europe? Name one, please. Of COURSE she’s catching heat, as that’s not historically accurate, and I’m sure that most people care about being historically accurate in some of the things they watch. I know the show is a ‘fantasy’, but I don’t even think some people could suspend their disbelief to believe that there were ‘black kings and queens’ in medieval Europe.
This nonsense makes me laugh A LOT for two main reasons:
1.) It’s a huge double standard in that whites can always be placed in stories revolving around Egypt, China, Africa, or pre “discovered” America and no one blinks an eye.
Well, think about this. The majority of the country that these movies are made in and mostly come out in are white. Egyptians were Caucasoids, so using whites isn’t too far of a stretch. What about Africa and China and ‘pre-discovered America’? Care to give some examples?
Yet if a PoC shows up in medieval fantasy tale, it’s unrealistic. Talking animals, elves, dragons, gnomes, all totally plausible. Black people in Europe? Too many people can’t suspend disbelief at that.
Some things are just that unrealistic that you cannot suspend your disbelief of them to watch a story. =^)
First of all, people of color have been in Europe for ages. Think about it. Between all the wars, travel, and trade that countries and nations do, it would only make sense that some PoCs have traveled, relocated, and settled in other lands.
OK? Populations migrate all the time, this means nothing. Does that mean they had a strong historical presence? No way.
The Egyptians who dealt with the Romans and Greeks were black. Egypt is in Africa, in case you didn’t know.
No, they were not black. They were West Asian Caucasoids. Genetic testing on mummies from the years 806 BC to 124 AD shows that they have the haplotype I2, which originated in Western Asia. Makes sense, seeing as Egypt is right by the Middle East, and Egypt and Sumeria did have extensive trading with each other. Just because “Egypt is in Africa” doesn’t mean that they were black. The whole of North Africa are Caucasoids.
Rome and Carthage went to war and Hannibal gave the Romans a run for their money. Which anytime you can give the ROMANS a fight, you’re a bona fide badass.
I definitely agree that if you can give Rome a fight, you are a bad ass. But there’s one problem: Carthage was a Phoenician civilization, not sub-Saharan African. The “picture” you use of Hannibal is NOT an accurate portrayal of what he actually looked like.
He looks pretty damn Caucasoid to me. This fantasy of Afrocenstrists to insert themselves into most any important event in world history just to say they did something worth talking about truly shows the inferiority complex of blacks.
Also, to see what Phoenicians really looked like, look to Sardinians. Due to genetic isolation from being on the island, they have hardly any admixture from outside the island. They also speak a Phoenician language.
If you’re a Greek Mythology buff like myself, look up a brother named Memnon. Speaking of Greek Mythology, look up Andromeda, Perseus’ wife and see where she’s from. Here’s a hint. And by hint I mean answer: Ethiopia.
Are we to take all peoples of antiquities word for everything they say? Are we made of corn? Is the story of Romulus and Remus true? Were there gods on Mount Olympus?
Again. Just because they were present, doesn’t mean they had ANYTHING to do with any discoveries of that time period.
Blacks actually ruled in some parts of Europe and could be found in Scotland as early as the 10th century. Funny how that isn’t taught in school.
Funny how you provide no source.
Still not convinced? Look up Othello.
Why should I look it up? Oh, it’s because it’s another thing co-opted to add blacks where it was originally a play involving whites.
Is this guy being cast in this play almost 200 years ago supposed to mean anything?
Amina of Zaria was in fact the inspiration behind Xena: Warrior Princess.
Amina of Zaria is a myth.
Alexandre Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Crisco? Black excellence also.
Meaning… what exactly? This is pretty meaningless. OK, cool. Some blacks can write good stories, but they are outliers. The Bell Curve, etc.
And our accomplishments didn’t stop there. As this amazing heroine’s story illustrates.
Who the hell is ‘Belle’? Also, it says it’s BASED on the ‘inspiring’ true story. Meaning, things are embellished to make a better story. Or did you not know that?
So if you’re one of those who constantly gripe about the presence of PoCs in period fantasy as being unrealistic; your history, do learn you some.
No, you learn you some. You’re spreading ridiculous things to people who know no better. Just because ‘PoC’ had a presence in these places doesn’t mean they did anything of note.
I hope you respond to this refutation of your garbage, Nerd of Color.
Towards a Theory of Everyone: Chanda Chisala Rebuttal on the Nature of the Black-White IQ Gap
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Chanda Chisala has been writing a series of articles for the Unz Review for almost a year now. They are on the nature of the black-white IQ gap. I’ve been eagerly awaiting his theory on the cause of the gap, as I always welcome any and all new information concerning this. Well, I was pretty underwhelmed by his theory.
Sowell has always used two arguments to cast doubt on the genetic hypothesis: the first one is the Flynn Effect or prior versions of it that he had noted himself, which shows that IQs have been rising with time for blacks and other people all over the world.
The “Flynn Effect” is rubbish. PumpkinPerson says:
It turned out Rushton was one of those “The Flynn effect is irrelevant” people. He found it prima facie absurd that we could have been a nation of mentally disabled people a century ago. It simply didn’t make any sense to him, given the outstanding achievements of early 20th century society. But it didn’t make any sense to me why the same tests that were culture reduced enough to measure the intelligence of South Africans could be so wrong when measuring Victorian intelligence. I needed an explanation. The Flynn effect is unrelated to g (general intelligence) and that was enough for him to just dismiss it and move on.
So even though Rushton and Jensen rebutted Flynn, as well as Flynn and Dickens, Chisala still chooses to use the Flynn Effect argument. Here is why it is irrelevant:
Let’s say Flynn is right. The average black now is as intelligent as the average white in 1945. That’s supposed to show that the race difference in IQ is environmentally caused because there hasn’t been that much genetic change in the white population and the IQ has allegedly gone up 15 points. So, you can have a 15 point difference created by just an environmental change, no one knows why. Some think better nutrition or malnourished brain, etc. That’s also a fallacy. Just because a change in one group over time is due to an environmental change, doesn’t mean, or even make it probable, that a difference between 2 groups at the same time is due to an environmental change. The Flynn Effect make’s that highly unlikely and here’s why.
The Flynn Effect, assuming it’s real, has been acting completely uniformly in every population. Any country you ask, the rate of increase is 3 per decade. That means it’s an environmental factor that affects whites and blacks the same way as well as the whole world. And as a result of this uniform environmental factor, you have a difference in IQ that’s being preserved. That would suggest that the response on the parts of blacks and whites is due to some non-environment factors, a genetic factor, which is making the difference in IQ remain constant as the Flynn Effect goes into effect.
What makes it even more unlikely, in the last 60 years, their environments have become very similar since segregation. These differences don’t exist now, they go to the same schools by court order, same TV shows, same movies, basically same environment for both, and yet, that increasing similarity in the environment, the Flynn Effect, the IQ gap has remained intact. Which means whatever counts for the gap is genetic and not environmental. The more and more similar the environment, the less and less of the difference can be due to the environment and the more and more it must be due to genes. So this 15 point gap surviving these changes in the environment, seems more and more likely to be genetic in origin.
So because this ‘Effect’ is the same across all populations and the gap didn’t close, that means it’s genetic. If the gap persisted even when IQs were rising 3 points per year, the B-W gap has still persisted, proving that it’s genetic.
That is why the Flynn Effect is irrelevant. This “Effect”, has been a slight upward trend in IQ, around 3 points per decade, which, in my opinion, has to do with the advent of better nutrition and an industrialized society. The rise in IQ started around 1880, almost perfectly coinciding with the industrial revolution in America. Along with a more industrialized society, it’s possible to give most citizens in the country good enough nutrition to where they are not iodine deficient (adding iodine to our salt boosted Americans IQs), as well as being deficient in zinc, iron, protein and certain B vitamins which the effects of not getting enough leads to the brain not growing to its full potential, which in turn leads to a lower IQ.
One more point on the Flynn Effect. The Flynn Effect does not occur on g, as it is not a Jensen Effect. Rushton defines Jensen Effect as follows:
Significant correlations occurring between g-factor loadings and other variables have been dubbed “The Jensen effect”.
…
Thus the secular increase in test scores (the “Lynn±Flynn effect”) is not a “Jensen effect” nor is this the first time the discriminating power of the Jensen effect has been shown.
The Flynn Effect is not on actual g. The black-white IQ gap is most heritable on those sub-tests that correlate highly with g. Through correlations on scores on inbreeding depression, Rushton and Jensen (2005) conclude that the magnitude of the black-white IQ gap is 80 percent genetic and 20 percent environmental.
Now to get to this other part of his theory.
The second very unique and original argument he has used is the differential IQ performance of black males and females, which seems to favor the females. He charges that the genetic hypothesis can not explain this, but it is explainable under an environmental hypothesis.
Sowell’s second argument is much stronger than the Flynn Effect argument because it is very difficult for hereditarians to explain why there should be a gender difference in African American IQ, especially one favoring females (let’s call this the “Sowell Effect,” to avoid repetition). This is very problematic for hereditarians, particularly since the trend is normally for male IQ to exceed female IQ, especially at the higher levels of the IQ distribution curve. We can see this unique trend among blacks even in the applications to medical school, a field that is considered a good metric for group intellectual comparisons.
This is very simply explained. Occam’s Razor anyone?
Even today in Africa, the women did the hunting and gathering, giving them more selective power. The same holds true for Eurasian men, who have a slight advantage in IQ over Eurasian women. Because of the colder climate in Eurasia, meat was one of the staples they had. So that shifted selection pressure from women over to men. Since men had the food, and the ability to hunt for it for that matter, men had more selection power to select the best possible mates. This led to Eurasian women being selected for beauty, whereas this led to African men being selected for physical attractiveness.
To quote from Erectus Walks Amongst Us:
In Africa, the women, even today, farm and gather food, so they have more selection power, but in the colder climates more of the food was meat, especially in the winter, and hunting was done by men, shifting some selection power to men. (Miller, 1994a). As a result of selection by men, Eurasian women have become more beautiful and, as a result of selection by women, Eurasian men have become workaholics and slightly more intelligent than Eurasian women (more intelligence = a better provider in Eurasia). African women have become slightly more intelligent than African men, however, who have become the more physically attractive sex.
So more intelligence led to a better provider. Being able to farm for and or hunt for food gave those who did it the selection ability to be able to sexually select to their liking.
Sowell (2013) claims this empirical victory in Intellectuals and Race (page 79):
Further evidence that the male-female difference in IQs among blacks is cultural is that black orphans raised by white families show no such female superiority in IQs, in addition to both sexes having higher average IQs than other black children.
Chisala says the Sandra Scarr data from the Minnesota Study does not back up this claim.
There are other studies that could possibly back Sowell up if he is right and we should check those too. For example, there is the well-known Eyferth Study in Germany which monitored the IQs of illegitimate children of black and white American soldiers who were stationed there at the end of the Second World War.
Wikipedia got its data from The g Factor, a book by Arthur Jensen (1998) that is probably the most cited in the racial intelligence debate. I went to the cited page and indeed found that Wikipedia had correctly reported Jensen’s data. The Sowell Effect had apparently disappeared among the black children born in Germany and the strong culture hypothesis seemed to be vindicated.
Arthur Jensen explains the cause for the mixed race children (and at the same time the cause for black female children having a higher IQ) on pp 483 of The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability:
Finally, heterosis (the outbreeding effect; see Chapter 7, p. 196) probably enhanced the IQ level of the interracial children, thereby diminishing the IQ difference between the interracial children and the white children born to German women. A heterotic effect equivalent to about + 4 IQ points was reported for European-Asian interracial offspring in Hawaii.
This means that we can also resolve the debate about whether the black soldiers in this experiment were more selected than the white soldiers. It appears that the hereditarians were probably right on this point: the black soldiers had to have been significantly more intelligent than the white soldiers because the presence of a Sowell Effect indicates that the IQ of the black children has received extra depression (through an abnormal lowering of the male IQ, as usual.) However, it’s another Pyrrhic victory for hereditarians: the continued existence of apparent extra depression for black male IQ makes their simple models impotent, just as it does for standard environmentalist models.
Yet another point that Rushton and Jensen shoot down in their magnum opus paper:
Second, 20% to 25% of the “Black” fathers were not African Americans but French North Africans (i.e., largely Caucasian or “Whites” as we have defined the terms here). Third, there was rigorous selection based on IQ score in the U.S. Army at the time, with a rejection rate for Blacks on the preinduction Army General Classification Test of about 30%, compared with 3% for Whites (see Davenport, 1946, Tables I and III).
Huge error. About one-quarter of the ‘black fathers’ were French North Africans! Because North Africans have a higher genetic potential for IQ (nowhere near that of SSA), this is not a true representation of black fathers and white mothers.
Thus, racial hereditarians can not explain why the race of the mother matters
Is he being serious right now? It’s easily explained. We know that the mother’s IQ is the most important predictor of the child’s IQ. The prenatal environment is better in the white mother than in the black mother. Due to the mother’s IQ being the most important predictor of a child’s IQ, doesn’t that end the black-white IQ debate right there? Due to the fact that mixed race black and white children with white mothers show higher IQs than those with a black mother and white father, doesn’t that end the black-white IQ debate?
We racial hereditarians can definitely explain why the race of the mother matters. You should have done a bit more research into this matter.
And now on to my favorite part of this article. It’s so out there in its propensity for being a possibility for the cause of this gap between the races.
In Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Sowell (2006) theorizes that the modern ghetto culture of black Americans came from their association with white rednecks during the time of slavery and he believes it is the preservation of this detrimental culture – preserved with the intellectual help of “white liberals” – that keeps the black IQ low due to its anti-educational, anti-intellectual disposition. Sowell convincingly demonstrates some very uncanny similarities between ghetto black culture today and some aspects of white redneck culture that was more dominant in the South in the past than it is today, as more and more whites have decided to abandon it.
One huge problem with this. If that’s the case, if the cause of lower intellectual achievement is due to black Americans association with white rednecks during the time of slavery, all we need to do is look at Africa to see how they did without the “association with white rednecks during the time of slavery”! We can also look at those countries never touched by colonialism to see that they’re the same backwards countries.
Of course there will be “uncanny similarities”. When you have two groups who have lived amongst each other for a certain period of time, traits of both groups will rub off on each other. This is not a genetic cause, but an environmental cause. The similarities come down to being around other groups.
And here it is, here is the kicker:
Although I agree that the case for a cultural transfer from some groups of Southern whites is very strong, I think it is more likely that this “culture” was actually passed to blacks genetically rather than through mere influence and imitation. If that is the case, then it was in fact the presence of relatively strong mutations in that sub-population of whites that was affecting the stranger aspects of their behavior and intelligence, and they passed on the same genetic condition to blacks through mating with the black women.
THIS is his big reveal? No. Way. This has to be one of the funniest things I’ve heard in the black-white IQ debate. Hey, Chanda, there is something called Regression to the Mean (nice post, Jayman), which throws your theory out of the water.
blacks in fact had more stable families and even had less out-of-wedlock children than whites. He uses this to show that if slavery was the root of these problems, they could have started much earlier.
Wrong.
In this paper by Steven Ruggles, he says that analysis confirms that the high incidence of black Americans of single parenthood and children residing without their parents is not a recent phenomenon. Data shows that from 1880 through 1960, black children were two to three times more likely to reside without one or both children than white parents. This directly goes in the face of what liberals say is the cause of the demise of the black family structure. Ever since blacks have been free from slavery has this begun to happen.
What explains this perfectly, is Rushton’s r-K Selection Theory (now known as Life History Theory). Those who are more r selected (Africans), will have more children but spend less energy caring for them. Conversely on the other side, those more K-selected (Orientals and whites in the middle of K and r), will have fewer children but show more attention to them.
Some of Sowell’s strongest critics on this theory also suffer from the same progressional problem. Scholar and investigative journalist, Steve Sailer, for example,argued that much of the negative behavioral tendencies in black ghetto culture must have come with them from Africa. His theory is also unlikely to be true if the statistics about marriage and out-of-wedlock births etc are true. If their culture came with them from Africa they would not have had a long period where that culture seems to have been almost absent only to forcefully show up much later, in generations that had the least connection to or memory of Africa.
Sailer is correct. See my above cite showing that from 1880 through 1960 black children were two to three times more likely to reside with one or both children than white parents.
So we can see that it’s not a recent phenomenon.
Our theory thus explains a paradox that is difficult to explain by present environmental or hereditarian models: when blacks from Africa, the Caribbean and the US are compared, it is the least white-admixed black group that apparently performs best (the Africans), followed by Caribbean blacks who are in between; the most white-admixed group, the native black Americans, do worst. And yet within these communities, it is not necessarily true that the more white-admixed individuals perform worse; they may actually be over-represented on the highest levels of academic or social performance.
Dr. James Thompson says the sample for the Caribbean blacks in the UK is not a representative sample. Also, the hereditarian theory does not say that ALL Africans and African-descended peoples have a lower average IQ. It’s perfectly within the hereditarian hypothesis to have some African countries, as well as peoples, descended from African countries around the world, show a genetically higher IQ.
The evidence of such deleterious mutations still existing among modern day poor whites can be seen, not just from their low intellectual performance (going even lower than poor Caribbean boys), but even from their violent reactions against their fellow well-performing students, a culture that is also seen among ghetto black Americans, which is further evidence of a mutational rather than an imitational cause.
Wow, you mean to tell me that American whites aren’t a monolith and that there are some white groups in America with a lower average IQ? News to me!!
This solves one of the stronger challenges raised against the Unzian Asian Exception conjecture, asking why it was not East Asians who produced the greatest epochs of human intellectual achievements in history if it is true that their average IQs have consistently been stubbornly high for most of modern human history. It would be because the same canalization that protected them from low intelligence also “protected” them from producing the numbers of super-creative intellects that would be required for such revolutionary achievements in a concentrated period of time. They have a small creative smart fraction, in short.
The cause for lack of East Asian creativity is due to conforming in East Asian societies, which Rushton says in Race, Evolution and Behavior that it’s a genetic trait. Rushton did say that a larger average brain size means more creativity and that with social restrictions lifted, that East Asians may possibly become more creative than whites.
From time to time Lynn notes anomalies in his theory that require explanations. One of these is that Europeans made most of the great intellectual discoveries, while the East Asians, despite having a higher IQ, made relatively few—a paradox extensively documented by Charles Murray in his 2003 book, Human Accomplishment. Lynn proposes an explanation for this: it may be that East Asians are more conformist than Europeans and this inhibits creative achievement. (In Race, Evolution, and Behavior, I presented evidence that this personality trait has genetic roots.)
Winters Are Good For Your Genes: Lynn Book Finds World Average IQ 90, Declining From North To South
And yet the same hereditarians admit the conspicuous paucity of highly significant originators and innovators among East Asians, despite showing over-representation in high intellectual aptitude, sometimes very precociously so. East Asian women, who have the highest canalization coming from gender and race, are the most exemplary of this contrast. The shortage of such super-creative phenotypes can not be because they lack the numbers of people with the right genotype, but because the genotype is “buffered” from phenotypic expression by canalization.
See above.
Ashkenazi Jews, on the other hand, may be the most over-represented at the top of creative achievements in different intellectual fields (from chess to physics to literature, etc) simply because they happen to also be quite lowly canalized.
No. No way. Ashkenazi Jews are over-represented at the top of creative achievements in different intellectual fields because they mated with Roman women thousands of years ago. I have already noted about the mother being the best predictor of child’s intelligence. That’s the cause for high Ashkenazi IQ, not canalization.
Lower canalization also means that their improvement will be more rapid when such environmental conditions positively change (as can also be seen among recent black African immigrants, whose radical improvements begin even in children who were born under bad conditions in Africa, thus defying all kinds of hereditarian limitations.)
This is a case of super-selection. Only the most intelligent peoples leaving the country to immigrate.
In short, there is basically false assortative mating among black elites on average. This also explains why the mixed black male children have lower IQ when their mother is black than when their mother is white, as we demonstrated above.
I went over this earlier. Black mothers have a worse prenatal environment than do white mothers.
This obviously would not mean that the usual theories of environmentalists are correct either, since it should also not make a difference to them if the boys are included or excluded from the black American samples, especially in elite families. However, as we have faithfully acknowledged, both environmentalists and hereditarians also have some empirically confirmed arguments. Our present hypothesis, taking account of differential gender and racial canalization in human populations, can hopefully help to unify the valid aspects of the environmental and hereditarian frameworks.
I’ve noticed that Chisala used a hybrid environmentalist-hereditarian position to explain his theory on the black-white IQ gap.
I refuted the “Flynn Effect”, as well as the part of the Eyferth Study that talks about higher black female IQ, refuted the section about Caribbean blacks in the UK, and finally, I refuted his claim that we hereditarians “have no explanation for a mother’s IQ being the best predictor of the child’s IQ”.
In conclusion, this is just an extremely long-winded way of saying “whites are the cause of low black achievement, crime, IQ and anything else negative that affects blacks in Western countries”.
If that’s the case, Mr. Chisala, why is Africa so backwards?
North/South Differences in Italian IQ: Is Richard Lynn Right?
2300 words
Richard Lynn has stated that there are differences in Northern and Southern Italian IQ scores. Is he correct?
Lynn claims Italian IQ is 100 in the North and 90 in the South, with the lowest being IQ 89 in the Southern most part of Sicily.
Richard Lynn is of course, extremely controversial in his research areas of interest, mainly with his views on IQ and how it relates to the wealth of nations.
In his paper which talks about the North/South differences in IQ which predict differences in education, infant mortality, stature, and literacy.
Lynn’s methods were to take samples of the Program for International Student Assesment (PISA) which administers tests gauging the abilities of students in math, reading comprehension and science understanding. IQs were calculated by averaging science understanding, reading comprehension and mathematical ability, which the averages are expressed in SD unit deviations from the British PISA mean (n=502, SD 99). Figures are then converted to conventional IQs by multiplying them by 15. So the regional Italian IQs are expressed in comparison to the British IQ and SD (100 and 15 respectively).
His 10 data points are as follows:
First, the IQ in the northern regions of Italy measured by the PISA data is approximately 100 and therefore about the same as in Britain and other countries of northern and central Europe given in Lynn and Vanhanen (2002, 2006). This confirms the results of the standardization of the Colored Progressive Matrices in northern Italy reported by Prunetti (1985) and shows that IQs measured by the PISA data and by the Colored Progressive Matrices data are consistent. Regional IQs in Italy decline steadily through the central regions and into the south and reach a low of 89 in the most southerly region of Sicily. The first hypothesis of this study that there may be a north–south gradient of IQs in Italy is supported and quantified by the correlation of 0.963 between regional IQs and latitude.
First, the PISA data from 2013 shows Southern Italians scoring higher, and Northern Italians scoring around the same. Is that an increase in intelligence that happened in only 3 years? Did the genetics of Southern Italy change in 3 years? No.
The table above shows the changes in PISA scores for Southern Italy in only 3 years for all 3 subjects tested in PISA. Southern Italy increased by 26 points in reading, and Southern Italy and islands increased by 30 points. For math, 25 for the South and 34 for South and the islands. For science, 18 for the South and 22 for the South and the islands. The presence of non-native students may also be a factor in these score differences. You can see the differences from 3 years, and how even in 3 years, there was a slight decrease in scores in Northern Italy. Migrants, after coming in from the South of the country, then continue to go into the Northern part of the country. This could also explain a huge part of the differences, seeing as they may be counted as Italian citizens, yet aren’t native to the country.
The above table shows mean PISA scores for 2006 and 2009, showing a huge increase in scores from Southern Italy, and hardly any increase in Northern Italy. Any genetic changes in 3 years to show that big of an increase?
Source: Problems in deriving Italian regional differences in intelligence from 2009 PISA data
Two, the second hypothesis of this study is that the north–south gradient of IQs in Italy may explain much of the difference in economic development between the north and south of Italy
Wrong again. Southern Italy has a huge underground economy, that isn’t noted on the books. The GDP in Southern Italy is far from accurate and employment figures do not match reality.
These raw figures require a closer look, because one economist’s analysis of Calabria found low pay, high unemployment, and a very high level of consumer spending. In 1994, the government insurance agency placed the number of business enterprises in Calabria at 23,758, while Istat, carrying out the 1996 census, found about 90,000 businesses in the same region.The economist Domenico Marino concluded, on the basis of 4,000 interviews in Calabria, that 75 percent of the Calabrian work force would refuse a fairly low-paying job, despite a very high official level of unemployment. In Calabria, with its dire employment figures, 84 percent of the families own their own home. What such anomalies must mean is that real income in Calabria is far higher than what is “on the books.” Many among the vast numbers of officially unemployed are, in fact, partly or fully employed. They are earning no social benefits, but they are earning the daily lire that keep their families afloat.
This massive sector skews all the statistics. It means that the GDP for the Italian South (and for Italy as a whole) is far from accurate. And the unemployment figures do not reflect reality.
LOOKING TO 2007: ITALY TIMES TWO
Three, the third hypothesis we set out to examine is that regional IQ differences in Italy are also manifest in variables that can be regarded as correlates or effects of IQs, including stature, infant mortality, literacy, and years of education
When historical data on those variables are used, a different picture emerges. Correlations are insignificant and in the case of infant mortality, do not the supposed link of regional differences in intelligence and socioeconomic development.
Four, per capita incomes are also highly negatively correlated with rates of infant mortality in 1954–57 (r= −0.652), and 1999–2002 (r=−0.823).
When the years 1911, 1891 and 1871 are averaged in, there is no difference.
Lynn didn’t consider the data from the 1860s to average it in with the rest of his data.
Five, the ability of populations with high IQs to give their children better nutrition makes them healthier, more resistant to disease and reduces the risk of mortality, and also improves their children’s stature
Right. But there is no mortality difference, as seen above.
Five, the ability of populations with high IQs to give their children better nutrition makes them healthier, more resistant to disease and reduces the risk of mortality, and also improves their children’s stature
There is a 1.7-inch difference between Northern and Southern Italian height. Which is explained by differences in nutrition between the regions, with the South having a more grain-based diet. Those effects are explained by a grain-based diet, and those Italians from America (which a huge majority are from the South of the country), actually show better educational attainment as well as more monetary success than their Northern counterparts.
Six, regional IQs in 2006 are highly correlated with the years of education of adults in 1951 (r=0.929), 1971 (r=0.871) and 2001 (r=0.886)
At the regional level, average IQs and current per capita GDP are highly related: for the year 2012, the correlation is 0.86. The link between IQ and regional development is, instead, much weaker when data for the years 1871, 1891 and 1911 are considered. Regional IQs and infant mortality rates in 1863–66 are positively correlated, contrarily to that which would be expected based on Lynn’s assumptions;
Two Italies? Genes, intelligence and the Italian North–South economic divide
This is explained simply. When Italy became unified in 1861, there were literacy differences in the country. 87 percent of the Southern population was illiterate in comparison to 67 percent of the Northern population.
The likely explanation for this high correlation is that the percentages of the population that were literate in 1880 was a function of IQs and therefore that the regional differences in IQs were present in 1880 and have been stable over the period 1880 to 2006.
Literacy and average years of schooling are better predictors of income levels than regional IQs.
The above table shows this.
Eight, it is an interesting question whether the differences in Italian regional IQs were present in earlier historical periods. Some useful data bearing on this question have been assembled by Murray (2003, pp. 303–5) who has compiled the numbers of “significant figures” (i.e. those who have made significant contributions to science, literature, music and art) and their places of birth for the whole of Europe from the year 1400 to 1950. His figures for the north, center and south of Italy are shown in Table 3.
Pretty damning right? Wrong.
More than half of the country is put into the ‘North’ section of what he is talking about, and how he did the dividing, it looks like this.
Murray also said that achievement happened in a few places in Italy, with Southern Italy being one of the many areas in Europe with ‘low achievement’, which includes a big part of Northern Italy as well. The achievements in Italy were mainly found in Tuscany, which the literacy rate wasn’t too high in 1880. Again, refuting Lynn on his thesis.
Nine, Putnam (1993, p. 159) and Tabellini (2007) have proposed that “civic trust” is a determinant of regional differences in economic development in Italy and in western Europe.
There are hardly any regional differences in economic development, as seen above.
A possible explanation for the northern regions having had higher IQs than the southern regions at least from 1880 and possibly from 1400 to 1600 is that the populations of the north and south are genetically different and these genetic differences are related to differences in intelligence.
Not at all. I touched on this in my Refuting Afrocentrism: Are Italians Black? article.
They write of the population genetics of Italy that “northern Italy shows similarities with countries of central Europe, whereas central and southern Italy are more similar to Greece and other Mediterranean countries.
See above. They are genetically the same:
Comparison with Germany and Italy, Germans are spread out farther on the graph than are Italians, are there huge genetic differences with Germans as well?
They write of the population genetics of Italy that “northern Italy shows similarities with countries of central Europe, whereas central and southern Italy are more similar to Greece and other Mediterranean countries. This corresponds to the well-known differences in physical type (especially pigmentation and size) between the northern and north-central Italians on the one side and southern Italians on the other”.
Pigmentation is explained by getting the same UV rays as Northern Africa:
Size differences explained by slight differences in nutrition.
Subsequent studies have confirmed the genetic impact of immigration from the Near East and North Africa into southern Italy. For instance, the Taql, p1 2f2-8-kb allele has a high frequency in the Near East and North Africa (Morocco, 81.8; Lebanon, 43.7; Tunisia, 34.1). The allele is also present but at a lower frequency (26.4) in southern Italy, including Sicily.
Using a single, or small number of loci will lead to you finding the same loci in different populations? Who knew!!
The diffusion of genes from the Near East and North Africa may explain why the populations of southern Italy have IQs in the range of 89–92, intermediate between those of northern Italy and central and northern Europe (about 100) and those of the Near East and North Africa (in the range of 80–84) (these IQs are given in Lynn, 2006). This also explains the north–south gradient of IQ in Italy in which the regional IQs do not show a clear dichotomy between north and south but rather a gradient in which IQs decline steadily with more southerly latitude.
Nope. I’ve covered this in my ‘Black Italians’ article:
Combined data from two large mtDNA studies provides an estimate of non-Caucasoid maternal ancestry in Italians. The first study sampled 411 Italians from all over the country and found five South Asian M and East Asian D sequences (1.2%) and eight sub-Saharan African L sequences (1.9%). The second study sampled 465 Sicilians and detected ten M sequences (2.2%) and three L sequences (0.65%).This makes a total of 3% non-white maternal admixture (1.3% Asian and 1.7% African), which is very low and typical for European populations, since Pliss et al. 2005, e.g., observed 1.8% Asian admixture in Poles and 1.2% African admixture in Germans. (Plaza et al. 2003; Romano et al. 2003)
Similar data from the Y-chromosome reveals Italians’ even lower non-Caucasoid paternal admixture. Both studies obtained samples from all over the mainland and islands. No Asian DNA was detected anywhere, but a single sub-Saharan African E(xE3b) sequence was found in the first study’s sample of 416 (0.2%), and six were observed in the second study’s sample of 746 (0.8%). The total is therefore a minuscule 0.6%, which decreases to 0.4% if only Southern Italians are considered and 0% if only Sicilians are considered.Again, these are normal levels of admixture for European populations (e.g. Austrians were found to have 0.8% E(xE3b) by Brion et al. 2004). (Semino et al. 2004; Cruciani et al. 2004)
An analysis of 10 autosomal allele frequencies in Southern Europeans (including Italians, Sicilians and Sardinians) and various Middle Eastern/North African populations revealed a “line of sharp genetic change [that] runs from Gibraltar to Lebanon,” which has divided the Mediterranean into distinct northern and southern clusters since at least the Neolithic period. The authors conclude that “gene flow [across the sea] was more the exception than the rule,” attributing this result to “a joint product of initial geographic isolation and successive cultural divergence, leading to the origin of cultural barriers to population admixture.” (Simoni et al. 1999)
One of the most important citations is the Simoni et al. 1999 cite. Which says that gene flow across the sea was more the exception than the rule. Those 3 studies above refute any ‘racial differences’ between Northern and Southern Italians.
There are problems deriving Italian IQ from PISA test scores. You cannot take PISA data and infer a group’s IQ from it!! Moreover, on purer measures of intelligence, such as Raven’s Progressive Matrices, there is no significant difference between North and South children. These are differences in achievement, not intelligence. None of the studies cited by Lynn were aimed at comparing Italian IQ across regions and none of them used the same age groups!! This is why his data on Italian IQ is wrong.
To conclude, we don’t know the true IQs of all of the regions of Italy. Lynn used faulty measures to make his theory (which doesn’t need fluff) of north/south disparities in IQ more palatable. He’s been refuted multiple times on this matter. I may do another in the future.
Italianthro source: Refuting Richard Lynn’s IQ Study
NotPoliticallyCorrect 
