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The Black-White IQ Gap
3300 words
(This goes along with my refutation of Steele here: Strong Evidence, Strong Argument: Race IQ and Adoption)
There is a 15 point, 1 standard deviation between black and white IQs. I will argue that they are not biased towards any group, as well as there being both positive and negative life outcomes based on IQ, crime included. This is due to false ideas of equality, some “blank slate” idea that we all have the same capacity for cognitive ability, athletic ability and so on. These egalitarian ideas, in turn, have devastating effects on our society, as we a) deny the reality of intelligence and b) deny any type of racial gaps in intelligence.
The famous words “Compensatory education has been tried and has apparently failed” in Jensen’s paper in the Harvard Educational Review that reignited the firestorm on the race/IQ debate called How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? is the reason why this debate got thrown back into the public eye (Jensen, 1969). It will be argued in this paper that he was correct and that his main thesis that blacks need differing education than do whites is correct and needs to be done.
IQ tests were first developed off of Army Aptitude Tests in the early 1900s by French psychologist Alfred Binet. They were originally used to identify at-risk populations in terms of who is mentally retarded. People then say that due to this, that IQ tests don’t test anything of worth due to the reason why they were originally developed.
In 1976, a study was conducted called the Minnesota Transracial Adoption study where they took children of different races who were adopted into different families and tested their IQs at age 7 and again at age 17. A follow-up study was published in 1992. What was found, was that IQs of transracially adopted children didn’t differ at all from children raised by their biological parents in the same area.
Dr. David Duke states in his book My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding (1998), that the authors waited about 4 years to publish these findings. This, of course, has to do with the political climate of today. Any allegations of “racism” can and most likely will end someone’s career; so most individuals just go the politically correct route to play it safe and keep their credentials. Blacks raised in white families hardly did any better than blacks raised in black families. If the differences supposedly were environmental in the way environmentalists say it is, how come blacks raised in rich white families didn’t reach the IQ of whites if “IQ is malleable by the immediate environment?” Because the differences are genetic.
Though, there are other studies that state that environment matters more than genetic factors. These three studies (Moore 1986; Eyferth 1961; and Tizard, 1972) all conclude that the black-white IQ gap is environmental in nature.
A study was conducted that 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) (Moore, 1986). 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.
One study conducted in Germany in 1959 observed IQ scores of out-of-wedlock children fathered by US soldiers stationed in Germany during WWII and reared by white German mothers (Eyferth, 1961). Mean IQ scores for 83 white children and 97 mixed-race children were 97, 97.2 for the whites and 96.6 for the mixed-race children (Rushton and Jensen, pg. 261). However, these results are disputed. One, the children were extremely young, one-third of the children in the study were between the ages of 5 and 10 whereas the remaining two-thirds of the children were between the ages of 10 and 13. The malleability of intelligence is very well-known in regards to children. The heritability of IQ at age increases with age (a phenomenon known as ‘the Wilson Effect’), which Arthur Jensen states that as a child ages, social environment can increase IQ (as heritability for children aged 5 is 22 percent and children aged 7 at 40 percent). Though, as the child ages, genes activate, and they fall to their genetic potential, with genetic effects accounting for a lion’s share of intelligence (80 to 90 percent) and environment having no effect. Second, 20 to 25 percent of the ‘black’ fathers were French North Africans (Caucasians). This shows why the mixed-race children had higher IQs in the sample: about a quarter of the sample was Caucasian (Rushton and Jensen, pg. 261). Finally, rigorous selection was done on both the white and black soldiers. With 3 percent of whites getting rejected compared to 30 percent of blacks, it is shown that high IQ blacks were selected for, therefore, skewing the sample.
Yet another study on black and white children observed 2 to 5-year-olds in a nursery setting (Tizard, 1972). 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.
All three of the above studies that get cited ad nauseum have something in common: they did not retest the children again at age 17 like was done in the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. This is very critical. As it was alluded to earlier, as children mature, genetics exerts more of an effect than does socialization. Any IQ differences that are brought about by socialization will be mediated by genetics at adulthood, falling to the racial mean. It also noted how the age of adoption does not influence children’s IQ scores after age 7 (Jensen 1998b). This is due to, again, genetic effects being heightened as age increases.
What the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study (Weinberg, Scarr, and Waldman, 1992) and the Eyferth study (1961) had observed was that the children born to a white mother and a black father had statistically significant differences in IQ in comparison to those birthed by a black mother and white father. This is attributed to prenatal environment. It was observed that mothers who had higher IQs and were more educated (which both correlate highly with each other), had children which, in turn, had higher IQ scores as well (Erikson, 2013). The results of the study suggest that mothers who are more educated have children who have higher intelligence. This should end this debate right there. Since, clearly, a white mother is more conducive to foster a higher IQ than is a black mother, this shows that racial differences in IQ are largely genetic in origin.
The black-white IQ gap has been noticed for over 100 years, ever since the test has been first conceptualized. Egalitarians may say that “they’re biased against minorities” or “they don’t learn the right things on the test”, all of these are easily refutable. This was true in the 70s, according to Herrnstein and Murray, but today there is no bias of that magnitude on these tests of cognitive ability.
Jensen states that genetic and cultural factors influence the black-white IQ gap the same as individual factors (80 percent genetic factors, 20 percent environmental). Since both individual differences in IQ, as well as the mean difference in the black-white IQ gap are genetic, this shows that some individuals are genetically predisposed to have lower IQs. Moreover, a multitude of traits in life fall on a bell curve, you will have some individuals at one end, and others at the opposite end, but you’ll see a majority fall in the middle of the racial mean (85 for blacks, 100 for whites, 104 for East Asians and 107 for Ashkenazi Jews). So, with equalized environments, the gap can be closed by around 3 points, but still a lion’s share of the gap is still there, which again gives credence to the genetic hypothesis.
Those who disbelieve the validity of IQ tests at the individual level, as well as the between-group level, say that test biases are the cause for lower scores in certain individuals in minority populations. Gottfredson et al state in their publication that was released after the controversial book The Bell Curve, Mainstream Science on Intelligence, that if you speak the language, IQ tests are not biased. If you don’t speak the language, you then get a special IQ test that is culture free, based on pattern recognition called Raven’s Progressive Matrices. Even then on these culture-free, word-free IQ tests, there is still a one SD gap, 15 points, between blacks and whites.
People have tried to bridge the gap, even going so far to make a test that’s ‘culture fair’ to blacks called the B.I.T.C.H. (Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity) IQ test (Williams, 1972). What was found was that blacks scored highly, whereas whites lagged behind. But, the thing is, this test has ridiculous concepts that don’t test actual intelligence. The way that people say that regular IQ tests are biased towards blacks don’t even realize that the way the B.I.T.C.H. IQ test is set up does not mirror the supposed biased nature of regular IQ tests on blacks.
Flynn noticed that no matter which country you look IQs have gained around 3 points per decade. Herrnstein and Murray then coined the term The Flynn Effect, after the man who focused the most attention on the phenomena. Flynn argues that since IQ scores have been gaining the same amount of points in any population no matter where you look, that the black-white IQ gap has to be environmental in origin.
However, the Flynn Effect is a fallacy and is overstated. In 1945, the average IQ of whites in America was 85, the same as the black average today. That statement is supposed to show that the between-group differences are environmental in origin and since there haven’t been any big genetic changes in both populations to account for this difference, then the gap must be environmental in origin. 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.
Any country you look at, the rate of increase is 3 IQ points per decade; but gaps in IQ stay the same. This shows that this same uniform factor affects all groups the same throughout the world. And due to this uniform factor, as a result, you have a difference in IQ that’s being preserved. This suggests that the response on the parts of blacks and whites is due to non-environment factors, a genetic factor, which makes the difference in IQ remain as the Flynn Effect goes into effect.
Blacks and whites also have a similar environment, especially since segregation ended. Since environments are similar, the more and more similar the environment, the less and less differences are due to environment and the more and more they are due to genetic factors. So the 15-point gap surviving this change in environments proves that the racial gap is genetic in origin.
Dickens and Flynn state that black Americans have closed the gap in recent years, but this, however, is not the case. Most of those studies were done on children; Jensen states that the black-white IQ gap becomes more noticeable as they get older because genetic effects take over at adulthood with the environment having little if no effect on IQ (Rushton and Jensen, 2005). Jensen concludes that the SD gap between blacks and whites at early adulthood is about 1.2 SDs or about 17 IQ points. In Rushton and Jensen’s 2005 paper, Flynn and Dickens sidestepped a theoretical analysis in which it’s showed that the higher amount of white admixture a black has, the higher his IQ score is.
The Flynn Effect is not on g, or the general intelligence factor, which the most heritable items on the subtests show the most differences between blacks and whites (Rushton and Jensen, 2010). Since the Flynn Effect does not fall on g, this should not even be in the discussion. A Flynn Effect is not a Jensen Effect, which is real gains in g over time (Rushton, 1998). Rushton found it ridiculous that we had a nation of mentally handicapped children 100 years ago. This was enough for him to disregard the Flynn Effect.
Other proposed causes for this gap involve a mechanism called ‘stereotype threat’ (Steele and Aronson, 1995). Stereotype threat is a situational predicament in which people find themselves falling into the stereotype of whatever group their group is a part of. Though, this is not the case for blacks. Blacks are rated as seeing themselves as more attractive, which a) shows more self-confidence and b) shows that the so-called effects of white racism making blacks feel ugly and inadequate in their own skin are simply not true. Kanazawa (2011) noted that both male and female blacks rated themselves higher than other groups; showing that there are no lingering effects of racism as well as this silly belief that just by thinking you’re going to fall into a stereotype means that you will fall into it.
Still, others may state that poverty is a cause for the IQ disparity between the races. People have causalities mixed up when they make this statement. Since lower IQ is correlated with lower SES, the cause of poverty is people being born with low intellect which manifests itself in the wealth attainment of the individual. Many recent studies have come out saying that poverty decreases IQ, yet the only environmental factors that can do such a thing is malnutrition, extreme abuse, and extreme isolation. Other than that, all a parent needs to do is just give the child an ‘OK’ environment and genetic factors will take care of the rest.
Critics of the public school system have said for decades that you can’t solve educational problems by throwing money at them, but those who believed in the public schooling system said it has yet to be tried. They did try, in Kansas, MO, and failed miserably (Ciotti, 1998). This desegregation experiment cost 11,700 dollars per student, more money spent per individual on a cost of living basis than 280 school districts around the country. This tax-payer money bought “higher teachers’ salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.”
Despite all of these variables to enrich the environment of the black students, even bussing in white kids from out of district, the gap did not diminish, test scores did not change and there was less, not more, integration. Moreover, numerous individuals say that poverty and schooling systems are the cause for anti-intellectualism in the black community. I, however, argue that there is a considerable genetic component to the black-white IQ gap (Rushton and Jensen, 2005 p. 279).
Where does all of this leave us? Yes, blacks are less intelligent than whites, but what does this mean for our society that we refuse to acknowledge the existence of innate intelligence, as well as racial differences in intelligence? The average IQ of a repeat juvenile criminal in America is 92 (Herrnstein, Murray, and Cullens, 1998). At adulthood, the average IQ for a repeat criminal is 85. The reason for the IQ of a repeat adult offender being lower than that of teenaged offenders is due to as you age, the environment doesn’t matter as genetics takes over at adulthood.
The fact that we are disregarding g (intelligence) and its multiple covariates is extremely alarming. The fact that America is headed down the path to dysgenesis (Lynn, 2006) and we are not doing a thing about it troubles me greatly. The way we treat black underachievement in America is completely wrong. To succeed as a country, we need to recognize biological truths in that certain groups achieve highly whereas others have low levels of academic achievement, we need to recognize that there is no insidious plot to hold down others; we need to realize that some groups are less intelligent as others due to evolution in differing climates over tens of thousands of years. The trillions of dollars we have spent on all of these programs have not worked. We have tried them, and they have failed. No matter what we do, black underachievement will always be around. By recognizing black underachievement, they will be better able to succeed relative to themselves and not compare themselves to other high-achieving groups. There is a considerable genetic component to the gap (80 percent genetic) and that due to this, blacks should have differing standards in comparison to the rest of the population (Jensen, 1969).
References
Ciotti, P. (1998) Money and School Performance: Lessons from The Kansas City Desegregation Experiment http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html
Cullens, F.T., Herrnstein, R., Murray, C. Does IQ Significantly Contribute to Crime? (From Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Crime and Criminology, Fifth Edition, P 30-51, 1998, Richard C. Monk, ed. — See NCJ-183062)
Dickens, W. T., & Flynn, J. R. (2006). Black Americans Reduce the Racial IQ Gap: Evidence From Standardization Samples. Psychological Science, 17(10), 913-920. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01802.x
Duke, D.E. (1998). My awakening A path to racial understanding. Covington, LA: Free Speech Press.
Eriksen, H. F., Kesmodel, U. S., Underbjerg, M., Kilburn, T. R., Bertrand, J., & Mortensen, E. L. (2013). Predictors of Intelligence at the Age of 5: Family, Pregnancy and Birth Characteristics, Postnatal Influences, and Postnatal Growth. PLoS ONE, 8(11).
Eyferth, K. (1961). Leistungen verscheidener Gruppen von Besatzungskindern in Hamburg-Wechsler Intelligenztest fu¨r Kinder (HAWIK) [Achievement of children on the Hamburg-Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children]. Archiv fu¨r die gesamte Psychologie, 113, 222–241.
Flynn, J. R. (1987). Massive IQ gains in 14 nations: What IQ tests really measure. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 171–191.
Gottfredson, Linda S. “Mainstream science on intelligence: An editorial with 52 signatories, history, and bibliography.” Intelligence 24.1 (1997): 13-23.
Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. A. (1994). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York: Free Press.
Jensen, A. (1969). How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement. Harvard Educational Review, 39(1), 1-123.
Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor: The science of mental ability. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Kanazawa, S. (2011). Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women? The Scientific Fundamentalist
Lynn, R. (1996) Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, Human Evolution, Behavior and Intelligence Praeger, 1996
Moore, E. G. J. (1986). Family socialization and the IQ test performance of traditionally and transracially adopted Black children. Developmental Psychology, 22, 317–326.
Murray, C. (2014) Our Futile Efforts to Boost Children’s IQ http://www.aei.org/publication/futile-efforts-boost-childrens-iq/
Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R. (2005). Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11(2), 235-294.
Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R. (2010). The rise and fall of the Flynn Effect as a reason to expect a narrowing of the Black–White IQ gap☆. Intelligence, 38(2), 213-219. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2009.12.002
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797-811. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.69.5.797
Tizard, B. (1974, February 1). IQ and race. Nature, 247, 316.
Weinberg, R. A., Scarr, S., & Waldman, I. D. (1992). The Minnesota transracial adoption study: A follow-up of IQ test performance at adolescence. Intelligence, 16(1), 117-135.
Williams, Robert L. (1972) The BITCH-100: A Culture-Specific Test.
“Philosophers of Science” and Race/IQ
1500 words
“Philosophers of Science” attempt to stick their heads into the race/IQ debate to give their field more credence than it should get with the hard sciences. They use bad arguments like saying that “gene-environment interactions are widespread and hard to entangle” (Block, 1995), not knowing that identical twins reared apart grow up to be so similar (Rushton and Jensen, 2005, p. 279). The only time they should stick their heads in this debate is when they’re affirming that the methodology used to test IQ as well as racial differences in IQ are sound; otherwise, they do not have the training to assess this. Most “Philosophers of Science” defend claims that disintegrate when presented with the relevant scientific evidence (Sesarardic, 2000). I will be referencing this paper for the length of this article.
Half of the paper analyzes Lewontin’s argument to Jensen in which he uses his now famous “seed argument” in which he says you can take two seeds from the same heterogeneous population and plant them in rich and poor soil and “. . . as a result, the phenotypic differences within each of the two groups of plants will be 100 percent heritable, but the difference between the two groups will be entirely due to differences in two environments (zero heritability).” The fact of the matter is, this argument is parroted by “Philosophers of Science” when Jensen never made that argument.
Jensen then systemically dismantled every environmental argument with empirical evidence that they don’t hold up.
Other researchers then made accusations of “racism” the reason for Jensen’s overlooking of this. James Flynn, a big opponent of the hereditarian hypothesis and Rushton and Jensen in general, say that Jensen is not a “racist”. There is also something called the “X-Factor”, which is when phenotypic differences between two groups can be explained by an environmental factor that has no within-group variation at all, a 0 heritability. Racism, however, is a poor excuse for the “X-Factor”. Both Flynn and Jensen rule out discrimination as being the cause for the “X-Factor” as well.
Simply put, Jensen doesn’t make inferences that the black-white IQ gap is genetically based on one or a few variables on their own, but everything put together, that’s where the remaining evidence put. “Philosophers of Science” don’t understand heritability coefficients to be saying what they do; they wouldn’t be saying that if they knew how they worked.
Sesardic brings up how Block (1995) only mentions three pieces of empirical evidence: The “Flynn Effect”, “data about caste-like minorities”, and the small amount of genetic variation between races.
- The Flynn Effect happens uniformly in all populations at a rate of 3 points per decade but has slowed considerably. This increase began starting around 1880, coinciding with the industrial revolution. Better nutrition increased brain size in all populations, which lead to an increase in IQ. The Flynn Effect is not on g, so to make any claims that the differences in IQ between blacks and whites, or global differences in IQ for that matter, can be changed with more favoring towards environmentalist positions are not consistent with the scientific literature. In 1945, the average white IQ in America was 85, the same as the average American black IQ today. Since the differences in IQ have stayed consistent despite better nutrition in all groups, this proves that the gap is genetic in origin. 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. Since the Flynn Effect does not occur on g, it should be a non-factor.
- Minorities are only “caste-like” because differences in IQ are heritable, leading to racial disparities in social class differences. We can see when we match blacks, whites, and “Hispanics” for IQ (100), that some differences disappear, other differences decrease dramatically, and even blacks and “Hispanics” beat out whites in a couple of variables. Through multiple IQ tests averaged over time as well as seeing that test differences between races stay mostly the same, we can then make the inference, with all of the other evidence, that racial and ethnic differences in IQ are mostly genetic in origin with the environment having very little effect. To say that “racism” or “stereotype threat” has any bearing on these racial differences in IQ is laughable because 1) stereotype threat is only replicable in the lab and 2) racism as a variable does not exist in IQ testing.
- The small amount of genetic variation between races as an argument for the non-existence of race is meaningless. There are around 3 billion base pairs in the human genome. The human races differ on around .1 percent of the genome, or around 3 million base pairs. This is more than enough genetic difference to show phenotypic differences (obviously) as well as genotypic differences (again, obviously). Richard Dawkins in the Ancestor’s Tale writes: “What is not correct is the inferene that race is therefore a meaningless concept.” Race is a perfectly valid concept, anyone who denies it has doesn’t know of all of the studies that show the existence of race and how it’s a scientifically taxonomic concept.
Sesardic then brings up how “Philosophers of Science” continuously cite The Mismeasure of Man and Steven Jay Gould in an attempt to denigrate scientists long dead. A few “glowing reviews” from two “Philosophers of Science”:
No one has done as much as Stephen J. Gould to expose race and intelligence studies for the garbage that they often are. (Brown 1998, 5)
Stephen Jay Gould has lucidly analyzed how filling the skulls with lead shot, and comparing the weights of the lead, could easily be infected with unconscious biases. (Kitcher 1997, 171)
The garbage that they often are? Steven Jay Gould is a long discredited ideologue who put his politics before actual science, ironically giving HIM the same bias he falsely accused Samuel Morton of having. James Flynn even says that Gould’s book evades all of Jensen’s best arguments (as most always happens with this debate) with his false belief that g is “reified” therefore leading to the study of race and IQ being meaningless since he has “rebutted the g factor”. I proved the existence of Spearman’s hypothesis the other day using Jensen’s writings that he empirically verified that Spearman’s hypothesis exists in 25 independent samples of blacks and whites along with the study by Dragt (2010) who used the method of correlated vectors to empirically prove the existence of Spearman’s hypothesis. In meta-analyses of Spearman’s hypothesis, he found that differences in intelligence between groups are largely based on cognitive complexity and any so-called “biases in mental testing” cannot account for these racial differences in cognitive ability.
In the definitive refutation of Steven Jay Gould’s “reanalysis” of Morton’s skulls, Lewis, et al definitively prove by remeasuring 308 of the 670 skulls that he had no implicit biases. They also found that if Morton’s biases were true, then there would be considerable overestimates of white skulls while there would be considerable underestiamates of non-white skulls. Ironincally enough, he considered his Egyptian skulls “Negroid” and overmeasured by 12 percent. He overmeasured three of those skulls, along with Seminole (by 8 percent) and native African Nergro (by 7 percent), falsifying the claim that Morton had a bias in measuring his skulls!! As I have brought up here numerous times, as Rushton has refuted him (and defended Morton’s results) as well as Jensen giving Gould a definitive rebuttal to his book. Gould should not be being cited seriously anymore. He should only be brought up as an example of extreme bias in the context of race as well as racial differences and a whole slew of other things that are politically motivated.
He finally rounds up the paper by bringing up how TJ Bouchard, showing that the Big Five Personality Traits have a high heritabilty, gets told that they are traits that carry a social judgment. However, we now know that 40-60 percent of the variation the Big Five is heritable, so this is a meaningless claim.
Sesardic ends the paper as follows:
Why is this small segment of contemporary philosophy of science in such a sorry state? On reflection, I prefer to leave this question as an exercise for the reader. My aim in this paper is to criticize a deviant philosophical trend, not to explain how it came about or why it spread.
My answer to this question is that most philosophers seem to be leftists. We can see with the vehement race denial that they want to believe so strongly that racial differences, as well as race as whole, does not exist. The fact that they attempt to say that these things are not a reality and based on faulty methodologies shows that they do not know what they are talking about. They show large misconceptions about heritability, and continuously cite Steven Jay Gould, even when Gould has been refuted numerous times as well it being shown that they don’t correctly understand heritability. They show large misconceptions of what is understood in the field of psychometrics and heritabilities and make faulty claims about the hereditarian hypothesis.
If the hereditarian hypothesis is to be refuted (it won’t), it will be from science and not philosophy or “Philosophers of Science”.
More g Denialism and more Gould Refuting
1750 words
It seems like every day something new comes out that attempts to discredit the reality of g (This paper came out in 2012.). Steven Jay Gould (in)famously wrote in The Mismeasure of Man:
The argument begins with one of the fallacies—reification, or our tendency to convert abstract concepts into entities (from the Latin res, or thing). We recognize the importance of mentality in our lives and wish to characterize it, in part so that we can make the divisions and distinctions among people that our cultural and political systems dictate. We therefore give the word “intelligence” to this wondrously complex and multifaceted set of human capabilities. (emphasis mine)
Which is the same thing that the researchers of the paper Fractioning Human Intelligence said to The Independent:
“The results disprove once and for all the idea that a single measure of intelligence, such as IQ, is enough to capture all of the differences in cognitive ability that we see between people,”
“Instead, several different circuits contribute to intelligence, each with its own unique capacity. A person may well be good in one of these areas, but they are just as likely to be bad in the other two,”
Just like The Mismeasure of Man is “the definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve”, right?
In the above paper, they cite Gould twice writing:
It remains unclear, however, whether population differences in intelligence test scores are driven by heritable factors or by other correlated demographic variables such as socioeconomic status, education level, and motivation (Gould, 1981; . . .
They have been shown over numerous studies that population differences in intelligence are driven by heritable factors (Rushton and Jensen, 2005; Lynn and Vanhanen, 2006; Winick, Meyer, and Harris, 1975; Frydman and Lynn, 1988; Rushton, 2005)
More relevantly, it is questionable whether they relate to a unitary intelligence factor, as opposed to a bias in testing paradigms toward particular components of a more complex intelligence construct (Gould, 1981;
I will prove the existence of g in this article. There is also an empirical basis for the g factor.
It’s getting old now that researchers still think that they can “disprove g”, as a multitude of studies have already corroborated Spearman’s hypothesis as an empirical fact. That is, applying the scientific method, using the same hypothesis over a multitude of different studies and testing those predictions by experiment or further observation and modify the hypothesis when new information comes to light. Then, repeat the aforementioned steps until there are no discrepancies between the theory and experiment/observations.Then when consistency is obtained it then becomes a theory that provides a coherent set of premises that explain a class of events.
How many times has the Hampshire et al hypothesis been corroborated? I doubt it has been corroborated as many times as Spearman’s hypothesis has.
As I said the other day, Jensen tested Spearman’s hypothesis on 25 large independent samples, with each sample confirming Spearman’s hypothesis. Even matching blacks and whites for SES didn’t diminish the effect. Jensen then concludes that the overall chance for Spearman’s hypothesis being wrong is over 1 in a billion. Pretty high odds.
Even then, if this study were to be replicated the amount of times that Spearman’s hypothesis has, it still wouldn’t disprove g.
On page 558-559 of the Afterword to The Bell Curve, Charles Murray responds to many of Gould’s criticisms of the book. He writes:
He (Gould) continues: “The fact that Herrnstein and Murray barely mention the factor-analytic argument forms a central indictment around The Bell Curve and is an illustration of its vacuousness.” Where, Gould asks, is the evidence that g “captures a real property in the head?
Murray states that they “barely brought up the factor-analytical argument” because it was out of date; Gould was using statistics on g that were 50 + years old. Also, a reviewer of his book for the journal Nature said that Gould’s “discussion of the theory of intelligence stops at the stage it was more than a quarter of a century ago.” Gould was using old arguments, and, as Arthur Jensen states in his response to Gould:
Of all the book’s references, a full 27 percent precede 1900. Another 44 percent fall between 1900 and 1950 (60 percent of those are before 1925); and only 29 percent are more recent than 1950.
More than half of Gould’s references in The Mismeasure of Man are outdated by more than 50 years. Clearly, he was attempting to denigrate the old studies of intelligence, i.e., phrenology, even though this recent paper in the journal Nature recently said:
The genomic regions identified include several novel loci, some of which have been associated with intracranial volume
So, we have several loci that are associated with intracranial volume; this shows that those skull studies of yesteryear weren’t crazy. Moreover, the fact that Rushton and Ankney (1996) “reviewed 32 studies correlating measures of external head size with IQ scores or with measures of educational and occupational achievement, and they found a mean r .20 for people of all ages, both sexes, and various ethnic backgrounds, including African Americans” shows that there is a correlation of .20, albeit not too high but there, with external head size and IQ. This shows that Gould’s argument on phrenology is bunk, as modern studies confirm that there is a slight correlation between head size and IQ, and therefore g.
The fact that researchers are still bringing up Gould’s arguments on g show that there really is no good argument to discount it. Basically, any and all arguments that attempt to discredit g are bunk as Spearman’s hypothesis has been empirically verified:
Conclusion: Mean group differences in scores on cognitive-loaded instruments are well documented over time and around the world. A meta-analytic test of Spearman’s hypothesis was carried out. Mean differences in intelligence between groups can be largely explained by cognitive complexity and the present study shows clearly that there is simply no support for cultural bias as an explanation of these group differences. Comparing groups, whether in the US or in Europe, produced highly similar outcomes.
Along with Jensen’s 25 large independent studies that showed that the probability that Spearman’s hypothesis is false is 1 in a billion, this proves that Spearman’s hypothesis is an empirical scientific fact.
Newman and Just, (2005) state in verbal and spatial conditions that the frontal cortex revealed greater activation for high-g in comparison to low-g, supporting the idea that g reflects functions of the frontal lobe. The “seat” of general intelligence is the prefrontal cortex (Cole, et al, 2011, Roth, 2011). This can also be verified with MRI scans that show that those who have higher g have bigger prefrontal cortexes than those with lower g.
Moreover, the fact that Colom, et al (2006) show that in their sample that neuroanatomic areas underlying the g factor could be found across the entire brain including the frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes, shows that this factor is present throughout the brain and all are correlated with g and work together in concert to manifest intellectual ability.
Other researchers have also used the method of correlated vectors on functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), which measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique is proven useful due to the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal action are correlated. Lee, et al write:
In conclusion, we suggest that higher order cognitive functions, such as general intelligence, may be processed by the coordinated ability may be attributable to the functional facilitation rather than the structural peculiarity of the neural network for g. In addition, our results demonstrated that the posterior parietal regions including bilateral SPL and right IPS could be the neural correlates for superior general intelligence. These findings would be the early step toward the development of biological measures of g which leads to new perspectives for behavior interventions improving general cognitive ability.
They also used the MCV to find that the frontal and parietal lobes are associated with g. Even these studies show that g shows up throughout the brain and not in one solitary spot (though, the PFC is still the seat of intelligence), this shows yet another biological basis for g.
Hampshire, et al write:
Thus, these results provide strong evidence that human intelligence is a construct that emerges from the functioning of anatomically dissociable brain networks.
However, with the above studies confirming that the seat of intelligence is the prefrontal cortex, along with great g ability possibly be attributable to the functional facilitation rather than the structural peculiarity of the neural network for g, this shows, along with the study proving Spearman’s hypothesis, that g is a real and measurable thing. g’s seat is the prefrontal cortex, and exceptional g may possibly be attributed to the functional facilitation of the neural network for g . What all of these studies show is that all though the Hampshire paper showed how they “demonstrate that different components of intelligence have their analogs in distinct brain networks.” that a) higher order cognitive functions may be processed by the coordinated activation of widely distributed brain areas (disproving the above quote), b) the seat of g is the prefrontal cortex, c) those with more g have bigger prefrontal cortexes and therefore bigger brains since the prefrontal cortex is the ‘seat’ of intelligence and d) Spearman’s hypothesis has been corroborated numerous times by many different researchers not named Arthur Jensen.
Highfield (one of the researchers in the study) ends the article as follows:
“We already know that, from a scientific point of view, the notion of race is meaningless. Genetic differences do not map on to traditional measurements of skin colour, hair type, body proportions and skull measurements.
This is something that never ends; it always comes up no matter how many times it’s been said. People can say “race is a social construct” all they want, it doesn’t make it true as there is a biological reality to race.
Now we have shown that IQ is meaningless too,” Dr Highfield said.
IQ is not biased, nor is it “meaningless“.
When will people learn not to cite men who have smeared their legacy in an attempt to defame men who they disagreed with ideologically? Citing Steven Jay Gould in 2016 shows a bias to want to discredit g as a main factor for many things in life including SES, educational attainment, wealth attainment and so forth. The g factor is a measurable thing, with the seat of the factor being the prefrontal cortex. No amount of attempting to dispute this factor can be done, as it’s been empirically verified numerous times.
There Is Such a Thing As a “Male” and “Female” Brain
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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.
Arthur Jensen’s Method of Correlated Vectors
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Arthur Jensen developed the Method of Correlated Vectors in the 1980s and presents a great explanation and analysis in his 1998 book THE g FACTOR: The Science of Mental Ability. Since IQ is correlated with g, it’s not presumable that the correlation between IQ and physical variable X does not involve g. More sufficient evidence would come from the correlation between X and the g factor’s scores. So Jensen proposed the method of correlated vectors that can determine whether there is a correlation between X (or any other factor other than X) and g. Still, it doesn’t tell us about the numerical correlations between g and X, but it can prove that there is a correlation between factor X and g and show if there are any other factors independent of g that are not correlated with X (pg 143).
When a significant correlation is observed between g factors and factor X using the method of correlated vectors, which Rushton (1999) calls the “Jensen Effect”, it demonstrates that the test’s g loading is the best predictor of that correlation with a given variable. Basically, a Jensen Effect arises when there is a correlation between a large number of biological and psychological variables and the g factor. Jensen did say in his interviews with Frank Miele for the Book Intelligence, Race, and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur Jensen:
. . . it involves what I have called “Spearman’s hypothesis.” In his book The Abilities of Man, Spearman made a casual observation that the size of the average W hite-Black difference on ten diverse tests was directly related to his subjective im pression of how much each test reflected the g factor— the more g, the greater the Black-White difference. I turned Spearmans offhand conjecture into an empirically testable hypothesis by calculating the average Black-W hite difference for a number of diverse mental tests, obtaining the g loading for each test (that is, how much each test measures g), and ranking the average W-B differences and the g loadings. If the rank order of the Black White differences and the g loadings are pretty much in the same order, Spearman’s hypothesis is confirmed.
I’ve now tested Spearmans hypothesis on 25 large independent samples and it has been confirmed on every one. It has held up for many different test batteries, and at every age level from three-year olds to middle-aged adults. Nor did matching Blacks and Whites for SES diminish the effect. It even shows up in reaction-time tests that have different g loadings but require no cultural knowledge and can be performed in less than one or two seconds by elementary school children. Based on all these studies, the overall probability that Spearmans hypothesis is false is less than one in a billion! (emphasis mine)
There is less than one in a billion chance that Spearman’s hypothesis is wrong. Which brings me to the Black-White IQ gap.
Using the MCV, Dragt (2010) had his prediction confirmed when the psychometric meta-analysis of IQ batteries showed a correlation of .91, based on a large N. Their study on language bias showed a small underestimate of 2.71 points. They conclude that Spearman’s hypothesis is an empirical fact:
Spearman’s hypothesis can now be considered to be an empirical fact. Mean differences in intelligence between ethnic groups can be largely explained by the complexity of the subtests in an IQ battery. So, the present study shows clearly that there is simply no support for cultural bias as an explanation of these ethnic group differences. Apart from subtests with a strong language component, IQ batteries appear to be excellent measures of intelligence for all groups studied in our meta-analysis.
…
Conclusion: Mean group differences in scores on cognitive-loaded instruments are well documented over time and around the world. A meta-analytic test of Spearman’s hypothesis was carried out. Mean differences in intelligence between groups can be largely explained by cognitive complexity and the present study shows clearly that there is simply no support for cultural bias as an explanation of these group differences. Comparing groups, whether in the US or in Europe, produced highly similar outcomes.
This proves the hereditarian hypothesis 100 percent. Since the black-white differences on subtests are greater the more the g factor is involved (complex tasks, etc), that shows that a magnitude of the black-white difference in IQ is genetic in origin. IQ tests are also not “flawed” or “biased“, as all of the variables that continually get brought up have been controlled for, and genetic confounding wins out every time. Since testing blacks and whites both in America and Europe produces the same outcome, there is a clear genetic component in IQ between blacks and whites.
However, as with most statements and theories by Rushton and Jensen, Jensen’s MCV doesn’t come without any detractors.
Ashton and Lee (2005) state that the MCV produces spurious results as well as non-g sources of variance, producing a vector correlation of 0, even when the item is strongly correlated with the g factor. However, Nijenhuis et al (2007) state that by performing a psychometric meta-analysis on the MCV would alleviate some of the limitations with MCV. Rushton and Jensen (2010) state:
For example, Dolan et al [59] and Ashton and Lee [60] argue that the method of correlated vectors (MCV) lacks specificity so that Jensen Effects might occur even when differences are not on g, and so more powerful statistics are needed, such as multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA). However, this criticism misses the point because there is no absolute claim that the g effects have been proven, only that what is observed is what would have been expected if an underlying g did in fact exist (see Bartholomew [61] for the logic of g inferences). Thus, the onus is on the critics of g to identify whether some other factor is operating
Which the critics cannot do. That is because the g factor encompasses all mental abilities and the lower one’s g, the lower one’s overall intelligence. The MVC shows that the black-white IQ difference is largely biological in nature, seeing as the black-white IQ gap is 80 percent genetic and 20 percent environmental (Rushton and Jensen, 2005, p. 279):
. . . is that genetic and cultural factors carry the exact same weight in causing the mean Black–White difference in IQ as they do in causing individual differences in IQ, about 80% genetic–20% environmental by adulthood.
Blacks are ahead of whites at young childhood (around 4 years of age), but at around the age of 5, whites catch up and that’s when the significant racial differences in intelligence are noticed between the races. The fact that we have this debunked “blank slate” notion on the nature of not only race and intelligence but intelligence as a whole in this era of scientific knowledge is mind boggling. Changing all variables to where environments are as close as possible still produces the same occurrence: a clear 1 to 1.2 SD difference between blacks and whites.
Methods like factor analysis and the method of correlated vectors help us to understand the magnitude and heritability of the black-white difference in IQ. Since the differences are the highest on those subtests that are correlated with g, along with correlations from the MCV, with an 80/20 (Pareto Principle in action) genetic/environmental difference in black-white IQ, we can most definitively say that the 1 to 1.2 SD (the equivalent of 15 and 18 IQ points respectively) gap in IQ between whites and blacks is genetic in origin.
In Defense of Jason Richwine
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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?
Differential K Theory, GFP, and the Evolution of Conscientousness
There is a link between higher IQ and higher ability to be more conscientiousness, which is then linked to the GFP or General Factor of Personality. Two meta-factors were identified beyond the Big Five Personality Traits and were described as ‘Plasticity’ and ‘Stability’ (Deyoung et al, 2002). To quote from the paper:
Stability subsumes Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability (the reverse ofNeuroticism), and Agreeableness, and refers to the extent to whichan individual is consistent in motivation, mood, and social interac-tions. Plasticity encompasses Extraversion and Openness to experi-ence, and refers to the extent to which a person actively searchesfor new and rewarding experiences, both intellectual and social.
Why did this evolve, especially so closely with high intellect? It evolved due to conscientiousness, which is defined as being thorough, careful, and vigilant.That, coincidentally enough, being needed to survive the harsh winters of Northern Europe and Siberia. Higher conscientiousness was is also another reason for the formation of European societies. With being able to be more conscientious, this, along with genetic pacification, is yet another cause for the cucking of Europe.
When our ancestors trekked out of Africa and into Siberia and Northern Europe, they needed differing abilities than those peoples who stayed in the more tropic climates. Those in the tropics, for the most part, could just lounge around all day. With food being readily available, there was really no pressing need to “save” or “partition” their findings (as Africa is full of mostly a hunter-gatherer societies). Conversely, in Europe and Asia, with harsh conditions in regards to their environment, which made food less plentiful than in the tropics, this meant that more cooperation was needed. Due to more cooperation being needed to survive, planning ahead (abstract thought) evolved to better help cope with the harsh environment.
The aforementioned factors in Europe and Asia then led to the higher rates of altruism seen today. Ancient Europeans needed to be thorough, vigilant and careful. Whether they needed to be careful with food storage, how much to eat, whether or not to help someone, etc, it’s clear that conscientiousness evolved with higher intelligence. Since higher intelligence is correlated with those three things involving conscientiousness, they evolved hand in hand, as selection only selects for good traits and discards the ones that aren’t useful.
These two environments that the three races evolved in then set the stage for what’s going on today. With Africans’ lack of conscientiousness, this leads to them not being vigilant, careful or thorough. This can be seen with how sloppy they are when they commit crimes. Their ancestral environment wasn’t conducive to conscientiousness, and in turn, higher IQ, so they evolved without the need of conscientiousness, as their societies (for what they are), function ‘well’ in their perception. This is yet another reason why that we cannot live together. Differing evolutionary strategies lead to these causes, yet we still think we can acclimate some peoples into society when their biology says otherwise.
JP Rushton proposed that the GFP (General Factor of Personality) and IQ were linked. It was found that the correlation between the GFP and IQ was -.23. The higher the g score, the higher the individual scores on the GFP. He noted that the correlation is so low, possibly due to the restricted range of the sample. Rushton provided an argument for the evolutionary process of cognitive ability and personality evolution. This is clear evidence of the GFP and IQ evolving hand-in-hand.
Lacking a high IQ, and therefore, lack of g, Africans (as well as other colored peoples), on average, have lower g and therefore lower conscientiousness, which then is a huge cause for crime. Increases criminality has been correlated, like I’ve said here before, to a lower verbal intelligence. Though this higher IQ and higher GFP is being taken advantage of. Ever since that fateful day in 1964, white pathological altruism has been taken advantage of. Those with lower conscientiousness know they can take advantage of those with higher IQ and higher conscientiousness as altruism is correlated highly with IQ and conscientiousness.
There is an altruistic personality; the altruist has a high IQ, is conscientious, and altruistic. Those on the opposite end of the spectrum, however, take advantage of that and this can be seen with the political climate around the world in regards to other races’ feelings towards whites.Conversely, those who are r-selected and have a low IQ and GFP tend to be more hostile and commit acts of aggression. This multiculturalism due to the altruistic personality on a large scale is one of the reasons for the mass immigration into Western societies. People, as a whole, become collectively altruistic. Then, those lower IQ, lower GFP, r-selected people then take advantage of the more altruistic people. They then turn into a parasitic entity, sucking the host dry before moving on to their next victim.
This is where a high GFP does not work, in multicultural societies. Of course, this is also due to ethnic dissimilarity, but the other thing I brought up along with that ethnic dissimilarity are all of the negative effects of those that are r selected, which, in their own societies is ‘fine’, but to who are K-selected and have complex societies, those behaviors are archaic.
There is a high correlation between low IQ, low conscientiousness, archaic actions, lack of abstract thought, and lack of society building. We know that those with lower IQs commit more crime on average than those with higher IQs.
This is why allowing non-Western people who are abnormal to our societies is a bad move, since they don’t share the same evolutionary track, and therefore, due to differing selections due to evolution, evolved differing behaviors to better adapt to the climate, environment, and surroundings.
Since skin color and IQ correlate at -.92, meaning the darker the skin the lower the IQ and vice versa, this is yet another great assessor on whether an individual has a high IQ, and is, therefore, conscientious. This is due to, as I alluded to earlier, the environment in sub-Saharan Africa being conducive to lack of ability to delay gratification. Due to that, we can infer, on average, whether someone will be conscientious or not. Since their ability to delay gratification is impeded due to certain evolutionary pressures not put on Asians and Europeans, they will, therefore, be less conscientious, which is a crucial building block in maintaining a successful society.
The research of Templer and Arikawa (2006) supports Rushton’s contention that higher intelligence develops in colder climates. They used 129 countries with primarily indigenous populations (Asia, Africa, and Europe) and correlated culture fair IQ (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002) with temperature. In addition to temperature, Templer and Arikawa used skin color provided by an anthropology book (Biasutti, 1967). IQ correlated .92 with darker skin color, .76 with winter highs, .66 with winter lows, and .63 with per capita income. Previous research by Meisenberg (2004) reported a correlation of .89 between skin reflectance and IQ in a similar study. Templer (2010b) found a correlation of .96 between skin color measure used by the Templer and Arikawa and the one by Meisenberg’s skin reflectance. Because both measures were independently determined using different methodology, they both can be regarded as highly valid measures of skin color.
The cause of these two variables being correlated is evolution. They paired well with each other, so over tens of thousands of years, they got selected for with each other and persisted to today. Since we have modern societies and are much more civil (some of us), we can better see these differences in personality as well as behavior. There are This General Factor of Personality was able to evolve due to evolution in cold climates. The altered intelligence, which then altered personality. This r/K Life History Theory of Rushton’s blend’s beautifully with the GFP and intelligence. Evolution in cold climates along with genetic isolation caused differing evolutionary trajectories for each race/ethnicity which led to differences in crime, IQ, socioeconomic status, sexual maturity, cultures, and so on. There are clear genetic differences brought on by the environment (due to evolution), which leads to differing societies based on differing evolutionary trajectories. Conscientiousness and intelligence, the whole General Factor of Personality, evolved in Northern populations since it was more beneficial in that environment, and to survive, this is what done to adapt to the environment through natural selection, which then led to racial differences.
Germany Begins to (Slightly) Wise Up: Will Begin IQ Testing “Migrants”
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Haaretz reported today that Germany was going to begin IQ testing on the ‘migrants’ to assess where talent and what occupational groups that they could put them in. This is a slightly positive change with all of the negativity this past year.
The mean IQ of Arab countries is 84 (Templer, 2010). With around 1.2 million ‘refugees’ coming from land and sea, assuming a SD of 15 (seeing as Arabs are Caucasian, I’ll assume a SD of 15), 50 percent of them fall at or below 84. So 600k at 84 or below. 16 percent fall at 100. 192k fall at 100. 12k at 120 and 1,680 fall at 130. 50 percent fall below 84. In America the average IQ for a repeat criminal is 85. With an IQ of 85, you can see that criminality begins to increase. This is due to lack of abstract thought(linked to verbal ability), which has them not think of the consequences of their actions before they act. At or below 85 is 1 in 6, 68% of the population is within 1 SD of 100, and 2.5% of people are 130 or more.
I can’t find any data on Arab testosterone at the moment, so I’ll just assume that it’s higher than Europeans due to the Arabs’ closer proximity to the equator (someone correct me if I’m wrong), as that’s why African’s testosterone is high. Due to higher average testosterone combined with low IQ, this leads to increased aggression along with increased sex crime, which is a cause for some of the sex assaults on European women by Muslim men. I can’t find anything on terrorist IQ, the closest I can find is how the FBI convinced a man with an IQ of 51 to attempt terrorist acts, though that’s an extreme case. Since low IQ is correlated highly with lack of abstract thought, it was easier for him to become convinced to do it. Like in most organizations, the more intelligent ones are at the top so they tell the lower IQ ones what to do. Though, by administering these tests, they will greatly lower their chances for another terrorist attack, seeing as those actions are correlated with low IQ.
In a study on prison inmates, IQ predicted inmate misconduct. Using a sample of 2500 inmates over 30 institutions from August 2004 to June 2006, it was found that those inmates who had higher IQs were involved in fewer incidents as well as being less likely to commit violent behavior. Verbal intelligence has been posited to be some of the cause for increased crime, seeing as verbal IQ is correlated with delinquent behavior, which is due to lack of abstract thought being correlated with lower IQ. With higher testosterone being correlated with low IQ and increased androgen sensitivity along with higher sperm counts (both are indicators of higher testosterone) being correlated negatively when measured by speed of neuronal transmission which causes a trade-off between g (general intelligence) and neuronal transmission, this shows that increased testosterone means decreased IQ. This is also seen with how higher IQ people have a lower sex drive.
I did say in my article Non-Western People are Abnormal for Our Society, that, as the title says, non-Western people are abnormal for our society due to not sharing our cultural values, which, we know is genetic. Though, higher IQ individuals will be better able to acclimate into society, as well as have a decreased proclivity to commit crime.
Since there are some evoultionary reasons for suicide bombings due to increased inbreeding this increased genetic similarity between them which led to increased altruism due to genetic similarity, by allowing those with higher IQs, this will lead to a greatly increased chance for attacks to happen as higher IQ people are better at controlling impulses.
This is a move I agree with. All countries should implement this procedure (obviously not enough to where it begins to displace the native population). With there being a cut-off limit on IQ, lets say 105 or even 110, that guarantees a high chance of those who are immigrating will be of value to the country and bring something to the table instead of the current situation with the benefits they currently receive (and lets be honest, you know these rules aren’t being followed). So by implementing this policy not only in Germany, but around the world, this would be a great thing for the West, to restrict immigration only to high-skilled workers, with a background check, intelligence test and someone with good credentials. Of course, only in sectors that really need the help. I of course advocate for the natives of any country to have first dibs when it comes to getting a job.
All in all, this is good move because a) rapes will be lessened and b) there won’t be as much individuals on welfare because there will be an (assumed) moratorium on those with lower IQs, leaving the higher IQ ones to find jobs and contribute to the economy.
Rushton’s Differential K Theory and Intelligence
1250 words
This is my 50th post. I plan to cover altruism and ethnocentrism much more extensively, intelligence and race, psycological disease and race, personality and race and so on. A JayMan refutation on his belief of Ethnic Genetic Interests and Group Selection is coming soon.
Differential K Theory explains human behavior on countless variables. Rushton was one the first scientist to use r/K selection theory to explain human behavior. Albeit, it’s on a much smaller scale than what r/K selection theory is used for, it still greatly applies to human populations. On over 6o variables, Blacks (r selected) fall at one end of the continuum, whereas Orientals (K selected) fall at the other end, with Caucasians falling in the middle, consistently on over 60 variables.
Rushton’s theory, which of course is extremely controversial, drew the ire of many researchers because he chose to use r/K selection theory in regards to explaining differences between isolated human populations. But, what they don’t get is this: even if Rushton is wrong with his Differential K theory, you’d still need a way to explain how and why these 3 populations who evolved in genetic isolation came to have such stark and consistent differences between them no matter where in the world you look. Between IQ (Asians 103-4; Europeans 100 and African-Americans 85), rates of 2-egg twinning (Asians 4 for every 1000, Europeans 8 for every 1000, and Africans 16 for every 1000 [I wrote about some evolutionary causes for earlier menstration in black girls with leptin being the cause last week, it also explains how and why blacks have more rates of 2-egg twinning, because the life expectancy is so low it lead to evolutionary pressurses in which Africans evolved mechanisms that have them have more kids and earlier menstral cycle.]), average age of first walk (blacks one week before whites who are one week before Asians) and so on and so forth.
The more intelligent the woman, the less kids she will want to have, on average. One SD increase in childhood IQ leads to a 21-25 percent decrease in a woman’s odds to have children. This is a clear k strategy. Have less kids, but show more care for them. Conversely, blacks have more kids, but show less paternal involvement. This still continues today in America, even though we have an industrial society. The things involved in this discussion are, at its core, evolution in its process, but we don’t see it that way because of the society we live in. With intelligent women not having children, while the less intelligent, r selected women having more children, this will lead to an eventual dysgenisis and the average IQ in America will drop immensely. The birth rate for whites in America was 1.75 in 2013, 2.0 for blacks, 2.4 for Hispanics and 1.77 for Asians. The r/K selection theory perfectly explains this. It’s an evolutionary process that occurs as adaptations to the environment that their ancestors evolved in.
The more K selected peoples had to have less children in their ancestral environment due to food being scarce. This is where the higher intelligence evolved as well as high amounts of altruism, which I theorize that Europeans have a higher amount of the brain hormone oxytocin, which leads to more altruism, but is being taken advantage of by non-Western people who are abnormal to our societies and eventually leads to increased ethnocentrism.
Rushton postulates that Differential K Theory is a cause for group differences in intelligence. With the K selected having less children and the r selected having more, we can see this in birth trends as well as IQ trends in the country. More intelligent women can see that it’d be better to wait to have children as to be more financially able to take care of the baby. While the less intelligent women have more kids due to not thinking into the future and only thinking in the now, wanting their pleasure immediately. This is causing a dysgenic effect on America. The more the average intelligence drops, the more we can expect to see conditions begin to deteriorate, as a country is only as good as the majority of its population, as we can see looking at the average living conditions around the world.
With altruistic behavior being highly correlated with race due to evolution for tens of thousands of years, we can see that more intelligent people will be more law abiding, more altruistic, commit less crime, have less children, more cooperative and so on. Whereas less intelligent people will be less law abiding, less altruistic, commit more crime, have more children and be less cooperative. This is modeled in communities all over America in their crime rates, graduation rates, IQ scores and so on. One of the most noticeable r selected traits is criminality. This is due to lack of ability to delay gratification and higher testosterone. The reverse is true for lower testosterone Eurasians, as well as numerous other differing physiological factors between the races.
With differing crime rates no matter where you look, the racial disparities are all the same. This is no coincidence; social factors do not account for these differences. Evolution, does, though. Evolution is also the cause for the social factors that do arise within and between populations. Over time, these selection pressures caused these positive traits you see in those who evolved in the Northern, harsher, colder climates and the more negative traits in the more Southerly, hotter climates.
This is why importing more people from differing societies into our countries will not end well. They have differing evolutionary goals different evolutionary reasons for them. They are not normal for our societies; ethnic dissimilarity causes more strife between people due to genetic distance. The more r selected peoples are less intelligent and are also prone to higher rates of criminality as well due to higher testosterone.
These differing evolutionary goals would be fine; if not for forced mass immigrations into Western countries. Since birth rates never remain stable, a lower white birth rate would have been able to rebound eventually. With the introduction of mass immigration into Western Societies, this is causing the birth rate to continue to fall percentage wise, even if the birth rate increases due to the introduction of more r selected peoples. The more educated that women get, the less kids they have. It works in two ways: going for higher degrees and wanting success in life first, some women may be around their mid 30s before deciding to have children and when deciding to have children they then can’t have any due to being too old. Whereas those with lower intelligence and no career prospects would have been having more kids due to their r selected strategy and lack of foresight into the future due to lower intelligence.
Looking at things from an evolutionary lens will make what’s going on around the world clear. Everything you see is evolution in action, though you won’t see its effects and they won’t be noticeable for tens of thousands of years, it’s evolution on a macro level. Negative birth trends always do reverse, as they never remain stable. As more women get educated (and this holds for all women of every age, race, religion and ethnic group), birth rates drop due to less time in the fertile years attempting to get pregnant. If we’d only look at things in an evolutionary scientific way, we’d be better able to understand how and why human populations differ behaviorally cognitively, and a whole multitude of other factors. We’d also better understand how to, on average, deal with the average criminalistic personality. It would make the job for police easier if these evolutionary factors were known and life would be safer in America as a whole.
NotPoliticallyCorrect 
