[RD] Discussion on IQ (split from effect of white people on America)

[Lexicus]

I actually don't think blacks are dumber than whites,

I think you actually do

 

[caketastydelish]

I would have been more impressed if you answered my question instead of giving an opinion.

edit: South Africa in particular I think is a good example. Not a poor country by any measure, an abundance of natural resources and industrialization, and apartheid is gone.

 

[Lexicus]

I would have been more impressed if you answered my question instead of giving an opinion.

Your argument has actually been addressed already in the thread, you should read through it more carefully.

 

[Synobun]

Question for some of you:

I can accept "blacks in Africa get lower IQ scores because of environmental disadvantages such as malnutrition"

My problem is I want you to compare that to blacks in South Africa, where this isn't as much of an issue, and then compare it blacks living in western countries (not just America). It's not just in poor African countries or Haiti and places like that where they score lower. I actually don't think blacks are dumber than whites, but this is something you all have not answered.

It's rather simple. None of the demographics you've listed have enjoyed the industrialized, modernized lifestyles you might expect from a western white-dominant society.

The Civil Rights Act is still recent. Apartheid even more so. Most African states were lambasted by colonialism over the course of centuries and then left to fend for themselves. Even then, each of these demographics regularly produce academics and innovators that vastly outshine the intellectual elites of those who can wave a shiny MENSA card around.

You're designing a test based on a western-white-dominant population and then comparing other populations against it. The populations that score poorly either haven't had enough time to integrate or have utterly no use for knowing what the IQ exam tests for.

 

[caketastydelish]

Well, black kids living in America, France, England, Germany, Australia, Sweden, whatever... those were mainly what I was talking about.

If someone was born and raised in one of those countries it's pretty hard to say "they are culturally biased against it".

 

[Synobun]

Well, black kids living in America, France, England, Germany, Australia, Sweden, whatever... those were mainly what I was talking about.

If someone was born and raised in one of those countries it's pretty hard to say "they are culturally biased against it".

Well, two things on that:

1) Western Europe has a low "black" population. Black being Caribbean and African-based. If being generous, there are ~15,000,000 black people in Europe.

2) Western Europe has a convenient state of denial over their issues with racism. Many sidestep it as nationalism and not racism.

Compare the maps of these two pages for example:

US: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...hey-dont-even-know-it/?utm_term=.9b914e1794a2

Europe: https://qz.com/984587/a-new-study-s...as-negative-racial-bias-towards-black-people/

European states have history in the mistreatment of other ethnic groups. Several European nations made their fortunes on it for centuries. While they don't have a recent history like that of the US or South Africa, they share at least similar implicit biases along the same range as US states. These nations have always had a bias towards the white majority. It's always been a scale of severity and not a binary yes/no.

 

[caketastydelish]

What about Asians countries who are not white and therefore not eurocentric? If IQ tests are biased towards "white western people" how come people in Asian countries are scoring even higher than whites?

 

[Hrothbern]

I would have been more impressed if you answered my question instead of giving an opinion.

edit: South Africa in particular I think is a good example. Not a poor country by any measure, an abundance of natural resources and industrialization, and apartheid is gone.

I would not hope for proper IQ tests from South Africa from people that had good circumstances.
You can see that from the average male South African height, which is still low (1.68 meter). Height is comparably influenced as your brain development by factors as malnutrition and healthcare (infection disease level, inflammatory level)

If your nutrition and healtcare is really ok in a country for more than a generation, with enough equality to prevent hidden ghetto's, you can expect that the average height is only limited by the genes (roughly 600 genes for height and 500 for brains).
This average height will typically be bigger than 1.80 meter for males.
That make human height, which can be measured in an indisputable way, a nice indicative marker for nutrition and health.

China made up 10 cm in the last 100 years and is now on average longer than most African countries. But males in China are still only 1.72 meter....
This link has a nice dynamic world map where you can also choose any period in history since 1810. Note: this is for adult males.
https://ourworldindata.org/human-height#why-are-africans-so-tall

As a gift the article also has a graph for the average male height in Europe since 16,000 BC. Around 16,000 BC average male height was around 1.79 meter.
The graph indicating that the agricultural & industrial revolution were bad for health. It is only since WW2, since we get really developed, that our height goes back to that level. Whereby noted that this only hits the upper level of the average height when equality in that country is high enough. The graph no BS BTW: based on skeletons, not some "test".
South Africa is nowhere near the level of nutrition and healthcare as the US or the EU and you need a generation on top as well. So IF it would be ok now.... it would take new mothers to grow up and then their children to grow up before you hit the 1.80 + meter height.

And when we see that I will start to accept SA IQ tests.

 

[Synobun]

What about Asians countries who are not white and therefore not eurocentric? If IQ tests are biased towards "white western people" how come people in Asian countries are scoring even higher than whites?

Because East Asian countries have built their school systems to emulate the western model. They take the tried-and-true methods that have been experimented with for decades and apply the revised, most effective models to their own curriculums. Enough so that this has reversed; many schools in the west now look to the east on how to get better test scores.

They also have a cultural component in which academic excellence is an expectation. Paying for private tutors for every class is a standard, not an exception, unlike in the west where education costs are slashed wherever possible. When I first moved to Vancouver, I did some side work as a tutor for Chinese immigrants here in Vancouver. I worked with children between the ages of 7 and 12, and each of them had been studying upper-level exams from the UK and the US since they were 5. From a young age they are exposed to and dedicated towards excelling at western-based educational models.

(There are some big issues surrounding that obsession with schooling, but it does play a part in explaining why they excel compared to western nations.)

 

[caketastydelish]

Both of you gave the information I was looking for, thanks.

 

[caketastydelish]

What about this?

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/09/the_wonder_of_i.html

 

[Synobun]

What about this?

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/09/the_wonder_of_i.html

This doesn't seem to be rejecting what @Hrothbern or I said, unless I'm reading it incorrectly.

 

[Berzerker]

just an anecdote, a long time ago on the west coast my Chinese neighbors were immigrants but their first born grew up here and was much larger and taller, he must have been in the 6'2" range. He may have grown that large back in China but I imagine an American diet helped him grow.

 

[Lohrenswald]

 

[Hrothbern]

This doesn't seem to be rejecting what @Hrothbern or I said, unless I'm reading it incorrectly.

agree
it shows nicely that the earlier you adopt in Sweden a child from Africa, the higher the IQ. The same for height.
And I think one should be careful with the absolute numbers... but the trend is clear enough.
As such adoption children are a window for measuring
But also caveats because a good share of the adoption children are likely to get much more than average parebntal attention.... but not all adoptions work like a charm... also the trauma of parental shift... so perhaps some higher variation as well.

 

[warpus]

Diversity makes humanity strong. I know it's a huge cliche or whatever, and it leads to eye rolls, but hear me out. Finnish people are good at identifying different types of fish. I absolutely completely made that up, but all the ethnic and socio-economic groups on the planet grew up in different circumstances, in some cases evolving slightly different traits as an adaptation to where they lived. The biology of it is minor, most of it is culture and learned lessons passed on to next generations, but overall the key is that we are a species of specialists. Each group has learned how to do certain things fairly well, through repetition and experience. We are a species of specialists, and if we look at our civilization from that angle, the conclusion you have to make is that the diversity of cultures that make up humanity is a great strength that we can use to move our civilization forward.

I'll leave it to the experts to decide whether different ethnic groups are better on average at IQ tests and what that implies or means. I would say the same thing if there was a study done to determine who is the best at identifying different types of fish. If studies were done and it turns out Iranians are the best at identifying different types of fish, I would be like.. Okay.. Now we know. If we ever have a spaceship and we find a planet with lots of fish on it, we should maybe consider using Iranian fish identification robots. Or maybe not. I have no idea, but it's probably a good first thing to put on the brainstorming whiteboard

This turns into a problem when you then use these patterns and turn them into stereotypes and throw them at people. "Oh, so you don't know how to identify any fish at all, since you're from Uzbekistan? What a shame". Turns out this person from Uzbekistan was actually really good at identifying fish, since cultures also have a lot of variety within.

People are too obsessed with "intelligence", IMO. I don't mean anybody here, just people in general. Different people are good at different things, and different people can contribute in different ways. And since you can't just assume things about people based on their skin colour or ethnic background (due to the variety within cultures), the statement "{Ethnic group A} is more intelligent than {Ethnic group B}" doesn't even make any sense.

All you can do is look at statistical collections of data of IQ test results and make your own conclusions. To me it's as silly as trying to figure out who's better at identifying different kinds of fish - Steve or Bob - based on their ethnic background alone.

 

[Hrothbern]

just an anecdote, a long time ago on the west coast my Chinese neighbors were immigrants but their first born grew up here and was much larger and taller, he must have been in the 6'2" range. He may have grown that large back in China but I imagine an American diet helped him grow.

More animal proteins (meat, fish, dairy) increase growth and height.

 

[Berzerker]

what does it do to intelligence?

edit: do the tallest/largest peoples in the world have high protein diets in general?

I remember an article talking about the evolving pain women suffer giving birth and it said agriculture produced a squatter more rounded body whereas hunter gatherer women were a bit taller or more slender. The difference had an impact on the amount of pain experienced in child birth.

I thought tall people might be a response to living near the equator - more skin area aids in sweating and evaporation - but Swedes aint been near the equator in a long time and not everyone who is got tall.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

People are too obsessed with "intelligence", IMO. I don't mean anybody here, just people in general.

Yes they are.

I'll only add one more thing to this whole IQ fuss:

I'm a member of Mensa. Some of the stupidest people that I have ever met are in my chapter. Think about that.

 

[Bootstoots]

I want to say something about IQ and what it measures. I mean, Mark kind of beat me to it, but at least I'll elaborate.

Based on everything we've learned in the last ~120 years, IQ still seems to be A Thing, in that IQ correlates significantly and positively with outcome measures like income, employment, not being arrested (including within racial groups and outside the US), and so on. It's an imperfect but useful way to measure abstract reasoning ability.

All this means, though, is that it's a trait - one of many traits that human minds can possess - that is considered positive and is rewarded in modern industrial economies. I dislike the use of the word "intelligence" to describe IQ; it doesn't really measure whether someone is generally smart at everything, or generally a valuable person, it just measures someone's skill at abstract reasoning.

Abstract reasoning is really important in the modern world, and it seems to be getting more important over time. It is virtually certain that it has a strong genetic component. There's probably some epigenetic stuff going on as well, affecting the expression of genes related to abstract reasoning, but that is not especially likely to explain most of its high heritability (a range of about 50-80%, with mean of around 70%, in twin studies and studies of first-degree relatives). It is possible - not at all an established fact, but consistent with the data - that the genes underlying abstract reasoning vary on average across groups of people we consider "races" in such a way that a large cluster of people in East Asia we currently call "Asian" ended up with, on average, a genetic tendency towards a higher abstract reasoning ability (as measured by IQ) than another large cluster located in Europe, aka "white", and that the European group ended up with a genetic tendency towards higher IQ than most of the other peoples of the world. If this happened - which again, isn't yet proven - then there would be differences on average in this one aspect of cognition that might not totally respond to intervention.

That's just a tendency. Fail to educate Asian or white children in anything resembling a modern educational curriculum, expose them to lead, deprive them of iodine or other micronutrients, starve them in general, deprive them of all social contact, abuse or neglect them, or do something environmental that we don't understand yet, and they will grow up with lower IQs.

But most importantly, IQ is not even close to everything that a person is. It's just one trait. Mark mentions a couple of others - extraversion and risk-taking - that are also important to "success". I will add the other four traits of the Big Five - openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism. All of these probably matter quite a bit - I know conscientiousness (tendency to work hard and keep things orderly) is correlated almost as highly as IQ to measures of "success"; I haven't seen anything about other traits but I'm sure there is plenty of data out there.

Overall, though, I'd like to endorse Mark's post:

Do you know what other phenotypic traits are influenced by a combination of genes and environment?-all of them. You have to ask what is the underlying obsession with IQ. Why are there not threads and books etc. on the genetic vs environmental components of extroversion or risk taking, both of which have been studied in the same manner as IQ and probably have some correlation with “success”. On the right I think it ranges from outright white supremacy to a desire to find a scientific justification for the illusion of capitalist meritocracy. On the left it is desire for an egalitarianism ideal (also an illusion) and more importantly a knowledge of the long history of now discredited “scientific” justifications of the supposed inferiority of “blacks”. It is a losing proposition to deny accurate replicated scientific results-as the saying goes science is true whether you believe it or not. It is also important to prevent the misrepresentation of current scientific understanding, esp. when for immoral purposes. If you simply accept 2 points of current science you can accurately say we do not know the basis for the real measured population differences in IQ between racial groups.

1. We currently do not know the relative genetic contribution to measured IQ differences across racial populations because there is a systemic difference in environment (racism/stereotyping) based on this outward visible marker that cannot be controlled for.


2. “Black” is not a meaningful classification for studies in human population genetics. African populations have the greatest genetic diversity yet all fall into the “black” category.