IQ differences and racism

[aneeshm]

First , the links to the relevant articles .

What good is IQ ? ( relating to racism )

Racism and group differences

Now , the body of the articles :

A reader asks:

To clarify, while I believe natural selection explains a lot I have caveats about IQ as a tool for testing intelligence. If you can’t measure the coast of France with a single number how can you do it with human intelligence?

To clarify, while I believe natural selection explains a lot I have caveats about IQ as a tool for testing intelligence. If you can’t measure the coast of France with a single number how can you do it with human intelligence?

Easily. Human intelligence is a great deal less complex than the coast of France.

It’s fashionable nowadays to believe that intelligence is some complicated multifactor thing that can’t be captured in one number. However, one of the best-established facts in psychometry (the science of measuring mind) is that it is quite difficult to write a test of mental ability that is not at least 50% correlated with all other such tests. Or, to put it another way, no matter how you design ten tests for mental ability, at least about half the variance in the scores for any one of them statistically appears to be due to a “general intelligence” that shows up on the other nine tests as well.

Psychometricians call this general intelligence measure “g". It turns out to predict important real-world success measures quite well — not just performance in school but income and job success as well. The fundamental weakness in multiple-factor theories of intelligence is that measures of intelligence other than g appear to predict very little about real-world outcomes. So you can call a lot of other things “intelligence” if you want to make people feel warm and fuzzy, but doing so simply isn’t very useful in the real world.

Some multifactor theorists, for example, like to describe accurate proprioception (an acute sense of body position and balance) as a kind of intelligence. Let’s say we call this “p". The trouble with this is that there are very few situations in which a combination of high p and low g is actually useful — people need to be able to balance checkbooks more often than they need to walk high wires. Furthermore, g is easier to substitute for p than the other way around; a person with high g but low p can think up a way to not have to walk a high wire far better than a person with low g but high p can think up a way not to have to balance a checkbook. So g is in a strict functional sense more powerful than p. Similar arguments apply to most of the other kinds of specialized non-g ‘intelligence’ that have been proposed.

Once you know about g, you can rank mental-capability tests by how well their score correlates with g. IQ is valuable because a well-composed IQ test measures g quite effectively. For purposes of non-technical discussion, g and IQ can be considered the same, and pychometricians now accept that an IQ test which does not closely track g is defective.

A lot of ink has been spent by people who aren’t psychometricians on insisting that g is a meaningless statistical artifact. The most famous polemic on this topic was Stephen Jay Gould’s 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man, a book which was muddled, wrong, and in some respects rather dishonest. Gould was a believing Marxist; his detestation of g was part of what he perceived as a vitally important left-versus right kulturkampf. It is very unfortunate that he was such a persuasive writer.

Unfortunately for Gould, g is no statistical phantom. Recently g and IQ have been shown to correlate with measurable physiological variables such as the level of trace zinc in your hair and performance on various sorts of reaction-time tests. There are hints in the recent literature that g may be largely a measure of the default level of a particular neurotransmitter associated with states of mental alertness and speed of thought; it appears that calling people of subnormal intelligence “slow” may not be just a metaphor!

IQ is one of several large science-related issues on which political bias in the dominant media culture has lead it to present as fact a distorted or even reversed version of the actual science. In 1994, after Murray and Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve got a thoroughly undeserved trashing, fifty leading psychometricians and psychologists co-signed a summary of mainstream science on intelligence. It makes eye-opening reading.

The reasons many popular and journalistic accounts continue to insist that IQ testing is at best meaningless and at worst a sinister plot are twofold. First, this belief flatters half of the population. “My IQ may be below average, but that doesn’t matter because IQ is meaningless and I have high emotional intelligence!” is, understandably, a favorite evasion maneuver among dimwits. But that isn’t the worst of it. The real dynamite is not in individual differences but rather that the distribution of IQ (and hence of g) varies considerably across groups in ways that are politically explosive.

Men vs. women is the least of it. With other variables controlled, men and women in a population have the same mean IQ, but the dispersion differs. The female bell curve is slightly narrower, so women have fewer idiots and fewer geniuses among them. Where this gets touchy is that it may do a better job than cultural sexism of explaining why most of the highest achievers in most fields are male rather than female. Equal opportunity does not guarantee equal results, and lot of feminist theory goes out the window.

But male/female differences are insignificant compared to the real hot potato: differences in the mean IQ of racial and ethnic groups. These differences are real and they are large enough to have severe impact in the real world. In previous blog entries I’ve mentioned the one-standard-deviation advantage of Ashkenazic Jews over gentile whites; that’s roughly fifteen points of IQ. Pacific-rim Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans etc.) are also brighter on average by a comparable margin. So, oddly enough, are ethnic Scots — though not their close kin the Irish. Go figure…

And the part that, if you are a decent human being and not a racist bigot, you have been dreading: American blacks average a standard deviation lower in IQ than American whites at about 85. And it gets worse: the average IQ of African blacks is lower still, not far above what is considered the threshold of mental retardation in the U.S. And yes, it’s genetic; g seems to be about 85% heritable, and recent studies of effects like regression towards the mean suggest strongly that most of the heritability is DNA rather than nurturance effects.

For anyone who believe that racial equality is an important goal, this is absolutely horrible news. Which is why a lot of well-intentioned people refuse to look at these facts, and will attempt to shout down anyone who speaks them in public. There have been several occasions on which leading psychometricians have had their books canceled or withdrawn by publishers who found the actual scientific evidence about IQ so appalling that they refused to print it.

Unfortunately, denial of the facts doesn’t make them go away. Far from being meaningless, IQ may be the single most important statistic about human beings, in the precise sense that differences in g probably drive individual and social outcomes more than any other single measurable attribute of human beings.

Mean IQ differences do not justify making assumptions about any individual. There are African black geniuses and Ashkenazic Jewish morons; humanity and ethics demand that we meet each individual human being as an individual, without prejudice. At the same time, group differences have a significance too great to ignore. In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color.

And that is actually a valuable hint about how to get beyond racism. A black man with an IQ of 85 and a white man with an IQ of 85 are about equally likely to have the character traits of poor impulse control and violent behavior associated with criminality — and both are far more likely to have them than a white or black man with an IQ of 110. If we could stop being afraid of IQ and face up to it, that would give us an objective standard that would banish racism per se. IQ matters so much more than skin color that if we started paying serious attention to the former, we might be able to stop paying attention to the latter.

Now for the second article

At the end of my essay What good is IQ?, I suggested that taking IQ seriously might (among other things) be an important step towards banishing racism. The behavioral differences between two people who are far apart on the IQ scale are far more significant than any we can associate with racial origin. Stupidity isn’t a handicap only when solving logic problems; people with low IQs tend to have poor impulse control because they’re not good at thinking about the long-term consequences of their actions.

Somebody left a comment that, if what I was reporting about group differences in average IQ is correct, the resulting behavior would be indistinguishable from racism. In particular, American blacks (with an average IQ of 85) would find themselves getting the ****ty end of the stick again, this time with allegedly scientific justification.

This is an ethically troubling point. It’s the main reason most people who know the relevant statistical facts about IQ distribution are either in elaborate denial or refusing to talk about what they know. But is this concern really merited, or is it a form of tendermindedness that does more harm than good?

Let’s start with a strict and careful definition: A racist is a person who makes unjustified assumptions about the behavior or character of individuals based on beliefs about group racial differences.

I think racism, in this sense, is an unequivocally bad thing. I think most decent human beings would agree with me. But if we’re going to define racism as a bad thing, then it has to be a behavior based on unjustified assumptions, because otherwise there could be times when the fear of an accusation of racism could prevent people from seeking or speaking the truth.

There are looser definitions abroad. Some people think it is racist merely to believe there are significant differences between racial groups. But that is an abuse of the term, because it means that believing the objective truth, without any intent to use it to prejudge individuals, can make you a racist.

It is, for example, a fact that black athletes tend to perform better in hot weather, white ones in cool weather, and oriental asians in cold weather. There is nothing mysterious about this; it has to do with surface-area-to-volume ratios in the population’s typical build. Tall, long-limbed people shed heat more rapidly than stocky and short-limbed people. That’s an advantage in Africa, less of one in the Caucasian homelands of Europe and Central Asia, and a disadvantage in the north Asian homeland of oriental asians.

And that’s right, white men can’t jump; limb length matters there, too. But whites can swim better than blacks, on average, because their bones are less dense. I don’t have hard facts on how asians fit that picture, but if you are making the same guess I am (at the other extreme from blacks, that is better swimmers and worse jumpers than white people) I would bet money we’re both correct. That would be consistent with the pattern of many other observed racial differences.

Sportswriter and ethicist Jon Entine has investigated the statistics of racial differences in sports extensively. Blacks, especially blacks of West African ancestry, dominate track-and-field athletics thanks apparently to their more efficient lung structure and abundance of fast-twitch muscle fiber. Whites, with proportionally shorter legs and more powerful upper bodies, still rule in wrestling and weightlifting. The bell curves overlap, but the means — and the best performances at the high end of the curve — differ.

Even within these groups, there are racially-correlated subdivisions. Within the runners, your top sprinters are likelier to be black than your top long-distance runners. Blacks have more of an advantage in burst exertion than they do in endurance. I don’t have hard recent data on this as I do for the other factual claims I’m making here, but it is my impression that whites cling to a thin lead in sports that are long-haul endurance trials — marathons, bicycle racing, triathlons, and the like.

It is not ‘racism’ to notice these things. Or, to put it more precisely, if we define ‘racism’ to include noticing these things, we broaden the word until we cannot justifiably condemn ‘racism’ any more, because too much ‘racism’ is simply recognition of empirically verifiable truths. It’s all there in the numbers.

Knowing about these racial-average differences in athletic performance would not justify anyone in keeping a tall, long-limbed white individual off the track team, or a stocky black person with excellent upper-body strength off the wrestling team. But they do make nonsense of the notion that every team should have a racial composition mirroring the general population. If you care about performance, your track team is going to be mostly black and your wrestling team mostly white.

In fact, trying to achieve ‘equal‘ distribution is a recipe for making disgruntled underperforming white runners and basketball players, and digruntled underperforming black wrestlers and swimmers. It’s no service to either group, you get neither efficiency nor happiness out of that attempt.

Most people can follow the argument this far, but are frightened of what happens when we apply the same kind of dispassionate analysis to racial differences in various mental abilities. But the exact same logic applies. Observing that blacks have an average IQ a standard deviation below the average for whites is not in itself racist. Jumping from that observation of group differences to denying an individual black person a job because you think it means all black people are stupid would be racist.

Let’s pick neurosurgery as an example. Here is a profession where IQ matters in an obvious and powerful way. If you’re screening people for a job as a neurosurgeon, it would nevertheless be wrong to use the standard-deviation difference in average IQ as a reason to exclude an individual black candidate, or black candidates as a class. This would not be justified by the facts; it would be stupid and immoral. Excluding the black neurosurgeon-candidate who is sufficiently bright would be a disservice to a society that needs all the brains and talent it can get in jobs like that, regardless of skin color.

On the other hand, anyone who expects the racial composition of the entire population of neurosurgeons to be ‘balanced’ in terms of the population at large is living in a delusion. The most efficient and fair outcome would be for that population to be balanced in terms of the distribution of IQ — at each level of IQ the racial mix mirrors the frequency of that IQ level within different groups. Since that minimum IQ for competency in neurosurgery is closer to the population means for whites and asians than the mean for blacks, we can expect the fair-outcome population of neurosurgeons to be predominantly white and asian.

If you try to social-engineer a different outcome, you’ll simply create a cohort of black neurosurgeons who aren’t really bright enough for their jobs. This, too, would be a disservice to society (not to mention the individual patients they might harm, and the competent black neurosurgeons that would be discredited by association). It’s an error far more serious than trying to social-engineer too many black wrestlers or swimmers into existence. And yet, in pursuit of a so-called equality, we make this sort of error over and over again, injuring all involved and creating resentments for racists to feed on.

Both the articles are from Eric Raymond's blog . Opinions ?

Support / oppose the views presented ?

 

[Akka]

This guy is simply stupid and wrong.

Even if IQ was in fact both representative of the person's intelligence and acutely measurable (which it isn't), it's still, despite the garbage this idiot throw, far to be the only, or even main, factor in success, like he pretends it to be.

Emotionnal drive is far more important than intelligence to do anything. A stupid guy with self-confidence and willpower will always outclass a timid smart guy who has a hard time going forward.

Additionnally, you can notice that he constantly talk about IQ of blacks being lower on average, and "forget" to mention that the black population has a considerably lower education level.

 

[thestonesfan]

Seems like a pointless exercise to me. Obviously blacks have a harder time in society. They also live in the derelict inner city in much higher percentages. That would mess any demographic up.

 

[Scuffer]

Eric Raymond, whoever he may be, is an idiot, or a racist.

 

[wit>trope]

I haven't read the articles completely yet, but they look excellent The points about the definition of racism are good. It ties in with my defending Mormonism (I am not Mormon, btw) against the charge of being "racist." And his point about sex and IQ is good too.

thestonefan, blacks having harder time in US society doesn't explain the fact that average IQ of blacks in Africa is lower than whites also. It also doesn't explain the findings about East Asians and about Scots and Ashkenazic Jews, etc. East Asians have higher IQ than whites not just East Asians in the US but also in East Asians in East Asia.

You shouldn't feel badly if the group you belong to has a lower average IQ than another group since what really matters is not the average IQ of some group you belong to but what your individual IQ actually is. It's just like in basketball. The super tall Chinese guy who plays for the NBA doesn't feel bad about belonging to a race that is on average shorter than other races since what matters for basketball is what your height is, not what the average height of the race you belong to is

And of course neither height nor IQ determine how valuable you are as a person

 

[thestonesfan]

thestonefan, blacks having harder time in US society doesn't explain the fact that average IQ of blacks in Africa is lower than whites also.

Cause Africa is so much better?

It also doesn't explain the findings about East Asians and about Scots and Ashkenazic Jews, etc. East Asians have higher IQ than whites not just East Asians in the US but also in East Asians in East Asia.

People in asia value their brains. People in the western world value their cars.

And Scots drink just enough to kill all the slow brain cells, but not so much that they destroy the good ones too.

 

[wit>trope]

Cause Africa is so much better?

Even if environment has something to do with it, it wouldn't explain the enormous gap. It's very unlikely that all of it has an environmental explanation and just silly PC-run-amok to assume that it does.

People in asia value their brains. People in the western world value their cars.

And Scots drink just enough to kill all the slow brain cells, but not so much that they destroy the good ones too.

What about the Ashkenazic Jews do you have an explanation for that?

I think that probably in many cases the difference in average IQ among races has to do with accidents of history. The elite in the society would often have many many wives or mistresses and thus many many children. If a nation was unfortunate to have a dumb ruler then he may spread his dumb genes a lot if he has many many children.

 

[anarres]

You shouldn't feel badly if the group you belong to has a lower average IQ than another group since what really matters is not the average IQ of some group you belong to but what your individual IQ actually is. It's just like in basketball. The super tall Chinese guy who plays for the NBA doesn't feel bad about belonging to a race that is on average shorter than other races since what matters for basketball is what your height is, not what the average height of the race you belong to is

And of course neither height nor IQ determine how valuable you are as a person

See, this is where my issue with this article comes from.

You and I know your IQ is not a measure of your worth. You and I know also that you are not what the 'average for your race' is.

The problem seeps in because a lot of people won't care about the above 2 points. What they care about is "that ****** is thick and I am better than him". This is why so many people want to ignore it, even if it is true (and I can't say either way, although I've read a fair bit about it - I guess the sources are always somewhat circumspect).

You argue that this shouldn't matter if it is true, but you know as well as I do that it *does* matter to many people, and it will only be the excuse for more racism.

With regards to affirmative action: I have always thought this counter-productive in the long term as it alienates white/non-discriminated groups people because they feel (with a very small degree of validity) that they are being unfairly treated. The fact they get a head start in life anyway is always forgotten when "that paki/raghead" gets the job instead of them.

 

[wit>trope]

I agree substantially with all your points.

 

[elfangor801]

Just a quick clarifying question, but isn't IQ inborn? Like it doesn't change with what schools you go to and whatnot, you're either 90 or 120 and it stays that way.

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

Nope, you can change your IQ substantially.

 

[elfangor801]

Nope, you can change your IQ substantially.

Oh, okay, my bad.

But then it still matters even then, because if you can change it and you don't, doesn't that show something about you? Inner city schools may suck but that doesn't justify a 15 point lower IQ on average....

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

They certainly do jusitfy such a thing. Although culture is another likely factor in deciding who will pursue further education.

 

[Akka]

Oh, okay, my bad.

But then it still matters even then, because if you can change it and you don't, doesn't that show something about you? Inner city schools may suck but that doesn't justify a 15 point lower IQ on average....

Of course it does.

The major way to improve intelligence, is to get a good education. Good education gives you a broader range of point of views, more knowledge, more occasion to use this knowledge.

Mind is exactly like muscle : you improve it by using it. Lack of "mind food" lead to an underdeveloped potential for your mind.

 

[blindside]

Cause Africa is so much better?



People in asia value their brains. People in the western world value their cars.

I'm going to assume you're joking because in my experience living in Asia you have the same wide spectrums of idiots and geniuses and whatever else that you have everywhere else.

 

[E-Raser]

This IQ tests aren't at all representative. Some questions are for example much easier to answer for a person from a certain cultural group as for someone aside this group.
A good education anyway will give you a better result than somone with the same "IQ" but less educated.
Everything else is racist BS! Join KKK in this case.

 

[elfangor801]

Some questions are for example much easier to answer for a person from a certain cultural group as for someone aside this group.

Like what? That's always said, but what's an example?

The major way to improve intelligence, is to get a good education. Good education gives you a broader range of point of views, more knowledge, more occasion to use this knowledge.

Yes, but a good education (At least at the higher levels) is usually obtainable if you have the motivation to get it. It didn't have ages for the study so I don't know if that applies. But I do know that in my school, which isn't technically inner city, almost all of the black kids don't put effort into much. Same goes for the majority of Hispanics. If they had an interest, they could probably be doing a lot better in society, but they aren't. Minneapolis isn't the best example for this because my school is only like ten percent black, but every single person in the Honors program in the freshman class is white, minus one girl who is mixed. If this comes back to bite blacks and Hispanics in the ass, well, that'd really stink for them. But it's also their fault for skipping class regularly and never doing their schoolwork. So I'd say the article is right in many ways. And anyone who thinks what I said was racist is welcome to try and walk past the Boy's Locker Room during passing time .

 

[E-Raser]

Post a test and I'll mark some examples for example.

The rest you told is IMO more connected with social class, environment and upbringing rather then color. Therefore I consider your statements racist. Nevertheless I'll not visit you lockers room.
!

 

[Japher]

Is there not a corrolation between social class, environment and upbinging with race? If not, than why AA or any sort of quotas?

 

[E-Raser]

Is there not a corrolation between social class, environment and upbinging with race? If not, than why AA or any sort of quotas?

Are there white and coloures medics, scientists?
Are there white and coloured crap on the streets?

What the <snip> are you tanking about man.