I did not cite the book for anything other than the number though, so I don’t know what prompted your diatribe.
My diatribes are much longer.
I was not challenging your statement, simply noting that The Bell Curve, that gets cited in many of these threads, is nonsense.
And are we still pretending that there is something called “I.Q.”, and that is a valid way to measure something we cannot even define? I thought that had long since gone onto the scrap heap along with “superego” and “id”?
We are not pretending that. We are confirming that there is something called “IQ” and that it has real life validity in terms of predicting how well an individual is able to perform functions related to mental ability. The “debunking” of IQ as a valid test for anything is way overstated. Feel free to structure the next Mars exploration program with people whose measured IQ is under 85 and have at it if you want debunk IQ for good. No test is a perfect correlate for every skillset requisite for real-life success, and in that sense of course, IQ is an imperfect measure. Moreover, the way in which the test might be administered across time and across broad populations may well be problematic. For example, the entire “Flynn effect” research suggests rising IQs but SAT scores over the last 50 years show an opposite trend.
A few other points while I have a moment.
How should we group people if we want to create a biological proxy for “race”?
There isn’t a good biological marker for “race” but this is not to say that races (as ordinarily perceived) don’t have grouped genetic pools which underpin the chance of drawing a specific gene. Put another way, “races,” along with many many other types of common cultural or ethnic groups, have disparate frequencies of genes, and those genes cluster by “race.” We humans are a broadly mixed breed with very soft margins, but the mixing is not so homogenous and the margins not so soft that all our “race” groupings draw from the same baseline pool of genes. This is why, for example, average appearance for typical “race” groupings is different from one group to the next. In fact, if you let people sort themselves and self-assign, the group to which they self-assign ends up being surprisingly close to their genetic heritage.
**Is it reasonable to suppose that SIRE groupings (self-assigned race/ethnic categories) might have gene pools that are substantively different (e.g., drive different skillsets to different average levels)? **
This is a very interesting question to me, and is the one actually at the crux of those of us who propose that mother nature has created substantively different gene pools for SIRE groups. The first part of the argument in support of this is a look back at human evolution and migratory patterns since anatomically modern humans showed up in africa a couple hundred thousand years ago. Since that time, migratory patterns have taken various populations all over the world, and many of those populations (say; for example, post M/N splits if you want to use mtDNA haplogroups as a population marker) have been separated for tens of thousands of years. This would be a separation something on the order of 70-100 thousand years for the oldest populations in africa and populations in parts of eurasia or north america. We have seen genetic changes for all sorts of physiology between those two broad groups, so there doesn’t seem to be a really good reason that mother nature would touch every gene function but exempt any and all genes related to mental skillsets. The second part of the argument that SIRE groups have substantively different gene pools is much more direct. We can measure clustering of genes by SIRE groupings and show that many genes cluster so significantly that the most reasonable assumption is that those high-frequency genes were positively selected for. This suggests that these genes have a reproductive advantage. By definition then, this makes a population with significantly different gene pools likely to have significantly different skillsets based on whatever direction mother nature is driving that population. Note that the broad theme here is that separated populations have disparate gene pools. It could easily be the case that populations which stayed behind in africa evolved much higher intelligence-related skillsets than those which left for eurasia…the point is is simply that modern SIRE groupings have a biological basis for, and direct evidence for, disparate average gene frequencies in their gene pools. And these are not just random gene differences; they are genes which are have been driven to high penetration levels, suggesting that the functions they underpin give a significant advantage to that population’s reproductive success.
Is there any evidence that “intelligence” itself varies by SIRE group?
This is easily the tenderest and hottest topic, argued endlessly here and elsewhere. It’s the one most easily degenerated into charges of “racism” as if such a label were an actual argument that something cannot be correct. But we know mother nature is a racist, and she doesn’t give a crap about assigning to one group of animals a difference over another. So please don’t bother with assigning labels (to me, at least). I’m unconcerned with labels.
The bottom line for the idea that intelligence skillsets (along with many other skillsets) varies by SIRE grouping is that genes underpinning intelligence skillsets are poorly defined and understood. Almost all evidence is indirect and proceeds from an analysis of nurturing. Normalize nurturing and what’s left is nature (genes). We do know that genes control intelligence; there’s at least one nice study (in an all-european population) showing how a single substitution of cytosine for thymine in the HMGA2 gene results in slightly larger brains and slightly (2%, iirc) improved average intelligence.
But until we understand genes better, the real argument here revolves around whether or not we can adequately control for nurturing (environmental) influences. Right now what we say confidently is that most of the ordinary suppositions–such as “lack of opportunity”–don’t hold up to scrutiny. As I mentioned earlier, children of black families where the parents are educated and wealthy (college; >80-100k dollars/yr) underperfom whites at the opposite end of the spectrum (sub-highscool; 10k dollars/yr) on the SAT. (This dilemma is the one at the root of all university admissions process. If you needs-test applicants, the highest-scoring black applicants ((who come from wealthier and more educated parents, on average)) still substantially underscore whites and asians who have had substantially less opportunity. So to get the best black applicants into higher education you have to specifically assign places to them using some variant of race-based affirmative action.)
I am not aware of a single study which has been able to show that equivalent nurturing for any putative variable results in equivalent performance on academic or IQ tests across the entire world for current SIRE groups. The counter-argument, therefore, rests on a contention that nurturing can never be normalized and therefore all such patterns are a consequence of a nurturing influence (such as, for example, low teacher expectation, stereotype threat and so on). I am underwhelmed by those arguments, but ymmv.
With the exception of social policy, these sorts of race/intelligence discussions are of pitiful significance. Who cares, and why, since a group average does not apply to a given individual? The only reason we should care is so that we can drive a better society based on sound science. As for social policy, we make accommodation for all sorts of group differences. Those of us who want to see a broad representation of all self-identifying groups (until such time as nature homogenizes us all more thoroughly) are OK with race-based AA as a perfectly reasonable way to not only correct prior injustice, but promote ongoing broad representation.
It’s hard to isolate the most ridiculous part of this claim (repeated for the umpteenth time), but if I had to choose, I think it’s the idea that the claim that a group of billions of people are on average retarded can “degenerate” into accusations of racism.
You’re protesting too much.
Whoever claimed Africans are, on average, borderline mentally disabled has either never been to Africa or was the subject of some kind of elaborate joke by their subjects.
Which they are. Even the darkest of skin is statistically likely to have a honky in the woodpile.
It does so mean something!
As a Mensa qualification test.
This “Mensa” of which you speak…?
But on what do they base that figure?
I’m always intrigued and a bit mystified by the IQ denialism among my lefty brethren.
What would one see in Africa which refutes such a claim?
Commerce, literature, philosophy, works of art…?
Don’t forget fairly well organized methods to distribute millions of dollars in bank errors, lotteries, and inheritances from long lost relatives over the internet.
Good point, I can go ahead and add “crime” to the list. Per this, in 2006 alone Americans were defrauded of $198.4 million over the Internet…so who are the mentally disabled ones, the scammers or the scammed?
Short answer: the science is garbage. People who espouse these theories are (sometimes) pretty skilled at using jargon to hide the weakness of data or ignoring inconvenient facts or simply transferring claims about one group of people to another, but the facts aren’t there. That does nothing to deter them, of course. They’re just telling it like it is[n’t].
Common sense says that literature, philosophy, and works of art are not necessarily created by your average person. And you don’t have to be very smart to participate in commerce.
By the way, can you give me three examples of the literature to which you are referring?
No, but a culture that creates enough to survive to the modern day has sufficient infrastructure and resources to support the creative types.
The implication that there were a few >2 standard deviation smart individuals sufficient to do all the heavy mental lifting combined with a vast majority of IQ 70 dolts doesn’t even pass the sniff test.
Fairly ordinary people?
You really don’t think we can find three works of literature that come from sub-Saharan Africa? That’s a comically easy task.