Modern Japanese are believed to have immigrated from Korea, where they practiced agriculture for several thousand years.
What percentage of the population was taking the exam? How many more children did they have than average?
This brings up the bigger question of the 10,000 year hypothesis: how was intelligence selected for in Europe? Agriculture does not take a high IQ to maintain, although it probably takes a high IQ to improve. But how would that translate into the gene spreading? Do you have any evidence that smart individuals out bred average individuals in agricultural societies, but not in hunter gather societies?
I would actually suspect the opposite. H/G societies have much less slack for low performers. Poor spacial memory and lack of planning does not stop the average human in an agricultural society from reproducing, but would in a H/G one.
Wow, crazy thread. My two cents.
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Assume that there really are biological markers for the different races. I’ve been told by anthropologists, psychologists and biologists that the concept of separate races is a social, not biological construct, but let’s, just for the sake of argument, assume all the scientists are wrong and that there really is a biological difference.
(Parenthetically, all humans are of the same species by definition since even the most racist of persons will concede people from different races can interbreed and produce viable off-spring.) -
Assume there is agreement about what intelligence is. This is not as simple as it sounds. Think about the varying abilities people have. I’m a retired CPA. I could do my plumber’s income taxes with a very high probability they are correct and keep his tax liability to the legal minimum. He almost certainly couldn’t do as well. On the other hand, I’d probably flood my basement if I tried to do his job. Who is smarter? I’d posit neither of us is demonstrably smarter than the other. And I’ve ignored musical and artistic abilities and probably a 1,000 others.
But for argument’s sake, let’s assume that some definition can be agreed upon.
- Assume that an intelligence test can be properly designed to screen out all factors other than inherent genetic based intelligence (as agreed in #2). People have been trying to do so for 100+ years, but let’s say some test designer has finally (!!) succeeded. We also need to assume that effort and focus and desire have no bearing upon this measurement. (That’s a total crock, but I’m making assumptions favorable to the OP.)
- Assume further that the results of “intelligence” of the various “races” agree somewhat with the OP’s original contention. That some are, on average, higher than others.
Profitable conclusions?
I say none. The excercise is meaningless.
Because within each large group of people there is a wide range of abilities. Any intelligence test, even the highly flawed ones used in the past, have results distributed in the shape of a normal curve. (Bell curve with fewer high and low scores and many more people scoring toward the middle.)
I can guarantee that the normal curves for the races would have a very high degree of overlap. You must, therefore, judge individual by individual.
But it has always been that way. Making assumptions about groups is a sure way to make mistakes.
NDD, you refused to answer before, so let me ask again.
You’ve made it clear you’re a fan of Rushton, consider him a good scientist and have repeatedly presented his “research” to prove that blacks are “biologically inferior”(to use your phrase) when it comes to intelligence.
However, when presented his claims that “whites” have much smaller penises than “blacks”, using the same research, you say you’re not prepared to accept his findings.
Why is it that you are so hesitant to accept his research about the …er… shortcomings of “whites” since you so enthusiastically embrace his research when it confirms your other beliefs.
Why do you vigorously nod your head when he discusses blacks intellectual inferiority, yet when he talks about white peoples anatomical inferiority you say “hold on, not so fast, we need actual evidence for this”?
Thanks
The link I posted on national school performance correlates with the link on national IQ averages.
The argument in The 10,000 Year Explosion is that urban societies breed for superior intelligence because men who have the intelligence to become merchants, financiers, government officials, artists, and so on live better lives than laborers, and have more children who survive and reproduce.
I am unaware of any study on racial penis sizes. Every study of scores on mental aptitude tests reveals that whites have better averages. Consequently I am unable to substantiate his first assertion; I am able to substantiate his second.
Professor Rushton has also said that blacks tend to have more athletic aptitude than whites. I agree with him on this point, because it is fairly obvious.
Except that his studies which you trumpet that supposedly “prove” your claim of blacks being intellectually inferior also “prove” are anatomically inferior and make less desirable lovers.
So, why do you trumpet his research that suggests that you’re smarter than most black people while claiming “he can’t substantiate those claims” when his same studies indicate that you are most like anatomically and sexually inferior to most black men?
That seems both extremely hypocritical and somewhat revealing.
Why is that your happy to trumpet the guy when he talks of your supposed advantages but treat him as unreliable when he discusses your shortcomings?
Pardon the pun.
When Professor Rushton says blacks tend to have larger penises he is not complementing them. His point is that they are highly sexed, and sexually irresponsible.
Your claim is baseless.
In the late nineteeth century, during discussions of immigration quotas, it was proposed that Russian Jews be banned, entirely, on the clear grounds that they were the stupidest immigrant group befouling our shores.
Now such a proposal has its own obvious faults and problems, but an argument appealing to the occasional scattered text from 2,000 years ago as “evidence” that Jews used to be intellectually unimpressive and then declaring that they rapidly became brilliant is flushed away by the fact that we have documented evidence that an even more disparaging opinion was held regarding their intelligence in the last 120 years, or so.
You are back to (or still) cherry-picking random factoids, (of dubious accuracy or provenance), and trying to build a “logical” and “fact-based” case that is illogical and not based on facts.
So then do you hope he’s correct and that whites have extremely small penises?
You are ducking the question. You are the one who doubted Rushton on white sexual features. It makes it appear that you think that his claims about white sexual traits were denigrating and it seems to bother you, otherwise, why not simply accept his claims?
I do not agree with Professor Rushton on anything simply because he said it. It is clear that blacks have lower IQs on the average than whites, and higher rates of crime and illegitimacy. I can document that without reading Rushton. I have not found any credible documentation on penis size, and consider it to be somewhat extraneous to his central argument. It makes sense to me that there is a correlation between brain size and intelligence. It is less clear to me that there is or should be a correlation between penis size, promiscuity, and illegitimacy.
Hey, kids, can you say “Idee fixe”?
I knew you couldn’t. 
So? What does that have to do with how many people took the imperial exam in medieval China? Your argument is that the fact that the social success of a very small minority of Han Chinese over the last 1000-2000 years somehow translates into increased intelligence for all “oriental” (or perhaps just the Chinese). The problem is for this to be the case you need to show that those that did well on the exam had higher than normal IQs, that they had greater reproductive success, and that those genes spread throughout the population.
The problems with that are that
a)Living better lives does not necessary improve reproductive fitness. Some of those government officials you talk about were required to be eunuchs, others were celibate, and others had high (lethal) turn over rates.
b)The percentage of merchants, financiers, government officials, artists and so on was so low for most of that period that there is no way they could have exerted that much pressure. If high IQ was completely useless to 98% of the population, then it is not really something that you expect to be selected.
No. It is central to Rushton’s claims and arguments. The fact that you are willing to quote Rushton in support of some of your views while trying to duck away from Rushton on some of his views without providing any reason for your cherry picking or providing a coherent reason why his single thesis is both right and wrong–right when it supports your denigration of one group of people and wrong when it might denigrate the people among whom you wish to be associated–leaves us ample room to laugh at anything you post that relies on Rushton.
That you would demonstrate so clearly that you do not even understand Rushton when you dismiss one of his central themes as “extraneaous” is a truly remarkable admission.
Of course, the fact that wealth with its attendant better health and living conditions is a pretty good predictor of falling birth rates does call into question that untested hypothesis.
Not really. In fact he published a paper just a few years ago in the International Journal of Neuroscience which repeated much of the evidence about brain size and race differences.
You should probably tell the editors of ‘Evolutionary cognitive neuroscience’ Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (2007). They are clearly unaware that Rushton’s claims have all been torn to shreds! In they invited him to contribute a chapter on “The evolution of brain size and intelligence” (pp. 121-161).
The argument is considered further here by Peter Frost. Frost concludes:
Except IQ wouldn’t be completely useless to 98% of the population. If you have state control, higher population density, more difficult winter survival conditions, higher paternal investment, lower incidence of polygyny, which reduced male-male competition for mates, then you get greater selection for rule following, and future planning. Indeed, early modern humans had more complex tools and weapons at arctic latitudes than at tropical latitudes, apparently because of the yearly cycle of resource availability: “Technological complexity in colder environments seems to reflect the need for greater foraging efficiency in settings where many resources are available only for limited periods of time.” (Hoffecker, 2002, p. 135)
In terms of population changes, Steve Hsu gives an example here.
Also, see Greg Clark’s data on changes in England.
Then why did you bring up the fucking Jōmon, then?
You, and NDD, seem to be under the impression that if the data supporting a thesis can be proven correct (or at least not entirely spurious), then the claims supported by this data must be correct as well. Prove the data, and it proves the theory !
Everyone here understands why this is not the case, but for your sake: “Penguins are black and white, old movies are black and white, therefore old movies are penguins” is an example of retarded conclusion derived from legit facts. It is an unfounded claim, no matter how much evidence I can line up that penguins and old movies are black and white.