If so, this sounds like a pretty good indication that IQ may not be a particularly useful measure of intelligence. Regardless, according to the data, average black IQ scores now are identical to white IQ scores X number of years ago – which goes to show us how much environment can be involved in test scores.
This is the fact that has moved me off the notion that genetics were a significant factor in the IQ disparity between whites and blacks. IANAS but it seems to me that if there is a white smart gene then it would be more likely to passed on with greater white ancestry so the average IQ of African Americans would grade up along with skin color.
But do you believe they are intellectually inferior due to other factors? Or do we ignore things like IQ tests because it tells us something we don’t believe to be true deep down in our guts?
To the first question – no. I don’t believe IQ tests accurately measure things like intellectual inferiority/superiority between groups.
Isn’t there a pretty good correlation between IQ and academic performance and all sorts of other shit? We can try to muddy the waters about what intelligence means and try to dismiss the significance of IQ but if you had to choose between a workforce of people with 110 IQ and a workforce of people with 90 IQ, which workforce would you choose (all other things being equal)? If you have a preference for the 110 IQ workforce, why would you have that preference? What is it that IQ measures that makes the 110 IQ workforce more desirable?
Do you think IQ scores measure anything at all or would we be just as well served by measuring intelligence using palm readers?
I believe IQ test scores may correlate to many things. I suspect IQ tests measure certain skills and abilities, but are unable to measure many aspects of overall intelligence.
Such as school performance and learning, work performance, criminal record or the lack of it, income, marital success, and others. These are important social outcomes, as you will agree. Since IQ test scores correlate with these factors, and since performance on IQ tests is strongly correlated with heredity, it is useful to use IQ test scores in predicting which groups will tend in which direction. (Cite for the above.)
Are you saying that these alleged other aspects cannot be measured? If they can’t, then obviously they can’t be studied and are not subject to analysis by the scientific method.
If they can, what are your measuring tools, what leads you to think they are valid, and what results do they give? IOW do you have anything other than anecdotes, and can you demonstrate a pattern?
If this is merely a faith-based statement then just say so.
Regards,
Shodan
Okay. Thanks for the information that doesn’t conflict with anything I’ve said.
No. Maybe they can.
There is no clear definition of “intelligence”. Like Wikipedia says, it has been defined in many different ways. I believe things like memory can be measured by tools we possess, and mathematical ability, and musical ability, and some other mental skills and abilities… but abstract thought? Understanding? Self-awareness? Emotional knowledge? Creativity? I’m not sure if these qualities can be measured by any tools we currently have.
I’m far from the only one to doubt that IQ tests actually measure general intelligence or overall intellectual ability:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
There are critics of IQ, who do not dispute the stability of IQ test scores or the fact that they predict certain forms of achievement rather effectively. They do argue, however, that to base a concept of intelligence on IQ test scores alone is to ignore many important aspects of mental ability.
[/quote]
This is far from a settled field, even before we bring any discussion of genes into it at all.
What are you views, Shodan? Do you think that black people are inherently intellectually inferior, on average, due to genes for intelligence?
Sure there is, in the context of this discussion. Intelligence is what is measured by IQ tests. Therefore intelligence is strongly affected by heredity, and high intelligence correlates with the other desirable social outcomes mentioned above.
Then they cannot be established to exist in any scientific sense, and have no place in a discussion of science.
If you are claiming that IQ tests aren’t valid because there are un-demonstrated, un-measurable, un-falsifiable factors that outweigh them, then you are not doing very good science.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s not the context of the discussion I’ve been having.
Okay.
Where did I say that IQ tests aren’t valid? I think they’re valid in measuring something – I’m just not convinced it’s overall “intelligence” that they’re measuring.
I’ll ask again: What are you views, Shodan? Do you think that black people are inherently intellectually inferior, on average, due to genes for intelligence?
Yes, it is. Read the title of the OP.
That’s a distinction without a difference.
If you cannot point to any measurable, demonstrable factors between “overall intelligence” and “intelligence as measured by IQ testing”, then there is no difference between the two.
Let’s define “performance on IQ tests” as “IQ” (for the purposes of this discussion).
Do you believe that:
[ul][li]IQ is measured by IQ tests[/li][li]IQ correlates strongly with income and job performance and learning and not breaking the law and other desirable outcomes[/li][li]IQ is strongly affected although not entirely determined by heredity[/li][li]IQ has high statistical reliabillity - that is[/li]
[li]In the US, an SIRE of “black” correlates with lower scores, on average, than an SIRE of “white” or “Asian”[/li][li]That correcting for SES and parental education levels does not elminate the gap[/li][/ul]Because every one of the above is demonstrably true.
Regards,
Shodan
I guess we’ll agree to disagree here.
I just posted about all the factors I understand are considered part of “intelligence” by many experts that can’t, with current tools, be quantified.
I guess this is another thing we’ll agree to disagree on.
None of those things conflict with anything I’ve said. I’m fine with calling whatever that thing is “IQ” for now.
You still refuse to answer my question – here it is, a third time: What are you views, Shodan? Do you think that black people are inherently intellectually inferior, on average, due to genes for intelligence?
“IQ may not be a particularly useful measure of intelligence”
But it sounds like you think it may be a useful measure of things that are, you know, useful to measure. If you want to explain why one group underperforms another group and there is a significant IQ gap between the two then couldn’t that be one of the reasons for some of that underperformance?
Possibly, or there could be some other causative factor, and lower test scores and worse outcomes might both be symptoms of that causative factor.
Sure but to the extent that the unknown causative factor (psst… its discrimination) causes (directly and indirectly) lower IQ scores which are reflective of actual lower IQ as opposed to simply stereotype threat, that lower IQ is a contributing factor towards then the lower IQ might be the cause of socioeconomic underperformance. Right?
I don’t really understand this phrase: “that lower IQ is a contributing factor towards then the lower IQ might be the cause of socioeconomic underperformance”. The placement of “then” and “might” are really confusing to me.
I never said Lee performed experiments. I said I wasn’t aware of any significant experiments since his review of the evidence as it was in 2009. He noted the overall evidence to date was inconclusive, and as noted proposed a means of resolving the debate. As I said, Piffer has looked at some alleles that are linked to cognitive abilities and those aren’t distributed evenly across groups. There’re only a small number of alleles identified so far though.
If you are referring to Sandra Scarr, the main study I am aware of that she was involved in was the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study? When tested at age 17 the adoptees performed consistently with the group average for their respective ethnic groups. While those with one white and one black parent averaged between the other two groups.
Scarr has subsequently commented on the pressure of finding an environmental interpretation:
No. It goes to show us you cannot compare IQ or other standardized scores across decades. They are not static exams, statically delivered to identical cohorts. The debate will rage on forever about what, exactly, “an IQ” test measures. Ditto for any other standardized exam, such as the SAT. The SAT has trended down; not up, across the decades. It makes no sense to advance anti-genetic arguments using IQ results across decades without acknowledging an opposite trend for other standardized tests. The variables involved in who gets tested (and the tests themselves) are legion.
What doesn’t change is the general order of outcomes by self-identified group, whether one is comparing that over decades or across socioeconomic status.
To date nothing has changed that, even factoring out poverty. You can take the same exam, in the same time period, and compare SES or other cohorts.
Even James Flynn, whose name is so readily advanced in the crusade against genetics, doesn’t personally think genetics don’t drive intelligence differences among groups.
Witness Flynn’s hot water when he made some remarks about not bringing down the national IQby making it too easy for the genetically underendowed to reproduce. He couldn’t back off that fast enough and pretend his comments about putting contraception in the water of those groups were just pretend.
“Otago University emeritus professor Dr Jim Flynn was commenting on census figures that show mothers without a higher education were the anchor of New Zealand’s current fertility rate.
Everyone knows if we only allowed short people to reproduce there would be a tendency in terms of genes for height to diminish. Intelligence is no different from other human traits.”
Baby steps.
I want to convince you that these pools are separated. That particular polymorphism appearing in such distinct disproportion is an example of two things: The branching point at out of africa, and the fact that genes flow only to descendant lines.
We tend to study gene variants for disease, and for good reason. If you look at those variants, you find a broad average difference of gene variant frequencies between the two pools. We can also look at the physical reasons people self-identify and infer that other gene variations average frequencies exist.
When we study gene variants for ordinary physiology, they also exist.
When we look at gene variant introgression by archaic lines, that also exists.
The complexity of gene interaction makes it extremely difficult to say, “this exact variation in this exact milieu of the genetic code is what drives this exact outcome.” This is true whether we are talking about bonobos v humans or population A v population B.
But the overall pattern of evolutionary divergence for separated groups is much more likely to be the case than not, for any human trait. This is why any population geneticist so easily slips into “sub-saharan” and “non-african” gene pools language. It is also why it is equally easy to assuage the masses with wordsmithing that “well; this particular SNP is just one tiny thing and can’t possibly be extrapolated for the rest of the DNA code.”
They just work within groups, right? So if I have a group of self-identified whites, an IQ range measures something related to brain function. But if I test an asian and she scores higher, why that score only makes sense against other asians. She may well be dumber than rocks compared with a white who has a lower score…
Yep.