Good job, Jason. And way to go! BTW, there is a forum of sorts on the Watson episode over at Nature magazine. You are guaranteed of a pretty elite audience, though apparently you have to subscribe to post. I'd be glad to post for you if you don't have a subscription.

The URL is http://www.nature.com/news/2007/...=2#last- comment

Congrats, well-deserved, etc. And good for the Times for running such an article. That's gotta be a stretch for them.

“Let’s say the genetic data says we’ll have to spend two times as much for every black child to close the achievement gap,” said Jason Malloy

To clarify this quote, I didn't actually recommend spending twice as much to close the gap, nor does the evidence show that anything of the sort would work. I probably talked to Harmon for over 2 hours total, so a lot was said. When I said that, I was explaining how society could make choices using the range of reaction as one possible way to ameliorate genetic differences.

The point was only that we need to start taking the issues into serious consideration before we can decide how or if we should work to remedy them.

I don't think the word "congratulations" is really sufficient to address the scope of this achievement. It's more like, just, wow.

“I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life researching how much genetic variability there is between populations,” said Dr. David Altshuler, director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass. “But living in America, it is so clear that the economic and social and educational differences have so much more influence than genes. People just somehow fixate on genetics, even if the influence is very small.”

I'm pretty sure Dr. Altshuler is speaking merely from personal opinion and not from data when he says that "the economic and social and educational differences have so much more influence than genes". First, educational attainment is highly heritable (~50%; search pubmed). Second, IQ differences are associated with large differences in social outcomes when you compare full siblings with different IQs (source) -- I hope the implications of that study design are obvious.

One point that needs making more often is that if the more intelligent among us were less "privileged" -- not in the sense of providing most of the leaders of our society, but rather in the sense of arrogating to themselves such a large slice of the economic pie -- racial differences wouldn't be so important.

A more egalitarian society in the redistributionists since, in other words, would be a less race-concious society, because parents wouldn't worry so much about their children's future welfare, whom they marry, etc. Possible racial differences in intelligence wouldn't matter so much.

This is one more reason why the economic disparities driven by current trade and immigration policies are playing such havoc: and one more reason why we need search harder for efficient ways to redress these inequalities, which are a natural product of a free market economy (which I support btw).

I know this may rub libertarians the wrong way. But there are efficient solutions -- they are there in the literature of economics (see BornAgainDemocrats.com) -- and we as a society need to get serious about them if we want more racial harmony.

Hint: they have nothing to do with minimum wage laws, means tested welfare payments, a progressive tax on incomes, or collective bargaining.

Strikingly absent from the article is the idea that no matter what 'group' or 'groups' we may fit into, we are still individuals. An individual is not his or her statistical profile, at least a profile based on the broadest of categories; Jeremy Wariner can be, and is, the fastest current 400 m runner, even though this is statistically unlikely. Statistical inferences are statistically accurate, but not necessarily individually accurate.

The emphasis on group differences has resulted in a failure to recognize individuals for their own talents, skills and weaknesses, rather than being just representatives of the statistical profile of some group.

Related to this, whatever our group, abilities, or inferences about our abilities, we deserve the same social and civil rights, level of individual respect, and rights before the law and from others.

I urged progressives to stop predicating their ideas of justice so religiously on empirical matters which might very well get falsified (leaving the door wide open for rival ideologies).

I don't think the people who define their political and social opinions as "progressive" are going to be particularly concerned with justification.

It is a very intelligent and thoughtful article. We have always had racial differences since the beginning of time. Finally someone/'s are putting it to paper and trying to explain why we as human beings have always been "racial" in our thinking and reactions to others. I applaud the genetic scientists that are finally coming forth with the truth instead of hiding because of political and economic reasons. Truth should always be told and then dealt with appropriately. People who can't handle the truth will always scream "foul", "I don't want to hear this"! [don't taunt]

Excellent. I admire your ability to put the right spin on the information so as to make it acceptable to talk about. In my words: "The truth will win in the end, so you better figure out how to make your political agenda compatible with it."

However, she didn't bring up what I think is the best argument: Genetic testing will end racism because you will not have to use race as a proxy for genetics. You will be able to test each individual for exactly the genes that interest you, without relying on racial stereotypes.

Genetic testing will end racism because you will not have to use race as a proxy for genetics.

well, as has been pointed out to me, population level information is information. because of the utility of knowing genetic background it may be a while before racial information is totally useless. though yeah, more info = less utilization of proxies.

because of the utility of knowing genetic background it may be a while before racial information is totally useless

I'm talking about getting the narrative right. Your vision is what makes you racist, not the facts.

This is the ripest fruit yet of our labors. There have been others, and more yet to come, but this is an occasion to pop the bubbly and gloat. I am sipping Cristal *right now*, compiler a compilin' in the background, blasting We Takin' Over by DJ Khaled. An appropriate track. Christmas came early this year. If I had an AK I'd be firing it in the air, waving it like I jus' don't care.

I'm proud to say that we pioneered the discussion of the Hapmap's implications. Right here on GNXP. More than five years ago, we saw the future with clear eyes. From 7/30/2002:

http://www.gnxp.com/oldblog/nopu.../nopub/ 85299282

In other words, if you think of the human genome project as a massive effort to provide a "first order" approximation to human sequence space, the HapMap will be a massive effort to provide a "second order" approximation to human sequence space. How is this useful? Suppose we want to describe the sequence of a randomly selected Joe. If you're limited to describing Joe's sequence with a single string, you'd give the consensus human genome sequence. If you can afford to be more accurate than that, you'll start figuring out which haplotypes are most common in Joe's population group, and give the haplotype distribution instead. A higher degree of accuracy would of course be to sequence Joe's genome de novo , but that's not yet cost effective. We can thus see that while the consensus human genome sequence is an approximation of what we have in common, the HapMap is fundamentally about finding the genetic roots of human differences. Yes, it may be useful for curing diseases, but that will only be the beginning of the applications and not a major one at that. There is much dispute over whether combinations of common mutations cause disease or whether rare mutations are more likely to do so, but such disputes miss the forest for the trees. The main haul of the HapMap will be a flood of data that will overwhelm those who would deny that significant genetic differences exist between humans. Even more importantly, it will provide an invaluable base of information for those who would usher us into an age of reengineered humans.

It is a fucking visceral rush to see your ideas, your blog, your baby diffuse out and percolate up to the highest neurons in the nervous system.

And at such a time it behooves us to thank our poor demonized blogfather, Steve. He's been in the NYT before (e.g. Dirt Gap and so on), but they've never taken on the fundamental h-bd premise directly. Now they have. And even though he's not mentioned by name, Sailer begat GC and Razib, and Razib/GC begat GNXP, and GNXP begat Malloy and (I believe) Half Sigma. And so the lurking reader became the blogger, and thus was the h-bd blogosphere populated, and lo it was good. And goddamn if I'm not proud as hell of what we've accomplished here, of what p-ter and Darth and Rik and all of the gang have done.


Mencius is right. This is possibly the most remarkable article -- of world historical importance, really -- that I've ever read in the NYT. The implications are that far reaching, for reasons I need not elaborate. And it's doubly important that it's not by Nick Wade. This is no isolated truth teller.

I mean, Christ Almighty, Marcus f'ing Feldman (!!!!) is acknowledging that IQ might vary by race! Do you understand what this *means*? The implications this has for peer review, for so many things...they are profound.

It's funny, I was just in a discussion over at 2Blowhards for the first time in a while (http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2007/11/ watson_populati.html), engaged in the usual kinds of repetitive block-and-tackling vs. the 101 tiresome ways to minimize the importance of h-bd. I was thinking, not for the first time, that it is and was a complete waste of time to lop off the branches of the tree rather than to strike the root. I mean, it's very difficult to see any long term benefit to arguing in a blog comment section about whether the earth moves around the sun or vice versa. But then you see something like this, and fuck, it's all worthwhile.

...

Anyway....as far as I'm concerned, the intellectual war is over. We've won. That doesn't mean the revelations will come quickly enough for the West or America. Hell is truth seen too late.

But in terms of the fate of the world, even if the priest class continues to burn Galileos and Watsons and Summers' who speak out in public, the international scientific journals in which history is made are now going to be incrementally more open to publishing that eventual series of articles which breaks it all wide open, which takes hammer to chisel and splits that granite facade right down the center. And everyone reads those international journals.

Even, y'know, people in other countries...

Five years ago we were right about the implications of the Hapmap. And five years hence we will be right again about our genetic engineering future. Y'all don't have to take my word for it, of course.

It'll be on the front page of the New York Times.

We are becoming respectable, mainstream. Steve Sailer will be Secretary of Education.

To claim that equality before the law is based on presumed bio-equality was an argument that was wicked in its stupidity and recklessness. Equality before the law may be viewed as a good thing just because it's our way; of British origin, as it happens, with its roots therefore in Christianity, German tribalism, Viking piracy and Lord knows what else. Or, you could make a good case from ordinary prudence, the pragmatic belief that it might be expected to lead to a happier, more prosperous, more peaceful society. But to claim to base it on a will-o'-the-wisp: what utter bloody folly.

"But many geneticists, ... worried that speaking openly about race could endanger support for their research": my gosh, she really is prepared to be frank. I can only add that thank goodness no such consideration ever weighs on climatologists.

Assuming that this issue entering the public consciousness parallels similar phenomena, we ought to expect retaliatory strikes from the people who have been supporting egalitarianism with biological claims. Watson might just be the beginning.

gc:
Anyway....as far as I'm concerned, the intellectual war is over. We've won. That doesn't mean the revelations will come quickly enough for the West or America. Hell is truth seen too late.

Nonsense, godless! I told you over at 2blowhards to cheer up and stop sounding so much like Derbyshire. And lo! you are indeed 'breaking out the bubbly'. It's not over for us here in the West, and your burst of good cheer proves that in your heart you know I'm right.

Some of you Americans might be interested to know that the Canadian meda is abuzz again with the Toronto District School Board's consideration of black-focused schools.

congrats to gnxp. i think gc's comment should replace jasons [no offense]

[accusations of racism. accusations of supporting hate and violence.]

This genetic differences you speak of, may not be different at all. The tools you use to measure IQ are made by European people with white skin . Would it not be better that people of African descent and Asia descent make up their IQ test and let you take?

It's like a knew game that's made up my European with white skin, where three groups participate. They explained the rules to a group of Afro-Americans and Asia's and tell them it can only be one winner. Who do you think will win?

I am not surprised by these findings , they have seemed as obvious as morphologic differences even without science .

I do believe that a lead to a propensity to violence could be found in DNA .

Perhaps we will have to wait for that.

Credell Phillips asks:

Would it not be better that people of African descent and Asia descent make up their IQ test and let you take?

Well, you know, the funny thing is that East Asians do better, on average, on this test that white Europeans invented, so why should they bother to invent their own?

Do you think if we include "empathy" questions into the IQ tests, these white skins would win?

It makes you wonder why Christianity was invented. Could it be to teach morality and empathy to these white skins because they lack points on these NATURALLY?

"What would Jesus do?" They need this guidance because they wouldnt know by heart.

You know, since you claim to be so big on truth telling, you might try in your apology for Watson to bring up all the relevant things that he has said that has antagonized people, and made them call for his ouster at Cold Springs Lab.

I notice, for example, that you quote Watson's remarks in the recent notorious interview that describes him as being

inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really"

Yet you don't quote the very next sentence,

His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

Now, I guess I wonder why you don't quote that sentence. Might it be because Watson's claim there is transparently unscientific, basing generalizations on the most subjective of grounds, and sounds exactly like the rant of the most benighted sort of bigot from the American South?

Now this is hardly the first time Watson had come out with such bizarre and unscientific and clearly prejudiced remarks.

Why is it you can't bring yourself to acknowledge this side of Watson? Why pretend that the man is some kind of paragon of unbiased scientific truth telling when it comes to matters of race and gender?

Now we can move on to issues encapsulated in Jason's scrambled comment in the NYT: As we move away from our ungrounded faith in bio-equality, what are the policy implications? How do we shape interventionist policies that optimize civil society?

And... how important are the other genetically linked behavioral traits?

His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

Now, I guess I wonder why you don't quote that sentence. Might it be because Watson's claim there is transparently unscientific

People who deal with employees of any color quickly recognize that not everyone is equal. As for matters of race, employers who have to confront the realities of equal opportunity legislation recognize that the pool of qualified candidates often doesn't reflect the general population.

So what exactly are you objecting to?

What is so weird about all this is that the focus is on racial differences, but differences in IQ exist within each racial group.

There are white people I went to high school with years ago who cannot do what I can do and who I would not employ for any position.

Equally, of course, I cannot pound rocks all day or do road work all day, but then, those jobs do not pay big bucks and will not help me put my children through expensive colleges.

Mencius is right but really, what other words are there? Congratulations to all of you.

Look, Caledonian, if you can't grasp that one's subjective impressions of a particular set of employees one happens to have does not constitute a scientific observation, as opposed to a hasty and unscientific and likely biased generalization, and the worst sort of anecdotal data, then why should anyone bother to argue with you?

You are so lost to your own biases you can't see straight anymore.

Watson's claim there is transparently unscientific

frankly0 -- if you take a sample of N random variables from the same distribution, what's the probability that they're *all* outliers? It would be astonishing if individual perceptions were generally at odds with statistical trends.

Ever heard of Chebyshev's inequality?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che...ev' s_inequality

No more than 1/(k^2) of the values are more than k standard deviations away from the mean

That's a weak bound of course (for Gaussians you can do much better; see e.g. Bertsimas & Popescu's stuff), but the point is that outliers are just that: outliers.

Of course this news is a sensitive subject. The liberal bastion of enlightenment would have us all believe that everyone is perfectly identical to everyone else. Even given evidence that Asians are sensitive to alcohol, Jews are more prone to Tay-Sachs, or that Irish are more likely to get skin cancer, we turn a blind eye toward other statements based on race. As the article alluded, American Blacks have dominated most sports. If matters of health and physical attributes are linked to ethnicity, why can't the same be true for intelligence? Sure, upbringing is very important, and proper motivation in childhood is necessary for later success, but certainly genes play a substantial role, too. Unfortunately, we may not get very farther than a week's worth of uproar in the press. I think that most Americans are going to be inflamed, see something about MRSA on TV, and then move on to the next crisis that scientists have caused.

GC is right. This could very well be one of the most important articles ever in the NY Times. It's #3 in most emailed articles, and appearing on the front page of the Sunday edition ensures it will get a large readership.

Congratulations to GNXP.

Now we only have to have faith in the inherent decency of the American people to make sure the policy implications of this do not lead to anything terrible.

gc,

What an absurd argument you make. You bring in some math to make it pretend to "science", but it is simply crackpot.

Look, we don't know that everybody who has black employees thinks about them what Watson claims they do, right? That's totally unsupported, right? For a given set of employees, we don't know what selection factors might interfere, right? We don't know how much of anyone's impression that black employees don't measure up are based on prejudice and not reality, right? There are a million things that we don't know about these kinds of complex social situations that make science here very difficult.

That's why people of a scientific bent insist that there be some measure of objectivity imposed: objective tests, double blind studies, etc. etc. Where do you find any hint of that in Watson's ridiculously biased remark?

At least in the first sentence quoted from Watson, in which he alludes to testing of blacks, he is on more solid scientific ground. Everyone knows that blacks don't on average score as well on IQ tests as whites, though the explanations of that differ.

But the further remark that Watson made shows a highly UNscientific approach, and does great discredit to him, and the notion that he's some sort of deep truthteller instead of a bigot trying to rationalize his biases.

By the way, I want to state something very obvious but which I haven't yet seen in this thread.

Widespread knowledge of h-bd invalidates the discrimination assumption. That is the assumption that the plight of a non-Asian minority is due to racist action by the white majority.

It is an *enormous* moral (and suasive) gap between:

1) It's your fault I'm poor
2) It's not my fault that I'm slow

The issue is not whether everyone will engage in pogroms. The issue is whether the scapegoating will end.

crackpot.

You have one warning. This is not the Washington Monthly's cesspool of a comments section. Keep all of your remarks to other posters scrupulously civil or you will be banned.

Ask any employers - white people love to talk. They would talk about how they would do their job but would take time to do it. They would also charge you big money for them to tell it to you. They also love to talk about someone else work, like taking credit for it. Can we openly talk about this?

[accusations of racism. accusations of supporting hate and violence.]

So this is how it goes. When white people email to each other an article how we should be open about discussing about how better they are and we should not be pc about it, its okay. But when a non white offers another argument, ah just call it racism.

WOW. I hope this web world reality does not spill into the real reality out there. Just keep it among yourselves , its okay, we understand you have to feel better everyday by reminding yourselves youre the best. Get a real life, will ya all?

Really, Watson's remarks about black employees is like him simply saying, "Everyone who has fat employees knows that they are sluggish but jolly."

Think of how many unsupported, non-quantified, subjective assumptions are built into that assertion. Would anyone who claims to be a scientist want to be caught making such a baseless remark? Wouldn't they know in their bones, if nowhere else, that they might better be much, much more careful before they came out with such a pronouncement, if they wanted to be taken seriously as a scientist?

double blind studies, etc. etc. Where do you find any hint of that in Watson's ridiculously biased remark?

Hmmm? Watson can't append 50 references to a single comment in a tape recorded interview.

That's why people of a scientific bent insist that there be some measure of objectivity imposed

Indeed. So consider this reference from Jason's James Watson IQ post:

In fact, economists Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann report that the association between economic outcomes and measured intelligence appear to be even higher within developing African countries than within Western countries. (pp 13-15) Similarly, at the national level, psychologists Earl Hunt and Werner Wittmann found that the relationship between GDP and national average IQ was stronger for the mostly African developing countries than it was among the developed industrial countries. (0.70 vs 0.58)



In their literature review, Kendall, Verster, and Von Mollendorf found that correlations between employee performance and educational outcomes and cognitive ability did not differ for blacks and whites in Southern Africa. In other words, at school or on the job, an African white with an IQ score of 70 will perform no different than an African black with the same score.Similarly an African black with an IQ of 115 performs the same as an African white with the same score.

So the relation between job performance and cognitive ability is population invariant. Thus we can do a calculation. Sample 50 whites and 50 blacks from the US population. What's the likelihood that the latter group has a higher mean IQ -- and hence a higher mean job performance level?

I don't like anyone coming in the way of science. I, for one, want to have more information about biology.

[I am a troll from Tulane University. My IP address will be posted and network administrators contacted if I ever post on this blog again, whether as a gc impersonator or not.]

frankly0:

Think of how many unsupported, non-quantified, subjective assumptions are built into that assertion. Would anyone who claims to be a scientist want to be caught making such a baseless remark? Wouldn't they know in their bones, if nowhere else, that they might better be much, much more careful before they came out with such a pronouncement, if they wanted to be taken seriously as a scientist?

This sounds a lot like Ari Fleischer:

they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.

Moreover, all science is built upon observations and hypotheses. A theory is speculation before it becomes a theory. You need to see something in the world and believe it's likely to be true before you can go out and gather systematic data for it.

It's a reasonable hypothesis, for example, that fat people tend to be sluggish; you could test this by looking at metabolism, or hours slept, or a hundred other things. Given some suitable quantification of jolly (e.g. extraversion on the Big 5 or something similar) you might assess that as well and look for a distributional difference.

What is *not* reasonable is to strive for a society in which scientists can't speculate about something out loud for fear of the NKVD descending on them.

Let me ask you something. How many times have Washington Monthly commenters speculated about, say, the general properties of a particular class of people -- like conservatives or Christians or Reupblicans, say?

Selective outrage at particular speculations is not about science, but about politically motivated suppression of speech.

After all, speculation about the truth of proposition X often comes *first*. Then comes some proof of concept calculations, then the grant application, then the big data collection, then the final analysis.

If you don't oppose the statistical test of Watson's off hand remark, do you support the idea of funding a large scale national study to gather data on employee performance, including both demographic variables plu as many objective measures of performance as possible (e.g. billable hours, number of lines of code, dollar total in sales, etc.)?

gc,

I simply can't imagine why you feel a need to defend the particular remark from Watson that I highlighted.

The quote (from someone else) that goes into the relation between GDP and IQ is irrelevant to whether Watson's remark, as it stood, was scientific. Do you not understand this? If he had made the point about the GDP and IQ in strictly scientific terms, that would be a different matter.

Instead, he was simply resorting to what he supposes are people's subjective impressions about black employees.

How many unsupported assumptions are built into that remark, and it's asserted implication that blacks and whites are not equal? First, that all employers DO have that negative impression of black employees. Second, that that impression is not itself based on a preconception. Third, that there are not selection factors involved that skew the results.

Again, where's the objective measurement here? Where's any attempt to counteract prejudices in judgment? Where's the effort to go beyond mere anecdote?

Really, if you can't grant the obvious unscientific quality of this observation, one wonders what commitment you might have to science, or understanding of it.

One wonders: if you consider this legitimate science, are you too simply finding ways to rationalize your own prejudices?

I simply can't imagine why you feel a need to defend the particular remark from Watson that I highlighted.


Because merit blind hiring due to affirmative action results in lower competence employees, as a general rule. Do you accept that this statement is true?

where's the objective measurement here? ...the effort to go beyond mere anecdote?

Suppose I were to say that "people who have to deal with black employees find them to be the equal of Asian employees in every important respect".

Is that an obviously unscientific remark, which I should be careful about making?

Widespread knowledge of h-bd invalidates the discrimination assumption. That is the assumption that the plight of group X is due to racist action by group Y. (Changes added.)

This is a very important notion, and can be extended to the actions of certain majorities, eg, Malays and Indonesians who were the majorities, against Chinese who were the highly achieving minorities in those countries, or, even the Jews, that high-achieving but minority group in Europe and other places.

The reality is that it is usually the elites in any group scapegoating some other group so that they can continue to reap benefit from their positions and avoid scrutiny. Exploitation central.

The reality is that it is usually the elites in any group scapegoating some other group so that they can continue to reap benefit from their positions and avoid scrutiny. Exploitation central.

the case in malaysia is one where the authorities (dr. mahathir mohommed) used the argument of innate inequality (because of different initial ecological and density conditions) to argue for differential treatment of the majority and minority. this is a classic case which falsifies the idea that a particular naturalistic assumption result in invariant policy responses.

[why don't you reframe your critique a bit more respectfully? that'll surely strengthen your argument, not weaken it]

i'm not going to defend the particular black employees generalization. rather, one can extend it and frame the context though. the assumption that differences in representation result from only discrimination means that people are promoted to fill the representation that one assumes would result with sociological conditions controlled. this means that individuals may be promoted beyond their level of competence (if you grant that different representation is actually at least in part due to underlying variation in skill set). but due to the nature of corporate and governmental environments superiors won't or can't dismiss employees who don't perform, and so they simply expect less and alternative standards became established and expected. one can explain this by saying that because of discrimination there are underlying differences in skill set, ergo, differences in performance, but that just pushes the causal factor another step down the line. the reality is that in large corporate or governmental situations many people perceive that there are difference treatments meted out, and whatever the initial skill sets an employee brings to the table their acquisition of further competence is often proportional to expectations.

to use a case which doesn't have an american resonance and illustrates the issues because of the extremity of their development, consider the situation in the arab gulf. arab employees know that they are subject to different standards when they fill the same job as a non-arab (or, more precisely, native arab vs. non-native arab or non-arab). this is why companies will sometimes just hire two people for the same position, a native who will draw a salary but add little value, and a non-arab or non-native who will actually perform the duties required. the nature of the system is such that the not only will the native arab not improve their skill set, they might object and feel put upon if expected to engage in anything more than nominal acts implied by their position.

ok, please read this everyone! this is a controversial topic. if we're going to keep this thread open (a proposition of uncertain probability as we move into the future), then it is best that everyone pretend they're a robot. so don't cast personal aspersions or pepper your points with exclamations as to the stupidity of your interlocutor. just the facts and theoretical propositions please. normally i like spice, but not in this case. following these guidelines will ensure that your comment doesn't get deleted. after all, is it worth your while to write up a satisfying little insult to see it deleted a minute later? comment threads are optional supplementary aspects to any post.

"What would Jesus do?" They need this guidance because they wouldnt know by heart.

Luke 9:48:
"Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me: for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great."

John 18:36:
"My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence."

...and so it was said in the days of our lord.

What are you, deleting comments still in preview? I'm not writing anything objectionable, besides, any call for respectability is patently ridiculous considering that we're replying to your original, insulting contention that blacks are inheritly stupid.

What are you, deleting comments still in preview? I'm not writing anything objectionable, besides, any call for respectability is patently ridiculous considering that we're replying to your original, insulting contention that blacks are inheritly stupid.

there's a difference between contentions being insulting, and being insulting to people. the former makes discourse difficult, but the latter makes it impossible (since the topic veers orthogonally off into questions of good faith and character which can't be ascertained). do you get it? in any case, your comment wasn't in preview. it was submitted.

What are blacks, an abstract idea?

This is what I take away as the most important point from Jason's original post and the NYTimes article -- to date, the representation of the science in the media has been tightly controlled by the likes of Dr. Feldman's "ready response teams". These scientists and others of similar dispositions have controlled and distorted the presentation of the scientific research in the media, favoring their preferred views. This is an unacceptable short-cutting of the way normal science is practiced and disseminated. However the science actually turns out in the end, we need free, open and civil debate.

Can't we just get back to teasing the Finns?

What are blacks, an abstract idea?

i guess that depends on if you are a nominalist or a thomist. in any case, groups are constructs whose nature is instrumentally validated. someone may be a member of a group without identifying all aspects of a group to themselves. e.g., i am often insulting to muslims as a group without insulting muslims as individuals (the only ones i know personally i like and have no issues with, in part because their own interpretation of islam is not one which i am insulting in any case).

Razib says:

the case in malaysia is one where the authorities (dr. mahathir mohommed) used the argument of innate inequality (because of different initial ecological and density conditions) to argue for differential treatment of the majority and minority. this is a classic case which falsifies the idea that a particular naturalistic assumption result in invariant policy responses.

Mahathir's argument is more sophisticated than we usually hear, and in any event, I was not referring to that. I was referring to the usual anti-Chinese demagoguery that we hear from the non-Chinese political classes in those countries.

It is notable, also, that at least one leader from a country colonized by whites referred to Mahathir as recalcitrant, an adjective that Mahathir was bound to be able to understand.

It is also notable that on average, Chinese students from both Indonesia and Malaysia do better than Malays and Indonesians.

The Average Punter Cannot Understand Negative Numbers

Is there any better demonstration that we are not all equal when it comes to IQ?

Were it as clear to the great majority of managers as it is to Math teachers in US high schools that a great many people, perhaps the majority, cannot understand negative numbers, we would probably not be having this discussion.

just to be clear re: preview, some "keywords" automatically trigger a response by the system. we had to institute this because people were using the comments to leave nasty little messages with offensive words. this results in false positives.

Watson should sue his former employers. He was only stating what is common knowledge. A good public trial would have the same effect on public opinion as the "monkey trial" a century ago.

My comment window keeps closing while I'm typing (I get it now. The old, non-slur term for blacks is for some reason forbidden. Is that just this thread? Is the black version of Modello ever mentioned here?)

Anyway, I'm glad that this and other sites like it are gaining publicity. The glaring fallacies (like the false dichotomy of "differences in group performances are due to either racism or inherit disability") that seem to be invisible to this insular echo-chamber won't be to those without similar motivations and narrow POVs. Also the transparency of the purpose behind these efforts will both amuse and disgust those without an ax to grind about the "Kneegrow Question".

"I get it now. The old, non-slur term for blacks is for some reason forbidden. Is that just this thread? Is the black version of Modello ever mentioned here?"

the old word for blacks has often been paired with other inappropriate words. sorry, conditional probabilities at work here.

Anyway, I'm glad that this and other sites like it are gaining publicity. The glaring fallacies (like the false dichotomy of "differences in group performances are due to either racism or inherit disability")

the dichotomy is totally dominant in the elite discourse now. the only difference is that it is attributed to one parameter only. and that attribution has public policy consequences. it was/is a high risk strategy, with the joint plank of premising moral arguments upon a naturalistic consensus. the objection of over-simplification would carry more weight if it was consistently applied in the public discussion.

the dichotomy is totally dominant in the elite discourse now. the only difference is that it is attributed to one parameter only. and that attribution has public policy consequences. it was/is a high risk strategy, with the joint plank of premising moral arguments upon a naturalistic consensus. the objection of over-simplification would carry more weight if it was consistently applied in the public discussion.

You cannot fool me young man. It's turtles all the way down!

It is most likely that a large majority of people cannot understand the realities of group difference. Hell, if they can't understand negative numbers they are not going to be able to understand differing distributions and the realities of the statistics behind group differences, let alone understand what selection has done to different populations.

Such fertile ground for the demagogues to manipulate.

Look, drsnacks, we are discussing a fact. Do different groups have the same combinations of genetic variants or do they not? At the end of the day, the answer to that question is either true or false.


And remember -- plenty of people contend that white Americans are such hateful racists that they go out of their way to sabotage black and Hispanic advancement, which would otherwise ostensibly be on par with all other groups in (say) mathematics.

Yet this contention is not considered insulting.

Why?

Renata McGriff, 52, a health care consultant who had been encouraging black clients to volunteer genetic information to scientists, said she and other African-Americans have lately been discussing "opting out of genetic research until it’s clear we’re not going to use science to validate prejudices."

"I don’t want the children in my family to be born thinking they are less than someone else based on their DNA," added Ms. McGriff, of Manhattan.

This is a canard that's grown in popularity after Watson's remarks. If your children are not "less than someone else," then they can't be told they are, so there's no worry. If someone tells Yao Ming he's short because he's Chinese, will he buy it? And even if they are less than someone else, will it really make them feel better / more confident to hear the reasons have nothing to do with genes? Compare:

1) You're not tall enough to play basketball, and it's all due to what flavors your height genes come in.

2) You're not tall enough to play basketball, and it's all due to the way your parents raised you, or due to your nutrition in childhood.

Either way, the kid will be miserable to know that he's too short and that there's nothing he can do to change his height. It is just a lie to say that chalking up differences to some mix of genes plus environment, rather than only due to environment, will preserve the person's self-esteem, will be more tactful, etc.

And instating AA to get East Asians on basketball teams in proportion to their numbers will result in a drop in the average skill-level of NBA players. Fans would tune out, and the industry would wither away.

Also, phrasing the objection in a lazy way -- "based on their DNA" -- just covers up what pieces of DNA are being looked at. In the future, if Harvard is able to scan your genome and reject your application because they're not confident about what your genes say about your intelligence -- they will be looking at genes related to IQ, the ones that matter, not the ones the say what your ancestry is. If a White or Asian doesn't make the cut on these IQ genes, they too will be rejected.

I'm glad this discussion is happening, because at base the assertion of some here -- that if it doesn't happen, the whole thing will be co-opted by those with an agenda -- is, I think, correct.

In the spirit of open debate, I'll add this:

1. So those studies that show that merely exposing children of one race or another to discriminatory statements can negatively or positively affect their performance on a test are irrelevant?

In a system of coupled gene-environment interactions, we should be weary of self-fulfilling prophecies.

razib should link to this on scienceblogs, shake things up a bit in that blank slate happy-camp. With enough interest it could get on the 'Buzz in the Blogosphere'. [come on, they're talking about MRSA and Swine at the moment]

christopher asks:

1. So those studies that show that merely exposing children of one race or another to discriminatory statements can negatively or positively affect their performance on a test are irrelevant?

Can you link to the studies that have shown this effect?

Can you tell us how discriminatory statements against East Asians have had the effect of improving their performance on tests?

I just read the NY Times article and that's how I came to this website.

The article was great and your comment was also appropriate.

A rhetoric question comes to mind as a final thought: now that the liberal propagandists are beginning to open their minds, will Summers get his job back at Harvard for raising exactly the same points as the NY Times article on the issue of innate male/female differences?

1. So those studies that show that merely exposing children of one race or another to discriminatory statements can negatively or positively affect their performance on a test are irrelevant?

He's referring to stereotype threat, which was debunked by Sackett et al. pretty brutally:

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives...ves/ 002620.html

C. M. Steele and J. Aronson (1995) showed that making race salient when taking a difficult test affected the performance of high-ability African American students, a phenomenon they termed stereotype threat. The authors document that this research is widely misinterpreted in both popular and scholarly publications as showing that eliminating stereotype threat eliminates the African American–White difference in test performance. In fact, scores were statistically adjusted for differences in students’ prior SAT performance, and thus, Steele and Aronson’s findings actually showed that absent stereotype threat, the two groups differ to the degree that would be expected based on differences in prior SAT scores. The authors caution against interpreting the Steele and Aronson experiment as evidence that stereotype threat is the primary cause of African American–White differences in test performance.

Read that whole post, well worth your time...

Congratulations Jason, gc, Marc, et al. Especially Marc, as you did heavy-lifting without being credited in the New York Times.

I am proud of the teensy-tiny part I had in this.

I do feel that the death of liberalism arguments are a bit premature. Bio-liberalism has hardly begun.

Rob,

Thanks! Just for the record, Half Sigma forwarded me a message a while ago that the reporter wanted to talk to me, but I passed on the opportunity. My email address contains my last name, and I didn't trust the reporter not to use it. Maybe I was a little paranoid, but I didn't feel like having my name attached to an article in the NYT on race and IQ.

Given the repetitive questions and claims we hear from IQ and race denialists, knowledgeable people like Malloy, Razib, Half Sigma, Sailer, Guhname, Chris Brand and others might want to consider putting together an ongoing "Race and IQ" FAQ that newbies to the debate can be easily referred to. Right now, there really is no single comprehensive online resource for such information. Malloy's recent post on the Watson controversy is a step in that direction and Half Sigma addressed a few of the more common fallacies he has been hearing from NYT readers in a post today. Such a resource might, if nothing else, improve the quality of the debate online.

@gc - thanks for tipping me off to the original research, whose substance but not provenance I recalled in my last comment.

Since we're (quite happily!) going to the source literature, I'll quote from the exact same critique that you do, i.e. Sackett et al.:

"Steele and Aronson clearly demonstrated a very interesting phenomenon in a series of persuasive and carefully conducted experiments. They have shown that stereotype threat can affect the performace of some students on some tests, an important finding worthy of careful exploration. What they have not done, and do not purport to do, is to offer stereotype threat as the general explanation for the long-observed pattern of subgroup differences on a broad range of cognitive tests."

What Sackett said was not that this was bad research, or at all invalid -- what Sackett et al. said was that *this research was widely misinterpreted.*

I would agree with Sacket: I would not dream of proposing that stereotype threat is a complete explanation for differneces in test scores between races.

I merely bring it up to inspire a thought experiment which does not require very much imagination, and one which I would argue has about as much evidence to its credit as the genetic-deterministic arguments being slung about here:

Imagine that the stereotype threat effect were not being exercised in a laboratory setting, but that it pervaded everyday life. Imagine that you were told, from birth, even implicitly, not to expect too much from your own abilities on account of your race -- what effect would that have on your desire to engage in the activity you were told you would fail at? And how would that effect look when multiplied across generations, and throughout an entire sub-culture?

It seems glib to imagine that discrimination is irrelevant in the context of performance; and that culture, whose advancement we imagine is so all-important to the progress of the human race, isn't as persistent and as powerful, in many contexts, as its genetic underpinnings.

* Just to throw out another wrinkle: The Flynn effect says that your mean IQ, regardless of race, is significantly higher than that of your great-grandparents. Do you really believe that's so? And if not, what does that say about the fact that even tests designed to target g can, in essence, across whole generations, be taught?

tommy's idea above is brilliant. A "wiki" is what we need. I'm not sure how to set one up.

tommy's idea above is brilliant. A "wiki" is what we need. I'm not sure how to set one up.

the wikimedia package takes about 15-20 minutes to install.

And how would that effect look when multiplied across generations, and throughout an entire sub-culture?

there might be some gene-environment correlation here. i've wondered about judith rich harris' thesis about peer groups. about ogbu's points about cultural bias. to really address these issues would require massive social engineering, and quite possibly cultural genocide. instead people see more inclined to engage in things such as affirmative action, which addresses symptoms and not root causes. in short, a hard-core culturalist explanation for between group differences might be more theoretically malleable, but in practice i'm not imagining that anyone is gong to want to engage in the massive engineering required to affect true underlying change.

to make clear what i'm talking about, note that behavior genetic studies routinely suggest that many traits become more heritable as people age. the reason is that they have more choice to select their environments as time passes on and their choices upstream tend to amplify characteristics downstream. so small initial differences can magnify down the line.

[cut the sarcasm]

I would go with a web hosting service that does wikis.

What's a good domain name? iq.org is taken.

I hope the neo-Marxist postmodernists in academia and elsewhere in our culture take your advice, but I woudln't hold my breath if I were you. Sadly, ideology and politics are more important than truth nowadays for the modern postmodern progressive.

Marc, why didn't you just set up an e-mail account with a fake name? That's what I did.

In all this, we can be fairly sure that the breastfeeding-gene-IQ link is real. And given the racial difference in breastfeeding, We can be fairly sure that more 10% of the black-white gap can be environmentally fixed.

Even if one thinks the racial gap is meaningful, then we know now it is partially bio-environmental, and not 100% intractable.

Interventions will soon be on the table to raise IQ. Thanks to Gene Expression, Half Sigma, Steve, and others, we can do it sooner. Maybe even soon enough.

I emailed Sailer about this once, but I want to put it here too.

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/...ize-for- iq.html

We need an X-Prize style project, call it a g-prize, for treatments that increase IQ in either adults or children. Even a temporary boost would be beneficial.

If a prize is too difficult to administer, the we need all the research we can get, with implementation, to increase IQ to the extent possible. I think it is likely that a 5 point rise in g is possible for most adults.

And whoever can do it, deserves at least a million.

Now low IQ is a problem to be solved. Like racial differences in vitamin D deficiency.

Breast-feeding babies makes them smarter and people with darker skin need to take measurements to ensure a lack of vitamin D deficiency. Where does the need for racial nomenclature and an examination of the racial gap come in?

If we went through a 30-year convulsion over "politically correct" speech -- which sought, basically to avoid hurting the increasing diversity of the intellectual and social agora -- it will be an even longer time before it is OK to discuss racial disparities in intelligence as 1. existing and 2. not impacting on the basic worth of a human being or group of humans.
Students get grades; students are segregated into fast and slow lanes; we house the mentally retardied and treat the mentally ill, and the law and how enlightened people view those in the slower, more difficult lanes, looks at ALL as having the same dignity and the same right to a piece of happiness and joy, even the profoundly retarded, for example.
The progress we see with parents cherishing their downs syndrome children is another sign that the equation of intelligence with goodness is fading away.
These data mandate that we engage in a wider discussion of how we treat others, how we respect others of diverse capacities.
Woefully, the media are as much slaves to the prejudices of the past as their readers. The issue is not intelligence but worthiness to have a shot at happiness and self-fullfilment.
The world may be flat, and wealth generation may be a significant piece of future human history, but our values need to reflect the diversity that that flatness multiplies.

What's a good domain name? iq.org is taken.

gfactor.org?

"Suppose I were to say that "people who have to deal with black employees find them to be the equal of Asian employees in every important respect".

Is that an obviously unscientific remark, which I should be careful about making?"
---


That would be silly of course since individuals differ in relevant capacities (one of several reasons secondary schools are streamed). If you're going to prejudge someone you may as well base it on more direct predictors of performance (previous performance for example)

On the level of policy, interventions are going to be based in part on group differences, unfortunately the more salient physical differences are a flash point when they don't need to be (availability bias based on easy to pick out characteristics in identity and emotional anchoring because of history of discrimination/stereotyping)

PBwiki and Wetpaint.com are hosted wiki services that I've tried. They both work well and are easy to use. I seem to remember that PBwiki's free account only gives you 10 MB of storage, but if all you're putting online is text maybe that's enough. And at some point in the near future Google should be bringing Jotspot (a hosted wiki service that Google bought about a year ago, then buried) back to life.

I've got a post on the subject here.

frankly0,

Now, I guess I wonder why you don't quote that sentence. Might it be because Watson's claim there is transparently unscientific, basing generalizations on the most subjective of grounds, and sounds exactly like the rant of the most benighted sort of bigot from the American South?


RE: Watson and black employees, I already dealt with this in the other Watson thread:

I hate to defend his critics even a little bit, but this comment "is not supported by the scientific evidence", is mean-spirited, and is in very questionable judgment for someone who may well have black employees to make.

That comment did come off wrong, but black job performance is lower due to the IQ gap, so any "race-blind" and otherwise random or relatively lenient worker selection process would reveal race differences noticeable to employers. Watson clarified at the time that he meant averages and that he did not support job discrimination.

And here:

The difference [one third of a standard deviation] is very small

That is by no means a small difference if you are an employer! Any competent employer would recognize such a group difference, as Watson indicates.


The large (claimed) IQ gap would predict a much larger difference.


Um, no it wouldn't. I assume you are using the bad logic that a 1 SD in IQ should mean a 1 SD in job performance! It doesn't work like that. IQ is not biased against blacks in training or job performance predictions:

Moderated regression was used to test for slope and intercept differences by race in ASVAB–job performance relationships. For core task proficiency, the coefficients for the ASVAB and race were significant; the coefficient for the ASVAB x Race interaction was not. The coefficient for the ASVAB was .35; put another way, a 1.00 standard deviation change in ASVAB scores corresponds to a 0.35 standard deviation change in core task proficiency. The coefficient for race was .08, indicating that, on average, a White soldier with a given ASVAB score obtains a performance level .08 standard deviations higher than a Black soldier with the same ASVAB score. Thus, the ASVAB overpredicts the core task proficiency of Black soldiers.

As the APA 'Taskforce' quote in my post indicates, IQ overpredicts black performance.

Watson was, again, correct. I see little more to argue about.

credell phillips,

The tools you use to measure IQ are made by European people with white skin . Would it not be better that people of African descent and Asia descent make up their IQ test and let you take?

I dealt with this in my Watson post as well:

Similarly Robert Sternberg argues that the tests are biased because they allegedly don't measure the sorts of abilities that are necessary for Africans to succeed in their unique environmental niche. This statement is not only a patronizing and idyllic caricature of African needs, but is also empirically false. This idea was addressed by psychologist Earl Hunt in his peer commentary on Rindermann:

There are two reasons that national-level differences in intelligence have been disregarded. One is that it can be argued that intelligence, as evaluated by these tests, is a Western concept, and that the abilities evaluated by the tests may not be the ones valued by non-western societies. This is a spurious argument for two reasons. First, the economic indicators we are trying to relate to intelligence are also Western concepts. As the commentator Thomas Friedman has said, the world is flat. We are not asking whether or not various national populations have the ability to compete in their own societies, we are asking about their ability to compete in the Western-defined international marketplace. The tests are appropriately designed to address this question. (p 727)

Strikingly absent from the article is the idea that no matter what 'group' or 'groups' we may fit into, we are still individuals.

I did keep stressing this in the interview as well, but it did not come out so explicitly in the article. Still:

“Let’s say the genetic data says we’ll have to spend two times as much for every black child to close the achievement gap,” said Jason Malloy... Society... would need to consider how individuals “can be given educational and occupational opportunities that work best for their unique talents and limitations.”

But another point I made in the interview is that minority ethnic voters have tended to prefer ethnic-based over individual-based policies, and this may or may not change when genetic data is thrown into the mix.

For a wiki name, how about "Watson&Summers

Marc, why didn't you just set up an e-mail account with a fake name? That's what I did.

I thought of that, but I got the impression that she wanted to talk over the phone, and I didn't want to risk my name coming up on caller id. Yeah, it's paranoid, but I have a good job and people who depend on me financially, so I didn't want to risk it. I might have if I had thought that I could have added something that Half Sigma could not, but after reading his blog he seemed more knowledgable than I.

I think the domain name should depend on what the page is trying to accomplish. I.e., are we just trying to consolidate the scientific evidence on G (in which case gfactor.org is a great one) or do we also want to add information on race differences in G, in which case gfactor.org doesn't seem truly representative.

"Suppose I were to say that "people who have to deal with black employees find them to be the equal of Asian employees in every important respect".

Is that an obviously unscientific remark, which I should be careful about making?"

--------------------------------------

Have you ever heard the saying that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"? Well, the modern counterpart to this principle is that "extraordinarily offensive claims require extraordinary evidence"

During a debate on African IQ's on another messageboard, a huge number of posters on the liberal side of the debate argued from personal observation. I repeatedly asked if they would accept the personal observations of somebody on the other side of the debate -- nobody answered the question.

And by the way, some group differences are so pronounced that they can be observed informally. You don't need to do a study to show that American men are taller than American women.

Linda Gottfredson has some excellent information on the implications and politics of this issue, including Suppressing Intelligence Research, which is particularly apropos to the reaction of the "priest class" (ya gotta love that term) to Watson, etc.

But another point I made in the interview is that minority ethnic voters have tended to prefer ethnic-based over individual-based policies, and this may or may not change when genetic data is thrown into the mix.

What do you know about what ethnic voters tend to do? A lot of the assumptions coming from you guys make it obvious that this whole debate is taking place mostly in your head. I guess from your distant, ignorant POV, you may think you know what ethnic voters are up to based on what CNN surveys tell you, but from mine, more than enough blacks are weary about being constantly defined by their non-self-selected group.

Your arguments be stronger if they stood on their own - constantly you guys, when questioned about the motivations behind this type of study, defer to blame to some third party of dubious influence as having "started it". If you're asked why we need to highlight differences by race, you don't whine about what Jerry Coyne is doing. Nobody asked you about Jerry Coyne. I don't even know who the hell Jerry Coyne is. That deference proves that you don't have an acceptable answer besides the obvious one that one would assume immediately. You may think that "the dichotomy [of performance disparity being due to either genes or racism] is totally dominant in the elite discourse now", but not everyone is coming from wherever you are that you'd think that. Merely asserting that instead of addressing what was asked makes you look stupid.

I read Gottfredson's piece. After many junk paragraphs, she finally got to at least addressing some sort of purpose behind proving the importance and unmalleability of g (so when can dumb down certain educational processes and everyday functions to address some people's low cognitive ability), but she never touches on the important question of why intelligent blacks should be burdened with the expectation of having low IQs, an expectation that would have dire social consequences to many, just like the emphasis of other race based statistics does. What's the benefit of discussing this from a racial perspective?

brazil84: Wow, that's a really nice observation.

The "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" idea has two sides:

a. Stronger priors need stronger evidence to overcome them. (And a common unconsciously dishonest form of reasoning is to "move the goalposts" so that ever more evidence is required to prove what you don't want proven. See any creationist website for details.)

b. Evidence contradicting strongly-held beliefs will be thrown out as bogus unless it's extraordinarily strong, in the sense of coming from an unimpeachable source. (This also turns the debate over these questions into questions about the solidness of the evidence, the qualifications of the people making the statements, their political leanings, etc., which also has a tendency to back into impossibly high standards of evidence.)

Ed Jaynes had this really nice explanation at the beginning of one of his lectures on Bayesian reasoning, about how Bayesian reasoning assigns questions a single real number (a probability), whereas human reasoning assigns questions a vector of different values, corresponding to how he feels about the question, who agrees and disagrees with it and how he feels about them, etc. Politically loaded questions of fact, like gender or racial differences or human-caused global warming, tend to bring that out--the other parts of the vector dominate the computation, so that the fear of resurgent racism or global economic controls overcomes the direct questions of fact being considered.

drsnacks: Survey data is likely to tell us more than anecdote. From my circle of friends (multiracial, from many different nations of origin, highly educated), George W Bush should have lost both presidential elections by about a 4:1 margin. Yet he seems to have gotten about half the votes both times. Your circle of friends isn't likely to be representative, for the same reason.

The downside of discussing race and intelligence is big, and I think most people here underestimate how bad the downside could be. But the only way to avoid that downside appears to be a sort of widespread active suppression of evidence. The people in a position to do that aren't wise enough to do it--for evidence, go watch CNN, MSNBC, or Fox for awhile. This doesn't just involve crucifying Watson (who was pretty famously an a--hole to many people), it involves denying the usefulness of race in medicine, even to the point of this affecting research funding. It involves not discussing the large, obviously relevant IQ differences when talking about differences in school performance, even at the cost of not fixing schools that don't work well for poor blacks, even at the cost of not trying to look into interventions like increasing breastfeeding or improving nutrition to raise average IQs among blacks. It ultimately involves silencing hundreds of discussions on the net, some among people who are very familiar with the data and literature, and who have increasing access to better tools and data. How would that even be possible?

This discussion is going to happen. Suppressing it would probably not be possible, and would probably be much worse than the consequences of not having it. So we ought to have it out in the open, with people able to bring all the evidence to the discussion and talk about it openly.

Who's talking about suppressing anything? I'm just trying to, for once, get an answer to the obvious question that arises from this study.
"The IQs of blacks are on average lower than the IQs of whites"
What's your point?
We're not getting a straightforward answer.

And what survey data tells us that ethnic voters tend to prefer ethnic-based policies over individual based ones?

Jason Malloy,

So all you can say about Watson's comment regarding black employees is that "It did come off wrong" -- and then go to justify it?

Yeah, I think it came off wrong alright: it came off as the kind of utterance you'd expect from a Southern white bigot, just as I had said.

Really, you absolutely refuse to come to terms with how unscientific that remark is, don't you? Anyone who has an appreciation for how science is conducted in the social sciences and even in the health sciences understands the importance of taking into account the effect of skewed selection factors, of trying to correct for biases (whence double blind studies, etc.), and for actual quantification before making a claim (does Watson even have a quantifiable number of the employers who supposedly "know" that black employees are inferior?)

Do you have an appreciation of any of that -- I mean, any of it?

I will say that when I first heard of Watson's remarks, and how he was being treated because of them, I thought that he was being far too harshly punished.

But when I read this particular remark about black employees, I immediately realized that, on this subject, this was not a scientist speaking, but a bigot. Bigots talk the way Watson did; scientists know what real evidence is, and what legitimate conclusions are, and they tailor their statements to be precise articulations of what they can directly support.

Again, I can only wonder why you yourself would nonetheless choose to defend this particular, obviously unscientific remark.

Actually, we cannot know if there is any racial element until we have eliminated several factors. We know that prenatal and infant nutrition affects IQ. Africans and African-Americans tend to have poor nutrition, particularly during these crucial time periods. This is due to severe poverty in the first instance and culture in the second instance. The second element is psychosocial complexity, which relates, again, to culture. If we have a group that, or historical or cultural reasons have less psychosocial complexity, we would expect that group to have lower IQ tests as adults, insofar as IQ tests the ability to recognize complex patterns. This is why IQ disparities arise over time, as people get older. Thomas Sowell pointed out that African American culture developed out of Scotch-Irish culture, and that is where a lot of African-American attitudes come from. If you were to compare rural Southern whites' IQs with whites from the North, you would likely find an IQ disparity there too for the reasons of nutrition and psychosocial complexity. You cannot feed your babies soda pop and expect good results.

My wife is Mexican-American, and when we were dating, she was concerned about my meeting her family, who all lived in the Rio Grande Valley. I told her that I was from rural Kentucky, and that there was no way they were going to be more shocking to me than my family was going to be to her. When I went down and met her family, I wasn't shocked at all. Her extrended family all acted just like my extended family. When she asked me what I thought, I told her, "You know what the difference is between a Mexican and a Hillbilly? Cuisine." When I brought her to Kentucky, she saw what I meant.

So my guess is that we won't, in the end, find any racial differences in IQ -- but we will find that certain social conditions result in cultures that affect IQ positively or negatively. Social conditions that result in poor nutrition and low psychosocial complexity will result in people with lower IQs. Take those same people, give them good nutrition and a complex society where they are encouraged to develop complex thinking, and you will get higher IQs. And here we're talking about people as a group. Individuals vary in IQ, and they vary in the range they can develop into. We forget that IQ is not a static number, but that it is possible to increase one's IQ. We need to ask ourselves what conditions are most conducive to developing more complex societies and psychologies in order to give everyone an equal chance to develop mentally as much as they are capable of developing.

but she never touches on the important question of why intelligent blacks should be burdened with the expectation of having low IQs, an expectation that would have dire social consequences to many, just like the emphasis of other race based statistics does. What's the benefit of discussing this from a racial perspective?

Because when people see what appears to be a clear signal of injustice -- elevated negative social outcomes in a group which has been historically oppressed -- many want to do something about it. Should we ignore, for example, the b-w achievement gap in US schools? What if it is caused by prejudice?

But once we agree that the problem should be examined, we have to be open to plausible explanations for its root cause, however distasteful some may be. And if one explanation turns out to be group differences in cognitive ability, then by the time we get to worry about how the group will react, it's too late.

A possible way forward is to go back and attempt to discredit the research (however genuine and good intentioned much of it might have been) that led to the distasteful (but plausible and well-supported) explanation. We're seeing a lot of that. But assuming you don't like this path any better than I do, how do you put the cat back into the bag, accepting that the questions were originally phrased in racial terms for all the right reasons?

Should we ignore, for example, the b-w achievement gap in US schools?
Why shouldn't we? The b-w gap is of consequence to no one, neither a high achieving black nor a low achieving black. What difference does the existence of a b-w performance gap make to a poorly performing black individual?

Frederick Douglas said what should have been the last word on the "Neegro Question", what all of this is an extension of, way back in 1865 -

"What shall we do with the Neegro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Neegro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also.

What is so difficult about that?

Actually, we cannot know if there is any racial element until we have eliminated several factors.

And that is what a number of studies (such as studies on twins reared apart) have attempted to do.

We know that prenatal and infant nutrition affects IQ. Africans and African-Americans tend to have poor nutrition, particularly during these crucial time periods. This is due to severe poverty in the first instance and culture in the second instance. The second element is psychosocial complexity, which relates, again, to culture. If we have a group that, or historical or cultural reasons have less psychosocial complexity, we would expect that group to have lower IQ tests as adults, insofar as IQ tests the ability to recognize complex patterns. This is why IQ disparities arise over time, as people get older.

Here you have one point; namely, we should be encouraging black women to breastfeed their children. This might have some positive impact on black IQ scores. Barring this, it might be in the interest of society to invest in the development of an infant formula more similar to breast milk in composition.

Thomas Sowell pointed out that African American culture developed out of Scotch-Irish culture, and that is where a lot of African-American attitudes come from.

Thomas Sowell is a man I greatly admire, but he is wrong on this point. The Scots-Irish populations in the South were the group of Southern whites having the least contact with blacks. The Scots-Irish tend to comprise the bulk of those farmers who were too poor to own slaves. A good example of a heavily Scots-Irish region is West Virginia which has only a very small black population.

If you were to compare rural Southern whites' IQs with whites from the North, you would likely find an IQ disparity there too for the reasons of nutrition and psychosocial complexity. You cannot feed your babies soda pop and expect good results.

We may find a disparity, but that would not necessarily be the result of environment and, to the extent that it may be environmental, it may not be relevant to blacks. For example, I recall some studies suggesting that living in a rural environment may depress IQ. That would not explain the black-white IQ gap since blacks are, on average, a rather urban population.

My wife is Mexican-American, and when we were dating, she was concerned about my meeting her family, who all lived in the Rio Grande Valley. I told her that I was from rural Kentucky, and that there was no way they were going to be more shocking to me than my family was going to be to her. When I went down and met her family, I wasn't shocked at all. Her extrended family all acted just like my extended family. When she asked me what I thought, I told her, "You know what the difference is between a Mexican and a Hillbilly? Cuisine." When I brought her to Kentucky, she saw what I meant.

That is an irrelevant anecdote and if what we are getting out of Hispanic immigration is a population akin to the most impoverished southern whites, then we should halt immigration immediately.

I also meant to say in addition to above:
We don't need to put the cat back into the bag. Implicit in all of the discussion here is the idea that there HAS to be some sort of social engineering, whatever the results. We don't - our liberal free market system has long proven to be the fairest way to distribute goods and services. (Then insert the Frederik Douglas clincher quote).

Ever since DAVID HUME most intelligent people have known that facts have no policy implications until they are combined with values.A strange thing about the "Race and IQ" debate is that the values are never spelled out. This seems to be a major reason why the debate often seems to bog down in fruitless confrontations over alleged facts ,whereas the root of the dispute is really about hidden value premisses.
"The Bell Curve" gave great offense some years ago, but it was very difficult to see quite what drove MURRAY and HERRNSTEIN's agenda. Even if we grant that their account of the facts was correct , their policy prescriptions did not follow.Presumably they felt that given the facts, Affirmative Action would be immediately seen to be futile and pointless.But Matathir Mohamed did not feel this way in Malaysia.On his reading, a genetically-based inferiority of the indigenous Malay population to the Chinese would justify a policy of Affirmative discrimination against the Chinese - and it would do so on a more or less permanent basis.Similarly if Murray and Herrnstein's argument had been combined with some of Ronald Dworkin's ideas about Equalizing Resources, then it would have justified very substantial redistribution of tax benefits or subsidies into Black households.(Blacks being handicapped as producers in the market-place , would have to achieve equal dignity and respect through non-market means.)
This prompts me to wonder if it is not the case that part of the problem is that Americans get a very narrow range of value-choices- basically there are just two packages- "American liberal" and "American conservative". Given some unpalatable fact like race-differences , Americans seem to have only 2 possible thoughts -either :it should be left to the Market, or else: the State should provide.To those of us who do not live in North America, this often seems a false dichotomy. We know that the Market does very well(in this case in looking after talented individuals from minority groups), but on the other hand this should not excuse the State and Civil Society from the responsibility of trying to improve the condition of those people whom the Market leaves behind.
So here are two reasons why the North American debate about racial differences is so often fruitless :it is because values are never spelled out, and also because the menu of values is often much narrower than it need be.With this thought in mind, I heartily concur with Jason Molloy's call for more debate about values when we face up to whatever are the unpalatable facts of human inequality.(And one fears for the very existence of debate itself when established leaders like James Watson or Larry Summers are driven from office merely for expressing politically incorrect views.)
But perhaps one ought to also be asking a further deeper question: why do so many of us find these facts so difficult to contemplate in the first place? Racial inequality is not just repugnant because of association with Hitler and genocide.Long before we get to the Race Corridor leading to the Final Solution, one feels uneasy; one spontaneously wishes to write HUMAN in all those bureacratic boxes asking one to identify one's racial grouping; and one feels that even well-intentioned attempts at racial discrimination-like affirmative action for example- have something of a whiff of brimstone about them.. I suspect that the underlying problem is our commitment to certain deep metaphysical beliefs about persons and their dignity. Genetic determinism like other forms of
determinism saps our belief in free will.The worst thing about beliefs in the inequality of racial groups is that it encourages us to give up on them -that is to give up on large groups of people.If the poverty of some African countries is due to the low IQs of their principal inhabitants why bother to invest there? Why give aid? If the genetic explanation is the correct one ,maybe the only development strategy to be envisaged is to
provide for the settlement there of large numbers of Ashkenazi Jews?
These conclusions seem to be repellent in themselves.But , it is a sign of our desperation in these matters, that we have so little in the way of real policy advice that we fall back on reciting simple nostrums about "the Market" and "the State"- or we embrace a dismal self-defeating policy like affirmative action.Basically humankind cannot abide a vacuum, and if there are no good policies out there people will embrace bad ones.The real challenge is to find effective ways of helping the advancement of Africans and African-Americans.The tender-minded will find facing up to the problem of lagging black IQs hard to stomach,so will be tempted to retreat into denial or fantasy; the tough-minded will take it in their stride. But whether we are tough or tender, the problems of African and African-American poverty remain difficult and challenging. Even when we know all the relevant facts, and theory; even when we have got our values up front and sorted out; the transition to policy making is still very difficult, and many mistakes are to be expected.

More Douglas in response to the "help the poor little blacks" rationale-

-- your interference is doing him a positive injury....Let him fall if he cannot stand alone! If the Neegro cannot live by the line of eternal justice,...the fault will not be yours; it will be his who made the Neegro, and established that line for his government. Let him live or die by that. If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live...

The anecdote is relevant precsiely because it addresses the issue of psychosocial complexity. Urban blacks, rural whites, and Hispanic-Americans all tend to be at the same level of psychosocial complexity. Whether or not Sowell is right, one thing that is certain is that these three groups are all at the same psychosocial level of complexity. This does not mean that they have to remain at that level. I didn't, and my wife didn't. If we take psychosocial complexity into consideration rather than ethnicitiy, we will go a lot farther to solving many of our social problems, including problems involving education. Most urban African-American families act just like my rural Southern extended family -- the same way that highly educated, highly psychosocially complex African-American families act like my immediate family. It has nothing to do with race; it has to do with the level of psychosocial complexity any person is at.

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence": that may be much repeated, but it's surely wrong. Planck needed only the most ordinary of available evidence for his Quantum theory; I don't know that Clerk Maxwell needed any new evidence for his Field theory. Einstein needed only one boat load of astronomical observers for his Relativity theory. Crick and Watson needed only the readily available, plus the purloined X-ray pictures, for theirs. Indeed, you could say that many extraordinary claims have involved looking at ordinary evidence in an extraordinary way. Mind you, I can't see that this is relevant to an area of work where the main issue is censorship.

drsnacks,

What do you know about what ethnic voters tend to do? ... What difference does the existence of a b-w performance gap make to a poorly performing black individual?


Policies such as affirmative action have been much more popular among minority voters and sympathetic whites, than whites in general.

More broadly I was thinking of details such as Amy Chua's World on Fire, where ethnic groups the world over tend to see the underperformance of their ethnic group as an extremely important political issue over and above the individual differences.

In my interview I stressed that American whites should be more sympathetic to minority viewpoints on this issue, whatever they may be; especially RE: genetic data. (or at least there should be a greater cross-racial dialog)



frankly0,

Really, you absolutely refuse to come to terms with how unscientific that remark is, don't you?

Yes I do, I just provided citations showing he was entirely correct. Instead of engaging the data or arguments of other posters dealing with the related speech dimension of the issue, you just repeat yourself like a broken record. Your subjective response to Watson's comments has been noted, so to further the discussion do not respond until you have additional points, data, or engage arguments.


Dr. Troy Camplin,

Actually, we cannot know if there is any racial element until we have eliminated several factors.

There is already data speaking to all the issues you raise. The vertically transmitted issues of culture in particular are handled fairly cleanly by adoption studies. See the linked Watson post.

Re: Douglas quotes etc. A long-standing hypothesis has been that white oppression has led to black underperformance. If this were true, then social re-engineering would seem appropriate. Namely, one should stop white oppression, weed out racism, and so on. This is part of how Douglas's goal ('leave us alone') is achieved. I fail to see why, if negative outcomes are a result of the majority oppressing a minority, this should not be exposed and stopped.

What difference does the existence of a b-w performance gap make to a poorly performing black individual?

Wrong question, and besides, it depends.

On the one hand, one might ask what difference studies of myopia make to a myopic kid. If the answer was that close reading makes you nearsighted, well, bring on the reading glasses. But while close reading does make a small difference, by far the major influence is heredity, so I'll go snuggle up with my Harry Potter and occasionally curl my lip at my parents. If I had known ahead of time that it was mostly genes, maybe I would have preferred not to know -- but it's too late after you do the study.

On the other hand, one might ask what difference studies of the effects of drugs on prenatal development makes to a crack baby. Very little, and that has absolutely no bearing on the value of researching, and widely publicizing, the effects of drugs on prenatal development.

Is the IQ gap more like myopia or crack babies? Mostly genes or mostly environment (breastfeeding, malnutrition, racism, etc.)? I would feel morally compelled to do the study to find out, given what's at stake, and given the possibility that an easy fix -- even a hard fix! -- could be found.

our liberal free market system has long proven to be the fairest way to distribute goods and services.

Um. What the free market does to underperformers is well-established. Asking low-performing groups to just accept their (much smaller) lot, and shutting down inquiries into root causes for inequality, is not a morally or intellectually defensible strategy in my book.

Adoption studies don't necessarily account for such differences. For one, there is still the issue of neonatal and infant nutrition. Adoption certainly can't account for neonatal nutrition. In fact, it seems to me that someone who intended to give up a child for adoption may be even less concerned about proper nutrition. Improper nutrition during fetal and infant development has a huge impact on IQ. This would explain at least some level of IQ difference. This is aside from the fact that we don't always know why someone may be giving up a child for adoption. Is it possible that one reason to give up a child for adoption is a deep recognition of low IQ? Many mammals kill offspring they recognize as genetically inferior -- perhaps humans do it to, only we give our children away nowadays rather than expose them. This isn't to say that all children given up for adoption fit this model, but what if even 10% were? Wouldn't that create a drag on IQ scores?

Further, just because one is raised in a complex environment doesnt mean that you will develop to your family's psychosocial complexity. Children are raised no just by their parents, but by friends and schools and society. If an adopted child ends up hanging around with people who look like him but are at a lower level of psychosocial complexity, he would develop to their rather than their parents' level. Steven Pinker points out that peers have a huge impact on how people develop psychologically.

Adoption studies don't necessarily account for such differences. For one, there is still the issue of neonatal and infant nutrition. Adoption certainly can't account for neonatal nutrition.

I don't know if any have done so, but one could start to tease out b-w differences using biracial children divided into two groups: one group with white mothers and black fathers, and the other group the other way.

If children of the white mother group have higher IQ, differences in prenatal environment (though possibly genetic)and nutrition, is a plausible hypothesis for a portion of the black-white gap.

Malloy
Policies such as affirmative action have been much more popular among minority voters and sympathetic whites, than whites in general.

What purpose did you think merely re-asserting the very thing I questioned you on in the first place would serve? And your laughable rhetorical trick of divorcing "sympathetic whites" from "whites in general" is notable as evidence of your lack of veracity about this topic.

[drsnacks, I have no idea why such an innocuous comment offended you, and I really don't care to try and figure it out.

Your role on these comment boards hasn't been one of exchanging data or considered perspectives, but one of empty, sour kvetching and personal attacks. I certainly can't expect you to grow any more articulate, introspective, or polite than what you have demonstrated. You are not welcome here anymore. - Jason]

Adoption studies don't necessarily account for such differences. For one, there is still the issue of neonatal and infant nutrition. Adoption certainly can't account for neonatal nutrition. In fact, it seems to me that someone who intended to give up a child for adoption may be even less concerned about proper nutrition. Improper nutrition during fetal and infant development has a huge impact on IQ. This would explain at least some level of IQ difference.

How do you explain that black students from the highest income bracket have lower scores, on average, than white students in the lowest income bracket? Do you believe that the children of upper-class blacks have worse nutrition, on average, than the children of lower-class whites? Do you have any evidence that upper class blacks in this country suffer severe nutritional deficiencies relative to lower-class whites?

This is aside from the fact that we don't always know why someone may be giving up a child for adoption. Is it possible that one reason to give up a child for adoption is a deep recognition of low IQ?

Oh, please. There's no evidence at all that people place children for adoption because they suspect their children are genetically inferior. (How would you even guess your infant's IQ?) People give children up for adoption because they don't feel prepared to parent and don't want to have an abortion.

You're really, really reaching here in an attempt to avoid the only sensible explanation for why the b-w IQ gap should persist in cases of transracial adoption.

Adoption studies don't necessarily account for such differences

I'm referring to the broader literature. Including the broader adoption and nutrition, etc literature which applies to your comment.

For one, there is still the issue of neonatal and infant nutrition. Adoption certainly can't account for neonatal nutrition.

We have data on the effect prenatal and neonatal nutrition has on IQ. It does not support that there are large effects (e.g. the Dutch Famine Study). And, as I already argued in the other thread, these kinds of explanations are just poverty by proxy, but the gap gets larger at higher socioeconomic levels. Severely malnourished Asians adopted out of or living in poverty have appreciably higher IQ scores than middle class blacks.


Is it possible that one reason to give up a child for adoption is a deep recognition of low IQ?

This is tested by comparing the IQ scores of adopted away children with their biological parents. The correlations are scarcely lower than those of children being raised by their biological parents.


Children are raised no just by their parents, but by friends and schools and society. If an adopted child ends up hanging around with people who look like him but are at a lower level of psychosocial complexity

I dealt with this in the other thread as well. These variables do not have much of an effect on IQ, and transracial adoptees take mostly white friends.

What's a fairer system [than one in which people are left to their lots and group outcomes are not studied or reported]?

Among othersa system where free markets are supplemented with inquiry into causes of disparity, so that all parties may use that information accordingly. Free markets love information, particularly accurate information. (And in most cases, how individuals feel about that information is quite irrelevant.) Not sure which kind of free market you're thinking of.

Why the insistence on [assigning people to groups]?

Because prejudice -- long thought to be a cause of this whole business -- is virtually always against individuals because of their group membership. People create groups; one cannot uncreate them, or even undercut their legitimacy as predictive fuzzy sets, by not studying them.

"What's the benefit of discussing this from a racial perspective?"

Because people in America will not talk about innate differences in IQ unless the issue of race is addressed. Back in '94, Murray and Herntsein tried to broach the subject of innate individual differences in IQ in The Bell Curve (a book that is not about race; most of the evidence in the book on the social importance of IQ was from white populations, such as Denmark and the Longitudinal Survey). Upon publication of the book, people immediately seized on a few equivocal statements on race from Chapter Thirteen (~"the evidence is not yet in") and and refused to talk about anything else.

It's a package deal. In America, you either talk about IQ in the context of race, or you don't talk about it at all. It is for this reason that advances in genetics are more likely to take place in locations, such as Korea or Japan (and China in few decades) where this race-taboo-fixation does not exist. And blacks will be left even farther behind as a result.

"Adoption studies don't necessarily account for such differences. For one, there is still the issue of neonatal and infant nutrition. Adoption certainly can't account for neonatal nutrition"

One can, however, compare identical twins with fraternal twins. The comparison reveals a pattern of heritability behind IQ (identicals are more concordant than fraternals).

Steve Sailer provides an excellent example of why we must start honestly discussing this issue:

Every time state schools chief Jack O'Connell thought he was doing something to close the achievement gap, a new round of test scores showed that black and Latino students had gained no ground on their white and Asian American peers.

Like many educators, O'Connell assumed the culprit was poverty. Then he noticed an even wider ethnic disparity among students who were not poor.

The realization was a jolt: Being black or Latino - not poor - was what the low-scorers had in common. And it changed everything.

O'Connell now believes that widespread cultural ignorance within the California school system is responsible for the poor academic performance of many black and Latino students in school.

He offered the example of black children who learn at church that it's good to clap, speak loudly and be a bit raucous. But doing the same thing at school, where 72 percent of teachers are white and may be unfamiliar with such customs, will get them in trouble, he said.

The achievement gap is "absolutely, positively not genetic," O'Connell said. "All kids can learn. I'm saying it's racial."

Even though I'm an atheist, I'm tempted to exclaim "God help us!"

Do we (people. majority of people?) subscribe to "coming from an ape"? I.e. product of Evolution of species or there is no general, absolute, fundamentally significant similarity between Homo Sapiens and say apes? (Why we then use or torture lab animals to see how new drug of makeup cream might work on us?)

Obviously, as soon as we leave religious dogma, we know or sense all to well that our cells etc. work very much like the other advanced creatures.

My question for anyone, not only oh-so-sensitive (say on the left, but the right, which shoots US chances in getting better economy by blocking stem cell research - even when Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II opening the Parliament specifically stated "My Goverment will pursue stem cell research") is this, following a rather simple, virtually "dowen on the farm" analaogy:

Say we have 2 horses there. One a Budweisser type, another Arabian racing horse. Say that for whatever reason (owners preferences, no beer industry thus no need for Bud horse, more glamor in horse racing, whatever ...) the owner or our two horses think that it is good, desirable, God-given right, economical, fun, whatever ... to be a racing horse.

DNA and scinetist, and PC corner, including academia etc. tell us that both horses have "99% identical DNA" so that they have same abilities to suceed in .... race of life.

To say that Budweisser heavy has practically no fighting chance on a race track - even when we give him an extra good feed, extra care, extra training, whtever is ... probably reasonable, not conmtraversial statement to make (unless you are not that horse or his owner).

Is it racist, prejudiced, discriminatory statement?

Or how many times more in better feed, training, care, etc. we feel justified to invest in that Budweisser horse to preserve in his mind (and our minds) illusion that one day he will run on the race track (and even more: to have a chance to compete competitively).

Please, as we are part of nature, etc. what makes us belive that it is justified to spend so much more on the Budweiser horse to feed his (or someone) illusions?

It is not unlike our healtcare: 50% of $$$ spent on last 6 months of person's life, while pregnant mothers, kids and middle age people have no money for basic, preventive, urgent care which brings to them (and society) real, manifiold returns (then questionable extension of life at any cost of those who are departing this world).

Im Asian and I am really sick of these talk. Can you guys go back to the subject of porn, pretty please?

Anna (11.12. at 4:05 pm) What - if possible specific - in any argument or statement makes you "really sick"? And why you suggest to "go back to the subject of porn, pretty"?

Thanks and ... keep faith. Adia rules and its acient cultures will own the 3rd millenium. So, extra reason not to feel "really sick".

Why we NEED stereotypes.

Stereotypes are not only good, but very natural, necessary. Especially in a complex world we increasingly finfd ouselves to live in.

Just yeatrday, at one very top Ivy League school I gently suggested to member of academia that say "Harvard" name is door, career, opportunity opener, especiallly outside of elite college environment (i.e. 95% of US).

Somehone who wants to hire someone (or OK his dayughter's new boyfriend) has no time or tools to come to conclusion that BS in Oklahoma Satte is really, realy the same (for the job opening or potential life partner) as BS from Harvard. Therefore, in many instances, it makes (economic, whatever) sense to invest (sweat, $$$ etc.) to get BS ... from Harvard.

Is is racism? Prejudice? Stereotype to resolutely disaprove? Obviously not.

To survive, to be able to make decisions, people need to use GENERALIZED experinece.

"My wife is Mexican-American, and when we were dating, she was concerned about my meeting her family, who all lived in the Rio Grande Valley. I told her that I was from rural Kentucky...

So my guess is that we won't, in the end, find any racial differences in IQ -- but we will find that certain social conditions result in cultures that affect IQ positively or negatively..."

Just me or has the entire egalitarian ideal become incapable of expressing itself without platitudinous anecdote and faith-based "guesses."

This is aside from the fact that we don't always know why someone may be giving up a child for adoption. Is it possible that one reason to give up a child for adoption is a deep recognition of low IQ? Many mammals kill offspring they recognize as genetically inferior -- perhaps humans do it to, only we give our children away nowadays rather than expose them. This isn't to say that all children given up for adoption fit this model, but what if even 10% were? Wouldn't that create a drag on IQ scores?

An examination of children randomly assigned to families would control for selection bias. Bruce Sacerdote reports some of the findings in his paper "What happens when we randomly assign children to families?"

I use a new data set of Korean-American adoptees who, as infants, were randomly assigned to families in the U.S. I examine the treatment effects from being assigned to a high income family, a high education family or a family with four or more children. I calculate the transmission of income, education and health characteristics from adoptive parents to adoptees. I then compare these coefficients of transmission to the analogous coefficients for biological children in the same families, and to children raised by their biological parents in other data sets. Having a college educated mother increases an adoptee's probability of graduating from college by 7 percentage points, but raises a biological child's probability of graduating from college by 26 percentage points. In contrast, transmission of drinking and smoking behavior from parents to children is as strong for adoptees as for non-adoptees. For height, obesity, and income, transmission coefficients are significantly higher for non-adoptees than for adoptees. In this sample, sibling gender composition does not appear to affect adoptee outcomes nor does the mix of adoptee siblings versus biological siblings.

Income is an activated trait transfered like height and weight, and unlike smoking and drinking. Sacerdote does not mention IQ in the paper, but the data set could be reworked with SAT scores instead of income (which is positively related to SAT scores).

"Steven Pinker points out that peers have a huge impact on how people develop psychologically"

Children select their friends from a variety of subgenres. Unless we posit that children actively seek out people that make them uncomfortable, this would tend to amplify rather than diminish the heritability.

"Even though I'm an atheist, I'm tempted to exclaim "God help us!"

What was Jensen's famous phrase? Paroxysms of denial?

STEREOTYPES suggest PROBNABILITY.

To make incerasing number of decisions (and modern life calls on making nany times more decisions then when we lived in a cave or an isolated farm in middle of nowhere, when "life was simple" ... and short) we rely on GENERALIZED knowledge and experience, which give us better decision making tools, relying to a great degree on PROBABILITY.

It is true (and useful) in every area of our lives (where we do not want to make foolish, expesive, undesirable mistakes).

Is is "PREJUDICE" or (not PC) "STEREOTYPE" when a boy meets a girl and she tell him that she is a CLEANER as compared to say a PHYSICIAN? Is he "racist", "prejudiced" "stereotypical" in not to be that excided with her being a "cleaner" as compared to "physician"? Or is his WISE, REASONBLE first ereaction? (not always we have enough chances, time, opportunities to probe further).

What is statistical probability, that she is a CLEANER, but actually and owner of a multimillion cleaning COMPANY (who BTW makes much more than a rarely unlucky physician with HMO on PT job who makes only $60K a year, another oddity whereas average doc makes say $180K)?

Chance that a cleaner makes similar $$$ as a physician is, as well all know all tolo well, rather slim, highly improbable. So "stereotype" and "prejudice", here conmcerning of suitability as a life partner based on his/her occupation makes sense. It is not racism, prejudice, etc.

And so it goes (with way one dresses, talks, habits, hobbies, where laast vacation, house one lives in etc.).

And DNA will tell us, I am sure, not only about IQ probability but probability of cancer, etc. etc.

Concerning DNA-indicated probability of some nasty ilnesses: maybe that what it will take to push our country into UNIVERSAL health care system, as (naturally) profit seeking private insurers an providers cannot be asked to expose their shareholders to KNOWN (or probably very likely) risk of underwritinbg someone with uneconomically high risk of expensive disease.

DNA and genetics are DOUBLE EDGE sword: good characteristics are blessing, free ride (say talent for academic or athletic overachievement), not so good are curse (or expensive): when it comes to "cancer runs in family" etc. How, why and at what cost we want to attemt ro "rectify" these deeply encoded probabilities (thus talents, lack of talents etc.) and why it is fair, justifiable to thow resources on probable underachiver, say train a white kids to be a basketbakll star, when fraction of resources will make an inner city kid more likely a star instead?

Contrary to widely held views that parents play a strong role in whether their children do well academically, Singleton believes the schools, not parents, are the biggest influence.

"If we were to say that black or brown kids don't perform as well because of their parents, we're saying black and brown parents aren't as effective as white parents," Singleton told The Chronicle. "That's pretty much a racist statement."

Wow. In order to preserve his belief in complete human equality, this man is denying that parental behavior is the single biggest influence on the scholastic performance of children.

That's... that's utterly remarkable.

well, it's happened here. Put Dr. or dr in front of a handle and you can expect something...well, interesting.
What makes you think that people who put babies up for adoption make a point of living on crack, pepsi and big macs? That's actually the diet of a great many more people who keep their offspring.
There have been countless famines and deprivations throughout the world--China and Korea to name two examples, but the effect has not been to give the victims' descendents low IQs that imbed in the genes and last for generations.
Those getting upset about the probability of stereotypes have a point. I have my own stereotypes to worry about so I know how that can be; but I'd rather that be the case than get blamed for some stranger's failures. I got problems of my own.
People who are scared by the truth are like little kids covering their eyes and thinking nobody sees 'em.

In order to preserve his belief in complete human equality, this man is denying that parental behavior is the single biggest influence on the scholastic performance of children.

No. We know from adoption studies (which control for genes) that parents do not have an influence on scholastic performance. As my Watson post indicated, ethnicity is the single biggest predictor of school performance. And this is apparently if the children are transracially adopted or not.

Singleton believes the schools, not parents, are the biggest influence.

No, the entire difference is there before children even start preschool. When it isn't, it closes rapidly, and it isn't affected reliably by any sort of measured or theorized school variables.

So my guess is that we won't, in the end, find any racial differences in IQ -- but we will find that certain social conditions result in cultures that affect IQ positively or negatively...


No, no. You have that all wrong.

Certain IQ ranges result in certain social conditions, and IQ is highly heritable. The arrow of causality is from IQ to culture, and we can see it in pretty much most societies, since they contain roughly three broad sub-cultures.

How about these statements (and I mean them quite seriously. This is *not* sarcasm):

"We like to think that scientists are responsible persons who understand the implications of what they say and how they say it, but anyone who listens to them knows this isn't true".

or

"The frequent inability of scientists to understand or sympathize with the reactions to their work is the result of deficit on their part, likely attributable to the mild autism common amongst people with technical ability".

Jason Malloy,

Your response to me was entirely irrelevant to the points I was raising; you simply refused to engage the issues, and pretended that your "citations" somehow refuted them.

Really, do you have any scientific training, I mean any?

Does it not occur to you that there's a reason that, say, you will never see Jensen uttering the kind of "observation" that Watson made? I'll tell you why he won't: he knows that no self respecting scientist on the subject in question would every make such a crude, absurdly unqualified and unquantified remark.

No. We know from adoption studies (which control for genes) that parents do not have an influence on scholastic performance. As my Watson post indicated, ethnicity is the single biggest predictor of school performance. And this is apparently if the children are transracially adopted or not.

I think Caledonian is just amazed that anyone who holds a 100% environmental view of intelligence would resort to labeling claims of parental influence on academic achievement as "racist." I have to agree that is pretty nutty.

frankly0,

you simply refused to engage the issues, and pretended that your "citations" somehow refuted them.

What are "the issues"? My citations reveal that, because of the intelligence gap, there is an appreciable gap in the average job performance of white and black employees, of a size that any sort of discerning employer would recognize. That is relevant, because it bounds the relative reasonableness of the observation. If a highschool teacher makes a remark that any teacher who spends time with students realizes there is an obvious inequality in height between males and female students, we know that is reasonable, because the large size of the gap means it can be realized quite easily through human observation. On the other hand, a teacher who says the exact same thing about, say, male and female happiness, we know, is obviously being incredibly speculative, because the gaps are so much harder to detect and verify.

More importantly, I strongly disagree with you that scientists cannot make untrained social science observations or hypotheses of any sort in public. I disagree they should be punished for this alone. And to the extent I do believe they should be punished, it should be based completely on the relative merit, genuineness, and truth of their claims. (with a quite liberal grey area for "acceptable" intellectual discourse, roughly matching the relative uncertainly and diversity of the scientific literature)

If a scientist uses a false, pseudoscientific, or clearly misleading claim in order to further an ideological agenda or intentionally cause harm, such as the "Intelligent Design" cranks or the many, many scientists and public figures who attacked Watson with their lies, they should be humiliated and criticized by their peers for poisoning the public forum and damaging the reputation of science.

Scientists like Watson, on the other hand, who air perfectly reasonable (but socially taboo) viewpoints in interviews, without, what?, telling the reporter to include graphs and append a three page bibliography at the end of the article, should not be punished or criticized by their peers.

This fosters a more open and fair intellectual environment where bad ideas can be evaluated and discarded more readily, not less.

Well, BJ, nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever accused me of being an egalitarian before. I spend a great deal of time on my own blog criticizing egalitarianist views.

That being said, you will note that much of my last postings consisted of questions. I did not know if these factors had been addressed, and I was raising them because they are factors that should be addressed. Jason has pointed out to what extents these questions have been addressed by the research. I try to raise as many questions as possible because I am never comfortable with settling on any explanation that has not been thoroughly investigated from as many perspectives as legitimately possible. Too many people like to settle in with their pet theories without considering as much evidence as possible, but I won't do that. It reduces bias -- though of course one can never eliminate it. And I do admit that I would prefer to eliminate every other explanation of IQ differences before I would accept race as an explanation. Behavior is about 50% genetic and 50% environment, so before I agree to a genetic explanation, I want to eliminate any and all environmental factors. In fact, if we want to understand what genetic elements there are to any behavior, we need to first learn what the envirnomental factors are, and also learn how environment interacts with gene expression, etc. It does not make me an egalitarian just because I refuse to accept an explanation before I have all the data in.

Now, to return to environmental factors, is it possible that vitamin D deficiency could explain IQ differences? I think the suggested experiment with biracial children would be a good way of testing for this. Also, nobody has really addressed the issue of psychosocial complexity -- I am particularly interested in the model developed by Claire Graves, especially as developed by his students Don Beck and Christopher Cowen in "Spiral Dynamics."

Jason Malloy-

It's really pretty weird that you think Watson's comment about black employees is "reasonable". Whether or not you can back up a version of the claim is beside the point.

Of course he has a free speech right to say it- but we are under no obligation whatsoever to pretend that it's an acceptable way to talk about difficult social issues in a society that is made up of real live human beings.

It matters very much how you say things, how you spin them. It also matters who you are (a Nobel laureate that people will take seriously, for example).

Don't like it? Too bad. It's the nature of the human race. If you want to play the game and be relevant, you can't do the whole "I'm right and you're wrong so shut up and listen to me!" thing here.The whole wide world is not a graduate seminar, nor should it be.

Yes, we need a frank discussion of genetics and the issues the NY Times article brings up. But defending Watson's comment about black employees is a fine example of how NOT to talk about it. Your perverse defense of the comment is really, truly baffling. Is it your goal to not be taken seriously?

The problem with tests is that you have to take them to get any results. My tested IQ has varied 20 points at different times in my life. Is there technology on the horizon that can measure brain waves or frequencies (I am not a scientist and don't have the vocabulary) and tell something about the quality and quantity of mental activity? I think that's the only way this argument will be settled once and for all.

Now, to return to environmental factors, is it possible that vitamin D deficiency could explain IQ differences? I think the suggested experiment with biracial children would be a good way of testing for this.

Sigh. People insist on only looking at the picture in the US.

In the parts of Africa inhabited by blacks, vitamin D deficiency is not an issue, nor is it in the northern parts of Australia or places like Indonesia.

In the parts of Africa inhabited by blacks, vitamin D deficiency is not an issue, nor is it in the northern parts of Australia or places like Indonesia.

*sigh* are you saying that there aren't other sorts of nutrient deficiencies in africa? even richard lynn assumes there are problems with micronutrients. strawmen abound on all sides it seems.

*sigh* are you saying that there aren't other sorts of nutrient deficiencies in africa? even richard lynn assumes there are problems with micronutrients.


If course there are other nutrient deficiencies that are possible in Africa, just are there are in other places.

However, to latch onto nutrient deficiencies as the panacea seems like grasping at straws.

Moreover, the US has done lots to try eliminate nutrient deficiencies, but there is still good evidence that high SES blacks still get lower test scores that poor whites in some cases.

*sigh* are you saying that there aren't other sorts of nutrient deficiencies in africa? even richard lynn assumes there are problems with micronutrients. strawmen abound on all sides it seems.

Moreover, dark-skinned southern Chinese (广州）have skin colors indistinguishable from Indonesians and Malays and live in the same areas (in Malaysia and Indonesia), yet there are clear differences in IQ.

Jason, I have to agree on this narrow point about Watson's statement. His exact statement ('...His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true"'), however justifiable in the abstract, is just awful in the specific. He's a public figure, and he's got to get the phrasing right. If he had said, "...people who study job performance find this is not true" he would have been perfectly justified. That may have been what he meant. That's not what he said.

I'm perfectly aware that sometimes one feels compelled to defend absolutely everything because the ninny who lands a papercut might be perceived, by onlookers, as having landed a death-blow. But we're deep enough in here that the Watson remark on black employees should be recognized for what it is -- a genuinely ill-considered statement in the middle of a series of bang-on, well-defended observations on controversial subjects. And an ill-considered statement that merited nothing like the response that followed.

Saudi Arabia has a higher GDP than China and almost certainly a lot more sunlight. The average Saudi also has a far lower IQ than the average Chinese person.

And Muggsy Bogues (5'3") played in the NBA.

And because this comment page may get more lay traffic than usual, I'll add, with an almost-straight face, "So height has nothing to with basketball proficiency." Finally, I'll ask what the point of the Saudi observation was.

And because this comment page may get more lay traffic than usual, I'll add, with an almost-straight face, "So height has nothing to with basketball proficiency." Finally, I'll ask what the point of the Saudi observation was.

The point is that the average Saudi is almost certainly less deficient in Vitamin D and other nutrients than the average Chinese person and yet the Chinese are still smarter.

o.p. and omnivore,

Like I said, I do believe the employee comment came off wrong, and I am hardly saying it was a smart thing to say, or that it sounded very nice. Other than that I think my objections to it basically comes down to superficial wording, which I have a hard time seeing much significance in in the overall context of this whole controversy and its outcomes.

I don't for instance, agree that it was wrong because it was anecdotal. For instance:

"...His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that "employers and educators readily observe there is a significant difference, on average, in the performance between blacks and whites"

Is saying the same thing in a way I find basically agreeable, sans only the offensive emotional language of "have to deal with". (I really do think that was a shitty way to put it)

I also realize from being interviewed, that people thinking on their feet almost inevitably say things in clumsy or unclear ways, and if you want to talk about group differences at all, it is inevitable that things will sometimes come out wrong. Especially because the unpopularity of the ideas means pretty much every phrasing will be found at fault or emphasized in a negative way by unsympathetic parties. (not that Hunt-Grubbe was anti-Watson)

For instance, I have found that in many online arguments I can very cumbersomely add "on average" 403 times in the same argument over group differences, but if I leave it out the 404th time, I'll get called on it, no matter how obviously it was implied by the context in 403 other comments!

Importantly, Watson's questionably phrased comments were immediately appended with assurances that he was talking about averages and that he did not support discrimination. It's petty to be overly concerned with the comment (i.e. "he deserved what he got"), and disingenuous to imply it played a large role in what transpired.

Jason -- Glad we agree on his phrasing; that's all that bugged me, and apparently we agree on everything else.

We all do need to learn how to talk about this issue. I am able to do so with close friends (fellow academics), but even with them, say the word "race" and you can practically the hives breaking out. "IQ" is almost as bad. Saying correct things is not good enough right now; saying correct things correctly is the standard, and will be for some time. I think it's fair to be hard on people for not being above reproach on word choice.

On a not-unrelated topic, listening to Rushton get drawn into a discussion on penis size by the NPR interviewer on the second question was beyond painful. I had to turn it off. Who coaches these people?

tommy -- hehe, gotcha.

I guess the scientific paper I read about the fact that those with darker skin make less vitamin D and it is well established that vitamin D affects development, which could affect IQ isn't a legitimate source. **sigh** You cannot seriously be claiming that Asians from south China are anywhere near as dark as Africans.

What do we make of the fact that in India the lower you are caste-wise, the darker you tend to be, and the lower you are caste-wise, the less intelligent you are consider to be (at least in India)? If it is true, that the lower castes are less intelligent than those in the higher castes, that could come from 1) prejudical treatment, and 2) environment (including the aforementioned vintamin D deficiency), since racially they are all Indians.

But let me continue with my apparently uncomfrotable questions. Why do you suppose it is that historically every race has shown preferential treatment toward those with lighter skin? This happens in Africans, where lighter-skinned children are given preferential treatment ove darker-skinned children. Claude Mckay talks about this issue in his novel "Banana Bottom" as it pertains to Jamaica. As mentioned, the Indians tend to do this. The Chinese also do this in China with lighter-skinned Chinese. Why do you suppose people tend to do this the world over, in various cultures, regardless of race?

I guess the scientific paper I read about the fact that those with darker skin make less vitamin D and it is well established that vitamin D affects development, which could affect IQ isn't a legitimate source. **sigh** You cannot seriously be claiming that Asians from south China are anywhere near as dark as Africans.

Maybe not, but I would certainly claim that Saudis are typically darker than your average Chinese person - and better nourished to boot.

but even with them, say the word "race" and you can practically the hives breaking out. "IQ" is almost as bad.

Yeah, when discussing the subject, I try to remove as many nonessential obstacles to understanding as possible. To that end, I tend to use "cognitive ability testing" or even "cognitive testing" instead of "IQ", and "ethnicity" etc. instead of "race".

I find a little linguistic strategizing goes a long way, and people appreciate that politeness.

Tell me this is not interesting (courtesy of Dienekes):

http://www.ehbonline.org/article...000736/ abstract

Is there technology on the horizon that can measure brain waves or frequencies (I am not a scientist and don't have the vocabulary) and tell something about the quality and quantity of mental activity?

Arthur Jensen has been investigating physiological correlates of IQ, such as Inspection Time.

Inspection time correlates around —.5 with IQ (Kranzler & Jensen, 1989)

Source Secondary
Source Primary



Other researchers have been looking at anatomical correlates in the brain:

Genes have a very strong influence over how certain parts of our brains develop, scientists in the US and Finland have found. And the parts most influenced are those that govern our cognitive ability. In short, you inherit your IQ.

Paul Thompson at the University of California at Los Angeles and his colleagues used MRI to scan the brains of 10 pairs of identical and 10 pairs of fraternal twins. Identical twins have identical genes, whereas fraternal twins sharing on average half their genes. The twins shared environments, means researchers can separate genetic and environmental factors.

The researchers found that certain regions of the brain were highly heritable. These included language areas, known as Broca's and Wernicke's areas, and the frontal region, which, among other things, plays a huge role in cognition.

In identical twins, these areas showed a 95 to 100 per cent correlation between one twin and the other - they were essentially the same. The frontal structure, says Thompson, appears to be as highly influenced by genes as the most highly influenced trait we know of - fingerprints.

"It's extraordinary how similar they are," he says. The finding suggests that environment - their own personal experiences, what they learned in life, who they knew - played a negligible role in shaping it.

Fraternal twins were near-identical in Wernicke's area, showing about 60 to 70 per cent correlation, but were less similar in other areas, . Random pairs of people would be expected to have no correlation.

Source

That being said, you will note that much of my last postings consisted of questions. I did not know if these factors had been addressed, and I was raising them because they are factors that should be addressed.

Questions of this sort -- and many, many more -- are addressed at considerable length (with references) in Arthur Jensen's "The g Factor" and "Bias in Mental Testing".

Also, nobody has really addressed the issue of psychosocial complexity -- I am particularly interested in the model developed by Claire Graves, especially as developed by his students Don Beck and Christopher Cowen in "Spiral Dynamics."

Tell you what, if you commit to reading Jensen's "The g Factor" then I will commit to reading Beck and Cowen's "Spiral Dynamics".

Deal?

Watson should sue his former employers. He was only stating what is common knowledge. A good public trial would have the same effect on public opinion as the "monkey trial" a century ago.

This wont reach a trial. It will get thrown out on pre-trial motions by the employer.

Tommy, the average Saudi is as poor as the average Chinese person. Don't let the royals you see on TV fool you.

Mark, you have a deal.

Dr. Troy: Is this really true that everyone everywhere has preferred light skin to dark skin? I'm no historian, but I don't think the Romans thought all that much of the ligher-skinned Britons or German barbarians when they met them. Was there a skin color hierarchy of this kind before the Europeans had a significant presence in Africa? Or among the pre-contact American Indians, Australians, Maori, etc.?

My amateur take on it is that genetic differences in nutritional needs and disease resistance are plausible explanations for some or all of the IQ difference. Blacks are also somewhat less healthy generally than whites in the US, I think, even controlling for income, and that's consistent with a single cause for ill health and lower IQs. Encouraging open discussion and research on this sort of thing is one reason to want to not have the black/white IQ difference be taboo to bring up.

"Related to this, whatever our group, abilities, or inferences about our abilities, we deserve the same social and civil rights, level of individual respect, and rights before the law and from others."

I certainly agree with this as far as dealing with individuals.

But if our immigrants as a group are less intelligent than the average citizen then the US should consider taking steps to correct that. For example we might require a HS or college degree, or the ability to speak English well. Or to get score above, say, 100 on an IQ test.

On another line of thought, the myth of group equality has led to a focus on raising group average instead of ensuring each individual gets the best and most appropriate teaching.

For example, I expect that tracking is taboo even in all-black schools. Almost all teaching is to the test.

If it were otherwise, the 16% of black children who test above an IQ of 100 could be given relatively enriched programs in school.

For those wondering about how different cultures treated lighter skin, Peter Frost has written extensively on this.

Yes, it seems to be universal, within the racial group. Hatred of other races is another issue.

But if our immigrants as a group are less intelligent than the average citizen then the US should consider taking steps to correct that. For example we might require a HS or college degree, or the ability to speak English well. Or to get score above, say, 100 on an IQ test.

This is something that needs to be brought up every time someone asks, "Well, let's say there are differences in IQ among the races. So what? What policies will this effect?"

Even high-IQ individuals from low-IQ populations will have children that regress to their population's mean. Importing large numbers of low-IQ immigrants, as the U.S. is doing, is clearly foolhardy. But even the more stringent policies of some other countries could prove to have a negative effect in the long run, assuming that their accomplished immigrants are coming from groups with low IQs.

My amateur take on it is that genetic differences in nutritional needs and disease resistance are plausible explanations for some or all of the IQ difference.

What evidence is there that blacks and whites have different nutritional needs? And if the races can differ in what nutrition they need to achieve their genotypic possible IQ, why can't they also differ in their genotypic IQs?

Marc: "Even high-IQ individuals from low-IQ populations will have children that regress to their population's mean."

I believe children regress to their "breeding" population mean. The mean IQ of the Brahmin caste is high. The children of South Asian immigrants in the US seem to be doing well. Assortative mating that leads to class stratification might also segregate the breeding populations of a nation.

anyone that talks about regression to the mean should be forced to read falconer. seriously. the understanding of regression to the mean is about at the level of ju-ju magic for most people.

Razib:

What in particular should be read by Falconer? The subject is of particular concern for me, since I'm from a middling-low IQ population.

I have been an enthusiastic lurker for quite a while. I feel compelled to comment for the first time on this thread. The reason? I am surprised by the reluctance of the hard core hbd-ers (a set of which I count myself a member) to confront the policy implications of this hbd research head on.

I suspect the cause is the very dogma that has shackled so many of us for so long. Gramsci's march through the institutions may have been more complete than even the enlightened realize.

As a founder of two publicly traded mid-cap companies, I can tell you that individual attribution of group characteristics is a great filter for organizations operating at scale. Particularly for hiring and resource allocation decisions.

At scale, we don't have the resources to pay special attention to seeming outliers, nor would we want to even if we did. Easily applied prediction functions are necessary to remain nimble while large. We usually channel Asians to highly technical, detail oriented roles that require strong organizational skills. Whites are typically channeled to management positions or creative functions. Af-Ams are only considered through personal reference, seemingly impressive pedigrees notwithstanding.

Now of course, the actual distribution is not as stark but those are our typical policy directives. We also routinely deny internal requests from employees to change roles to unsuited areas even if they can offer evidence of some accomplishment in the specific area in which they desire to relocate. It seemed harsh at first and some questioned these practices initially but it has worked out for the best over the past 7 years, despite some scattered employee churn cost. Why?

Because when you're operating at scale, you have to make decisions based on averages. Plan for the long term.

What in particular should be read by Falconer? The subject is of particular concern for me, since I'm from a middling-low IQ population.

meant introduction to quantitative genetics. see chapters on heritability & assortative mating.

If such a policy can't be spoken or written how could it be implemented? If it is spoken or written doesn't it create a legal liability that outweighs the benefit?

Because when you're operating at scale, you have to make decisions based on averages. Plan for the long term.

group averages would be less important if you subjected people to a battery of tests. also increase the number of tests so you get a more accurate measure not thrown off by an outlier result. of course, that's illegal. depends on the size of the company, characteristics you're looking for, etc. in any case, that sort of idea has been mooted here before (blacks have to score higher on a given test than whites because there is a greater likelihood that their result it non-representative if it is a high score, etc.). the key problem is that it doesn't take into account the impact on morale if it is well known that people are judged by non-individual priors. look at how perceptions of nepotism can cause issues (even if relatives in a small-mid-sized company have more of an incentive to be more trustworthy employees).

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives...ves/ 001747.html

also, re: regression to the mean, people have a tendency of thinking of it as an orthogenetic property as opposed to an inference based on conditional probabilities. people forget that quantitative genetics started out as applied statistics.

I don't see what the big deal is. The article addresses how laypeople such as Jason Malloy use their limited knowledge of scientific data to draw premature or incorrect conclusions about important topics such as racial differences in various metrics.

Despite all the ravings by some about how genetic and brain research is going to find the smoking gun showing that one race is genetically superior to another, it will never happen. I'm all for this type of research but even I know that studies on the brain will only create more questions than answers. It's going to be similar to studies that tell you to eat a certain type of food, only to find out in another study that you shouldn't eat it. In short, there is no smoking gun.

Minut differences outside of obvious physiological differences can be mitigated by any number of environmental factors. We already know that human populations are different, albeit in non-meaningful ways. This has nothing to do with an "egalitarian fiction". For all intents and purposes humans are equal - by law AND nature. No amount of correlational data or differences in scattered genes in the brain or elsewhere can change that.

I don't see any significant ramifications toward public policy with regard to race.

Social Realist is a phony. If you're putting people into positions based on race rather than individual merit, your company is likely to suffer. Not only that, but many industry jobs require little to no real skills at all, and being a mindless drone is probably more beneficial than somebody who is ambitious and unsatisfied with their job.

"Even high-IQ individuals from low-IQ populations will have children that regress to their population's mean."

Now wouldn't that contradict the heritability of IQ that people are always talking about.

Discussions about IQ as being synonymous with intelligence is laughable. Sure, it's an indices, but that's all, that is not well understood and has limited predictive capabilities. Maybe we could create an ideal society using eugenics to breed only people with IQs of 130 and above. But that's not going to happen because of human factors that lie beyond the scope of abstract scientific data - compassion, lust, proximity, humanity, personality traits, respect for individual (and group) differences.

Laypeople know this intuitively which is why most of them dismiss the data outright. The fact remains, that nobody's life can be predicted using a number taken from a battery of tests based on reasoning and spacial ability.

Now wouldn't that contradict the heritability of IQ that people are always talking about.

no. as you know, regression to the mean is less powerful inversely to the extent of heritability. the higher the heritability, the lower the regression, the lower the heritability the higher the regression. this is a complicated topic and can't be summarized in a sentence or two. heritability is higher in higher SES environments, and tends to increase with assortative mating on a trait. but like is aid, some falconer would be good in this case....

Malloy contends that:

"No. We know from adoption studies (which control for genes) that parents do not have an influence on scholastic performance. As my Watson post indicated, ethnicity is the single biggest predictor of school performance. And this is apparently if the children are transracially adopted or not."

It's crystal clear to myself and anybody who isn't in a coma that parents DO influence scholastic performance. If a parent allows children to watch TV and not do their homework, the kid will NOT perform as well as if parents make school a priority for their kids. This is a prime example of how a study can be misinterpreted. Scholastic performance is NOT the same as G, and IQ and G do not fully predict scholastic performance.

The average medical doctor has an IQ in the 125 range. Amition, memory, and other factors aside from IQ predict academic performance.

Tommy, the average Saudi is as poor as the average Chinese person. Don't let the royals you see on TV fool you.

Do you have evidence to back that up? There may be huge wealth disparities in Saudi Arabia but the GDP is fully six times higher than in China and it isn't as if there aren't any disparities in wealth in China. But if you don't want to rely on Saudi Arabia, you can always look next door at Kuwait. Citizens of that country have the same low IQs you find everywhere else in the Middle East but enjoy an extensive welfare state.

Social Rrealist wrote:

I am surprised by the reluctance of the hard core hbd-ers ... to confront the policy implications of this hbd research head on ... attribution of group characteristics is a great filter for organizations operating at scale.

Razib responded

the key problem is that it doesn't take into account the impact on morale if it is well known that people are judged by non-individual priors.

I'm glad Social Realist raised the issue, and I'd (quite honestly) love to hear some of the GNXP regulars personal views on that kind of practice. Thumbs up? Thumbs down?

I can't see how Razib's objection is a relevant objection. The morale of the brilliant African-American not hired by Social Realists' company is irrelevant -- (s)he never got hired. And if a few Asians start slacking on the job because they have a hard time breaking into management, they will find the opportunities for career advancement on the technical side would suffer. I'm not sure how, from a company perspective, morale issues matter.

But from a societal perspective, its a different story.

"In all this, we can be fairly sure that the breastfeeding-gene-IQ link is real. And given the racial difference in breastfeeding, We can be fairly sure that more 10% of the black-white gap can be environmentally fixed. Vitamin D deficiency".

It will be small environmental changes such as these that, if discovered, will further close the gap and mitigate the reasoning of racial differences in intelligence. If it fails to dissolve the controversy completely, it will make the differences irrelevant in the real world.

My anecdotal experiences tell me that on average Whites raise their kids differently than Blacks. I generally see Whites correcting their children's speech, have full-fledged discourse with them even when they're small, teaching them the value of morals, have higher academic priorities and standards. The Blacks that I generally see lack in all of these areas, in part because they don't have dual parent homes, and are not educated themselves. The kids too, follow role models and lifestyles that are more likely to get them into trouble than help them learn to cope in an academic environment properly.

Furthermore I observe that White kids and Black kids often seperate into different camps at school. So even a White kid from a poor background is more likely to interact with White kids from better backgrounds. This social interaction itself, and the knowledge and modes of thinking that can be imparted, likely influences outcomes.

But you'll be hard pressed to find a study detailing such fluid facets of human life that must obviously play a role in an individuals development.

Shakey says :

"i don't see what the big deal is"

Inded you don't see anything at all.
Did you bother reading *anything* that was previously posted ?

Social realist is serious.
There are probably whole economic areas like high finance , high technology , high law (to a lesser extent maybe ?) where a company can *easily* thrive without paying any attention whatsoever to "diversity" , which mostly means non eastasian/non indian minorities .
As for those jobs that require no ability at all, are you talking about education and low level gov jobs ? Surely you don't mean serious finance or serious engineering , science , manufacturing , serious trades or even serious arts and litterary endeavours .

Just read the previous posts and countless others and you will see that everything you've said, every single word , has been already addressed and demolished when necessary.

"a company can *easily* thrive without paying any attention whatsoever to 'diversity'"

They already do that but pay lipservice to the idea that they want to be diverse.

"As for those jobs that require no ability at all"

I took literary liberty when I said "no real skills" however I'm talking about probably 90% of the jobs on earth - none of which require you to have the "intelligence" and nimble fingers of a brain surgeon. I speak from experience. I operate my own online business and have had success for 7 years. I didn't finish college because I started making money. It doesn't take a genius to do what I do - all it takes is ambition, dedication, and an opportunistic personality trait.

You like to throw out a lot of high caliber titles, like "serious finance", "science", and "manufacturing". Those are umbrella terms for a wide range of disciplines requiring different capacities. If we break them down into, I'll be able to give you a better idea of who can and cannot do those jobs.

Name the high finance and high technology industries, and high law firms that are flooded with non-asian minorities or have over-representation of such minorities. I haven't researched this at all, but I'll predict that there are NONE.

Thus, I don't see what all the hoopla is about.

I can't see how Razib's objection is a relevant objection. The morale of the brilliant African-American not hired by Social Realists' company is irrelevant -- (s)he never got hired. And if a few Asians start slacking on the job because they have a hard time breaking into management, they will find the opportunities for career advancement on the technical side would suffer.

even though i can see the efficacy of such a policy, if i found my company operated in such a manner and refused to change, i would simply quit. i would never work for a company that treated ppl like cogs in a machine. i don't really care how efficient it makes the company, or society in general. i say this even as i agree that there is likely significant hbd. i don't really care if genetic research points to ppl essentially being robots w/ firmware. if u treat me as such w/o regard to the possibility that i could be an individual, i will rebel. even if that too is part of my firmware.

Efficiency isn't always what it's cracked up to be. In fact, we're too technologically efficient at fishing, which is why we've depleted natural stocks of some of our favorite sea food. Who knows how much longer we'll have them on our plates. We're effecient at many things that have destructive ends. Enormous profit margins at the expense of social cohesion and fairness in a world that is growing smaller may also be destructive.

Ikram :

Social realist tells us that he's actually been successful in business using the quick and dirty filtering that he describes. I don't have a hard time believing him .

Filtering by race is similar , in a way , to the filtering by school that's commonly practiced by elite employers. Just like social realist's race based selection , school based selection seems to work ok . Ask Wall Street and Google. Ask the top french companies. Ask the top British companies and institutions . There are few enough false positives (dummies from great schools) and false negatives (geniuses from bad schools) that implementing more complicated selection procedures doesn't seem worth it for the talent seekers . Basically , using stereotypes isn't that stupid at all, as long as one allows one's belief to change according to new information .

Thumbs up or down ? I'm a black man . If more and more people think like Social Realist ( how many already do ? ) it will make things pretty damn hard . Social Realist mentionned that he doesn't even care about educational pedigree and only trusts personal recommendations, when it comes to hiring black people ( that last point tells me that there is cold rationality in his attitude towards black employees. Were he hateful fanatic, he would make no exceptions whatsoever ). What can I say ? Were there no affirmative action of any sorts , Social realist would probably trust pedigrees more .

The libertarian in me tell me that social realist should be allowed to hire whom he wishes to hire, no matter how inconvenient that is for me.
But that can't work can it ?

Thumbs halfway between up and down. This is only the beginning of the discussion on those issues .

an addendum to my previous post: i would be satisfied w/ razib's suggested solution of extensive testing, illegal as it is. even though that furthers the idea that i'm a machine, i will have had my opportunity to demonstrate how i might be an outlier with respect to my race. even if the testing only confirmed that i was not an outlier, i would have been given the opportunity. that is all that i could ask and all that i would want.

An extensive welfare state is no argument. There is a positive correlation between those on welfare and low IQ. If you don't have to fend for yourself, how smart do you have to become?

Shakey :
You said previously that employers using social realist's hiring methods would suffer.

I'm saying that IQ-heavy environments like wall street front offices and technology firms that are at the top of their game hire heavily based on school pedigree or university major pedigree . This is almost the same as hiring mostly whites, asians and indians and it's not obvious to me that those firms are suffering from this state of affairs .

Anyways, if this is not a big deal at all then social realist's hiring practices are no big deal and thus merit neither scorn nor praise, just indifference. Right ?

"I'm saying that IQ-heavy environments like wall street front offices and technology firms that are at the top of their game hire heavily based on school pedigree or university major pedigree . This is almost the same as hiring mostly whites, asians and indians and it's not obvious to me that those firms are suffering from this state of affairs."

I would do the same. A degree shows that the person is disciplined enough to invest in an education and complete it. Whites, Asians, and Indians, on average have these degrees in higher numbers, so it goes without saying they will get hired in higher proportions.

I don't know the finances of all the companies involved on Wall Street, but I do have enough examples of where companies have been driven into the ground by people with presumably high intelligence. CitiBank lost billions due to greedy and shady business practices in the mortgage market and now have to be bought out (bailed out) by other banks. I'm a laymen and I could have told you that what they were doing could only lead to their undoing - yet thousands of their scholarly minions apparently couldn't or didn't.

Microsoft probably has some of the "best" brains in tech, but what have they done lately besides buy up small innovative companies and give customers a new browser that most dislike?

"Anyways, if this is not a big deal at all then social realist's hiring practices are no big deal and thus merit neither scorn nor praise, just indifference. Right ?"

I guess it goes back to another comment I made earlier and the comments I've made in this post. The central theme seems to allude back to wisdom of an old Greek adage: "All things in moderation"

It's crystal clear to myself and anybody who isn't in a coma that parents DO influence scholastic performance. If a parent allows children to watch TV and not do their homework, the kid will NOT perform as well as if parents make school a priority for their kids. This is a prime example of how a study can be misinterpreted. Scholastic performance is NOT the same as G, and IQ and G do not fully predict scholastic performance.


Scholastic performance is operating mostly through g, and shared environment dissipates on all measures as people develop. So shared environment (not necessarily parents) does have a detectable influence for preadolescents, but by the time people hit age 10 to 12 the effects of shared home environment on school achievement apparently do not reach significance.

So it is actually doubtful that parents affect scholastic achievement, and even if they did, it is doubtful the influence would come through TV privileges or homework expectations. First because this sort of authoritarian parenting is actually associated with lower grades not higher grades, and second because hours spent on homework (over and above initial human capital) is not an obvious cause of higher grades.

This is consistent with the fact that US blacks and whites spend the same amount of time on homework, and yet receive substantially different grades. (much to the credit of Af-Ams and their efforts as students)

"The article addresses how laypeople such as Jason Malloy use their limited knowledge of scientific data to draw premature or incorrect conclusions about important topics such as racial differences in various metrics."
I don't know what Malloy's credentials are, but quite a few researchers and scientists signed a document in support of the conclusions of the Bell Curve back in the mid-90s. If Malloy had all the degrees in the world, and said the same things, you would still reject the messanger because you cannot accept the message.

Your reliance on g and IQ, as limited as they are, makes any conclusions you draw from them limited as well. I believing that using inherently contrived abstract measurements such as IQ is useful and better than having nothing at all, but it must be seen for what it is.

The validity of the framework in which g has been used and understood is still very much open to debate: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007...ntal-intuition/

"authoritarian parenting is actually associated with lower grades"

It doesn't have to be authoritarian. It's usually based on a system of rewards and lack thereof. For example, if you maintain straight A's, you get a car on your 16th birthday. Reinforcement of this type throughout childhood will produce better results on average.

Time spent on homework means little if an individual doesn't understand the homework and doesn't get assistance. Time spent on a basketball court isn't going to make me a star player, but I'll have a better chance if I'm actually playing basketball on the court and practising the skills properly.

The convoluted piece-meal science that you're dredging up to support your over-arching conclusions just doesn't cut it. And that's what much of this amounts to: small snapshots of various intricate dynamic ever-changing functions of humans, that you and I try to make sense of. The puzzle is far from being conquered.

"If Malloy had all the degrees in the world, and said the same things, you would still reject the messanger because you cannot accept the message."

Absolutely correct. Regardless of one's credentials, I will disagree with statements they make that are incorrect. Prominent people have faults just like you and me.

"Laypeople know this intuitively which is why most of them dismiss the data outright. The fact remains, that nobody's life can be predicted using a number taken from a battery of tests based on reasoning and spacial ability."
What laypeople are you talking about? Most people also think the Government means well, but they don't delve into it too deeply in order to keep that belief.
You seem to be missing point--it doesn't freaking matter whether anybody "rejects" the idea of IQ or not. The data shows overwhelmingly that lives are defined by IQ--among other factors-- whether anybody "agrees" with it or not. According to Linda Gottfredson, who has been studying this subject for decades, it is the most saliet SINGLE predictor of life outcome that we have. High IQ must be there for intellectual achievement, but high intellectual achievement is not assured by high IQ.

"I don't know what Malloy's credentials are, but quite a few researchers and scientists signed a document in support of the conclusions of the Bell Curve back in the mid-90s."

For the record, Malloy has no credentials. He's an artist (draws pictures), not a scientist. I think we should also use caution when we say "scientist" when often times we're referring to social scientists and political scientists - like those behind the Bell Curve. These are not the same as biologists, geneticists, and so forth.

"Linda Gottfredson, who has been studying this subject for decades, it is the most saliet SINGLE predictor of life outcome that we have. High IQ must be there for intellectual achievement, but high intellectual achievement is not assured by high IQ."

I agree that IQ can be useful and it may be the best predictor we have. This doesn't run contrary to my arguments and criticisms of it.

An extensive welfare state is no argument. There is a positive correlation between those on welfare and low IQ. If you don't have to fend for yourself, how smart do you have to become?

Pointing to an extensive welfare state in the desert whose citizens have low IQs is a perfectly good argument when it comes to rebutting claims that undernourishment or vitamin D deficiency might be the cause of race differences in IQ. Kuwaitis aren't starving. You are shifting the argument: instead of arguing poverty is to blame, in the case of the Kuwaitis you want to claim they're not poor enough.

When it comes to the less intelligent people of the world:

If they don't each much, then blame it on malnutrition.

If they eat too much, then blame it on obesity and poor dietary habits.

If their country is poor, then blame it on the fact that they must exert themselves at mundane tasks and don't get enough serious intellectual stimulation.

If their country is rich, then blame it on the fact that they don't have to struggle enough and thus don't exert themselves intellectually.

If they are dark skinned, then blame it on the fact their skin is too dark to absorb enough vitamin D.

If they are light skinned, then blame it on the fact they live in a cold climate and don't get enough vitamin D.

Such, my friends, is the many headed hydra of race and IQ denialism.

Tommy says:

An extensive welfare state is no argument. There is a positive correlation between those on welfare and low IQ. If you don't have to fend for yourself, how smart do you have to become?


Pointing to an extensive welfare state in the desert whose citizens have low IQs is a perfectly good argument when it comes to rebutting claims that undernourishment or vitamin D deficiency might be the cause of race differences in IQ. Kuwaitis aren't starving. You are shifting the argument: instead of arguing poverty is to blame, in the case of the Kuwaitis you want to claim they're not poor enough.

Moreover, he's prepared to accept use it or lose it in the current generation, but unprepared to accept that this happens genetically over long periods as well (in both directions).

I don't know if Jason or anyone else is still reading this thread, but I have a comment from a different direction. It concerns Jason's plea (shared with Pinker and others) that the answer to a moral code based on a questionable factual premise of equality ought to be supplanted with one based on one with a premise of moral equality. Essentially, move in the moral direction of Kant. As sympathetic as I am with that move, it's not itself without difficulties and, for that reason, it's not insane to base a view of moral equality on a factual premise of cognitive (or whatever) equality.

Here's why. Presumably, this claim of moral equality will be based on some independent grounds, lest it be merely a circular statement of a priori faith. But what could justify this claim to moral equality? Touched by God? God I hope not. How about Kant's favorite: rationality? Oops, that's precisely the issue on the table. OK, but maybe there's some threshold of rationality that, factually, we are confident virtually all humans pass (actually, this is more like Kant's view). But why is the threshold set there, as opposed to a bit higher? Why don't we count some as more morally equal than others? Just because? There's that old circularity problem. Because the consequences of so doing would be hideous? I agree they would, but what justifies the standard itself? It's just wrong? A strange answer and one I wouldn't want to hear from those so (rightfully of course) demanding of reasons in other venues.

Long story short: There's a reason these moral questions still bedevil us after 2600 years. Bioinformatics brevis, philosophia lunga.

Stephan, laws are justified through the emotionally mediated innate human drive for cooperation and sense of fairness.

The argument is: If one person is born with low IQ and another is born with high IQ through only random circumstance, then what justifies one should lead a more comfortable life than the other? Nature cheats people and we should work to ameliorate or correct the unwanted act of nature.

But what's "fair" depends on how you feel about certain social outcomes. The libertarian argument is that the meritocratic policy creates higher economic conditions for everyone, but higher inequality as well. He feels this is more fair, that poor people have objectively higher health and material conditions than they would otherwise. The socialist argument is that the redistribution/antidiscrimination policy creates lower economic conditions for everyone, but lower inequality as well. He feels this is more fair, that poor people have objectively more equal status and higher social value in society than they would otherwise.

The liberal and the libertarian just have to convince others to feel as they do. Which is the domain of political rhetoric.

Shakey, Jason Malloy and others have presented evidence from studies. You rely on anecdote. So what makes you confident that you are right and they are wrong?

The most important orb in our Solar system is the sun, for without it, mankind ceases to exist. The sun produces UV light. Skin exposure to this UV light can result in skin cancers that are caused by mutations in skin cells induced by UV light from the sun. Absent advances in S&T and holding others factors stable, these skin cancers could be terminal resulting in the possible extinction or slower propagation of the human species.

Long ago, in order for the human species to propagate, it seems probable that evolution dictated that the human body (i.e. human skin) must have a relationship with the sun to protect it from developing these deadly skin cancers from exposure to its UV light. Thereby, putting the human body in an evolutionarily stable state.

Today, we know that UV light from the sun triggers melanin production (hormone stimulant produced by the pituitary gland) that makes skin cells dark, which protects the human body against those skin cancers that are caused by mutations in skin cells induced by UV light.

According to the CDC, of the 6 different skin types, skin type I & II are the most prone to damage from sun exposure.

As it relates to DNA, it seems unlikely that evolution would favor evolving DNA for a higher IQ in a skin type/body type that is prone to mutations or terminal skin cancers caused by the orb that life itself is gravely dependent on. Since IQs typically increase with age or longevity, it seems evolution would favor evolving DNA for a higher IQ in skin types IV through VI, which are less prone to sun damage and would provide the sun exposure protections necessary to facilitate longevity within the human species.

Time Magazine, 1987, reported that Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Wilson had established that all living humans share a common ancestor, "mitochondrial Eve". Although some studies have shown anomalies such as paternal mtDNA altering maternal mtDNA, it is widely accepted that “Mitochondrial_Eve” lived in Africa.

According to this Blog, it has been firmly established that Africans are stereotypically black who are typically skin types IV through VI.

Therefore, if the DNA findings in question indicated that the DNA in “brown to darker skin people (Indians from India, Native Americans, Africans, West Indians, Hispanics, etc.)” or in “women” has a higher propensity towards developing a higher IQ, it would seem to be more consistent with well-known data.

The U.S. Founding Fathers said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

…heck, what did they know or maybe the ideas of a bunch of old men aren’t as intellectually stimulating as discussion on DNA!

CDC - http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/c...cover/ qanda.htm

I wonder how African Americans or just Africans in general are suppose to do with this kind of infomation or even how to take or interpret it? Would people (read: non-black) expect them to reject or ignore the possibility that they may not be as smart as white people? Or would they expect them to be upset or even too ignorant to understand whatever implications could come from it.

It seems that other people (read:white) are stuck with the job of defining ethnic groups like black americans. Knowing how they are different or similar, whether they are just as smart as they are or not. And I'm sure there are people who would much rather hear the point of view of the black people the various studies on intelligence in regards to race include.

"He's an artist (draws pictures), not a scientist. I think we should also use caution when we say "scientist" when often times we're referring to social scientists and political scientists - like those behind the Bell Curve. These are not the same as biologists, geneticists, and so forth.logists, geneticists, and so forth."

uh, Mr. Shakey, This is getting really weird. Good for Jason Malloy if he draws pictures. So did Leonardo da Vinci (just kidding.) But really, it is exactly the "hard" scientists, the biologists, geneticists and so forth, who most support the genetic basis for mental ability, but they have been terrified to go against the religious faith of egalitarianism. It is the sociologist types who most argue against heredity determining intelligence, Bell Curve authors notwithstanding. In any case rigorous statistical studies have their "hard" edge.
It is hard science far faster than soft that is coming down with a clang on the side of heredity of intelligence.

"Shakey, Jason Malloy and others have presented evidence from studies. You rely on anecdote. So what makes you confident that you are right and they are wrong?"

I'm not arguing with the science. I'm merely suggesting that IQ is not the end all be all, using the same evidence/data that Malloy uses.

I support genetic and biological research in this area because there is more to be learned.

whatever says,
"Time Magazine, 1987, reported that Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Wilson had established that all living humans share a common ancestor, "mitochondrial Eve". Although some studies have shown anomalies such as paternal mtDNA altering maternal mtDNA, it is widely accepted that “Mitochondrial_Eve” lived in Africa."
and now for something entirely different:
hey, that was 1987. what makes you think all the human races even originated on this planet, particularly, as you point out, some are not really well adapted to it without sunscreen and big beach umbrellas. http://physicsforums.com/archive...hp/t- 78438.html

a quote from the above:
"Non-coding sequences, also known as "junk DNA", were discovered years ago, and their function remains mystery. Unlike normal genes, which carry the information that intracellular machinery uses to synthesize proteins, enzymes and other chemicals produced by our bodies, non-coding sequences are never used for any purpose. They are never expressed, meaning that the information they carry is never read, no substance is synthesized and they have no function at all. We exist on only 3% of our DNA. The junk genes merely enjoy the ride with hard working active genes, passed from generation to generation. What are they? How come these idle genes are in our genome? Those were the question many scientists posed and failed to answer - until the breakthrough discovery by Prof. Sam Chang and his group."

Your reliance on g and IQ, as limited as they are, makes any conclusions you draw from them limited as well.

In case my wording was unclear in that comment, the linked study showed that shared environment did not significantly impact school achievement after about age 10. Not just g. It directly addressed your assertions.

Reinforcement of this type throughout childhood will produce better results on average.

Ibid.

"the "hard" scientists, the biologists, geneticists and so forth, who most support the genetic basis for mental ability, but they have been terrified to go against the religious faith of egalitarianism"

Not true at all. There are plenty of scientists working in the field of intelligence. However, many shy away from the issue of race because of the way the data may be abused or misinterpreted. Isn't this what happened with Bruce Lahn's research? I think it's a prudent step.

UU :

I'm black , though i'm certainly not speaking for anyone but myself.
As far as I'm concerned , just as James Watson said, there is simply no good reason to assume as a given that different ethnic or racial groups evolved in such a way that they're equally endowed with genetic features that promote, depress or do nothing for mental ability.

Some may say that intelligence is so useful that it must have been selected in each population so as to end up distributed identically in modern populations. Intelligence is of course very useful and of course it gets selected , but there's no such guaranteed of equal outcomes that I know of.

Our primate ancestors were at some point not very distinguishable from any ape. Intelligence was probably quite important back then and yet it didn't get selected for in equal amounts among the different apes . We got much , much smarter than our cousins. Anyways, it doesn't seem to me that nature believes in equality.

What I hope intelligent black people get out of all this is that we should do something about this problem (it is a problem ) . What I hope is that those black people with the means and the brains ( they exist) will explore technological solutions ( genetic engineering ), social solutions ( eugenics ) and who knows what else . I hope people won't lie to themselves and think that we're just fine because we can "avoid malaria" (dixit robert sternberg).

Let's put IQ to the test.

Would you agree to have your IQ measured and have your life choices decided or mapped out based on your score (what jobs you can do, how much money you should earn, where you should live)? If you answered "no", may I ask why?

Theoretically, a society like this could function supremely well.

The black people I've talked to, you know, family, see this stuff as par for the course. Someone is constantly trying to prove that we are stupid or functionally retarded, and assume that without affirmative action, the Ivy League or any success would be out of our league.

Do you really think that when I walk into macy's the security guard is going to think, " Wow, she must be one of those outliers I've heard so much about! I won't have to follow her around." ???

Odds are he won't think. He will assume. Americans can be shallow now, and a soundbite about research on the nightly news is going to be taken as the gospel if it confirms their predjudices anyway. People tend to think they are a little brighter than they really are.

You know research is fine. Go for it, I want to hear the story too, but I can't say that I'll be popping open the bubbly if some people get the results they are longing for. I'm going to be too worried about my two little boys.

ogunsiron:
"explore technological solutions ( genetic engineering ), social solutions ( eugenics )"

As with designer babies, should the day come when humans can genetically engineer "intelligence", I think members of all races and walks of life will be in line for it. Although, I wonder if it will cure society's ailments, or its perceived ailments. I doubt it, but I'll be in line too.

As for eugenics, I don't think that any amount of data concerning IQ will disuade people from having offspring as a result of more immediate purposes such as lust and love; unless forced to.

RE: uu; "I wonder how African Americans or just Africans in general are suppose to do with this kind of infomation or even how to take or interpret it? Would people (read: non-black) expect them to reject or ignore the possibility that they may not be as smart as white people? Or would they expect them to be upset or even too ignorant to understand whatever implications could come from it."

I think the point is that scientists really don't have a lot of expectations, they're just going where the evidence leads. It's the people who say this should not be discussed who seem to have expectations.

Shakey, again, evidence has been presented showing the huge predictive power of IQ, unrivaled in all of social science. What is your evidence that IQ is not as important as they claim?

TGGP, if you will, please post the actual statistical numeric predictive value of IQ. Unfortunately, I no longer have this data on hand and don't have the time to weed through to find it in the posts above. Thanks in advance.

to A.T :

What if, T.A , there was * really, for real* something keeping us from being competitive with , among others , whites ? Admitting for the sake of argument that whites have historically preyed upon black people , what if there was something about blacks made that predation easy ? I'm not saying that the people studying these things all have our interest at heart. I'm just saying that maybe they know something that we should also be aware of , if only to remediate .

You say that people will just see whatever reinforces their prejudices. You assume prejudices are set in stone. Are they, really ? East asians , for instance , seem widely acknowledged nowadays , even among racist whites (!), as civilizational equals . Do you think this was the case in the early 20th century ? Most people have prejudices but most people aren't fanatical ideologues and their attitudes are subject to change , to varying degrees .

to razib,

what happens in context of india, i mean about the divisions in the south asian mass? will the differences attributed to the castes be proved by genetics?

what happens in context of india, i mean about the divisions in the south asian mass? will the differences attributed to the castes be proved by genetics?

that is a strong possibility (depends on the population genetic parameters). though special pleading based on environmental inputs seem a more powerful argument in a region of the world where the elites are now succumbing to obesity while the majority of the population still suffers chronic nutritional deficit. e.g., half of the population suffers from iodine deficiency (thanks to the idiotic populism which favors local salt production which isn't supplemented), 50 million have goiter and a few million are outright cretins. i think a better test of these sorts of hypotheses would be outside of south asia where the malthusian trap isn't as strongly operative (e.g., mauritius).

Ogunsiron,

To be honest, I think there is an x factor holding us back. I often ask myself, what the hell is going on with my people? Maybe it's inherited, maybe it's environmental. From my perspective, it's both.

My problem is that right now, the jury is still out on the genetic aspect, and most people have a limited understanding in regards to science and math across the board. I've often wondered if what g is, is a measure of how good a super predator you are.

It's easy to cherry pick data, and too many only hear and retain that which suits them most. Today's media is unreliable on so mant levels. Really truly, I caution. People have done terrible things with good science.

However,the environmental stuff is a factor we can grasp right now. I'm talking about drug use (including tobacco)early within the first trimester etc. Another issue we need to stop having babies out of wedlock and accepting these behaviors as normal. In other words, we need to rethink the negative values that have developed as a result of our unique situation.

In regards to Asians, they had to deal with predjudice and racism for sure. I just don't think they have the same hang ups we do. They had a cultural reference to say we come from a glorious old civilization who are you to judge me?

Hope I'm clear. I'ts almost 3am.

"please post the actual statistical numeric predictive value of IQ"

Here is Linda Gottfredson's table of social outcomes as a function of IQ.

The list of items on the table is inclusive but by no means exhaustive.

"Here is Linda Gottfredson's table of social outcomes as a function of IQ.

The list of items on the table is inclusive but by no means exhaustive."

So it appears that while IQ is our best predictor of outcomes, it still leaves much to be desired with regard to its predictive capacity.

Furthermore it shows that the population most at risk is that below an IQ of 75, which is approximately 10% of the entire population. This reinforces my "who cares" position.

Those with IQs of 80 and above are functioning members of society (society being a non zero sum system) which requires service people. The problems of these particular groups are also small when taking the size of the entire population into account. On average, the bottom 25% of the population has statistically higher instances of crime and so forth compared to the mid to high IQ groups, yet it's a minority even within these low IQ populations.

All in all you're dealing with "problems" occuring at higher rates in probably 5% - 10% of the total population. Given some forms of intervention and guidance those numbers could be reduced.

I look at that graph, and if I'm interpreting it correctly, the situation just doesn't seem as bleak as some are making it out to be.

Razib,
Thanks,

dont you feel that the sterotype images that brahmins are intelligent, vysyas are cleaver, etc will be reinforced.

i am a layman to this field, hence these questions!!

Policy implications? I believe there are two.

1. Don't seek to suppress the science of human nature, because the younger generation will only see you as a liar (e.g. Sternberg, Lewontin).

2. Don't be a luddite; support gene therapy if the problems of humankind really concern you.

Modern society won't be too interested in any more concrete policies any time before gene therapy begins to make this a mute issue.

Shakey -- I can't address how "bleak" the situation is, as that's in large part a matter of personal outlook. Similarly, you can say "who cares" if you like.

But imagine the situation was altered slightly. Instead of low IQ, let's say this was about HIV infection -- that the same proportions of people with IQs below 80 are instead HIV+.

10% of the population? Worth caring about.
More than 3X as many blacks as whites afflicted? Seems like a problem.

But many of these folks will be just fine -- after all, many HIV+ people are just fine, and HIV is only a predictor for AIDS. So really, who cares. (!)

The analogy is only to illustrate the importance of these proportions; IQ and HIV are totally different. I just can't look at proportions this large and say who cares.

And yes, these proportions are large. IQ=80 is the bottom third of Gottfredson's "Uphill Battle" group. With white/black means of 100/85 and standard deviations of 15/13.5, below 80 one finds 9% of whites and 35% of blacks.

"Would you agree to have your IQ measured and have your life choices decided or mapped out based on your score (what jobs you can do, how much money you should earn, where you should live)? If you answered "no", may I ask why?
Theoretically, a society like this could function supremely well."

I'd have been pretty nervous, but whether anybody measured it or not, it would still affect my life as it has. personally I'd love to have an iq of 250 and understand, oh, just everything...but alas, it was not to be.
They iq-track people some countries, such as Italy and I think, Japan. They don't use the term iq of course. The kids take tests at middle-school age where they are tracked into a certain line of study. Like SATS, the tests do correlate to IQ as well as personal interests, but of course there will be outliers. When I expressed surprise and alarm to my Italian teacher, a liberal sort of lady, she explained that the system worked well and while there were a few outliers (naturally we are talking averages) most people fit very comfortably in the track their academic and personal preference indicated. . Yes, sometimes complex entities do get squeezed, or perhaps distilled, into numbers. Pi. E=M squared. Circumfrence of the earth in relation to the sun. Size 9 dress. Number 8 = eternity. Apt. no. 7. Anti-christ 666. The number five symbolizing the human figure in Islamic numerology. Lucky money number in China = 4, The holy trinity = 3. The Couple = 2. Ego = 1. 0 - naught.

You seem to think if nobody knows what your IQ is, then everybody will think you are the same as they are. Doesn't work that way. Intelligence is like porn. Hard to define but you know it when you see it and you know it when you don't see it.

"Odds are he won't think. He will assume. Americans can be shallow now, and a soundbite about research on the nightly news is going to be taken as the gospel if it confirms their predjudices anyway. People tend to think they are a little brighter than they really are."
I don't know where you live but where I live, D.C., most of the security guards are black.
However, your point is well taken. I find it pretty easy to "read" people and take them as they come, but on a dark, lonely street, any sane person has reasons to feel as they do.
I am sure many liberal whites, myself included, have imagined over the years that blacks would recognize our benevolent, liberal disposition, our abolitionist, Union army (or persecuted Jewish), ancestors, our heartfelt pro-black, civil rights era zeitgeist, and treat us accordingly, especially when we send little Anne or Allen to a 90% black school. Know what. Countless whites can tell you, it doesn't necessarily happen that way. If anybody is "celebrating" it is ONLY because they are weary of keeping up the idiot's dance: trying the same remedies over and over that fail over and over.

Cogsys wrote:

Modern society won't be too interested in any more concrete policies any time before gene therapy begins to make this a mute issue.

I'm not sure I follow. Isn't the purpose of GNXP and articles like the one in the NYT to make this a live (non-mute) issue? I don't think techno-optimism about gene therapy to address the potential group disparities in intelligence due to HbD is a realistic near-term position. Unless you're willing to supress publcizing research in this area until gene therapy is viable (which you're not).

WongBa -- Testing is costly. Cheaper to use racial group averages to discriminate between individuals. And testing is not always sufficiently predictive -- how do you cheaply reliably test a techie Asian for leadership ability? Easier to hire a white guy as manager and leave the Asian in the lab.

Nightnurse, I live in Ohio, just south of Cleveland. Believe me, it's no D.C. There are clear lines of separation between populations. I'm not keen on sending my kids to all black public school, not after what my siblings and I went through. Our parents ended up going the private school route. But I also recognize that the problems in predominately black schools have nothing to do with white people.

Most of us have moved past the "it's the white man " stuff. It's more about internalized hatred. We need to deal wth these issues ourselves.

I have to go for now, but I'll add that sometimes just having a black security guard is harder to deal with than some white ones.

More to come...

Well, tommy, my comments have not shifted, but are consistent with my overall postings. I have said that environment affects IQ, and both nutrition and being on welfare are environmental factors.

Your posting that follows your "rebuttal" actualyl makes an excellent point. You gave extremes that DO affect IQ. This is why Aristotle said that virtue is the mean between extremes -- you give me a populaiton of people who lie at the mean between the extremes you lay out, and I will give you a population with a higher average IQ than most.

You might also want to explain why Jews and Kuwaitis, who are racially the same (bth are Semites), have different IQs.

Horrible, hijack, but, I've searched this entire blog and found a startling lack of articles about penis size. Don't think I'm joking - for all of this talk about IQ and it's importance as being such a prominent predictor of future success, I'm pretty sure a much higher percentage of men would be much more interested in finding out how to enlarge their penis. I myself would gladly exchange 10 IQ points for a trophy penis (well, maybe 5. I don't know my IQ - maybe I really don't have much to spare...). I think most people, during a survey of their own insecurities, would find the size of their penis more salient than their intelligence, finding an improvement in the former a much greater guarantee of increased quality of life than the latter.

Why the glaring absence on this site - amid article topics such as hair thickness and facial attractiveness and sexual dimorphism? I'd hate to believe that it's because it's one of the few, socially important attributes that skew in favor of blacks, stereotype-wise. I don't know of any studies that prove this (haven't looked into it, but then I don't run a blog about genetics), but the rumors are there. And I reluctantly admit that in my experiences it has been true (and the one East Asian penis I've seen in person was small - in a weird, proportional way that I've never seen on anyone else - i.e., it was like a scaled down penis rather than one lacking in length and/or girth, if that makes sense to you).

have you picked up and commented on this article?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/ 2007...KGxuJ7ecO9vaA8F


Despite what folks claimed earlier, in the last 10 years sub-Saharan African GDP has been growing at 5.4% per year, and is as fast as GDP growth in the rest of the world.

Speaking of the above, has the startling impatience shown with this area of study ever been addressed by the g proponents on this site? The "overwhelming evidence" cited always points to relatively tiny time period mired in tremendous fluxes in politics, and you get the idea that people here think Africa materialized into existence during the 20th century as a land that has always characterized by famine, poverty, and unrest.

(continuing...)Dropped into the petri dish of the human experience by God himself, so to speak.

I've searched this entire blog and found a startling lack of articles about penis size.

we provide a handy search tool on the sidebar. you should use it.
http://www.google.com/search? ie=...search=gnxp.com

I continue to worry about the "rush to judgement" which always seems to go with discussions of "Race and IQ".
Thus while I fully applaud and support the freedom of academic scientists (and more generally of creative intellectuals) to try and get at the truth (even when, or especially when, that truth is unpalatable),I feel considerable anxiety about the next stage: what happens when the science gets established and interacts with values and with popular philosophies and when it gets absorbed into the general culture. There is also an even more worrisome stage beyond that :when science is taken as oracle and is used to justify policy.
A good example is provided by global warming.Initially it was a heresy, then it became an orthodoxy.I am old enough to remember the time when the doomsayers were predicting a new Ice Age- and only socialism, or at any rate drastic controls over economic activity , was said to be capable of turning back the coming ice.Those who found evidence of warming, were greeted as having liberated us from fear, but after a few years this evaluation changed, as the enthusiasts of global warming in turn became doomsayers , and indited the moderate majority for being the complacent majority,and went on to embrace the theory that a man-made catastrophe is just around the corner.
In terms of science the honour always lies with the sceptics:for progress always demands we demolish premature conclusions, and science, even when it involves the mobilization of much data and the cooperation of many thousands still rests all too frequently upon a fragile basis.
Private industry liquidates its mistakes through competition; the public pursuit of knowledge is not as well organized on the competitive model; but if there is academic freedom, one can usually rely on successive generations to at least try to expose the mistakes of their fathers.
But now consider what happens when determining the roots of climate change becomes not merely an academic issue - but millions of dollars turn on the outcome of arcane debates.Worse,we play a game of follow-my-leader:people who are not competent to assess the science are recruited to line up and campaign vigorously for pursuing some particular policy.
Again the honour lies with the sceptics: for the orthodox story implicating carbon-emissions, is going to be paired with a polcy of carbon-tax , which (contra Nicholas Stern) is going to be hugely costly and burdensome. Now the basic facts are not in dispute: there has been a small but persistent rise in average annual temperature over most of the world over the last three decades. But the science being fragile, there is a multiplcity of possible explanations -(including for example that this is a random fluctuation- 30 years is tiny geologically.) The rational policy response is to allow one's policy to be moulded by several, possibly contradictory , theories.One could for example combine the dominant orthodox view that one should try to cut down on anthropogenic carbon-emissions, with the view, scouted by Fred Singer for example, that warming is a natural recurrent quasi-periodic phenomenon, and that therefore action in mitigation is more sensible than efforts at prevention. A policy of compromise that combines elements of these two philosophies is more rational and sensible than one which concentrates on either, because it is always prudent not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Now I'm wanting to argue that similar considerations apply to the "Race and IQ" question. The defense of freedom of research, and academic freedom, should go without saying. It is just deeply wrong and irrational to punish people for voicing dissenting opinions. Similarly I fully agree with the suggestion made by Jason Malloy, that egalitarianism needs to be founded in ethical (or more generally normative ) philosophy and not made hostage to peculiar facts about population biology. And I agree that people need to debate these issues, not just experts.
But because of the high costs of error- especially when we come to the policy stage , I can't help feeling this is not enough.
I live on the African continent, and I am acutely aware that labeling Africa as the continent of darkness, and the stereotype of African countries as all enjoying basket-case political systems and windfall economies has been damaging out of all proportion to the partial truth that these sterotypes contain.Intervention fatigue did affect the case of Rwanda, but one nonetheless does feel that the International community would have been far more ready to step in and intervene to halt the Rwandan genocide, if Rwanda had been part of say, Eastern Europe.Likewise one worries that a stereotype of Africa as inhabited by large populations of people of average IQ in the 70s may have unwarranted adverse effects on patterns of aid , trade and investment .(This just assumes that investors are rationally looking for a safe way of maximizing their rate-of-return, and donors are likewise looking for the biggest bang for their bucks.)
Once again I don't think the basic factual account is open to much dispute. There are too many studies, caried out by too many people , of too many different social origins and political orientations,to make it at all plausible that the summary picture of widespread low African IQs is the fruit of some sort of racist conspiracy.
But, that being said, I still think the science is fragile, and when we come to looking at EXPLANATIONS for what is prima facie, a fairly dismal state of affairs, we may expect there to be rather less consensus.
And in particular, I think the honourable stance is always that of the sceptic. If these figures are for real, if these explanations are correct , they should be able to withstand scrutiny.If not, they need to be corrected.
So I'm not convinced that it's entirely useful or fair to talk glibly about people being "denialists".Denying the broad shape of the standard version of the facts is one thing-and probably represents intellectual cowardice; denying various hypothetical explanations for the facts is quite another.
We've aleady seen some attempts to mitigate the bad news, by asking about the representativity of the samples.(Is there an IQ bias mong school attendees, who get tested?- for example.) I don't think there is likely to be much enlightenment in pursuing this route. It's shaving off a point or less than a point, I would guess.
But there remains the old hoary chestnut of Nature versus Nurture, and although one would need to be a kind of dedicated optimist to think that one can altogether avoid modern sophistication (and indeed modern sophistry) of the Nature-via-Nurture variety, one can predict fairly confidently that one will be able to line people up as environmentalists versus hereditarians.
(Perhaps also, when it comes to policy, one will need to pursue two contradictory policies pointing in these two different directions.)
But I suspect if we want a more productive debate about lagging African IQs, we will need to bring in non-traditional themes.One may be brain-science.Nowadays neuroscientists are more ready to emphasize plasticity and flexibility of brain-function than they used to be. As a mere layperson, I have often wondered whether part of the story about IQ is not that is a trait governed by multiple genes, and that while some of these genes have a sine-qua-non character,others can be substituted, one for another- just as certain areas of the brain can be recruited for different functions,under appropriate circumstances. (It is strange that we often seem to be fixated on thinking of family and social conditions as constituting the environment, not biology.The Dutch Hunger Winter, showed that poor nutrition hurt IQ for a relatively brief period ,if I remember well, once diets were restored IQ recovered. I have sometimes wondered whether that would continue to be true under conditions which inhibited brain plasticity.)
But let me stop my amateur excursions into speculation and in stead finish by raising a question where I may be on more solid ground.
Most of the literature on African IQ that I have seen or have seen cited concentrates on AVERAGE IQ. But to a statistician, the mean or average is only one of several statistics or MOMENTS of a distribution which are of interest. Two others are the Variance and the Skewness (or Kurtosis). These measure the spread of values round the mean, and the extent to which the distribution is asymmmetrical. Now because Africa is the original home of mankind, and according to Darwinian evolution, variations have accumulated there over the longest period of time, we expect to see more variation in the African population than in the populations of other continents. And again (if my recollection is correct),this is indeed what we do see, when we look at things like blood-types.But what happens for IQ? Is there great variation over the continent as a whole? Do local populations display larger variances than similar groups in Europe, or in Asia? If variance is greater then the practical effects of a low mean are mitigated, because those who are outliers will fly higher- at least on the high side. And a similar remark will apply to skewness-( provided the distribution is biassed to rise above, and not fall below the mean.)
I cannot recall seeing this question discussed,though it seems to be of considerable practical importance as well as of some theoretical interest.But that may just reflect my ignorance, and perhaps someone who is
knowledgeable can easily direct me to some literature.

NaH -- Your historical point is well-taken. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of an ancient sub-Saharan civilization known for its perspicacity and technological development. I can think of ones in northern Africa, Europe, China, Japan, India, and South and Central America (though putting the Aztecs on par with the Romans seems charitable based on my knowledge of the two). I must be forgetting something. Not saying there weren't notable sub-Saharan civilizations, just can't think of those that are noted for their intellectual achievements.

I think you forgot to add your point.

"Social Realist"'s point: ("individual attribution of group characteristics is a great filter for organizations operating at scale") seems exactly backwards in light of the ever-strengthening case for racial IQ distribution differences.

Basicly, what he says we *should* be doing is what many companies *already* do - discriminate based on race. While this will give better results than not discriminating at all, due to the existance of racial IQ differences, there will be many errors made.

The *next* step is already in place as well: discriminating by educational pedigree instead of race. Doing things this way allows fewer false classifications than discriminating by race, since not every member of a group is average.

However, since a harvard degree is basically just a way of saying "I have a high IQ"; then you'll get even MORE accurate by discriminating based on IQ scores. The number of false positives and negatives is lowest using this method vs. the other two.

Certainly, if I were a high-IQ black person, you bet your ass I'd feel cheated against if I was automatically disqualified for a position based on my race. The *value* of IQ testing is it means you don't have to discriminate racially anymore!

As steve sailer has said, the solution to bad stereotypes is better stereotypes.

Perversely, the most accurate method (IQ testing) is illegal. (see Griggs vs. Duke Power Company) Racial discrimination, while often innacurate, is cheap, but illegal as well. The only legal method of discrimination is based on educational pedigree, which is horrifically expensive for the pedigree-earners. The mind boggles at the amount of money that could be saved if degrees weren't needed to serve as IQ score proxies.

Pwyll.
The *value* of IQ testing is it means you don't have to discriminate racially anymore!

No. Read Razib' link above, where a (ex?) GNXP poster shows how, in a world with IQ testing, companies would need to practice 'reverse affirmitive action' (what a euphemism!).

Even if they can estimate IQ, if they can't do so perfectly, knowledge that you're a member of group X gives them additional information that would cause them to adjust the estimate downwards, if they were behaving perfectly rationally

In other words ... barring extensive genetic engineering or the like, the informational content of race and other visible attributes can only be reduced .. not eliminated

That last paragraph is the key -- read the whole old GNXP post for a full explanation. As far as I can see, there is no easy solution to this potential issue -- not IQ testing, not gene thereapy.

Jesus, you read it. His point was that the mere qualification of a college degree in a society with no affirmative action wouldn't be enough to completely validate blacks, since one could rationally assume that they'd probably be at the bottom of the class. Good thing we have other more precise aptitude measurements - besides IQ itself, there's class percentile and GPA.

And I'm not sure why, if we can fathom AA being eliminated, people here talk as if outlawing of IQ test usage by employees could never be changed.

No. Read Razib' link above, where a (ex?) GNXP poster shows how, in a world with IQ testing, companies would need to practice 'reverse affirmitive action' (what a euphemism!).

The problem with Razib's link is that while the conclusion is essentially correct, the numbers are wrong.

So, read the comments, which introduce their own incorrect claims that twins reared apart show lower IQ correlations than siblings reared together.

Sigh. The blogosphere is full of shit.

A.T.: "Nightnurse, I live in Ohio, just south of Cleveland. Believe me, it's no D.C. There are clear lines of separation between populations."
yes A.T., for D.C.ites, inside the beltway is where it's at. Everyplace else is somewhere over the rainbow. OTOH we are surrounded by Virginia and Maryland.
I guess my 'ciao' in this discussion is this:
While firmly on the side of genetic realism, I know there is of course a danger in stereotypes. It just so happens that I work with two black ladies (one African educated in a mission school, one Candian born) who are two of the smartest and most professional people I have ever worked with or ever met, and who have no need of affirmative action whatsoever. So it just goes to show you.

omnivore writes:
"below 80 one finds 9% of whites and 35% of blacks."

If we accept these figures, it still indicates that only a minority are at risk. Of those 35% of blacks, the minority will have negative outcomes; On average, I would venture based on the numbers that no more than half, so ~17%. And known environmental factors can assist that remaining 17%. If we take into account the disparity in justice meted out to the poor versus the rich, and to Whites versus Blacks, that number dwindles even further.

I understand that given these figures it seems that the demographics of the haves and have nots will likely endure for some time, and will have an entrenched racial component.

But as more knowledge about environmental factors (note that environment effects genetics) and science allows for gene therapy, some of these issues may be resolved. I'm quite optimistic.

"Most of the literature on African IQ that I have seen or have seen cited concentrates on AVERAGE IQ. But to a statistician, the mean or average is only one of several statistics or MOMENTS of a distribution which are of interest. Two others are the Variance and the Skewness (or Kurtosis). These measure the spread of values round the mean, and the extent to which the distribution is asymmmetrical."

African Enquirer,

Lynn and Vanhanen suspect that sub-Saharan Africa (with an average IQ of ~70) is underperforming its potential by about 10 points, which would bring the regional average up to 80. Assuming a normal distribution and a standard deviation of 15, if we could get the s-S African average up to 85, then 5% of the region would have IQs above 110, which might be enough to sustain a competent indigenous managerial population (assuming they don't leave the region).

Better nutrition in addition to policies that encourage reproduction among the gifted, such as child care credits and no-interest housing loans to students that score in the top 5% of an IQ test, may help close the gap between the actual and the potential. Such policies could be justified by the positive externalities that high IQ Africans add to their communities. And an IQ bounty such as this may have the foreseeable yet unintended consequence of encouraging education more generally. Singapore has adopted similar policies.

Nightnure writes:

"I'd have been pretty nervous, but whether anybody measured it or not, it would still affect my life as it has.

You seem to think if nobody knows what your IQ is, then everybody will think you are the same as they are. Doesn't work that way. Intelligence is like porn. Hard to define but you know it when you see it and you know it when you don't see it."

If the Italian system works well, I would have no problems implementing it here. It could definitely be helpful, especially in breaking preconceived notions that if somebody has the same IQ as somebody else, that they're even "equal" in intelligence. However, one may have stronger vocabulary while the other has higher spacial IQ.

It's not people like me who believe people with the same IQ score are mentally homogeneous. It's the bigots and such who will fall into that mindset. But even they will have to re-examine their views in a system where IQ is frequently tested because they will know their own IQ score and thus where they stand in the IQ continuum.

ikram said: Testing is costly. Cheaper to use racial group averages to discriminate between individuals. And testing is not always sufficiently predictive -- how do you cheaply reliably test a techie Asian for leadership ability? Easier to hire a white guy as manager and leave the Asian in the lab.

in my post, i didn't contest that testing would be costly. i only said that filtering w/o testing was unacceptable to me. anyways, forgive my ignorance if this has been covered, but since iq predicts better job performance regardless of job activity, where is the data that points to whites being the most effective managers/leaders? is there data that shows that g is a worse indicator of performance for leadership than race?

We should also make the distinction between innate "intelligence" differences between races versus the difference in the distribution of "intelligence" as measured by IQ. The data would suggest that all races have members with the same mental capacities at all levels, from retarded to genius. Thus all men/races are created "equal" by nature. The problem is that in particular groups - such as Africans and Black Americans - the number of those with high IQs is disproportionately small compared to other groups, and those with low IQs are overrepresented.

In a completely amoral world where eugenics became the rule of law, theoretically the black populations could be bred to produce only high IQ members, and over time, average racial differences would cease.

It's important to make this point because far too often people use average differences in population groups to mean innate superiority of a race over another.

Re: regression to the mean, as I understand it, the children of two 115-IQ members of a 100-IQ average breeding population are more likely to have IQs in the 100-115 range than they are to have IQs in any other single 15 point range on the IQ scale. However, these children could still have IQs above 115 or below 100, with the former perhaps being more likely since it is closer to their parents' scores.

Also, assortive mating could continue to buoy the IQs of the original pair's descendants, so it's not certain that anyone in that lineage will ever actually regress TO the mean. (I say this because I didn't mean to imply with my original post that the descendants of high-IQ African immigrants to this country will inevitably regress to the current African-American mean, just that such regression is a possibility for each individual offspring.)

I admit that everything I know about this comes from reading online science blogs. If I am woefully wrong, let me know and I'll shut up about the subject until I can shell out the $90 for Falconer. :-)

I say this because I didn't mean to imply with my original post that the descendants of high-IQ African immigrants to this country will inevitably regress to the current African-American mean...

Uh, how else could you interpret:

Even high-IQ individuals from low-IQ populations will have children that regress to their population's mean.

James Malloy writes:

"Scholastic performance is operating mostly through g, and shared environment dissipates on all measures as people develop. So shared environment (not necessarily parents) does have a detectable influence for preadolescents, but by the time people hit age 10 to 12 the effects of shared home environment on school achievement apparently do not reach significance."

I can only speak from personal experience. I was a C student from kindergarten until grade 7 when I began to take school seriously trying to figure out what it took to get good marks. At the end of grade 8 I was a straight A student and Valedictorian of my class (I would have been about 13 or 14 years old).

I maintained straight A's until grade 12 when I got bored with school. I did enough to get admitted into University. I enjoyed my first year of University more than any other school year in my life - because I was learning things I enjoyed. I was a B student, largely due to my inexperience with writing essays (something that I did poorly throughout most of highschool because I wasn't a fan of reading novels; I prefered science books), but have since improved considering I read more and understand how to organize and assemble them.

My 3rd year saw me hovering in the D and C- level because I started my internet business which was taking up all of my time. I didn't study and didn't have time to even familiarize myself with the material.

So to say that IQ alone predicts scholastic achievement, at any age, without accounting for environmental factors, is absolute rubbish.

Not a Hijacker,

You're right, I misspoke/was lazy in my original post. I should have said,

"Statistically speaking, the children of high-IQ individuals *tend* to have IQs that are closer to their population's mean than are their parents'."

So to say that IQ alone predicts scholastic achievement, at any age, without accounting for environmental factors, is absolute rubbish.

IQ is an environmental factor, it does not predict scholastic achievement "alone", and shared environment is not equivalent to environment. Environment plays a large role in school achievement and IQ, but nonshared environment is mostly the entire source of these differences.

Flynn and Dickens argued recently that the IQ of U.S. blacks is approx. 90. This score is higher than that of most nations of Asia and Central and South America. And it is statistically on par with the scores of some of the nations of Southern Europe.

Here are some scores: India 81, Nepal 78, Philippines 86, Mexico 86, Iran 83, Iraq 87,
Guatemala 78, Burma 86, Thailand 89, Greece 91,
Turkey 91, Saudi Arabia 83, Indonesia 89, Bhutan 78, Bahrain 83, etc.

The score for Africa is disingenuously put at 70 because the reported scores for places like Uganda, Tanzanian and South Africa have been put at 85 approx.

Some have argued that so-called "Sub-Saharan Africa" never produced "technical civilizations". Wrong! The location of Kush is in the sub-Saharan area of the Sudan. There there was writing, cities, etc. B

Given that "Sub-Saharan" Africa is but an euphemism for "blacks", one must therefore include places like Ancient Egypt which the Greeks unhesitating dscribed as being populated by blacks. Axum, Ghana, Mali and Songhay must also be mentioned.

Furthermore, one must note the indigenous ways in which iron smelting and agriculture developed in Africa--both being aspects of "technological culture".

So to say that IQ alone predicts scholastic achievement, at any age, without accounting for environmental factors, is absolute rubbish.

Can't you distinguish between a statistical statement about populations and a personal anecdote about an individual?

Some have argued that so-called "Sub-Saharan Africa" never produced "technical civilizations". Wrong! The location of Kush is in the sub-Saharan area of the Sudan. There there was writing, cities, etc. B

Please compare it with China. Which one has mantained a continuous history, and is a people that still exists today.

Flynn and Dickens argued recently that the IQ of U.S. blacks is approx. 90.

The scores of adults have not narrowed, and a 1 SD gap appears to remain.

This score is higher than that of most nations of Asia and Central and South America. And it is statistically on par with the scores of some of the nations of Southern Europe.

This is true. Although some of those IQs are appropriately modified in the Rindermann paper. (e.g. Greece, 95)

SS Africans in less environmentally developed countries tend to show IQs more similar to the ones found in SS Africa (e.g. Brazil, 70), and people from some of the listed countries tend to do somewhat better when transplanted to more environmentally developed countries (e.g. India, 89 in Britain and Australia). This is consistent with genes and environment playing a role in racial differences.


The score for Africa is disingenuously put at 70 because the reported scores for places like Uganda, Tanzanian and South Africa have been put at 85 approx.

Do you have citations for this assertion? See here.


Given that "Sub-Saharan" Africa is but an euphemism for "blacks", one must therefore include places like Ancient Egypt which the Greeks unhesitating dscribed as being populated by blacks.

Afrocentric nonsense.

Besides we are talking about modern populations, not ancient populations. But even if not, the level of development of ancient people is surprisingly consistent with the development of their descendants. This is what Jared Diamond was trying to explain after all.

More to the point many factors influence history, regional power, and economic development, and this is as true today as it was in the past, so I am not thrilled about any mono-causal IQ 'theory of history', nor do I believe viewpoints about genetic differences in traits like intelligence in any way need to be predicated on such a curious idea.

Shakey: "In a completely amoral world where eugenics became the rule of law, theoretically the black populations could be bred to produce only high IQ members, and over time, average racial differences would cease."

If a foundation offered young women access to a sperm bank and offered to pay child support if the donor father had an IQ over 130 would that be wrong? The women could choose the race, height, appearance, athletic ability, etc. The program would be available to women of all races and IQ's, married or single. Would many women choose this option? If it became popular, would the state pick up the tab.

(Science and technology are advancing rapidly. The discovery of genes that influence "g" will lead to effective nutritional and drug programs. Gene engineering and stem cell treatments to enhance adult "g" will follow. In addition, cybernetic enhancement could augment anyone's mental performance. The new gap will be between those who use the technologies and those who don't.)

How did the western europeans go from having such low civilization to having one of the most advanced civilizations in the world? Did their I.Q's magnificently change in a few generations? The reality is that most of you are hard-core racists. If you are honest, you will admit that socio-cultural explanations for "racial" differences aren't satisfying to your racial fantasies. The pseudo-intellectualism of this board is sickening.

Wow, let's see if we can make this go to 1,000 comments...

AT:

I feel for you - seriously, I do. I feel for any black person who is law-abiding, works hard, and gets lumped in with people who do anti-social things for which they are not responsible. In a liberal democracy, this shouldn't happen.

But should is not where we live. We live in the concrete world, of what is. Stereotyping is wrong, but what else can a person who isn't big, and doesn't carry a gun do? I was mugged by two black teenagers during the bad years in NYC. As were most of my friends. Sorry - every time I saw a black teenaged boy I'd move to another subway car. That made for a lot of moving. Eventually I stopped taking the subway.

I don't feel that way anymore because the crime rate dropped.

Stereotypes can change rather quickly. The Iron Curtain fell in 1989. Are you too young to remember when "Slavic woman" meant "shotputter"? Now it's a synonym for "babe."

If blacks became synonymous for positive things like studiousness, or craftsmanship, your own security guards wouldn't scare you so much.

I really feel bad for saying this.

On prenatal environment,

I'm too tired to google for it, but I recall that both MZ and DZ twins have slightly lower IQ (4 points?) than their non-twin siblings. This seems to show that reduction in prenatal resources depresses IQ.

OT, I've been googling around, and there seems to be a connection between lower performance IQ vs. verbal IQ in people with depression. Without journal access I can't find the magnitude. Since success in science, math, and engineering require performance IQ, or at least spatial visualization, could the differential depression rates between men and women account for a portion on the visual-spatial gap?

"Can't you distinguish between a statistical statement about populations and a personal anecdote about an individual?"

Yes but I also can distinguish between seemingly benign environment versus circumstance. If somebody is unable or unwilling to attend classes and must focus his/her attention on other matters, their scholastic achievement will suffer, regardless of their IQ. I can have the inherent ability to do the work that the teacher asks of me on tests, but if I'm familiar with the material, that ability remains dormant.

Likewise, a person of any IQ is more likely to engage in socially negative behaviors if they live in an environment that encourages this behavior and if opportunities are perceived as limited. Thus, all persons of all IQs can benefit from productive environments.

I'm not arguing with the science and the statistics. I'm pointing out the possible blindspots and areas where more testing can be done (assuming it's even logistically possible). Lastly, if people in this discussion are using general statistical data in ways that will effect the lives of individuals, I think I'm justified in adding applicable anecdotes.

Yes but I also can distinguish between seemingly benign environment versus circumstance.

Ah, a 'no', then.

Quick tip: trying to rebut a population-level trend with a personal-level anecdote serves only to make you look foolish.

'Philippines 86' I read somewhere that Filipinos have better graduation rates than whites, have more homeowners, bigger household income. Could it be the fish diet from the islands. Makes you wonder if the IQ test were given in English. Even if you give the test in native language, not all them speak the national language, each island have their own dialect. So I would bet that the test were given in English, which is of course unfair since its not the first language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Fil...lipino_American

"Quick tip: trying to rebut a population-level trend with a personal-level anecdote serves only to make you look foolish."

Mr. Stats 101. Hey, I took that course too. Try keeping up with the logic of the posts in this discussion. Maybe then you'll understand why what I've posted makes sense.

Diana,
I understand. I understand stereo-types, as well as self-preservation. That's why I have to play the i.q. skeptic, or the liberal, or the model minority. I moved out of the city to ensure that unwanted influences have to use a lot of gas to visit my house, and I scold my father-in-law for using poor grammar with my 3 year old.

I can't have my hard work, or the rest of my family's hard work be shot to hell because some "well intentioned" group wants to publicize the relatively low i.q. of black people --especially if the jury is still out. I can't afford to look at the population statistics without personalizing them.

I've been debating whether I should say this, because it's only my opinion, but I think you all are going to witness "Black Flight". We are at a cross roads in which we have to define who we are and assert ourselves as something other than the victim, or we can keep on letting everybody on the freaking planet decide for us.

Too many of the high achievers see the traditional black community imploding. Historically, blacks stayed in the same area regardless of income; I don't think we can do that anymore regardless of our shared history. Too many good kids are being dragged into the wrong direction, as our schools are substandard and peer pressure is overwhelming. One cannot compete if one's math teacher does not know math.

My point is, while I am all for the research on intelligence, and I look forward to the debate, and the new questions that arise, I'm not sure if we should be so gung-ho with these kinds of things without sound hardcore evidence.

Dale J ,

I'd be curious about what proportion of american filipinos are CHINESE philipinos like Amy Chua.
I wasn't able to find that information ...
It could also be that filipino immigration was largely middle class (and that class is strongly chinese ) .

ogunsiron:

Some of it is that aspect, though not completely. Looking at the migration habits of Filipinos to America, families tend to send the members with nursing or minor technical degrees to the USA. They're better able to get a job and send back more money. If you want to migrate but don't have the brains, its probably more fruitful to emigrate to a richer country in Asia or the Middle East where low status jobs are easier had and have higher returns.

In general:

As for the whole thing about stereotypes in wider society, I don't fear it too much. The only people who wouldn't be able to get past my different mode of dress and speech than my compatriots are dumb-dumbs themselves, and why worry over idiots?

AT:

People may move subway cars when a young black man in baggy pants and a "G-Unit" t-shirt gets on, but when one with a button up shirt, slacks and a violin case with a Juilliard sticker gets on? I doubt it. Cultural markers have the ability to trump race when it comes to reasonable people. Why worry about the unreasonable ones?

Blacks have higher downward mobility than whites

Regression to the mean cited.

LOL at suggestion that bright filipinos are actually Chinese. Let me guess, youre chinese? In my experience, Chinese who are from Philippines never identify themselves as Filipinos. Its their racial pride. Even Chinese from Vietnam would identify themselves as Chinese.

Oh, admit it, the Filipinos threw off your "IQ research". I would think that the IQ test that were given to chinese, koreans and japanese are the culture-fair tests since no one speak English and the IQ tests given to Indians and Filipinos are in English.

The Filipinos unlike the Indian immigrants are a mixed class. You have the nurses, teachers, wives of military men, the whole clan of a Filipino ex-military men ( those who fought against the Japanese) so no one can say that Filipinos got it made when they came here.

The Filipinos have been here since 1587 earlier than most white immigrants yet they are still discriminated as "foreigners" Makes you wonder how bad the racism is in the US.

Anna says:

The Filipinos have been here since 1587 earlier than most white immigrants yet they are still discriminated as "foreigners" Makes you wonder how bad the racism is in the US.

If you want to retain any credibility you are going to have to distinguish between a landing party and permanent settlement or immigration.

Jaso Malloy,

Here's the Lynn reference "Ethnic and Racial Differences in Intelligence: International Comparisons"(1978, in Osborne, Noble and Weyl,eds.) The scores reported for tests on Uganda children were (470, 88), and (50, 80). For Tanzania Lynn reported (2959, 88). South African Zulu children(275, 87), Zulu adults(703, 75), Zulu children(another test, 1220, 81). These tests were done some 40-55 years ago.
Lynn also pointed out that the scores of Southern Europeans were "substantially lower" than those for Northern Europeans. The same held for their American born offspring. Testing were done using non-language tests put the scores of Southern/Eastern European offspring at 85 and those of their Northern European counterparts at 97(Lynn. p.269).

The Flynn and Dickens research cited was done not only on younger individuals (4-24) but also on adults. The study is quite detailed and the conclusion is that the post-segregation score for blacks in the U.S. is 90-91. The scores were compiled for tests done from 1972 to 2002.
The point I made about the technological history of Africa was in response to another poster who claimed that there was never any technological movement by blacks in Africa.

Spike,

I don't speak for AT but I think he/she understands the subway car issue.

And also, I pointedly placed the fear of subway crime business in the past. I now take the subway with near-complete freedom from fear. (Can we please not mention Giuliani, thank you. It was William Bratton who brought the crime rate in NYC down.)

In fact, it's no longer young black men who bother me. The young black men I encounter tend to be placid and good-natured. Maybe it's the hip-hop.

The new pain-in-the-ass demographic is urban Latinos. Mixed gender groups emit decibel levels that literally have to be heard to be believed. Single gender groups emit a sullen, menacing hostility.

But, for the most part, they only threaten each other. Unlike black teens of yesteryear, they ignore me, so I ignore them & go on my way.

AT,

The jury will always be out. Tradition is the illusion of permanence. You just have to survive as best you can. If that means cutting off a relative who is sucking your resources and dragging you down, so be it. I don't live in Fiddler on the Roof-land, why should you? Meanwhile, you can busy yourself with creating a new paradigm. It's not impossible.

Anna,
i don't think there's anything that unreasonable about asking whether the immigrant filipinos are heavily chinese. from what i read on wikipedia, the chinese and mixed chinese/filipinos make up about 15% of the population . Are they over , under or fairly represented in the USA ?
My own anecdote : one girl I knew at university, whom i thought was simply chinese, on her own mentionned that she was half chinese/half filipino . I don't know if her parents were from there or if they met here in canada. In any case, she wasn't ashamed of her filipino heritage.

Koreans/chinese/japanese may have been given tests in their own languages back home but they don't have much trouble with IQ tests in english given in the USA or elsewhere in the west anyways. Also ,It seems to me that a lot of indians are quite familiar with english and grow up with it all their lives so I don't see why giving those tests to educated indian adults is a problem . It could be a problem if you give them to illiterate people, I suppose .

Spike ,

Holding stereotypes means that one has learned something about other people , either from one's own experience or indirectly through others and readings/etc . When combined with an open minded willingness to change one's opinions given new information, stereotypes are OK by me .

gadfly, I discuss that 1978 Lynn reference in this post.

The Flynn Effect was unknown back then, so the scores are uncorrected. So the corrected Uganda score would be 80, but that was not a representative sample, the Tanzania score would be 78, next reference 74, next ref 64, next ref 75. We have more and better data than we did 30 years ago. See my post.

Lynn also pointed out that the scores of Southern Europeans were "substantially lower" than those for Northern Europeans.

Actually he only says "somewhat lower" for Southern Europe alone, and "substantially lower" referring to a heterogeneous grouping including India and the Middle East. These statements are still correct.

The Flynn and Dickens research cited was done not only on younger individuals (4-24) but also on adults.

Like I said, we graphed all their studies. The line is flat for adults.

If you want to retain any credibility you are going to have to distinguish between a landing party and permanent settlement or immigration.

Newly arrived Britons or Germans or Swedes will always be considered "American".

Ogunsiron, did you ever consider that those Chinese achievers born in the Philippines yet call themselves Chinese should be identified as Filipinos?

Did you ever consider how many of those Filipino-Chinese high-achievers were actually raised by Filipino Mothers. By practice, Chinese females seldom marry non-Chinese therefore in any Chinese-Filipino pairing, the mother would most probably be the Filipino. Now we all know that Filipino mothers or any mother have direct control on how a kid is raised, correct?

A daughter would never have the same chance on education if she is born in China, yet in the Philippines, she's an equal member of the society, Philippines being a matriarchal society. She would converse in English, since she can go to westernized schools.

Why is it that if the kid is bright, blame the Chinese, if its dumb, blame the brown one. It seems that stereotyping is controlled by the those who love to talk.

Sometimes high scoring samples from other countries are not representative, and are actually high performing ethnic minorities. For instance 'Russians' in the US have high IQs and high income, but this is only because many of them are Ashkenazi Jews. We can tell this by looking at the Russians immigrants separately by religion in the GSS. Similar story with immigrants from a number of other places in Europe.

With Southeast Asia there is a similar phenomenon, except many of the model immigrants are Chinese instead of Jews. This was the case, for instance, with a majority of the academically adept "Vietnamese" boat refugees.

Anna says:

If you want to retain any credibility you are going to have to distinguish between a landing party and permanent settlement or immigration.

Newly arrived Britons or Germans or Swedes will always be considered "American".

No. You claimed, based most likely on a Wikipedia article, that "The Filipinos have been here since 1587 earlier than most white immigrants ..."

This is simply not true, and the claim is based on a landing party on a Spanish vessel who were Filipino.

Using the same method it could be claimed that the Chinese have been in Australia since the 1500s or in Kenya since 1433 (as that was the date of the last Zheng He voyage).

By practice, Chinese females seldom marry non-Chinese ...

That is not my experience, since I know many Chinese females who married non-Chinese. Indeed, I am married to one. The key, in my opinion, is that Chinese females have an in-built high-IQ detection system.

Why is it that if the kid is bright, blame the Chinese, if its dumb, blame the brown one. It seems that stereotyping is controlled by the those who love to talk.


In my experience with both Filipinos and Chinese (from the South of China) their skin colors are indistinguishable. They are both brown.

how many of the chinese have indigenized their surnames in the philipines or vietnam? amy chua is pretty obviously chinese. look at the list here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Chi...hinese_ancestry

looks lots of the pure chinese have chinese surnames, and many of the part-chinese do too (based on fathers i'm assuming). isn't the same pretty true of vietnamese too? it might be a bit more difficult for chinese-thai, who are more acculturated or indonesian chinese who have been forced to take indonesian names.

Its a short list, I dare say. Against millions of Filipino Americans.

The key, in my opinion, is that Chinese females have an in-built high-IQ detection system. - Suuuuureeee.. Whatever.


In my experience with both Filipinos and Chinese (from the South of China) their skin colors are indistinguishable. They are both brown.

Again, let me remind you that the Chinese whether they are brown or yellow would call themselves chinese first, even if they were born and raised in another country.

Therefore those who raised their hands as Filipinos, I would bet they are the real brown malay kind. Now just because SOME of them have .1 percent chinese blood 5 generations ago doesnt mean they are chinese. THey are still Filipinos. So stop claiming rights on their intellectual capacity if, after all the discrimination, they managed to achieve whatever a non-discriminated group can achieve.

As to half filipinos, there are more malay-spanish than malay-chinese since its common knowledge that Chinese seldom marry a non-chinese.

Now here's the deal, in this racially aware country, if you look more white you claim yourself to be white. If a Filipino is aware of his Chinese blood, most likely he would call himself Chinese.

So the rest, they just call themselves Filipino.

So please stop bashing the browns.

ok...this thread has been pretty coherent so far, so i think i'll close it now that we're on the plus side.