Interesting musings on IQ and the Wealth of Nations

[DaShi]

Secondly, there is one effect which is being neglected here. A large part of our culture assumes that humans are born with equal abilities, and structures its institutions accordingly. A recognition of statistical differences in inherited traits in different groups/races should lead to a corresponding re-structuring. For instance, nobody would be overly exercised over black under-achievement in some tests, or their under-representation in certain professions, as long as this disparity is congruent (within reasonable error) with what the data would predict it would be. To take a contemporary example, very few today lament the under-representation of whites in basketball.

Actually, blacks could be more successful in basketball and other sports simply because other opportunities of achievement are not as easily available to them because of SES factors and discrimination. To assume that it is because they are black without providing empirical evidence is actually racist.

Attempts to make the entire populace college-educated would stop after it is realised that most are not capable. The school system would no longer be afraid of competition. People, instead of being led up the garden path of the egalitarian dream and then off the cliff of the limits of their abilities, can instead be honestly told what they are good at, what they aren't good at, and what they will excel at if they apply themselves - the final decision being, of course, their own choice.

And so on. These are just some of the changes we can expect this re-structuring of ideas and institutions. It affects all aspects of life.

Seriously, nothing you are saying is makes logical sense. You are drawing conclusions based on nothing but your own ignorant biases. Perhaps you should focus on learning first.

[DaShi]

That's true. And I don't think there necessarily needs to be a practical application. What I would like to see is an end to the widespread assumption that an equal environment would yield equal outcomes for all racial groups.

Until the evidence shows otherwise, this is the assumption people will go on, despite your racist preferences. Simply put, there is enough evidence to show that environment plays a strong enough role to affect individual outcomes.

It undermines equality under the law.

So you are asking for laws based on race? What a ridiculous statement on all levels.

[Elok]

That article is WTFL;DR. I am suspicious of anyone who has to air his opinions at bible-researcher.org, though, under its anti-PC section. Yes, it's possible that he's a lone voice of truth pushed to the margins, but it's also possible that he's bonkers.

Your ideas for the application sound like a sort of half-assed police state. "This is what Science says you ought to do with your life. You will fail miserably at anything else, we predict. But feel free to!" Also, increasing miscegenation will make the institutions you plan on (as well as most existing racial institutions) pretty well irrelevant, thank God. I know it will be after I die, but some happy day in the future most of the world will be caramel and nobody will have to sit through Black History Month in school. As we speak, hundreds of thousands of children are having to learn Harriet Tubman's story for the eighth consecutive year.

[Caligastia]

Until the evidence shows otherwise, this is the assumption people will go on, despite your racist preferences. Simply put, there is enough evidence to show that environment plays a strong enough role to affect individual outcomes.

Nobody is arguing that environment isn't a huge factor. Where is the evidence that it is the only factor?

So you are asking for laws based on race? What a ridiculous statement on all levels.

Quite the opposite. I want to get rid of laws based on race - racial preferences, etc. I support equality under the law and equal standards applied to all.

[Heraclitus]

I don't think you guys understand that what Caligista is asking for is equal oportunity for whites. Todays society measures equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. This has the seeds of gross future injustice if cognitive differences between groups are real.

[Caligastia]

I know it will be after I die, but some happy day in the future most of the world will be caramel and nobody will have to sit through Black History Month in school..

So you agree that racial homogeniety is desirable in the long term.

[aneeshm]

Actually, blacks could be more successful in basketball and other sports simply because other opportunities of achievement are not as easily available to them because of SES factors and discrimination. To assume that it is because they are black without providing empirical evidence is actually racist.

Maybe. And you magnificently miss the point.

I'm trying to point to the moon - and you're fixating on my finger.

Seriously, nothing you are saying is makes logical sense. You are drawing conclusions based on nothing but your own ignorant biases. Perhaps you should focus on learning first.

Well, if you refuse to engage me entirely, I don't think there's much more that I can say.

[BeBMan]

Humans being equal in a ethical sense has merit as a usefull abstraction. But equality in any empirical sense is actually a step below mainstream religion.

Even if you conclude that humans are not absolutely equal from birth, why does it follow that 'race' is a good/the best/the primary category to describe differences?

For someone who dislikes religion because of how its detrimental to mankind the comparison of ekwaliteee in the sense Aneeshm speak of to religion is only natural. Denial of human biological diversity is nothing short of claiming evolution stops at the neck. Its the Lysenkoism of the West.

Esp. if you don't like "denial of human biological diversity" - isn't it exactly denying diversity to think that people share basic characteristics along broad racial lines (if that is what you mean)?

[aneeshm]

Until the evidence shows otherwise, this is the assumption people will go on, despite your racist preferences. Simply put, there is enough evidence to show that environment plays a strong enough role to affect individual outcomes.

Of course. The question is not one of nature versus nurture; it revolves around the relative importance of the two. As it turns out, it isn't constant over the life of an individual. For instance, in children, around 45% of the variation in IQ can be explained by heredity; in adults, between 75% and 85%. Basically, the influence of environment wanes as people grow older.

This result, by the way, is applicable to a large number of cognitive variables, including what could be considered the second-most important predictor of lifetime success, conscientiousness; we can say with some confidence that, in the general case, the effects of environment wane over the person's lifetime.

If you want these results yourself, you are free to check out Wikpedia and the quoted references. They are all "respectable", in the sense that they are beyond attack as far as the credibility of the source is concerned. These numbers are not mine; the 0.45 and 0.75 figures for children and post-adolescents come from a 1996 statement by the American Psychological Association, and the higher figure of 0.85 comes from a 2004 meta-analysis.

Furthermore, the evidence at this point is quite incontrovertible that, even controlling for all the confounding factors you have noted (socio-economic background, educational level, etc.), the black IQ is one standard deviation lower than the white IQ. The SAT scores (which I consider a good enough proxy for IQ) of the cohort of the wealthiest of (rather, the children of the wealthiest of) blacks were just below the scores of the cohort of the poorest whites. The problem is further complicated by regression to the mean among high-IQ blacks; this is why black students given exactly the same opportunities as white students tend to perform worse. Again, you are free to check the Wikipedia; the mass of references is there for you perusal.

[aneeshm]

Even if you conclude that humans are not absolutely equal from birth, why does it follow that 'race' is a good/the best/the primary category to describe differences?

If we define "race" to mean an endogamous group with a shared selective history, then it is the most obvious and natural way of categorising these differences. It is true that the "races" recognised today are too broad-brush to be useful in teasing out subtler differences between human populations, they are nonetheless good heuristics; the reliable and consistent variability in some key traits between even these broad-brush categories bears testament to that.

Secondly, because a large amount of political discourse centres around this construct, it is natural that any differences such as these will be the first to receive attention, specially in politically-charged matters. For instance, I have not seen much controversy over the fact that blacks are much more prone to sickle-cell anaemia; it is accepted in this case without rancour that a different selective history would select for different traits. The fact that many such traits exist, where a large part of our political philosophy is based (erroneously) on the idea that they should not or do not, is sufficient reason for this to be the construct most frequently invoked in such discussions.

Esp. if you don't like "denial of human biological diversity" - isn't it exactly denying diversity to think that people share basic characteristics along broad racial lines (if that is what you mean)?

Instead of proceeding from what is wanted to be true - in this case, individual diversity - I would think the correct approach would be to try to find out what exists in the real world. So a "denial" of diversity in the sense you mean it would be "incorrect" because it isn't what is wanted. But that would be wishful thinking - that what falls out of our theoretical constructs should be or must be true because that is what we want, or because the consequences of it being wrong are too frightful to contemplate.

At the moment, the evidence suggests that we conclude that certain groups with a shared selective history are statistically more likely to be X. This in no way implies that you do not have outliers, or that the entire spectrum is not represented in all significantly sized populations; it merely indicates that the distribution is not mathematically equivalent for all the populations considered.

[BeBMan]

certain groups with a shared selective history

But these are hardly 'races', throughout history this would be rather things like families, tribes, clans, nations, realms, states etc.

[Heraclitus]

My response to BeBro and DaShi on comments I made is practically unnesecary. I just wish we didn't need to waste so much time in this debate to establish what has already been established and accepted by mainstream science. There are measurable IQ differences. How much is heritable and how much is the result of environmental factors is worthy of debate and inquiry.


I belive considering many nations base so much of their policy on racial terms (afirmative action is an example, or attemts to close various educational and acheivment gaps) its only natural to put those claims to the test BeBro. Also belive me I would love to live in a world where there are no significant differences between groups. Also Aneeshm neglected to point out that despite the fact there are outliers we need to remember that group differences aren't only important for things evaluating the merit of public policies but also for recongizing that regression towards the mean (check out the wikipedia article to check out what I mean) , parents need to understand their children are more likley than not going to be average whether they are inteligent or relativley dull the kids will tend towards the average. The problem is that they tend towards the racial average. This is very bad news for excpetionally talented outliers.

[aneeshm]

That article is WTFL;DR. I am suspicious of anyone who has to air his opinions at bible-researcher.org, though, under its anti-PC section.

I was initially wary, for the same reason, so I probed further. As it turns out, the website is a collection of Bible-related resources for students. The anti-PC section is a small and extremely well-chosen selection of some very interesting works.

As for the source - this isn't the original source. It was, as the article mentions, originally posted in Commentary. As this was the first source I could find for it on the Internet, I linked to it.

The size also led to me being put off initially, but it has amply rewarded my reading of it; I suggest you put aside your reaction of "TL;DR" for a moment, and bother to read through it. It's quite compelling once you get a little into it, and is an engaging read.

Yes, it's possible that he's a lone voice of truth pushed to the margins, but it's also possible that he's bonkers.

As it turns out, he's representative of the scientific consensus. The only reason he has faced so much criticism is because he has attempted to bring this information to the awareness of the public, as he thinks that it is relevant to a large number of issues confronting this said public. Other scientists avoid controversy by publishing their research in academic journals whose results are very rarely, if ever, featured in a news story, and by not attempting to bring their work into public discourse.

Your ideas for the application sound like a sort of half-assed police state. "This is what Science says you ought to do with your life. You will fail miserably at anything else, we predict. But feel free to!"

This is not the case. I am not talking of the state enforcing anything. I am saying that when (if) this information is publicly understood, it will become possible for individuals to make much more informed life-choices. You'll see private testing services providing an accurate measurement of aptitude. They already exist, I simply expect their services to become much more widely (and wisely) used.

I, to take a personal example, took a battery of tests offered by such a psychological testing agency when I passed out of the 10th, when the time came for me to select my stream (the sciences, commerce, or the arts/humanities). As it turns out - and as I expect it to turn out in the overwhelmingly vast majority of cases - my abilities and likes were perfectly congruent. What the test did provide was a finer awareness of my abilities at that time.

I see these profiles playing a key role in individual decision-making; they can prevent the sort of mis-allocation of human talent we see in a large number of people, simply because they believed that they would be happy doing something they were not truly suited for. They end up miserable (and the quality of overall work suffers, too). This is tragic, and if better information can prevent, I'm all for it.

Also, increasing miscegenation will make the institutions you plan on (as well as most existing racial institutions) pretty well irrelevant, thank God.

I'm not talking of specifically "racial" institutions, or anything of the type. I'm talking of institutions which all of us assume are universal, such as the governing apparatuses, the educational establishment, the corporate structures, the intellectual atmosphere of the sciences, and so on. If it turns out that the distribution of certain inherited attributes in a group precludes that group from either creation or sustaining these institutions, we have a major problem on our hands; even the possibility of which is not considered today, for various political reasons.

In simpler words: what if a sufficiently important number of sufficiently important institutions hitherto assumed to be "universal" turn out to actually be "racial" in their requirements?

I know it will be after I die, but some happy day in the future most of the world will be caramel and nobody will have to sit through Black History Month in school. As we speak, hundreds of thousands of children are having to learn Harriet Tubman's story for the eighth consecutive year.

I doubt this will happen; both history and human nature seem to militate against the idea of a "caramel" world.

[Elok]

So you agree that racial homogeniety is desirable in the long term.

Not for its own sake, no. It will merely have the pleasant side effect of eliminating neurotic and self-defeating racial institutions.

[aneeshm]

But these are hardly 'races', throughout history this would be rather things like families, tribes, clans, nations, realms, states etc.

The second factor is also quite important - that because "race" happens to be the most deployed construct in discourse today, and because even this "broad-brush" grouping seems to consistently show nearly fixed differences in heritable traits, it is the most likely to be brought up.

Another thing to remember that the relevant arguments made are not affected by the size of the grouping; as long as it shows the differences required for the arguments to work, and ceteris paribus, "race" happens to be as valid a differentiator as any other. I would say it is so widely used because it is convenient.