The Atlantic: “black people are dumber than whites”
Dec 7th, 2011 by Unamused
I give up! I’ve had enough!
Enough of these race denialists, these radical egalitarians, these “anti-racists,” these diversity-mongers, or whatever they’re calling themselves now, telling me that blacks are dumber than whites. Fine, I concede: they are! They’re dumber than whites. Are you happy now?
I guess I should explain.
I have occasionally written on the subject of race differences in intelligence. I am far from an expert in the field — just an enthusiastic amateur — but I do have a handle on the basics. For example:
- race differences in intelligence definitely and obviously exist
- blacks are less intelligent than whites, on average
These are uncontroversial scientific facts. Perhaps you were not aware of them. Well, I’ve just made you aware, so you are out of excuses.
The most familiar way to express the black-white intelligence gap is with IQ scores, which are a good way to measure intelligence (meaning general intelligence, the so-called g factor). The average IQ of white people is about 100, and the average IQ of American blacks appears to be about 85 (though some estimates put it as low as 78). This is the IQ gap you’ve heard so much about, and it is responsible for the achievement gap that occupies so much of the education system’s attention. Furthermore, the average IQ of sub-Saharan African blacks (from whom black Americans are, of course, mostly descended) is just under 70.
Again, none of this is scientifically controversial. It shouldn’t be offensive, either, as long as you make it clear that you are talking about averages taken over millions of people.
“But I know lots of smart black people!”
“Congratulations. Please ask them to explain averages to you.”
Unfortunately, some people aren’t happy unless they’re hurting black people’s feelings. They simply insist on giving offense.
Over at The Atlantic, for example, senior editor Ta-Nehisi Coates — who is, oddly enough, black — is insisting that the IQ gap (again, that’s the fact that American blacks have an average IQ more than one standard deviation below that of whites) be expressed as follows:
black people are dumber than whites
Well… okay, I guess. If you insist. I can live with that.
Obviously the statement* is still true even if you express it in a way that is seemingly designed to hurt black people’s feelings. So although I prefer to state this particular fact about race and intelligence with more, shall we say, nuance, I reluctantly defer to Mr. Coates. I will no longer attempt to spare black people’s feelings. They can have the unvarnished truth:
Black people are dumber than whites.
They really are. (I checked.)
*Of course, I’m assuming that by “black people” and “whites” Mr. Coates means black people and whites in general, i.e., on average, as opposed to, say, every single black person and every single white person, because that interpretation would just be silly.
Almost as silly as this kitten!
This whole drama was pretty funny. Coates twice admitted that he shouldn’t even be in the debate; in his first post he said that he didn’t know what a standard deviation is, and in his second post he said that he doesn’t know the “neurology” of what intelligence is.
I also made a comment over at the big Gawker post but they wouldn’t let it through.
This needs to be put in bold.
[unamused: ok fine but i also put a kitteh]
ACCORDING TO “THE BELL CURVE” BOOK, NEGROES ONLY HAVE A 75 IQ WORLDWIDE, WHERE WHITES HAVE 106 AVERAGE WORLDWIDE.
TO SHOW THE IQ OF NEGROES, THEY NEVER KNEW THAT A BOAT COULD BE PUSHED BY WIND, AND NEVER KNEW WHAT A “SAIL” WAS, WHEN WE FOUND THEM.
THEY ALSO DID NOT KNOW WHAT A “WHEEL” WAS, WHICH ARE LOGICAL THINGS THAT IQ CREATES FOR HUMANS, WITH NO TRAINING OR EDUCATION AT ALL.
WHITE PEOPLE SHOUT STIFFLY LIKE THIS
black folk speak smoove like this, bruh
If there’s one thing I’ve been taught, it’s to SHUT THE FUCK UP if I don’t know or understand the subject. That N*gger Sapiens individual, Ta-Nehisi*, insists on spewing his ignorance, presumably with a wide audience from the middle-to-left part of the White bell curve which frankly is not much brighter than he is, or at least has other status-seeking uses for IQ than finding the truth about nature.
I am also quite appalled at Sullivan apologizing to the sub-human* for “hurting his feelings”. This attitude must stop, the superior man must cease apologizing immediately and grow some balls and be the alpha male. To be superior is to be alone, and to quote a character from a leftist video-game: “That which increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow”. It is almost inevitable, perhaps with the exception of physics or chemistry.
Galileo stayed under solitary house arrest for saying things much more disturbing back in the day that Blacks are dumber than Whites. Yet he left us with invaluable knowledge, instead of destroying it for the sake of keeping his friends.
*I don’t usually resort to slurs towards Blacks, but some of them truly deserve it; this guy is one of them; and what a name, he sounds like he just came out from the jungle to write diatribes against the curiosity of Whites, which enabled said Whites to leave the forests and live a more comfortable and long life when his own ancestors were dying by the age of 30.
That video game is quoting the Bible. Specifically, Ecclesiastes 1:18.
That is one silly kitten. I wonder what his IQ is.
The silly kitten is a nice touch, but I prefer slutty faeries.
Blacks not only have a much lower mean IQ, they also have somewhat narrower standard deviation or variance. La Griffe du Lion says the SD of their IQ variance is 12.5 versus 15 IQ points for whites. The two together mean that damn few blacks are really smart. I think it’s even more important for people to understand this.
Using Excel’s normdist statistical function (which I’ve long since set up in a spreadsheet to work these kinds of calculations for shiites and giggles) while 4.8% of whites have IQ’s of 125 or above, pretty much the threshold (and it helps to be a good bit higher) to be an elite level doctor or lawyer or a really top level political pundit, only 0.07% of blacks do. As for the threshold of genius at 145 (some would put it at 160), 0.14% of whites are at that level but only 0.00008% of blacks are, trace amounts, i.e. virtually none. Pretty much only in the case of one drop of black type blacks.
However there are decent percentages of blacks who can come off decently smart. A bit less than 1% are at 115 IQ or above. 11.5% are at the white average of 100 or above.
All of the members of House’s super star diagnostic medical team are meant to be at genius levels of intelligence (except maybe slightly lower than that for the white surgeon from Oz, Chase). Now tell me how likely realistic do you think it is that jet black Foreman is the intellectual superstar of that team, replacing House when he gets in trouble and so on. It’s just a total lie is what it is.
The same thing goes on all the time these days in TV shows and movies. Lies, lies, and more lies. Oh and all the absolutely routine all over the place closest buddies between black and white men. Yeah right.
Obama voters misbehave:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/12/savage-beating-caught-on-tape-at-dean-college-in-massachusetts-video/
I, too, could never proclaim to be an expert on the subject of IQ but I will say that, as far as the black in Africa is concerned, low intelligence level was not a concern simply because it was irrelevant to their existence–picking fruit or whatever fell to the ground, hunting, gathering, etc. The glaring differences are only obvious and worth looking at as it relates to civilizations (western) and their inability to assimilate. Well, yeah, duh. My point being, they can survive, and that’s really all that matters, in the end, for any species.
But now I wonder, is their ability to survive based solely upon the western world’s interference or, if left to their own devices, would they go the way of the do-do bird? I don’t think we’ll ever answer that question, which should be the only one worth studying. One problem with being a member of a species with a superior, on average, IQ is that pesky little problem of empathy.
Instead of beating the dead horse of IQ, let us please test the survivability of the black on his/her own.
Let us see this “vibrancy” we’ve been suppressing!
EMD–
Haiti still hasn’t done f*ck all to rebuild. There are almost no whites there except the aid workers.
Imagine how they’d be doing without the aid workers and foreign money. They’re pathetic.
In contrast San Francisco quickly rebuilt after it’s 1905 earthquake and devastating fire.
Doug1-
You’ll get no arguments from me on the pathetic nature of blacks.
The problem with places like Haiti and any sub-saharan African country is that we’re aware of them, which means they’re aware of us! That’s the problem. We introduced the “shiny” objects that a civilized world brings to these evolutionary dead-ends and now, because of empathy (found in higher IQ people), we’re wasting money and research dollars and time trying to figure out why they can’t keep up. We already know why!
I would just like to see any and all White influence (by way of doctors, money, religion, etc.) disappear from any and all black tribes. I would like to see survivability in that sense studied. I know, it’s dreaming the impossible dream.
Cute kittie :)
Sullivan has previously linked to Saletan’s slate essay on the James Watson controversy and this time linked to Razib Khan basically in defense of his position. It’s encouraging that he is intellectually honest enough to maintain his position in the face of hostility.
I’ve enjoyed debating this subject with people on alternet (which was the site that triggered the whole thing by writing about how research was being suppressed – it also featured an IQ researcher, Dennis Garlick saying that Arthur Jensen was widely respected. Nice to see some accurate reporting rather than the standard smearing when it comes to Jensen).
On average, blacks are much better athletes than whites, and anybody who doubts that is, well, not very intelligent. If blacks were just as smart as whites too, then whites would clearly be an inferior race compared with blacks. So, liberals who insist that blacks are, on average, just as smart as whites, are really arguing for white inferiority. Which if it were true would be, considering the relative historical accomplishments of whites and blacks, pretty damned remarkable.
Perhaps we should have some affirmative action in the NBA?
[…] Ferdinand Bardamu The most familiar way to express the black-white intelligence gap is with IQ scores, which are a goo… Published: December 8, 2011 Leave a Comment Name: […]
Can you keep on this one:
[maybe get her fired]
Sara Goldrick-Rab
I’m glad to hear Ta-Nehesi finally conceded the point. Now maybe we can move on.
EMD said:
“But now I wonder, is their ability to survive based solely upon the western world’s interference or, if left to their own devices, would they go the way of the do-do bird?”
They’ll survive, but certainly the population of Africa (excluding Northern Arab/Berber countries) would drop to Neolithic levels. A moderate amount of civilized influence boosts their numbers dramatically. Of course from this point forward they will always have influences from the outside.
You saw it in the Congo when the Portuguese were able to bring Zaire’s GDP (in the ’50s) to a level exceeding that of Texas’ at the time, but now is comparable with counties in some states.
In this current century you will see a stabilizing influence brought by the Chinese the way it was delivered to them by Western powers largely in the 18-early 20th centuries. They’ll do this because war and disease can only impede commerce and the ability to extract resources. No doubt the Chinese will build ports, road, rail, and communication systems on the continent and use garrisons (force or the threat thereof) to keep them intact.
===========================================
Doug,
You must be into demography as much as I am. I’ve posted a few comments on here earlier. Everyone rejects the null hypothesis that there are no differences, the problem is getting people to interpret their results correctly and because of PC brainwashing your average researcher (even if they publish the stats correctly) is afraid to acknowledge why.
Even if the numbers are correct one can always run the wrong tests and can always interpret the results fraudulently; just look at reports from Katrina for example: natural disasters don’t discriminate but Katrina killed far more blacks (even though whether or not one was elderly was a better predictor than was race this wasn’t reported) than it did whites and in greater proportions. Somehow this was interpreted as being Whitey’s fault, somehow we magic’d Katrina into being racisss when in reality (I hypothesize) it was their inability to plan ahead and adapt. I’ll predict that IQ (lack thereof) was a far better indicator of death in Katrina than was race, age, poverty or any other stat.
In defense of the not-completely-silly kitten, I’d like to point out a couple of things:
People always think there are exceptions. But that’s wrong. It’s a mistake to think about there being “exceptions” to the rule that black people are stupider than white people. It’s more accurate to think about it this way:
ALL black people are stupider than they would be if they were white. There is not a single black person that hasn’t been made stupider by being black. Yes there are a tiny handful of black people with IQs of 135 or more, but if those same people were white, they’d have IQs of 150 or more. And yes there are stupid white people, but if those same people were black they’d be clinically retarded.
The average black person is stupider than the average white person. But it doesn’t stop there. The above average black person is stupider than the above average white person. The (rare) way above average black person is stupider than the (rare) way above average white person. And of course the below average black person is stupider than the below average white person. No exceptions. Every black person has a white equivalent that they could be matched with from the same part of the distribution, and that white person is always 1 std dev (ie a lot) smarter.
About 15% of black people are smarter than the white average, compared to 50% of white people. But what people forget, is that those 15% are mostly only just past the average, whereas the 50% extend much further above average. If you recruit people on a race-blind basis, with a minimum cut-off IQ of 100, then the black people you recruit will still be stupider than the white people you recruit (but not so badly as in the general population).
Another point is: Some races have almost no overlap. For example, Ashkenazi Jews and Australian Aborigines. The stupidest Ashkenazi Jew that you could realistically expect to find, is smarter than the smartest Australian Aborigine you could expect to find.
And there’s always effectively a cutoff point beyond which you would not reasonably expect to find any of a particular race. There is a point of genius that only white people, NE Asians, and Jews can be expected to reach, but zero black people. There would be a point of genius higher than that that only Ahskenazi Jews could reach, except that Jews are outnumbered so much by white people and NE Asians. There’s also a point of stupid depraved criminality that only Africans can realistically reach (which you can’t imagine without visiting the Congo).
Of course, if you look at all racial traits, not just IQ, there is no overlap at all, which is why anyone can tell the difference between a black person and a white person, even if the black person was a fluke high IQ albino. As you would expect from completely seperate gene pools for tens of thousands of years.
Off-topic, can we have a post about Emma West?
Send Emma West a Christmas Card since she will be in prison awaiting her fate.
Emma West
C/O HMP Bronzefield
Woodthorpe Road
Ashford
Middlesex
TW15 3JZ
is there an online card and petition for Emma?
if not can someone who is Inet savvy build?
This is a slight digression – does anyone know of any legit IQ tests one can take online? I am not an expert but want a realistic assessment without having to pay someone to administer a test.
“But I know lots of smart black people!”
“Congratulations. Please ask them to explain averages to you.”
LOL! Nice. I’m swiping that one. I’m not all that free with the praise but you’re definitely race-realism’s leading humorist.
There’s another joke in there somewhere:
Negroid Mean IQ (in America): ~85
Caucasoid Mean IQ: ~100
IQ required to understand arithmetic: >100
This is a slight digression – does anyone know of any legit IQ tests one can take online? I am not an expert but want a realistic assessment without having to pay someone to administer a test.
If you took the SAT, just find a site that converts SAT scores to rough estimates of IQ.
I’m from the Indian subcontinent; my IQ is 142. My point is simple: OP (unamused) is a dumbass. Just like he would like to talk about IQ differences between the races with haughty contempt, I just did the same to him. How does it feel to be put down? Not good right? So even though it’s a fact that races have varying IQs in general, what’s the point of pointing it out? You just look like a dick. Just let it go and allow the races to mix and mingle and for the IQ differences to coalesce.
You’re an Indian idiot, Indian man. That’s probably why you’ve missed the point of this post completely (“haughty contempt” trollolol). It’s also why your own “point” isn’t one, simple or otherwise: you’re not “talking about IQ differences between the races,” so you haven’t done “the same” to anyone. What you’ve done is brag about your own (inflated) IQ score; unfortunately, at three SDs above the white mean, you set the bar a little low to hurt my feelings.
No, really. You’re an idiot. I don’t believe for a second that you’ve got an IQ of 142. I’m sure that Internet “IQ test” you took said you were real smart, though. “How does it feel to be put down” by an Indian idiot? I think I can survive it.
For the record: (1) The average IQ of Indians is 82. (2) Your IQ is lower than 142. (3) Mine is higher.
“What’s the point of pointing it out” to Indian idiots? Well, gee. I dunno. It’s not like I’ve already explained this four or five hundred — oh wait. Do the words affirmative action ring any bells? Blacks, Hispanics (Mestizos), American Indians, South-East Asians (e.g., Hmong), etc. fail in America — compared to their white and East Asian cognitive superiors — because of race differences in intelligence. If you don’t know that, then you’ll blame their failure on mythical “white racism,” and that leads to all sorts of problems, which I’ve written about four or five hundred times already. Are you starting to understand, Indian idiot?
As for races “mixing and mingling,” aren’t Indians and other South Asian types considered to be the least attractive men, to all races? Anyway, go promote miscegenation elsewhere. Your kind bores me.
[Unamused: You can comment again when you start making sense, Indian idiot. Since you appear to be incapable of doing that, good riddance!]
Haha, I like you, Unamused. You are like those Bible-belt idiots in the States taking their creationism to their grave, something endearing about that!
[Unamused: Rrrright… Anyway, I’m waiting for “Indian idiot” to realize I’m actually smarter than he is. This may take awhile, because he’s obviously not (capable of?) reading what I’m writing.]
If you want some facts: 3/4 of India is dirt poor. Hinduism insists that the more you suffer in this world, the better off you will be in the next. Spiritualism and a zen way of being (nirvana) are tattooed into most Indians. This is why those dirt poor citizens don’t score well in IQ tests..
[Unamused: How about this: they’re dirt poor because they have an average IQ of 82?]
I took the test, scored genius (142), but I can tell you that a lot of the logic reasoning is not school-independent. Someone who is illeterate will have tons of difficulty.
[Unamused: And that’s why when researchers measure IQs in third-world countries, like yours, they don’t give whatever school test told you you were a “genius.” They give tests designed to be culturally unbiased, tests that use no language at all. By the way, genius, it’s spelled “illiterate.”]
Amongst the 1/4 middle-class and rich, the IQ scores are only below Japan/Korea/Chinese and the SAME as Europeans (west).
[Unamused: How about this: middle- and upper-class Indians got that way because they inherited high intelligence from their parents, or because they inherited wealth from their parents, who got it by being intelligent! Congratulations, you’ve discovered that intelligence and wealth are correlated, but like most people, you got confused when it came to causation.]
Indians and Europeans are genetically linked after all. So your figures for Indian subcontinent IQ scores are vastly incorrect.
[Unamused: “Vastly incorrect”? Okay then, genius.]
The correct figure is the same level as whites, below Asians.
[Unamused: No, it’s still 82. Way below whites. Why does that bother you so much?]
[Unamused: I’ve deleted some bizarre, rambling, made-up history lesson about how Indians invented everything ever and white people lived in trees like monkeys. You’re not missing anything.]
Sub-saharan Africans do score the lowest for more reasons than just poverty, as they do score lower across the board and also while they go to western countries (unlike Indians who outshine their white counterparts in western countries), so Blacks are indeed lesser intelligent, but they make up for it by rhythm, music, sports, and adding to the rich human culture with their very important contributions.
[Unamused: First, we import the most competent Indians. It’s called “selection bias.” Second, blacks “make up for it”? So they’re violent and unintelligent, but at least they have rhythm and run fast?]
People like you, creationism-mongers etc. are hopefully not reproducing.
[Unamused: What an odd coincidence: Indian intelligence scores make you mad, and you believe intelligence research is like creationism, i.e., not valid science. Well, clearly you must be well informed and unbiased, not ignorant and prejudiced!]
If you want to talk further, look me up (thilfiger11@gmail.com). I am sure to convince you to spend the precious few moments of your life on somethings more relevent. Peace bro.
[Unamused: It’s spelled “relevant,” genius.]
[deleted: anti-white racism]
my IQ is 142.
WAIS or Stanford Binet?
[Unamused: I’ve deleted some bizarre, rambling, made-up history lesson about how Indians invented everything ever and white people lived in trees like monkeys. You’re not missing anything.]
Thank you. How could anyone steal from the blacks and this in Black History month!
You’re in denial. That’s fine. History is filled with falsities created by denial. I often wonder what our outlook on life would be if history were ever told truthfully, without bias. Alas, no way to find out in this realm.
In the old world, the French used to think Germans were pretty dumb and inferior too. They were perhaps a little agrarian on the average at that time. Looks like the French were proved wrong, particularly in the 20th century with all the great physicist coming out the country. Similar things were said about Jews too in the more distant past. People are wonderful, creative, amazing if you let them be, from any culture. Our IQ test are built on self-fulfilling prophecies about the dictates of Western culture…I doubt they apply more broadly than that or even very well within Western culture. By basing your arguments on a test you don’t understand, I think you are proving you as a White person are not very smart.
There was an excellent study done in the Journal of Science based upon scholastic grades. Those students who did the best, were successful early in their careers, but the correlation was very poor later in their career, and could be explained by the self-fulfilling prophecy of getting more sucess BECAUSE of the better grades. There is all kind of evidene we really don’t kwow what we are talking about when it comes to intelligence. Even in the field of neuroscience, the “slowest” learning for artificial intelligence acutally produce the smartest computer algorithms…in the long run. Humans are also pretty slow learners (at first) and take a long time to develop compared to other animals. Chimps at 2-3 years do much better than human babies. I think we should not judge intelligence based upon someone who can learn quickly only.
Your statement about Jews is pretty funny. Jews ARE Africans, Northern Africans to be exact, and they share many cultural and linguistic aspects with other Africans. Amazingly, they have also produced some of the smartest people on the planet!!!
Ramanujan from Southern India was much much smarter than any of mathematicians of his day, and they still hold conferences for him in Chicago every few years. He was a profound genius. I also knew a real genius once, IQ unmeasurable, and he was darked skinned. He was an amazing person to talk to, knew everything and could predict political events with precision, much smarter than any person I met or saw on TV too. He took the IQ test once and he said it was junk science, and had no meaning because it was based on elitist ideals and memorization. Anybody could do well if they were educated in such and such a way. I believe him. If the “average” human can memorize a complete language 30,000 words that is an amazingly complex feat, one more complex than learning any particular subject like algebra or relativity, or and use rocket design. It is mostly a matter of motivation and enthusiasm I think for the “average” or “below average” IQ.
In the old world, the French used to think Germans were pretty dumb and inferior too.
Citation needed.
Similar things were said about Jews too in the more distant past.
Citation needed.
People are wonderful, creative, amazing if you let them be, from any culture.
No, many people are genetically predisposed to antisocial behavior.
Our IQ test are built on self-fulfilling prophecies about the dictates of Western culture…I doubt they apply more broadly than that or even very well within Western culture.
You are mistaken. Do some research on intelligence testing. Start here.
By basing your arguments on a test you don’t understand…
Pot/kettle.
Those students who did the best, were successful early in their careers, but the correlation was very poor later in their career…
Citation needed. Also, I have a study of my own:
…artificial intelligence…
Totally irrelevant.
Chimps at 2-3 years do much better than human babies.
Chimps may well “do much better” in some respects. This is because they mature faster. Interestingly, blacks mature faster than whites, who mature faster than Asians.
Jews ARE Africans, Northern Africans to be exact…
Oh good grief. Sub-Saharan (black) Africans are genetically distinct from North Africans. Don’t pretend “African” is a (genetic) race.
Ramanujan from Southern India was much much smarter than any of mathematicians of his day…
Er, no. Ramanujan was clever, but he wasn’t smarter than every other mathematician of his day, let alone “much much smarter.”
I also knew a real genius once, IQ unmeasurable, and he was darked skinned.
lulz learn to average
He took the IQ test once and he said it was junk science…
Sounds like your supposed friend didn’t know anything about intelligence research. That’s okay: knowledge isn’t the same as intelligence.
It is mostly a matter of motivation and enthusiasm I think…
Nope. That’s why you, for example, will never understand physics.
I see I’m going to have to watch that “recent comments” sidebar, or miss some good stuff in old threads.
I majored in physics and math and molecular science. I also went to med school. Some of the greatest discoveries in physics were done by non-whites, like Bose and Chandrasekar. If you read their papers, you can see they have something very insightful and special about their intelligence too. While I do not believe an iota in race influencing intelligence, I do very much think culture does, and Indian culture does emphasize fascination with symbols and I think that helped those individuals. Also the greatest mathematicians often had the greatest teachers. Gauss pupils went on to be great mathematicians. Environment is critical. Our brains our miraculous machines, and even people with low IQ by standard tests are just not being tapped correctly for the potential they could give the world. I am an optimist in this respect. I should quality though about IQ testing. IQ testing is definitely specific. If you score very high or unmeasurable like my friend, then you are probably quite smart. But I do not think it is at all sensitive, and probably most individuals who could achieve great things intellectually cannot ever score well on such tests. The future will tell, but all research in neuroscience and artificial NN and even optimization suggest slow learning is better because you sample the space of possiblities more. I think our education system and emphasis on fast learning of concepts is completely lopsided, and possibly the greatest geniuses could even be wasting their lives away in a horrendously judgmental and racist society.
I don’t think your study is any good actually. I will have to look to find mine. This is because as the world has become more organized and connected, it is also more judgemental, and people who do not do well in school simply are not given the chance to succeed. I think it is worse now than the past. In the past, many great people failed in tests (Einstein failed algebra), Edison hated math…it is possible these people could not succeed in todays world if everyone was always telling them they were dumb. The only way to really do a good study is to measure long term success in a non-elistist society, and that does not mean (like it does today) that some guy has Daddy pay to hire SAT tutors and get him into an Ivy league school, gets reasonable grades, earns a Ph.D.and then hires a bunch of Chinese postdocs to do his work for him so he can look successful. The deck is so stacked nowadays, these studies have no meaning at all.
Tim: you’ve disqualified yourself from any serious discussion. Here’s why.
(1) You still don’t understand what an average or a distribution is: Some of the greatest discoveries in physics were done by non-whites, like Bose and Chandrasekar.
(2) You argue from ignorance, only you call your ignorance “belief”: While I do not believe an iota in race influencing intelligence, I do very much think culture does
(3) You get causal relationships backwards: Also the greatest mathematicians often had the greatest teachers. Gauss pupils went on to be great mathematicians.
Did it ever occur to you that Gauss, being perhaps the greatest mathematician ever, working at one of the greatest math universities in the world, would only get very intelligent students? Did that ever cross your mind? Oh, I forgot: you’re a super-genius who went to college and med school.
(4) You make wild (sometimes irrelevant) assertions without even attempting to find or cite evidence: Even people with low IQ by standard tests are just not being tapped correctly for the potential they could give the world… slow learning is better
(5) You bring out the R-word to bash white people in a discussion of science: a horrendously judgmental and racist society
(6) Instead of reading my sources and learning something, you dismiss them on fallacious grounds without reading them, maintaining your perfect ignorance: I don’t think your study is any good actually… some guy has Daddy pay to hire SAT tutors and get him into an Ivy league school, gets reasonable grades, earns a Ph.D.and then hires a bunch of Chinese postdocs to do his work for him so he can look successful. … these studies have no meaning at all.
This tendency, more than anything, demonstrates your profound prejudice in matters of race and intelligence. Presumably you’re non-white — member of some relatively low-IQ population. Get over your bias.
And this weird racial-Marxist fantasy of rich old white men cheating the system to get their kids doctoral degrees (!?)… Look, I’ll make it simple: you’re deluded.
(7) You state myths as fact: (Einstein failed algebra)
Wrong, wrong, wrong. “Google is your friend,” as the kids say.
I think I’ve established what is wrong with your thoughts. Until you acknowledge and correct these errors in your thinking, you really have nothing to contribute but misinformation. Propaganda. Lies.
It is difficult to havr a serious discussion here. The point to all of your discussion IS a value judgement and that is was makes me angry. I am only pointing out what I know. I read a lot and I do have a informaito to make my claims. My understanding of IQ tests (and I have taken many tests) is that they ask questions which it took whole lifetimes of great geniuses to answer in the past. How can we expect to reliably judge people in our society by these standards. Students are just tested on there ability to memorize quickly. It cannot be reasonably assumed that they have the genius of the past greats all stuck in their heads, or have some kind of propensity to come up with all this on there own…that would be ludicrous as is the value of these tests. They are really just good at memorizing, as I was. It doens’t mean I or anyone else good at these things will make an intellectually important contribtuion to society. That is the value argument. I am very white by the way, German and French. My grandmother was supposedly Jewish.
I do not understand your obsession with averages. I know exactly what you mean by averages, even standard deviations. You might be correct about many of your statements, just as anyone can say anything correctly, but it is the insinuation and value judgment that bothers me, as would bother anyone with a conscious. I can say white people throug wars are responsible for more death and suffereing than black people. I can say on average a white man weaker physically than a black man. But what is the value of that? Human progress doesn’t come about by anything average, and that supposedly is the value of these test in judging some kind of intellectual ability which is beneficial for human progress. Saying a whole group is more stuipid on average makes no point, and is harmful even if it has some verity (which I doubt) by some one-parameter tests. Our brains our made of billions of neurons with trillions of connections. I just don’t see how you can put a value judgement on that with a single parameter, and say that is important.
A few last points, and then as you said I do not want to bother your discussion if you think I am too prejudice to contribute. You say I am making prejudicial remarks without reading these studies. Well, I have read a lot of studies, and while what you said is technically true,my position is not uncalled for. I do not need to read a study on global warming when the method used to measure is if a person feels hot or cold. The methods to measure intelligence are most certainly too primitive to make widespread generalizations. There is common sense in knowing what value a study can and cannot truly answer. We simply do not have the tools or know the real meaning or cosequences of making a judgement on this. It does not mean such studies shouldn’t be done, it just means we can only know so much, and we have to take what they say with a grain of salt if they do not have much to work with. The human mind is way too complex and way too capable for it to be judged and categorized by a one-parameter model. It is doubtful we have the technology in this century or the next to really evaluate (and possibly even define0 human intelligence accurately, and certainly when and if it can be done (and there is even doubt there), it would be by a sophisticated multiparameter model and takes into account environmental variables. I can find an “average” correlation between the hairs on somones head and their age, but that does not mean we should put babies on social security. Finally, and most importantly though, the value is questionable because the future is always unknowable. If you look at the history of inventions and human progress (Burke’s Connections is good) or the evolution of life on earth (S Jay Gould0, there are so many surrendipitous inventions/ideas and lifeforms which seemed originally worse/inefficient/poorly adaptable/bad in the zeitgeist of the past, yet in the long run, fared so much better and were more successful ultimately. I think it is absurd to try to place a value/superiority on intelligence via IQ. There are probably many types of intelligence, and who knows which one could be the one capable of propelling us into a better future. It may not be the type that has brought us this far.
Timothy,
Averages are important for the following reason: Because public policy in Western nations are based upon the idea that intelligence is distributed equally across all the races, with whites as the median. Thus, if a race under performs in comparison to the whites in said country, the reason for this is instantly identified as racism. Of course, taking the United States as an example, East Asians and Jews, two highly persecuted groups (East Asians being a “visible” minority), are now outperforming whites, despite years of systematic oppression against them.
So why is it that some groups who were oppressed succeed (Asians, Jews) while others continue to fail, despite years and years of policy that has attempted to bridge the gap between themselves and whites (blacks)?
Well, if you accept the exhaustive research that thousands of scientists have done that says IQ does matter, that there are races that have higher IQs than other races, that IQs are at least 50% genetic and possibly 80%, then these gaps make sense.
If we were to accept what many scientists have accepted as fact, then we could do away with foolish programs that waste billions and billions of public dollars that are used to try and close the gaps. In this matter, black people who actually DESERVE their places in Ivy League schools or Fortune 500 companies, would no longer be looked at with suspicion that they got their due to affirmative action and diversity quotas.
Let’s use the Olympics as an example. If we used our government and public university policies in regards to the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team, we would have to hack Anthony Davis, Deron Williams and Tyson Chandler off the team. We would have to include Jeremy Lin, Chandler Parsons and David Lee. We would be purposefully decreasing our chances of victory for what purpose? To better resemble our nation? Isn’t the goal to win? Likewise, isn’t a university’s goal to prepare those who can handle a university education for the future so that they can contribute to society? Why waste spots on people who cannot do these things? Why should a company inflict harm on their performance simply to appease the diversity Gods?
IQ is a wonderful indicator of success and easily explains WHY East Asians seem to succeed wherever they go, while black Americans seem to fail. It certainly makes more sense than some invisible white hand destroying little black kids’ dreams every time they enter a classroom.
Tim,
Also, IQ tests are best taken when you don’t prepare for them. They aren’t things that one “easily memorizes” when they are simply taken without prep books. If an IQ test is in your language, it is something that basically tests your ability to solve problems and identify patterns. How is that not the basic indicator of human intelligence?
Your understanding of IQ tests is as bad as your spelling and grammar. I have been through the full Stanford-Binet IQ test. Among the tasks were mental addition of 1-digit numbers and arranging a set of tiles to make specified shapes. There are some tasks which test working memory, others which test verbal acuity. Any moron could solve one or more of the tasks; solving many of them with speed and accuracy shows high “g”. Nothing requires deep knowledge of the work of past genuises (unless you consider the English language and arithmetic itself to be such, but we teach both of them to everyone… or once did, until we decided to stop being “discriminatory” and required good results or at least good effort from all students).
You can’t even memorize the proper use of “their” vs. “there”, nor “prejudice” (the noun) vs. “prejudiced” (the adjective). As a matter of fact, you spell as if you’re phonetically reproducing Black diction.
You also don’t know what “prejudice” is. The word means “pre-judging”, before having the facts. Nothing is pre-judged here; we have the facts. Just because you pretend not to see them does not mean they don’t exist.
A most prejudiced statement.
You could say that physics is way too complex and subtle for so much of it to be captured by one parameter called “energy”, and you’d be wrong there too.
Picking at spelling errors is like making a personal attack in an argument, pretty unprofessional and meaningless and childish. Feynman nor any good physicists didn’t care about Pi and 2 and various contants until they have to publish, and you’ll find plenty of spelling errors in writers personal journals too. Spelling is also plastic and correct spelling and grammar changes from century to century, just as I imagine so called IQ will. I haven’t taken too many IQ tests, I’ve taken a lot of tests period, some of them IQ. If you study high level math, you’ll recognize many of the logic puzzles are in part of these IQ tests though, sometimes hidden but there. Where do you think the questions come from? Some divine source? No they come from scholars who have read other scholars. They are in no way shape or form linked to some device measuring the neural circuitry of the human brain and diagnosing eurekas. It’s pretty much all smoke and mirrors hogwash on a very fundamental level IF you try to put a value judgement on that and especially if you effect someones life. Until someone even knows what intelligence is, I don’t think we can make a test to accurately tell that. Intelligence as it is understood has been defined by these researchers, it is not a concept as well defined as energy. The concept of energy has both a definition and well-defined meaning (well-defined effects upon the world). IQ has only a definition but who the heck knows what the meaning is. My own speculation is that true intelligence has more to do with creativity and testing possible outcomes efficiently (or perhaps even inefficiently as you might find more stuff if you don’t always put the horse-blinders on). I don’t buy all that crap people are writing on the internet about how the failure of (real) geniuses in academia was because they were misunderstood. You go back and read the actual biographies and autobiographies, you will find real intellectual struggles there. Calling people intelligent who take these tests is like calling someone a great writer because they can read and understand a great author’s book. But the two are not one and the same, and in fact maybe even polar opposites really. The only way to know is to watch and see if they write a good one on their own. Researchers do not have the time for that, so they make lazy test that tell us nothing and do a world of harm.
Daggs,
I like the fact you mentioned Jews and Asians as persecuted peoples, yet very successful peoples. But I interpret it as a cultural struggle (and contrarian attitude) to excel against classification and prejudice rather than somehting intrinsic in the genes. Asia is a big place, as is the Jewish culture. You will find many places in Asia where people are extremely uneducated though if you travel there, and I think there is a big bias because we are looking at a select group of immigrants. Culture is very important as many places in China highly respect educated people, and it is a ‘popular’ thing. It used to be that way in Japan too, but things are changing. Amerian Blacks (and uneducated whites) associate intelligence with elitism and the negative feelings affect many generations. . Jews are complicated, and their struggle is also part of their religion and beliefs about meaning and discipline, and I think what makes them succeed too. I don’t think it is genetic at all. American black have lost most of their culture and self-esteem when they came over. I know you think it is an excuse, but I do not think so at all. Culture is very powerful about how you think about yourself and what you an do. I worked in Northern Africa/Middle East, and even the Africans there believe the American blacks sometimes act ignorant. But if you go back to Europe, ‘white culture’ as it was developing had its own time of stupidity, and ignorance too. Those times weren’t all bad either and gave us room for novel ideas and ways of doing things. I think only after a few hundred more years will we be able to judge anything about American Blacks, and by that time I honestly don’t think it will matter, if it does now. The world already is and will be so much more a diverse place and requires all kinds of intelligence to function. I am pretty stupid at spelling, but I am very good at other things. I’ve met plenty of white people and black people who (I thought) were dumber and smarter than me in different ways. There is no need to classify people like this. It is waste of time and non-productive use of the human brain, which even at the lowest IQ if miles ahead of a computer. We just don’t use our potential is all, that is the best lowest measure of IQ in my book.
Mr. Rational,
Physics is too complex to be captured by a single parameter stands. You need position, momentum, wave functions, charge, currents, math. Energy alone would be quite meaningless.
Tim — let’s grant your premise.
IQ testing is, as you say, conditional and contingent: that is, it doesn’t exist in an abstract void, it has a tangible relation to certain pre-decided conditions, and is therefore not absolute. It measures what we’ll tentatively call “intelligence” (for lack of a better word) in a contingent, contextual matrix, not in an absolute one. Fine.
It’s also true, would you not concede, that IQ testing doesn’t exist for the purpose of bragging rights (“Woo-hoo! I’m smarter than you, and so is my sub-group! Eat these IQ numbers, baby!”) It isn’t a parlor game created for the purpose making some people feel good and others less good about themselves. It’s a sorting device, used basically as a tool to help in shaping social policy and allocation of resources. (“Hmm, there are only so many seats in the calculus class, and only so many seats in shop class. Who, precisely, should we give them to?”)
So, being that it’s contingent, and being that it has a purpose, we would say that it is shaped for usefulness in the context of the society that administers it. If we lived in the Australian Outback 8,000 years ago, our IQ test might consist of testing our ability to identify and differentiate between several thousand different types of plants, roots, berries, and animal subspecies. But if we were both members of the Sligo Fiddlers Guild in the north of Ireland in the year 1530, our IQ test might consist of our ability to play and differentiate between several hundred different reels and slip-jigs which all sound practically the same to an untutored ear.
And here we are now, today, in a particular society which is highly predicated for its success and viability on advanced math, coherent logic, and intelligible language — the very things which enable us to have this discussion remotely, via computer. Slip-jigs and roots and berries would not help us to thrive in this technocentric hypermodern world. Being able to play “She Moved Through the Fair” on one string in the Clare style is nice, but it does not help make a jet-engine aircraft take off and land successfully.
So we’re back to where we started. It doesn’t matter if IQ testing as we practice it is conditional or culturally biased, because it is biased so as to be useful in the context, (OUR context) under the conditions, (OUR conditions) and in the culture (OUR culture) in which we actually live and function. I’m sure you or some other clever rapscallion could devise an IQ test with premises based on the ability to yell obscenities into a microphone and throw a rubber ball through a hoop; and I’m fairly certain that the average denizen of Detroit would do better on that test than the average denizen of Cambridge, Mass. But that test wouldn’t do much to help a jet-engine aircraft take off and land successfully. You may prefer the sort of culture whose greatest achievement to date is throwing a rubber ball through a hoop. I prefer the sort of culture that keeps coming up with things like jet-engines and computers; and the IQ tests that we “happen to” use, measure the mental abilities needed to maintain that particular culture and distribute resources and make policy accordingly. The rubber-ball/hoop culture is merely piggybacking on the success of the jet-engine culture, because up til now the jet-boys (NY Dolls ref) have just been too damn polite to tell the b-ballers to bugger off.
But those days are reaching their limit.
In the meantime, in the contingent, contextual, conditional cultural environment of a society that values things like advanced math, technical facility, coherent logic, and the ability to speak and write persuasively and intelligently in standard English, there is a limit to the value which can be placed on what I believe a great black bard once called “the power of street knowledge” — which mostly consists of how to deal crack cocaine, shoot your enemies wif your Uzi (which weighs a ton, I’m given to understand — bad metrics and even worse wieldability), throw a rubber ball throw a hoop, and rape white women.
If the IQ test as devised by the evil mathematicians using their evil, a priori, racist cultural biases decides who gets into CalTech and thus who designs the next generation of jet-engine aircraft, the proof of the pudding will be in whether that aircraft will actually fly properly… or will the aircraft designed by the IQ champions of Da Skool of Street Knowledge have better, faster, safer performance?
You’re a mathematician, you understand things like statistics and probability.
You tell me.
Hi Oscar,
I get some of your points. People can be brutal if uneducated, and sometimes they can be brutal when they think they are more educated and smarter or superior than than another group too. It’s worked both ways historically.
I don’t think anyone is evil directly in this venture of using IQ tests, more misguided. Many are possibly thinking they are doing the right thing, and some of them sincerely are trying to understand intelligence, and that is a good thing. Intelligence is multi-faceted, and we are in danger though of overclassifying (and simplifying) our society and our potential by relying on such a simple test. Even relying on objective parameters like “speed” rather than learned knowledge could be all wrong. As I mentioned earlier, research in computer learning all points to the fact that “slow” learning algorithms actually find the “best” solutions in the long run, not fast ones, so these tests could easily be testing for the polar opposite of the correct thing!! We might be selecting for people very capalbe in some way (like fast learning) but completely incompetent and irresponsible for making the best solutions to long term problems in our society. It is dangerous and certainly has an evil potential. In not too many years from now, people will be able to change their genes or alter the genes of their children to have higher IQ’s by some test. If everyone does this, believing it is beneficial to the world, it could make us dumber or more psychopathic or who knows what as a society. It may not be a very pleasant place to live in this future. It is dangerous to put a value judgement on something we really don’t understand how it works. There are many types of intelligence and we might lose certain types if we homogenize and pasteurize our society to just one type. The kind of intelligence that made Einsteins and Teslas is different than the one which made Michelangelos and Buddha. But they were all valuable in some way at some time. We may ruin our future if we put stake in one parameter as important. Whole species become extinct in nature because they are too homogeneous, especially when some environmental variable changes, and they cannot adapt.
With regard to your comments about not being valuable shooting hoops, etc. when I said there are many types of intelligence, I meant many types of academic intelligence, not what is the popular trend now…emotional/street-smarts/etc. I don’t believe in making these kind of excuses for some groups, and it isn’t fair for those groups because they are missing out. I think most people can be taught and motivated to learn high level maths and physics or other valuable deep knowlege. 2000 years ago, only scholars and scribes were literate. It took a paradigm shift in attitudes to understand most people could, and society is much better for it. Moreover, jobs and productivity were created naturally from this untapped potential. Of course there are exceptions like those mentally handicapped or with emotional or mental diseases. I sincerely believe even these individuals see life from a unique perspective though, and know and understand and can teach things perhaps more capable people would not be able to know on their own. Basically, however, if you are reading this message, you know the English language, 30,000 words and possibly 30,000 squared = 900 million cross connections between them, you’re already capable of untapped genius abilities, and quantum physics, relativity, Shakespreare could be child’s play, you just don’t know it yet. It took 8-14 years for you to really learn this language well, and it wasn’t really that easy if it took that long, why do you think those other subjects should come any faster in a just a single semester or a 4-year college degree? I have no doubt, that if there was such a Renaissance in human learning on a massive scale, that we would find many great geniuses who have unique gifts and types of intelligence we have not yet imagined, to make better jet engines and maths and literature than the quick-learners upon which our success in our society is now based. I have no doubt some of them might come from sub-Saharan Africa or deep in the Australian outback. You may think it is a pipe dream, but from all the reading I’ve done on how computers and the brain works, I think society has it all pathologically wrong on how intelligence and capability are judged. I once knew a guy who used to go to Bulgaria and said that even some of the waitresses could write electric circuit on napkins to impress the foreign engineers. In Singapore on a Friday night, the libraries used to be packed. Its just a matter of education and culture. We should be finding new ways to untap this latent potential, rather covering it up and dismissing unique peoples and experiences with a fundamentally flawed test.
Picking at spelling errors is like making a personal attack in an argument
It’s up to you to be clear, concise and accurate.&nbps; If you can’t even spell correctly it suggests that you’re repeating nonsense that you don’t understand. The fact that you don’t grasp what IQ tests are and do confirms that suggestion.
Spelling is also plastic and correct spelling and grammar changes from century to century
And anyone trying to communicate uses the forms of the time. Excuses for sloppiness, ignorance and incompetence are just that: excuses.
just as I imagine so called IQ will.
Imagine seeing the Virgin Mary in common things around you; it’s got much better odds.
you’ll recognize many of the logic puzzles are in part of these IQ tests
Part of “g” is being able to parse logic better and faster.
They are in no way shape or form linked to some device measuring the neural circuitry of the human brain and diagnosing eurekas.
You know this how… oh, right, it fits your prejudices. Meanwhile, IQ as measured by IQ tests strongly correlates with success in academia, work, and a host of other things. Whatever it is, it’s connect to something. Wishful thinking is connected to nothing.
They are in no way shape or form linked to some device measuring the neural circuitry of the human brain and diagnosing eurekas.
You have speculation, psychometricians have data. No, what you have is a specific thing called egalitarian dogma. Only in a solipsistic universe would your dogma have any effect on reality.
I don’t think it is genetic at all.
There’s that dogma again! Meanwhile, twin studies, adoption studies and new results showing that genetics predicts at least 51% of IQ variation based on SNPs (roughly the 50% floor of IQ heritability derived by other means) prove your dogma wrong.
The world already is and will be so much more a diverse place and requires all kinds of intelligence to function.
Standard “diversity” mealy-mouthing. The world is suffering from diversity and the conflict and loss of social capital it causes. The so-called “other kinds of intelligence” have proven worthless for essential tasks for economic and social development such as supplying electricity and clean water, making buildings that don’t fall down, and simply not having epidemic levels of murder.
You need position, momentum, wave functions
Wave functions incorporate position and momentum. Energy alone says quite a bit… much like “g”.
Intelligence is multi-faceted, and we are in danger though of overclassifying (and simplifying) our society and our potential by relying on such a simple test.
Yet it has high correlation with other features of extreme importance, including job performance (positive) and criminality (negative). There’s no working example of a functioning first-world society with a low average IQ. Not one.
research in computer learning all points to the fact that “slow” learning algorithms actually find the “best” solutions in the long run
European children reach early developmental milestones at later ages than Africans.
It is dangerous to put a value judgement on something we really don’t understand how it works.
Like the smallpox vaccine? You really epitomize the “disingenuous” part of DWL; you will do anything, make any rationalization, to avoid admitting what you know is true.
We should be finding new ways to untap this latent potential, rather covering it up and dismissing unique peoples and experiences with a fundamentally flawed test.
Meanwhile, Black people in the USA avoid bookstores and don’t even read newspapers. They’ve got access (libraries packed full, left behind by the White people who built them), they just refuse to use it.
That’s another test that Black people fail… and it correlates with IQ.
Dear Mr. (Ir)rational(izing)
Twin studies do not support the importance or value of high IQ; they merely validate hereditary correlations, known for eons and first quantitated by the genotype-phenotype hypothesis since Mendel. I never said we couldn’t find genetic predispositions to success at some test or task, most certainly we can. But an IQ test is a very specific test and task, and to say it measures human intelligence is a pretty big and careless leap of faith. [UP: You’ve been proven wrong so many times, yet you keep coming back to spout your ignorant opinions. Like the rest of this wall of text:] No scientist in their right mind can tell you what or how intelligent thought is generated, therefore we have to assume such tests are of limited value because we don’t really know if we are asking the right questions, or perhaps more importantly, even if there “are” right questions (more on that below). Measuring any lifetime success is also heavily biased, as those who can score well on tests are given opportunities in education and employment that those who do not score well are simply not given. The later is not a weak confounding variable; it is quite strong in our scrupulously documented modern academic evaluation system, and has the potential to be self-sustaining and exponentiating (snowball effect). This is a reasonable stance on the matter and not prejudicial at all sorry, quite the opposite. Moreover, the very question of success is also meaningless usually as it is defined by Western culture. The greatest mathematical discovery of the last 10 years was made by a Grigori Perelmen who is dirt poor and refused a one million dollar prize for his work, as accepting such would pervert his system of thought. He is know “successful” modern day Grant gainer.
There are very strong biological, and mathematical reasons that a good measure of intelligence is likely impossible, irrelevant, and possibly harmful, and I have presented these ideas in previous blogs, and they still stand on their own. Let me present a more philosophical argument however which is a bit more subtle, but also perhaps essential at this point. The IQ test measures abilities in specific tasks, usually logical puzzles, puzzles based upon past ideas of what is important to understand about how best to think about the world. These ideas and concepts are not necessarily relevant for our future, however, and, in fact if history has anything to say about it, are probably antithetical to that future actually. The greatest and most intelligent ideas usually deviate radically from the past, so by placing people in boxes and categorizing intelligence using past ideas, we are doing our best (quite efficiently in fact now!) to prevent future intelligent concepts from ever surfacing. In this sense, (the attempt) to categorize intelligence is actually the best way to stifle intelligent thought and progress!! A little like the uncertainty principle in quantum physics…you ruin it if you touch it too much. Your perfectly dogmatic and irrational faith in IQ would make you the modern day forbear of the individual who would have exiled Galileo because his ideas did not answer that essential Medieval question… how many angels fit on the head of a pin, or would have prevented publication for Einstein because he did not formulate the theory of relativity using the ether. Intelligence is uniqueness also, and to truly create something meaningfully intelligent, is unknowable because almost by definition it is not known in the present or can be entirely well-qualified by ideas from the past. Intelligence is unpredictable and usually quite radical, certainly not something defineable with any test. If you think such statements are just handwaving, you are quite wrong, they also have a firm mathematical basis. Go read Goedel Theoem please. His proofs basically say any system of rules we make, we can always ask questions which cannot be solved by that system of rules, and thereby require a new system to be developed, ad infinitum.
Suffice it to say very smart and very scientific people (even the people who conduct these studies…you should really talk to them before regurgitating their results) do not believe so wholeheartedly in IQ or hold it to be a very limited test. People with low intelligence (maybe even low IQ) like to be dogmatic and say this means something and that whites are superior. It is rubbish. Go ahead and swim ’round in this fishbowl of your own making, but I prefer to walk in a bigger and truer universe of wider possibilities.
Measuring any lifetime success is also heavily biased, as those who can score well on tests are given opportunities in education and employment that those who do not score well are simply not given.
Do you believe IQ tests scores correlate positively, negatively, or not at all, with dropout rates?
Suffice it to say very smart and very scientific people (even the people who conduct these studies…you should really talk to them before regurgitating their results) do not believe so wholeheartedly in IQ or hold it to be a very limited test.
If you’re unwilling to name names, I can name one for you: Arthur Jensen. Please sum up his thesis in Straight Talk About Mental Tests.
Dear Olave,
A correlation most certainly will be found. But this is a failure of the school and rarely the student. I have seen too many lives changed by creative and enthusiastic teachers (or also by a good admistration that does not brow-beat or threaten its teachers into conformity and make them useless) to believe otherwise. A positivistic and non-materialistic culture also can encourage the best from students along intellectual and abstract endeavors. We have a lot of money in the U.S., but many of the best scientists were actually “produced” in less materialistic and even communistic societies, and we just attracted them later in their careers due to money and a better political climate. Students drop out for many reasons, but in my experience in a relatively wealthy society like ours, it is because they are jaded and confused about their path in life or wish to rebel against adults who are similarly jaded and boring. There are plenty of dropouts who were great successes also, Bill Gates is one. Einstein wasn’t technically a dropout but he certainly couldn’t do well enough to get a university slot at first, so had to settle for a patent-clerk for a stint. There are numerous stories from other scientists, politicians, engineers, and artists, who were “jilted” by a system which originally poorly judged their abilities by who-knows-what dodgy parameter. In fact, I find curious just how seldom one reads about someone who did something truly great and who did NOT have difficulties and some major failures in life before. The people who get all A’s and have stellar records end up in our society with 6-7 figure salaries, running fortune 500 companies, and universities and the like…but you’d be hard pressed to find them having made a great discovery…frankly I think those types are too concerned about image to take the chance and use their supposed intelligence to do anything truly great. Unfortunately nowadays we have such a fanatical devotion to beliefs in implications of IQ and other testing, these “smart people’s” influence and hubris actually I think is ruining it for really great people (read Grigory Perlman story please). The whole thing is self-sustaining garbage. Judging people by IQ really shows only a laziness and self-interest, and is non-constructive. IQ is at best a research tool into our “very very very” early evaluation of intelligence. It has no basis in theory other than phenomenology (apparent coincidences) which is fraught with statisical confounding variables, particularly because we are actually actively using such indicators already to judge people and alter their lives. There is no epistemology (how-we-know-what-we-know) to this so far. If you want information on how to implement our understanding of human intelligence into a useful social tool, money would be much better and more practically being spent trying to research how to accessorize peoples strengths, (i.e. intelligence velocity or intelligence acceleration perhaps), than intelligence categorization. The later field is too static (and frankly boring), as is the implications of any result of such a field when we are dealing with such a dynamic quantity as the human minds and spirits from all races and creeds.
If you don’t want to use IQ, don’t. It doesn’t matter much to me. If low IQ is not what is causing so many Black to rape and maim so many Whites, then something else must be the cause. If I were the religious type I would just blame Satan.
It’s difficult to get a non-circular argument for Black dysfunction, since Blacks reproduce and make continued generation of Blacks who behave more and more poorly. Pat Moynihan blamed welfare. (Thank goodness welfare was reformed or by the summer of 2011 we would have had dozens of massed attacks by Blacks on Whites from Peoria to Charleston to Wisconsin.
Oops.)
Anyway, the point is that if you use all your arguments about dynamic quantities and bigger and truer universes to dig Blacks out of being diagnosed as dumber than Whites, we’ll just end up wondering why they are still so much lazier, more violent, and more drug-addled than Whites. Given the marked negative correlations between IQ and bad behavior, the smarter you make Blacks out to be the more remarkable their wickedness will be.
Olave, after about 25-30 generations (600 years), the genes over the entire planet are pretty muched mixed up. [UP: No.] It means you yourself most likely have black and Jewish and chinese ancestors. [No.] [Deleted: worthless, unscientific garbage.] It doesn’t matter though. The point is we and all races are smart enought to become good people. [… No.]
The most common thrombophilic (pro-blood clotting) genetic condition is Factor V Leiden Mutation, which is much more common in Caucasians than in any other race. It is believed the high incidence of this condition in whites is due to a Darwinian selective advantage for warriors who needed to clot fast in order to minimize blood loss in violent conflicts. This is consistent with the well-documented history of such conflicts among whites in the last few thousand years throughout Europe. The oh-so-modern delusion of the civilized behavior of whites with respect to the other races is only an artefact of an already advanced culture and historical amnesia. Genetically and historically, things are quite the opposite. It’s easy to look good when you’ve already clawed your way tooth-and-nail to the top of the mountain.
The oh-so-modern delusion of the civilized behavior of whites with respect to the other races is only an artefact of an already advanced culture and historical amnesia
It’s a delusion because it’s only been true for a couple of centuries?
Have you relocated to Pontiac yet? Or Camden? Or Lagos? It’s only a “delusion” that those places are more dangerous than New Hampshire.
P.S. At some point I’m going to reverse your Factor V Leiden Mutation as part of a short-lived hoax. I’m going to tell some leftists that it’s a blood-clotting condition much more common in Africans. Then they can tell me that that is proof that Blacks are more evolved and that Whites are inferior, and invite me to revel in the ethno-masochism. Then I’ll tell them it’s actually more common in Whites. Then they can say that it’s proof that Whites are more violent than Blacks.
The next point is that if you use all your arguments about dynamic quantities and bigger and truer universes to dig Blacks out of being put into a different genetic category from Whites, we’ll just end up wondering why they are still so much lazier, more violent, and more drug-addled than Whites. Given the marked positive correlations between number of Blacks in a given area and violence in that area, the more similar to Whites you make Blacks out to be the more remarkable their wickedness will be.
I wouldn’t confuse wickedness with violence. The former requires often some kind of misused knowledge and connivery, which lands squarely with the white race so far. With the atomic bomb and its use, world wars, gas chambers, Auscwitz, the Soviet Gulags, Apartheid, the Palestinian crisis, you name it, that is where the real wickedness lies, and by consequence unspeakable violence and many millions of innocent lives. Stupid violence like battery and robbery in poor towns are inconsequential relatively speaking, and mostly a by-product of poverty (cultural and material) yet we have to hear about this drivel every night on the news as it it means something in comparison. The big white elephant has always been in the room.
Why would you want to reverse the truth about Factor V Leiden? Are you an honest person? Do you need to lie and do such a wicked thing to make prove an argument? I have been honest with you, and despite what has been said, I have not purposely tried to misrepresent the truth here. I am white and am happy my ancestors were warriors. I’m sure I have unique characteristics because of this. It doesn’t mean I have to be violent however. Gene’s only mean so much. Environment is key.
You sound a lot like Tim Wise, the viciously anti-White “diversity” consultant.
It’s a psychology test, to reveal the prejudices of his debating opponents. As a way of clarifying where the issues are, it’s quite proper and honest.
I am not Tim Wise. He is much more eloquent than me, although I think I have a perspective and knowledge outside of his base which can contribute to this discussion. Also, I do not hate white people at all, quite the contrary. I am proud to be raised in Northen European and American culture, and also proud of the accomplishements of this “white” culture in the last few hundred years especially. We shouldn’t carry this to an extreme however and think we are somehow superior. It is in fact doubtful our blond-haired-blue-eyed peoples could have become successful without adopting ideas from our less fairskinned brethren in more Souther latitudes, namely the Mediterreanean cultures (Greek, Roman) and Northern African (Egyptian, Arabic, Hebrew and Asian) cultures who gave us the inspiration and models of ideas in religion/ideology, politics, science, mathematics, etc which we built upon. I think probably most imporant was the adoption of Christianity which ushered in a (relatively) unified cooperative and nonviolent spirit critical to success, and we owe that to adopting/transforming one of the many Northern African monotheistic semitic religions (Judaism) by combining it with more peaceloving ideas just making their way into Palestine at that time from farther East (Zoroastrianism and Buddhism).
It might surprise you, but the original-stock Greeks are fair-skinned and often blonde and blue-eyed. You find them mostly in the mountains. The population of the cities is mixed heavily with Turkish input, from decades of rule under the Ottomans. Needless to say, the Turks did not produce the philosophers and mathematicians that the Greeks did.
As for Germans… Liebniz, Gödel, Neitzsche… need I say more? They took longer to acquire agriculture because crops had to be bred for northern conditions. Contrast this to sub-saharan Africans who had ideal climate for millennia and could have gotten a jump-start on high culture using e.g. papyrus from Egypt, and are still largely savage and illiterate to this day.
The Indians who produced all the mathematicians… Aryans, I’ll bet. Satyendranath Bose doesn’t look Dravidian to me. Neither does Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
Regardless, we don’t owe people for what they’ve done in the distant past. We can’t rest on our laurels, and neither can they.
“We shouldn’t carry this to an extreme however and think we are somehow superior.”
You’re right. There is no quantifiable difference between a culture that lives in mud huts and is at the complete mercy of nature, vs one that can visit other planets.
“It is in fact doubtful our blond-haired-blue-eyed peoples could have become successful without adopting ideas from our less fairskinned brethren in more Souther latitudes, namely the Mediterreanean cultures (Greek, Roman)”
Greeks and Romans are both White, and both have plenty of blond haired, blue eyed people.
” and Northern African (Egyptian, Arabic, Hebrew and Asian)”
Hebrews are not African. Plenty of Arabs live in Africa but they aren’t African either. By definition, Asians aren’t Africans.
“cultures who gave us the inspiration and models of ideas in religion/ideology, politics, science, mathematics, etc which we built upon.”
I keep forgetting which Africans and Asians gave us the inspiration for the germ theory of disease, modern manufacturing, microprocessors, our understanding of the atom, etc. Could you tell me which of them put us on the right track to figure those things out?
“one of the many Northern African monotheistic semitic religions (Judaism)”
Judaism did not come from Africa. Do you understand simple geography or history?
Mr. Rational,
Your assumptions about Dravidians and Aryans (norther Brahmin castes) are completely off. Ramanujan was about as Dravidian you can get; most people there look almost Aboriginal and they in fact have Aborinal genes. He was from Tamil Nadu in the far South His math is also the greatest and most wonderful really if you ever get the chance to read it.
Aryans in India are associated with the warrior class in their ancient art, not really higher learning, and are associated with the god Krishna who is often portrayed as fair skinned or blue skinned. Dravidians are considered more mystical, wise, and peaceful too. They are associated with Hanuman god. If you go to India you see Krishna and Hanuman hugging in their art and culture, which represents the mixing of Aryan and Dravidian culture. India is a fascinating place to examine the rich culture which can evolve when two different races and cultures mix. I’ve been there, they may not be rich yet, but they are very intelligent and wise and nice people too. Karnataka is in the South, Dravidian more than Aryan, and they have the best computer programmers in the world, puts most “white” guys to shame really. The Northern peoples are whiter and more a ruling class, but they are actually often poorer than “lower caste” Dravidians in the South, because that class is smarter in math and computers and medicine, and many of them are doctors in the states now or computer engineers in their own country. We whites can take a lesson from this. I suggest whites learn to not rest on their laurels and delude themselves into thinking they are superior to people of color, because those same people will easily pass us if we entertain such stupid fantasies and don’t work hard enough. This is most certainly the case in India, where many of the Dravidian “low castes” have actually passed us the Brahmin aryan castes, economincally and intellectually.
Tim
Hank,
Hebrews are African. They are a semitic culture which is African, and in common with other Northn Afircan semitic languages and cultures. Go to any competent linguistic or cultural anthropology book to learn that. We only think of them as fair skinned because Ashkenazi Jews have mixed for 2000 years in Europe with the “white man”, so those Jews look like us now naturally. Go to Israel and look at the native Jews that haven’t mixed with nonlocals or emigrated to Europe and come back. They basically look like Arabs, or Egyptians, they are most definitely Northern Africans genetically and culturally. Being in the Middle East, they’ve had a lot of cultural influences from all over, but at their heart, they are African.
Arabs are also African. Believe me I lived in the Middle East. They are Northern African, and they identify and intermarry more often with Africans (like Sudanese and Ethiopians), and share stronger genetic, cultural, and religious ties with other Africans than they do with Europeans. Trying to say Arabs are more European is hogwash. Africa owns the Arabs and their great discoveries, certainly not the European for Godsake.
Also, who said we’re on the right track to anything but our own destruction. The last 500 years may “seem” impressive, but comparitively I am not so sure. I think the white man can think fast, and do fast, and perhaps “copy and implement” the ideas of others fast but I am not so sure they actually have the imagination to develop political theory or atomic theory like the Greeks did or develop mathematics and astronomy like the Arabs did out of almost nothing. To be honest I think we are too violent, conformist, and generally weak minded to do that, which is why we were constantly warring or wasting away our time with nasty witchcraft before African religions like Judaism straightened us out. We’ve proven to be an excellent “middle” relay runner, but definitely not the beginning and judging what a mess the world is in, doubtful the end. We may have too much milk running in our veins to really make fundamental discoveries, and too much pride and competitive behavior to rescue the earth for over-exploitation. We laugh at anything which is different and are too conformist. We are good followers of the ancient ideas from darker skinned races once we got over the superstition of implementing them, and are great con-artists and show-offs, pretend like we could have done it without them, but it is a big joke. Probably we’ll make a mess of things and destroy much of the earth with nuclear or biological weapons. Then the dark skinned races if there are any left will have to pick up the pieces and do things right.
Hank,
I suggest you travel to Greece and Italy (especially middle and south). Native blonde hair and blue eyed people are are NOT common there even today, nor would they be expected to be in ancient times since fair skinned people would be selected out by natural selection due to the stronger sunshine and the danger of skin cancer.
Judaism came from the fertile crescent which we can squibble about geographic lines but it is basically a continuous with the African continent via Egypt (30 minute drive by car!). The Sephardic and Mizrahi African Jews are the oldest Jewish culture, not the European Ashenazi Jews, which are an offshoot only. The Semitic languages are most definitely African in origin. Learn Hebrew, Arabic, Eritrean, etc and it is obvious. The verb structure and many of the words and gutteral sounds are similar, and very different than say Norther Indian, Iranian, or European languages which are all similar. Talk to any linguist. The only truly Middle Eastern religion is Zoroastrianism, and that is from the Persians, who are Aryans (and Europeans genetically) although there is some African-Semitic and Asian gene mixtures in these peoples through intermarriage.
[…] If they concluded that people of African descent tend to be “dumber” (Mr. Coates’ preferred term) than people of European descent, we should hardly take that as evidence against the […]
The problem with the author (who is Caucasian) saying this is……..If you want to open up this Pandora’s box be warned. South East Asians have a higher IQ than whites.
No, they don’t. North-East Asians have a (slightly) higher average IQ than whites, but South-East Asians do not. But gee thank you for mentioning Asians, an AMAZING NEW CONTRIBUTION WE DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT WOW.
Umamused, when you say you are an “enthusiastic amateur”, I take it by “enthusiastic” you mean “vitriolic”? Look, your original post is well argued and spot on, no argument there. I actually came here to thank you for the great “ask them to explain averages to you” quip and for your flyer: definitely something I am going to use. But in the comments section, I am afraid the unassailable and objective bits begin to get a bit muddied by much less certain or objective claims and by opinion and, in the end, just acrimony and vitriol. While this of all topics is one where everyone needs to keep a cool head and finally agree to just be guided by the facts. I understand why you became annoyed with “Indian idiot”, but why spend more effort on him (he disagrees with you and looks stupid, so that actually makes you look good) than on the idiots who *agree* with you just because they hate blacks but not because they have understood the first bit about any of this? Already comment #2 goes completely overboard and argues that “blacks didn’t know the wheel” because they were less intelligent. That’s complete nonsense. Our ancestors sat around in Stone Age Northern Europe and for all their intelligence had to wait for 20k years before anyone bothered to bring them the wheel [reasonably assuming the racial “IQ gap” had fully formed by about 25 kya, give or take 5k] , or agriculture, or metalurgy, or writing. Otoh, the Bantu expansion brought the Iron Age to Southern Africa by about 2kya, entirely via black [even “West African”] cultural transmission: Yes they were slower, but they were slower by about 2ka on a scale of 20ka. Yes this is significant, but it doesn’t translate to “THEY ALSO DID NOT KNOW WHAT A “WHEEL” WAS, WHICH ARE LOGICAL THINGS THAT IQ CREATES FOR HUMANS, WITH NO TRAINING OR EDUCATION AT ALL” I am not saying you agreed with this, but you clamped down on Indian idiot because he attacked your position, but you let this idiot dump his nonsense in support of the “dumb blacks” meme, which does a lot more damage to your argument than idiots who disagree with you.
Also, your statement that “Indians have an average IQ of 82″ may or may not be true, I have no idea, but it is above all compeltely pointless in this context, because “Indian” is not a race. India is one of the most racially diverse places on earth. On the northwestern fringe of India, natives are practically white (racially indistinguishable from Central Asians or Iranians), then you get a huge spectrum of “mixed” populations, all with very granular edogamy clusters, and further south you get remnants of ancient Homo sapiens (an early L3 group who reached southern India some 50kya, before any H. sapiens first set foot in Europe and reflecting a time still predating the “IQ gap”). Sure you can just take the average of all of this, but then you can also just take the average of the US, or of the world, and the entire topic will just disappear.
Some people just annoy me I guess.
I, too, could never proclaim to be an expert on the subject of IQ but I will say that, as far as the black in Africa is concerned, low intelligence level was not a concern simply because it was irrelevant to their existence–picking fruit or whatever fell to the ground, hunting, gathering, etc. The glaring differences are only obvious and worth looking at as it relates to civilizations (western) and their inability to assimilate. Well, yeah, duh. My point being, they can survive, and that’s really all that matters, in the end, for any species.
When europe was first settled they picked fruit hunted and gathered
then they intellectually fertilized, the world, china, india and Japan did it from the East
blacks are still toady still picking fruit that falls on grount
Smart, learned people here, but not well-mannered. Anyway, the grim truth about I.Q. tests that really can’t be denied is that they are good predictors of educational success and perfect predictors of educational failure. That is, if you have an I.Q. of 130 you have a good chance of getting through law school, but if you have an I.Q. of 110 you have no chance at all, no matter how hard you work.
And of course, the fact that the mean I.Q. of African Americans is 85 (more of less) can only mean that American Black people will never become the economic equals of European or Asian Americans. On the other hand, we aren’t going to see any winning professional football backfields that are manned predominately by European Americans. And not a lot of Asian American football players at all, I’m thinking.
Tim you are a moron. shut the fuck up please.