Intelligence, heredity, and environment
In school I always did very very well on IQ tests. But I also always felt they did not, and could not, measure some completely innate and unchanging thing called “intelligence.” Here is some research support for that perception.
I’m referring to a curious phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. In the huge amount of verbiage on the subject of intelligence (as measured by IQ scores) and heredity vs. environment and race and class, the Flynn effect is well-known in the field of research but far less well-known in non-technical articles for the general population on the subject of IQ. Here’s a brief definition:
In his study of IQ tests scores for different populations over the past sixty years, James R. Flynn discovered that IQ scores increased from one generation to the next for all of the countries for which data existed (Flynn, 1994). This interesting phenomena has been called “the Flynn Effect.” Many of the questions about why this effect occurs have not yet been answered by researchers.
As with many fields of scientific inquiry, there’s no small amount of politics involved in such research, both with those who perform it and those who use it to make various points. In addition, we have all the intrinsic problems and difficulties of psychological research with human subjects.
But given those caveats, nevertheless the Flynn effect seems to be both real and widespread:
In general, countries have seen generational increases between 5 and 25 points. The largest gains appear to occur on tests that measure fluid intelligence (Gf) rather than crystallized intelligence (Gc)….
…[Tests for fluid intelligence] try to emphasize problem solving and minimize a reliance on specific skills or familiarity with words and symbols. These tests on average have shown an increase of about 15 points or one standard deviation per generation…Deary (2001) notes that it is these types of tests (i.e., “culturally reduced”) on which we would not expect to see score increases if the cause of the increases was due to educational factors.
…IQ gains for [tests of crystallized intelligence) have been more moderate, with an average of about 9 points per generation…
Flynn believes that the increase is actually an increase in abstract problem solving rather than intelligence. Flynn…favors environmental explanations for the increase in test scores.
You don’t have to agree about the strength of environmental factors. But those who don’t agree still need to explain the results known as the Flynn effect. Some of the environmental factors studied and cited to explain the effect are years of formal education, which apparently correlates somewhat with the rise in scores, as well as nutrition, which has some correlation as well.
I doubt that any one factor explains it. But I think it’s likely that something is changing that’s environmental and leads to the higher scores, which indicates that IQ tests don’t just measure some wholly innate factor called intelligence, but instead measure something called intelligence that is linked (as are so many things) to some combination of heredity and environment.
The real question is how much of the variation in intelligence found among countries and among groups within a country can be attributed to heredity and how much to environment. I’ve read a great deal on the subject—much much too much to go into in any blog post (it’s a very complex subject)—and my conclusion is that the jury is out on it but that environment is definitely an important factor.
Who cares? Obviously, a lot of people do. But to me, individuals are individuals and everyone must be evaluated on the strength of his/her own personality and achievements. Some members of all ethnic groups are brilliant. Some members of all ethnic groups are dumb. Even if most of the variation among groups were to turn out to be hereditary—and I happen to think that is not the case—how would it change anything? It still wouldn’t tell us one single thing about any individual and his or her potential to achieve. And it oughtn’t to ever affect the human rights of anyone, or the concept of equality of opportunity.
But there’s plenty more information on the Flynn effect and attempts to tease out what may be going on regarding environment. For example, see under the heading “environmental factors” in this analysis of the Flynn effect. See also this, this, this, this, and this.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve been pondering the Flynn Effect myself for a few decades. I too consider the jury out.
Likewise the relationship between IQ scores and real intelligence, whatever that may be.
I was surprised to learn that Richard Feynman, one of the greatest modern physicists, and Gary Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players, both reported measured IQs of only 125 — quite modest for individuals who shook the world with their minds.
“The real question is how much of the variation in intelligence found among countries and among groups within a country can be attributed to heredity and how much to environment.”
I’ll posit that heredity determines the individuals natural potential and environment (diet, parental influence, access to and quality of schooling) affects the degree to which the individual’s potential is actualized.
“to me, individuals are individuals and everyone must be evaluated on the strength of his/her own personality and achievements.”
Absolutely.
“Even if most of the variation among groups were to turn out to be hereditary–and I happen to think that is not the case–how would it change anything?”
Blacks makeup approx. 12% of the pop. yet;
“At the start of the 2014 season, NFL surveys revealed that the league was approximately 68% African-American”
81% of NBA players are black.
Asians excel in pursuit of educational goals.
These are facts and strongly indicate that there is a group dynamic at play.
That said, I agree that, “It still wouldn’t tell us one single thing about any individual and his or her potential to achieve. And it oughtn’t to ever affect the human rights of anyone, or the concept of equality of opportunity.”
Jews and Asians telling people not to worry too much about IQ scores is like black people telling people not to worry about penis size，talk about the why not eat cake attitude.
Black IQs are the third rail in this discussion. Blacks as a group consistently score 10-15 points less than whites. However, this harkens back to the bad old days when blacks were dismissed as an inferior race, which no one wants to see return.
However, time passed and the disparity stood. The solution has been to stop studying and discussing the subject.
In the case of Charles Murray, who co-wrote a book, “The Bell Curve,” which included discussion of black IQ, he is regularly mobbed by SJWs when he is invited to speak.
I’m ambivalent. On one hand I’m a “Let science be done though the heavens may fall” kinda guy. We ought to be able to discuss low black IQ scores as well as black dominance of the NBA.
On the other hand IQ scores have been used in ghastly ways to justify racial prejudice and worse. Perhaps it is too dangerous a subject for open discussion.
For years I hoped blacks would Flynn their way to equality in IQ scores and maybe they will. One can only hope. But so far they haven’t and maybe they won’t.
Of course as neo and GB say, and I will repeat:
It still wouldn’t tell us one single thing about any individual and his or her potential to achieve. And it oughtn’t to ever affect the human rights of anyone, or the concept of equality of opportunity.
I think that the early childhood environment probably has a huge effect. I’ve seen reports on the number of words kids hear by the time they are 3. There are enormous differences. That means it is harder for them to do as well in reading, which means they have access to less information on which to base judgements later on. Plus the fact that poor performers in school are more likely to give up and seek recognition for dribbling basket balls.
When you have had a couple of generations raised with the learning to read is acting white BS, you have all these people being told to turn off their minds.
I looked up a few items in this regard. One had to do with Ashkenazic Jews. They score about ISD above whites on standard IQ tests. One piece talked about a savage culling which has not had time to shake off various handicaps such as propensity to neural issues. But they score very poorly on tests which are called, “Spatial orientation” or “visual orientation”, or substitute “memory” for “orientation” if you want to follow up.
Then I looked for the spatial issue among Australian Aborigines. I was also led to the same among the Inuit.
The Aborigines–“traditional peoples” being the polite term–score very, very high, compared to white Australians. The Inuit also score high. It would stand to reason that people traversing relatively featureless terrain would be selected for ability in this area.
What was telling in one report was that the traditional peoples living non-traditional lives–which is to say not roaming the outback–also scored well up. And there were almost desperate attempts to demonstrate that this is a culturally transmitted ability. How that happens isn’t listed. One considers a traditional people father living in a small town putting objects on the dining room table and telling his kids to look for thirty seconds and then draw them in relation to each other as if they were standing on the opposite side of the table. Or something. Point is, the desperate need to show a cultural rather than a hereditary transmission was to avoid looking at heredity when looking at the traditional people’s scores on standard IQ tests. Very, very low compared to those of white Australians.
There was, in another piece, a reference to how Inuit language or story telling might transfer the ability, but it wasn’t as desperate as the Australian article.
Yeah. Third rail indeed.
As to expat’s reference to word count; the difference between lower and middle SES parents addressing youngsters, explaining, using more words in raw quantity is depressing. Remember, reading is how you recreate the sound of a word, and if you don’t know the word as spoken, you’re lost.
Further to my last graf above; trying to change the situation runs the risk of all kinds of accusations, “racist” being the most likely, but not alone.
What can not be denied is the wide range of intelligence from one individual to the next and the advantage in a modern society of being intelligent. When most men in a society work in agriculture, mining, timbering or fishing, the ability to think abstractly is not greatly valued.
Doing well or poorly in school is an indicator of how well one is likely to do as an adult in society because it correlates with intelligence. We don’t have many jobs for people with IQs under 85. The reading level of penitentiary inmates is about third grade. What kind of work can they do?
Years ago schools used to give students IQ tests to determine how well a kid could do. If you were bright and lazy, the teacher would tell you that you could do much better. If you weren’t bright, the teacher would accept poor work which could become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Now we pretend that all children are equally bright and teachers and professors are under great pressure to make all students academically successful.
Yikes. The research in this field is fascinating, but trying to summarize it in a blog comment is a fool’s errand. For example, the paper cited by Neo, entitled “The Flynn Effect: A Meta-analysis” started with a literature search that generated 4,383 articles. Currently, there’s an intense debate over several studies that show a leveling off of the Flynn effect.
If we expand our scope beyond the Flynn effect, to include all research on intelligence, heredity, and environment, then my despair at saying anything useful becomes overwhelming. If it weren’t for one thing Neo said, I’d keep my mouth shut.
Neo writes that her “conclusion is that the jury is out on it but that environment is definitely an important factor.” I’m not a geneticist, but I don’t think any credible researchers in genetics and intelligence would dispute Neo’s statement. In fact, the opposite argument prevails among most non-geneticists in academia, the media, government, politics, and obviously at Google. In public, it’s almost forbidden to mention the link between intelligence and genetics. Those who do so risk career ruin.
Over the last twenty of thirty years, there’s been an explosion of research linking human genetics and behavior, including intelligence. But people who work in this field always speak cautiously about their results, and their remarks are almost always restricted to very specialized journals. GWAS (genome-wide association studies) have been the most recent approach to the subject. For example, this GWAS study (http://tinyurl.com/yb4el9e6) concludes that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic. Among geneticists, this view is widely accepted, but no one contends that environmental factors are not significant.
Even before the advances in GWAS research, there were many twin studies demonstrating that 40-50% of intelligence can be explained by genetics. About 5% is derived from family environment, and about 50% is unexplained variance. The unexplained variance can best be seen as noise. In any research on human subjects, noise is inevitable. A wide variety of seemingly random things happen to people as they grow up. One twin could have had an early-childhood disease, the other not. And so on. Please note that, in this paragraph, I’ve summarized from memory, and I won’t try to provide adequate definitions for the statistical techniques used. These twin studies have been controversial, but the research has held up under attacks from other academics, who refuse to accept any significant link between genetics and intelligence.
Finally, population genetics — especially as applied to populations that have long been geographically dispersed — is the most controversial of these related fields of research. Once again, population geneticists don’t deny the importance of environmental or cultural factors. Once again, they are very cautious in stating their results. And, once again, they’ve been viciously attacked by non-geneticists, who accuse them of scientific racism.
An issue of interest to me because of the variations among myself and my two brothers. Same parents, same schools, same teachers, even many shared friends. Yet our academic achievements were quite different.
Both my brothers were gifted mechanically. They could do carpentry, wiring, plumbing, and car repair, yet they did poorly in school. I was below average on mechanical skills, yet did very well in school. Both brothers lived blue collar lives earning a living in the trades.
Our parents weren’t high school graduates. Dad was an electrician, Mom owned a beauty shop. there was no tradition of education in our family. I found school to be easy. Always got top grades and was valedictorian of my graduating class. Yet, I wanted to be known as a jock.
My ambition out of high school was to be a ski patrolman in the winter and a seasonal National Park Ranger in the summer. I reluctantly attended college because WWII vets that I knew told me it would be better to be an officer than to be a draftee. (The draft was a major issue in those days – 1950s) Also, I hoped to ski for the college ski team.
I found college relatively easy achieving Phi Beta Kappa honors as I graduated with a BS in Geology. That education, which I was suited for but never felt a great motivation to enter, opened up a world of possibilities for me for which I have been eternally thankful. But I have always wondered why I was gifted with academic ability and my brothers weren’t. I’ve also wondered why they had such excellent mechanical ability and I didn’t. It seems indisputable to me that it was all heredity and very, very little environment. Then again, maybe there were subtle environmental influences that I can’t understand. Until someone can delineate what those influences might be, I’m a great believer in nature versus nurture.
J.J.
The subtle differences are sometimes figured to be like a butterfly’s tantrum causing, by a cascade of reinforcing mechanisms, a hurricane on the other side of the world. It’s an interesting read if you like that sort of thing. But it’s just an exercise in speculation.
To have the effect you saw, the influences would have to differ markedly and would likely be visible.
What might they be? Pain tolerance differs and somebody who really, really hurts getting his knuckles skinned when the wrench slips is going to be more reluctant than somebody with fewer pain receptors, or whatever it is that makes the difference.
Perhaps the age at which the path was determined was one of scarcity when you were going through it and your parents discouraged messing with things they couldn’t afford to lose.
As I say, it’s very likely the environmental difference would have been obvious, at least in retrospect.
African students in American colleges are reputed to do much better, generally, than American blacks. Is this true?
The Flynn Effect is what it is largely because of the Test Givers// Writers.
That’s the correlation that’s never studied — as it would be reflexive.
There is NO WAY on this Green Earth that IQs can drift that fast — and always to the upside.
Black students admitted to elite universities tend to be immigrants or the children or grandchildren of immigrants from Africa or the West Indies.
“expat Says:
September 16th, 2017 at 2:42 pm
I think that the early childhood environment probably has a huge effect. I’ve seen reports on the number of words kids hear by the time they are 3. There are enormous differences.”
There are numerous studies done on blacks in the South where culturally children are not spoken to in conversation. One of my cousins, a speech therapist in Georgia, affirmed this as well. She used to follow black mothers with children at the grocery store, and she noticed that they didn’t talk to them at all. When white mothers have little children in the kiddo seat in the grocery cart, they are constantly pointing out the various items, colors of the food on the shelves. Blacks don’t do this. My cousin was interested b/c many of her elementary school students had speech issues due to lack of verbal interaction at home.
Francesca.
There have been studies with recorders carried by mothers. The differences are stark. I am told that the mothers who don’t speak much to their youngsters are easily encouraged to change.
11 September, 2014
IQ in decline across the world as scientists say we’re getting dumber
Quoting John Jay Ray a friend of mine whose specialty is IQ with quite a number of published papers in the field.
This is a generally good article below but it needs a little more background. In particular, one needs to know why IQ scores rose for most of the 20th century (the “Flynn effect”). The evidence seems to converge on more schooling. As people got more and more schooling (as they mostly did throughout the 20th century) they learned more and more test-taking strategies and that helped when they did IQ tests. But that process obviously had its limits and that limit has now generally been reached. Now that the Flynn effect has run its course we see what the underlying tendency is — towards a dumbing down of the population. With dumb women having most of the babies, any other result would be a surprise
and the article
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/iq-in-decline-across-the-world-as-scientists-say-were-getting-dumber/story-fniym874-1227052942109
Interesting to read what Walter Lippmann had to say about IQ tests way back in 1922. A taste:
I’m sure an impoverished childhood does not do good things for a child’s IQ. However, not all blacks grow up in the inner city or a rural backwater. A substantial black middle-class has emerged since the civil rights movement in the early sixties.
Nonetheless, blacks remain rare in tech. When one sees photographs of tech teams at Apple, Google and the like, there are almost no blacks — just the usual sea of white and Asian faces plus a scattering of hispanics. This is not because Apple and Google have racist hiring policies. Far from it. They are desperate to hire blacks.
I caught the personal computer wave in the late seventies and worked in tech in Boston and the Bay Area. I met only two black programmers and no engineers. The programmers were good guys but strictly mediocre tech talents.
This past year I took an online MIT calculus course with lectures filmed in 2007. It looked like about 10% of the class was black. An MIT degree is golden for a tech career, but how many of those blacks graduated in STEM and did so?
In Hollywood films like “Terminator 2” or “The Martian” there is the trope of the super-brilliant black nerd guy who saves the day. Not much reality there.
“James R. Flynn discovered that IQ scores increased from one generation to the next for all of the countries for which data existed (Flynn, 1994)” . . .
calls to mind a couple of old Mark Twain -isms:
“My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got.”
and then
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
Pardon me if I am a rube. But what you inherit in the womb is almost always what you inherit in the extenal environment after birth. And it has nothing to do with the “culture” you grow up in after birth. Teach your children/grandchildren well.
Probably each successive generation has more exposure to IQ tests, and thus becomes better test takers.
There are other examples in generational changes in humans completely unexplained scientifically, like acceleration. May be, some day they could be explained, but may be not. My guess is they have neither nature nor nurture to be a cause, but purely supernatural, that is, God’s will, and so science is totally incompetent to study this causation.
huxley
A substantial black middle-class has emerged since the civil rights movement in the early sixties. Nonetheless, blacks remain rare in tech.
Following is at least a partial explanation. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: The Widening Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admissions Test.
When I compare 244 blacks scoring above 750 on the Math SAT, with how many in my high school class got 750 or above on the Math SAT, the results are not encouraging.
Gringo, while I’m too lazy to look, I would suggest that the data would be more meaningful if we could compare the math scores to, say, language scores.
If the language scores were comparatively higher and the math scores not, then we have one possibility. If the entire score is low, then we have to look at the level of education.
I presume you use taking the SAT as a proxy for being in the middle class and thus leaving out those from poor schools?
Gringo: Sounds about right. As I understand it, affirmative action policies spot blacks 200-300 points on their combined SAT.
Of course, that’s another aspect of the lack of blacks in STEM. They get to a good school then find the whites and Asians have game way over blacks. That’s got to be discouraging.
If you buy the idea blacks have a real 10-15 point IQ deficit vs. whites (and worse vs. Asians and Ashkenazi Jews), the most serious upshot is the rarity of high IQ blacks.
My high school class of only 200 students probably had four 750+ Math SAT scores.
I presume you use taking the SAT as a proxy for being in the middle class and thus leaving out those from poor schools?
I presume using high SAT Math scores as a proxy for going into STEM. (huxley used “tech.”) The low number of blacks scoring 750 or above on the Math SAT is a good indicator why, as commenter huxley observes, there aren’t many blacks in STEM.
While I would agree that SAT scores don’t necessarily indicate how one will achieve in life, I would consider it fair to conclude that someone scoring 750 on the Math SAT is much more likely to have a successful STEM career than someone scoring 400 on the Math SAT.
(A relative’s doctorate looked at predicting college freshman grades, from high school grades, SAT/ACT, and a battery of psychological tests. He found out that the best predictors were high school grades, SAT/ACT, and a psychological attribute that could be called “grit”- the ability to persist in spite of setbacks.)
I would suggest that the data would be more meaningful if we could compare the math scores to, say, language scores.
In my previous comment I quoted the article:
That is, blacks are more likely to score higher on the Verbal than on the Math SAT, but there are not many blacks scoring above 750 on either the Verbal or Math SAT sections.
(STEM, a.k.a. science, technology, engineering, math.)
If the language scores were comparatively higher and the math scores not, then we have one possibility. If the entire score is low, then we have to look at the level of education.
I did some research on the matter of human intelligence a few years ago. I discovered that the ASVAB, is a commonly used testing criteria for the military, mostly to gauge IQ and basic comprehension abilities amongst the public. As a result, it is not difficult to score in the upper 99% percentile for certain gifted or AP students. But it also has spatial and computational areas which can’t be excelled using knowledge bases. For example, one has encryption or decryption capability, and women, on average, scored 10-20% higher than the men. This pattern recognition was merely more advanced amongst 15-20 year olds for female brains than men, of a certain mix for the Marine Corps. This was independent of the various female and male outliers who scored higher or lower than the mean.
For a record of upper level IQ testing, the Raven’s Test is independent of language orientated knowledge or cultural comprehension. This type of upper level test is utilized by the High IQ societies, such as Mensa, who Gringo belong(ed) to once, if I recall correctly. Also Prometheus, Nine, etc. They specifically developed testing criteria to discover geniuses sand filter out common “IQs”. People use the IQ number, but it doesn’t really mean much, since each one is its own standard deviation calculation. But generally speaking, Mensa is looking for people in the 97-98% percentile. Prometheus and Nine are in the 99.9% range.
The highest reported standard score for most IQ tests is IQ 160, approximately the 99.997th percentile From the wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_IQ_society
I’m not part of any of these societies, so I can be considered objective or non biased. I did take the Raven’s test a few times, and noticed that it could be prepared for using some pre taught tricks. Mostly to save time for the more difficult puzzles. The issue wasn’t generally the inability to solve them, but rather that the test specifically goes for a timed solution. So unless your CPU is over clocked to a point where it can perform calculations at that level accurately, there’s a barrier. I preferred to create a self designed architecture of multi Core processing units, that calculates solutions much like a quantum computer processes problems in parallel dimensions. I calculated my initial run result as 90-92% percentile, which is merely above average. Often times I would have to resort to parallel processing, which meant unlike raw logick, I myself did not know how I came to the conclusion, even though I knew it was correct. If I over used my logick circuits, I would feel fatigue, aka burnout and overheating.
Those who are born with single processor unity and upper clock speeds, don’t have to self program in their own architectures and software, since they can rely on their one processor for almost anything. And by processor, this would be otherwise known as the human brain’s intellectual capacity.
Intelligence is creatable, moldable, self upgradeable, and can be recognized from a unique set of connective points. The previous understanding of the status quo that intelligence is inherited is only partially correct. Their understanding rested upon the belief that DNA was mostly “junk code”. That wasn’t junk code. If it had been mostly junk code, then whether traits were dominant or recessive could easily be calculated by the most primitive of vacuum tube computer architecture. In reality, quantum computers 50 years from now, may not be able to process the divine software that is the complexity of DNA’s helix structured computer code. That epigenetic marker allows for several interesting features to the program. It allows self programmable, external programmable, variables to be introduced and tweaked, which affects the overall result. Every single action from before birth, to after birth, to the actions of your ancestors, to your own actions in life, is recorded. In other words, it is the Book of Life, and can be written or rewritten. We have not cracked the program yet, but with CERN and D wave’s quantum computer, plus distributed systems using humans to pattern recognize, humanity is getting quite close to figuring out what the “junk dna” of the helix really is. One example people often hear is that monkeys are DNA wise close to humans within about 98%. Preliminary reports of the testing criteria of the original scientific team and their methodology: it was about 68% match, but the differences were full of these “junk DNA” that the team or the publishers decided to throw out the junk DNA as irrelevant data, leaving the remaining recognizable DNA as within 98% of the human DNA.
One other thing I found out is that members of high IQ societies think like me. Using the internet, it becomes very easy to see what the average and above average comprehension of people are at. The numerous QA websites out there, for example. The high IQ societies are not always correct, but the thinking of their various content producers share something akin to each other: natural flexibility and the ability to connect the dots. Why didn’t anyone think of this yet. vs “This makes perfect sense, at least someone now thought up the same route as me”
Not much reality there.
The South African and African sub sahara genome is not as damaged as the American black genome. The native American black genome was damaged or modified during 1830 slave lord eugenics.
Technical ability is not impossible, but merely suffered a temporary breeding out problem. Africa once had the same issue with Islamic castrations, but they recovered.
miklos000rosza Says:
September 16th, 2017 at 7:28 pm
African students in American colleges are reputed to do much better, generally, than American blacks. Is this true?
Why wouldn’t it be true. Genetically and culturally, there is a significant amount of difference that it would be more logical to classify them as completely different lineages by now.
Of course, people from Nigeria or South Africa don’t just go right into computer programming. They are more cunning and adaptive than that. But the technical fields such as electrical engineering 2 year degrees, are perfect opening slots for people who want the highest return at the lowest investment from American education, that are foreigners. They can do well in the host country and also do well outside of it. Computer programming is not as adaptable. One needs electricity first, generally, before computers. And while electricity can save people from frost and bad water, computers cannot.
http://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/
It’s a short read, but should at least give a general introduction into the kind of thoughts that these high IQ societies value or appreciative. Even though their intellects seem to beyond much of human ken, their natural emotions or lack of control over such, are still as human as the average normals.
General processing power can be upgraded or degraded with time. Some child prodigies peak or burn out, and then afterwards obtain a more stable and normalized ability set comparable to their highly intelligent (but not genius) peers.
There are also people who, due to weed or other psychotropic drugs, deteriorate in their natural abilities. One person I used as a sample case, had recall equivalent to eidetic photographic memory. After smoking some weed for a few years, even continuing into his adult years, he could no longer process as quickly as he did in college or high school. And his memory became worse than mine, and since I never had eidetic memory…
There is also a writer of some well known books, he used weed in order to cultivate his literature muse, because only with the weed unrestraining the social blocks on his emotions can he call out his highest imaginative potential and his full artistic expressive emotional range. In other words, finding a way to turn a teenage tantrum into some kind of productive work for society. There are various poets who used drugs for similar outputs.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1680265/single-core-performance-cpus.html
One talent necessary is the ability to communicate. Higher IQ must be capable of rotating down subjects so that people on a lower level can comprehend them. Otherwise, it is merely gibberish or tl;dr.
If you can’t summarize things into a parable or modern metaphor like Jesus of Nazareth did… then your only option is to find and delegate to some secretary or PR guy in the White House. That is why human leaders aren’t in the top 99% of IQ. They have to be lower. Generally preferably upper 25%, but the more delegation they can utilize, the higher they can be without losing control of the organization.
To me, while single core performance is high valued by society and by laser focused social stratified allegiances, the ability to self program and edit your own software, is far more important than whatever hardware you got dumped with. After all, it doesn’t matter how smart you are when emotions can be used to hijack and control you. Then you’re just a tool and cog in somebody else’s Totalitarian system.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her autobiographical book, Infidel, wrote that she was given an IQ test in the Netherlands and did very poorly.
Ann. That is surprising. I suppose if you’re taking a test in what is your second language and you’re not very good at it–I presume she was eventually–you’re going to have trouble reading the questions and thinking about whether you even have the question right.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her autobiographical book, Infidel, wrote that she was given an IQ test in the Netherlands and did very poorly. –Ann
Everyone can have a bad test, IQ or otherwise. If you know who Richard Feynman is, his IQ score of 125 is boggling.
I suspect Feynman took a perverse pride in that low score–low compared to the company Feynman kept as a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
Meanwhile Feynman won the national Putnam Math Competition in 1939 by a large margin without preparing for it. That’s a big deal if you care about math.
I don’t think math is the be-all, end-all of human intelligence. Nor is IQ. There are plenty of high math, high IQ folks who do poorly in life.
Nonetheless, the great thing about math and tech is you can’t BS a math problem or a computer program with tricky talk or political jockeying. (Obama and Trump come to mind.)
Plus today’s world requires math thinking more than ever, i.e. STEM.
If American blacks can’t muster, as gringo links, more than 244 scores out of ~39,000 over 750 on the Math SAT, that’s hard cheese.
I don’t know the problem is solved by gesturing towards the better outcomes for blacks directly from Africa or the Caribbean. Those are self-selected groups with the resources, smarts and moxie to make it to America.
Nonetheless, blacks remain rare in tech. When one sees photographs of tech teams at Apple, Google and the like, there are almost no blacks – just the usual sea of white and Asian faces plus a scattering of hispanics. This is not because Apple and Google have racist hiring policies. Far from it. They are desperate to hire blacks.
Interesting piece in USA Today on that — “Tech jobs: Minorities have degrees, but don’t get hired”:
Intelligence, like many other aspects of human capability, will change beyond recognition in the future. Our genes can be and will be manipulated. Prosthetics, inserts, add-ons and enhancements will be commonplace. Homo Sapiens will morph into Homo/Cyborg Upgradus.
Future people will leave the historic human race in the dust. And nations that are too squeamish or wishy-washy to go for it will lose to those that aren’t.
Homo Sapiens will morph into Homo/Cyborg Upgradus.
Future people will leave the historic human race in the dust. And nations that are too squeamish or wishy-washy to go for it will lose to those that aren’t.
This is part of that whole human arrogance centered around “we can’t be judged by the divine counsel because we have so much tech”. The Sumerians, Babylonians, Nimrod’s empire, and the whole Genesis Six experiment had the same ideas pre Divine Flood.
Having technology and being destroyed often go hand in hand with human history.
For those making comparisons with their siblings: The average difference in IQ for two people, picked at random from the same family: 12 points. For two people, picked at random from the same population: 17 points.
Those interested in research on intelligence, see http://www.isironline.org/
Hard to believe that IQ is one thing that “tends” to NOT be inherited. The key word is tends. Some dumb parents produce bright kids and some bright parents produce dumb kids. But not on average.
Also right tail of the IQ bell curve of a low IQ will overlap the right tail of the IQ bell curve of smart group and vice versa, but not with the same distribution. In other word there are dumb and smart people in both groups, just not in the same proportions.
The latter is also visible in athletic skills and why we see some fabulous white athletes and some really high IQ blacks, but not on average. The problem is that when it comes to academics, and diversity in general, the assumption is made that the two curves perfectly overlap. Unlikely.
Lower black and Hispanic IQ because of genetics is extremely relevant to public policy. White oppression is blamed for black underachievement, and since black underachievement is due to genetics rendering blacks less intelligent which accounts for their underachievement, this undermines the blame whites theory. The blame whites theory is used to justify racial discrimination against whites in school admissions, employment, etc. The fact that black IQ is lower for genetic reasons should be broadly publicised.
The fact that black IQ is lower for genetic reasons should be broadly publicised.
Since 1830 slave lords changed the DNA sequencing of black slaves via human breeding, that’s not exactly going to solve the problem.
LBJ kept up the breeding experiments with welfare. It is why the black nuclear family self destructed.
Ann: Good find! However, I have my doubts and would like to see more such articles.
First, I’m wondering what elite universities the author has in mind aside from “Stanford, UC-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA and MIT.” Does the author consider the Univ of Florida at Gainesville to be an elite university?
Second, there is no breakout for grades or class rank. Given blacks get an affirmative action boost in admissions, the odds are they are finishing in the bottom half of their class, maybe even near the bottom. Not exactly the programmers Google and Apple are looking to hire.
Third, I would be less skeptical if the lead quote in the article weren’t from a black economics professor at the notoriously leftist New School.
There is so much to comment on here that I hardly know where to begin. I will begin by noting that cornflour and Gringo have worthy posts, and Ymar Sakr’s includes a lot that is valuable. The place to follow this is over at West Hunter, run by physicist turned anthropologist Greg Cochran, who wrote The 10,000-Year Explosion. Not only are his writings good, but a number of other experts such as James Thompson hang out there and comment.
I don’t usually mention it, because people find it off-putting, but I am a past president of the Prometheus Society. When I started in the group I was a great believer in environmental factors in intelligence. I had two small children who were read to daily by both parents, encouraged in all manner of word games, math games, music games, you name it. We spent many dollars sending them to private schools – I have paid my dues as an environmental believer. The data has pushed me to the numbers cornflour notes above: 40-50% genetic, 5% family environmental, 50% randomness. That last 50% is likely randomness in genetic combination.
I did not want to come to this conclusion. I wish people would stop guessing what it all probably is and actually read up on it. The guesses above are not stupid – they are the same ones that many bright researchers have considered. But most have been tested and found to have no effect.
African blacks do not do better than American blacks on the tests. They do far worse. However, the children of the elites who are sent here or to Europe to study do quite well. In particular, Ibo/Igbo of Nigerian score at something like the Caucasian average. They were a trading people, called the Jews of Africa. When you read articles about a black high-schooler getting accepted at all Ivies, look immediately and you will see Nigeria, and if you dig deeper, Ibo.
Jews do not score much worse on spatial components, they score average, which for them is terrible. 122V, 115M, 99S. Feynman scored very high on 2 of 3, poorly on the third – that’s why the 125. You have to dig for that, because he didn’t let people know it. There are many excellent summaries of why Ashkenazi Jews have IQ’s that are 1SD higher, but my new favorite is Dr. Scott Alexander’s over at SlateStarCodex http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ Alexander is also the author of wht I believe is the best essay of the 21st C to date, “The Toxoplasm of Rage.” http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
Those black mothers not talking to their children? It’s a very popular, comfortable idea, because it would be so fixable. Popular enough to make it to the NYT, which, you will note is almost entirely speculation. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/?src=me&ref=general&_r=0 But if we just try harder!
People have to stop and think when they see “environmental” explanations like that, noticing that they could just as easily be explained by the parents’ genetics. Or more easily. You just can’t put something like that into the “environmental” column at all. It’s only a maybe at best.
There is much more to say, and I might say it.
Sometimes common sense is necessary to avoid the pitfalls of politically correct error. No one would argue against genetics placing limits on things like height, hair and skin color, muscle type (fast twitch vs. slow twitch), and other basic physical characteristics. The argument would logically be that genetics give the maximum possibilities in all of these areas and environment either limits or allows one to approach these possibilities.
Why do we stop applying the same genetic principles to our brains and our intellectual abilities? That is dishonest. It is easy to see that genetics provides an upper limit that cannot be exceeded by normal environmental factors which only limit maximum potential. That should be the starting point for honest inquiry.
To expand on what I said before, agriculture and animal husbandry/sports have long identified genetics as the chief area of trait determination. Horse breeding for racing is an obvious example. Even dogs are bred to be more intelligent for specific reasons, hence the noted superiority of the Border Collie, arrived at by breeding. Why do we think humans are any different. They are not. It is simple genetics.
What is different is how humans use this information to control other humans and the dangers that can cause and the inevitable drift to the kind of totalitarian societies it makes possible. Some truths are dangerous to our shared future, but that doesn’t make them untrue.
Lost in all this discussion is the obvious fact that genetics is merely a code of instructions. Figure it out, and you can fix the bugs as early as in the womb with targeted therapies and nutrition. By pretending genetics don’t matter, people are literally slowing down progress on figuring out how to “hack” those genetics to improve the lot of everyone.
For instance, it has been observed that aspartic acid improves working memory; go look at a list of foods high in aspartic acid, and you’ll feel like you’re looking at an East Asian shopping list (well, except for the skunk cabbage). The East Asians appear to be hacking their own brains via diet in order to improve their working memory. They probably did it accidentally, but there’s nothing keeping us from doing something similar intentionally as we increase our knowledge about how different genese/proteins/metabolites are connected to different kinds of abilities.
African students in American colleges are reputed to do much better, generally, than American blacks. Is this true?
Africans score almost a standard deviation below American blacks (S Africans excepted,) so I would attribute any superior performance as self-selection bias. That is, the best and the brightest Africans are attending American colleges.
Dr James Thompson has an excellent discussion on what IQ researchers think about the Flynn Effect. From that site:
A discussion of the history of research into the Flynn Effect is here.
If there was no relationship between intelligence and genetics, endogamy would not tend to cause intellectual deficits.
Mé³nicaF:
I don’t see anyone here saying there is NO relationship between intelligence and genetics. The question is how much of a relationship there is, and how much variation is due to environment.
Craig Howard:
And, if the brightest Africans come to the US or other countries to be educated, and remain abroad rather than returning to Africa, that could affect the average intelligence of the group of Africans left behind in Africa. That would be true of any country or area, by the way.
And yet the Flynn effect also holds true for African countries as time goes on and they become more modernized (or whatever else causes the Flynn effect).
Criticas, thanks for bringing us back to center. The Flynn effect is likely showing us that IQ scores increase with improvements in nourishment, health and family stability — but only to a point. The great hope is that there are ways to raise IQ with other efforts, but genes seem to be the unavoidable and overwhelming factor. Despite quibbles about the testing instrument, the IQ component, together with a diligence component, makes all difference in being effective in the North American economy.
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Agrarian economies can accommodate disparities in IQ. But the Information Economy, with all its brilliance, is stuck without a way to make sure no IQ is left behind. Particularly when we (myself included), continue to save funds by buying Chinese goods produced with labor deprived of protections expected in the West.
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The premise of this blog post is just wrong. Nobody who has looked into IQ believes that it measures an effect that is 100% genetic. Also, the “unchanging” refers to the IQ of one individual, not from one generation to the next – but even there IQ is not unchanging within one person.
The important fact is that IQ strongly correlates with life success, adjusted for every environmental factor researchers could find. In other words, high IQ is a positive characteristic, in general (if not in any particular indivual). Also important is that genetics matter, but are not the entire picture. Genetics account for, very roughly, half of IQ variation, which means the rest is environmental, whether in the womb, early childhood, schooling, playground environment or whatever.
The Flynn effect is indeed well accepted, if not well understood. Regardless of the cause, a general increase in IQ should be a good thing for humanity.
John Moore:
I never said, nor did I imply, that people studying IQ believe it is 100% genetic.
But there are quite a few people in general who DO think that, or close to it. IQ has often been sold—particularly back when I was growing up–as measuring something almost entirely innate. And if those people believe that IQ is inherited and genetic, then the Flynn effect would come as a big surprise. Genes couldn’t be changing that much that quickly—something else must be involved.
As IQ practitioners will admit, “intelligence is whatever the intelligence test measures”
So to figure whether it’s actually measuring intelligence, we…….
Best we can do is correlate it with life success, which is reasonable.
Environment, particularly beginning in the first year of life, can improve or destroy the usefulness of whatever innate ability the child has. It’s not long before the difference shows up–and then, due to differences in success at school–may well be exacerbated. Because not doing well isn’t fun, isn’t what somebody wants to do again tomorrow.
Ymar Sakar Says:
September 17th, 2017 at 6:47 pm
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I went to the Prometheus link and read “The Outsiders” – very interesting.
I don’t usually mention it, because people find it off-putting, but I am a past president of the Prometheus Society.
I saw one of your bio archives from a year or so ago, while researching that society, so I knew about it but also knew that you, for whatever reason, modified your own profile to remove the reference.
It was probably your blog post about that guy said to have an IQ of 165+ centuries ago.
I went to the Prometheus link and read “The Outsiders” — very interesting.
That’s great.
African blacks do not do better than American blacks on the tests. They do far worse.
In order for that data value to be compared, they would have to create an independent test, correct for bias with a control group, and utilize a method of calculation for each group.
The problem with too high a sample size, such as with American blacks, is genetic contamination, or also known as …. nobody knows what the genes and ancestors are. Thus ancestral DNA’s impact on these tests are affecting the test scores, as well as the number of overall genius outliers, but they are not accounted for when the data is compared against a smaller sample of not very broad spectrum Africans.
For one thing, it would be a good idea to separate the Africans that are 3 generation Muslim from the ones that are 3 generation Christian, as well as separate out a new category for testing a sample size of only Christian converts. Since there are too many tribes in Africa that haven’t mixed, each individual tribe must have their own statistically accurate sample size.
None of these factors are accounted for in IQ tests given to Africans by Americans, because that’s not the point.
Even if they tested for verbal IQ, visual IQ, spatial IQ, and pure mathematical calculation and pattern recognition IQ, it would still not have enough of a diverse sample size to produce a standard deviation normal graph.
One of the cultural effects is that American blacks will often use the excuse of institutional racism, to not go for the gold ring. Such as refusing admittance and acceptance into the Air Force, because they think the whites will keep them from ever graduating. Meanwhile, whites are busy voting for Hussein Obola…
Those from Africa, if they get an opportunity, they’ll take it. And if whitey is pushing them down, they’ll punch through that. Their attitude is significantly different from a social cultural survival point of view.
That means over the generations, African blacks will producer smarter and more capable descendants. While American blacks, will only degrade if they mate with others with the same atittude. They would only “advance” if they inter married with a white aristocratic family, sorta of like Hussein’s father did. The Ancestral DNA has an impact to at least the 3rd generation of descendants, if not more for dominant characteristics.
The reason why environmental factors are incapable of countering the tide, is because up to 3 generations of ancestral DNA programming is still stored in the blood of the descendant as epigenetic markers. And that is from both sides of the lineage while they were alive. It usually takes more than one life to counter these effects, although marriage with certain family lines can nullify the weaknesses to a certain extent.
Family history is what people use no to figure out what ancestral traits they have inherited. DNA sequencing is not up that accuracy level yet, where they can detect which epigenetic markers exist and what effect it has over a life time. They have figured out how to detect haplogroups and thus trace ancestry to various tribes and geographic locations. Which is humorous because some people think they came from Africa, but their DNA says they came from Europe.
Going back to the African DNA issue, the amount of malnutrition and disease on that continent is quite well. More accurate data would probably be better obtained by seeing the second generation children of lower IQ couples who came from Africa. One should be able to see an incredible increase due to the higher nutrition of American food. Higher speed processing brains may need a higher oxygen content as well.
The delightful paradox of the FLynn effect is that all deliberate policies to boost IQ have failed, and the only apparent IQ boost has been achieved inadvertently as an indirect consequence of improving general health and education. This is good news.
The only guaranteed way to raise someone’s IQ independent of their genetics, nutrition, environment, or ancestral origins is the Holy Spirit. Aka the Holy Ghost, third head of the godhead. A 3 person voting counsel at least.
A couple of case examples would be Jean De Arc and various criminals who converted.
The great hope is that there are ways to raise IQ with other efforts, but genes seem to be the unavoidable and overwhelming factor.
This is why the traditional view is wrong. The traditional orthodox view is that DNA is set at birth and is not changed, while environmental factors can change.
The more accurate relationship between DNA and environment is that DNA changes the environment, and the environment changes the epigenetic markers in DNA which turn genes on and off. These epigenetic markers are preserved for around 3 generations down through the descendants.
Let’s take a person born in the ghetto, but one of his ancestors was a pioneer or risk taking warrior. These instincts and traits, now inherited, may activate due to trauma or violence, which against another DNA template would simply turn that person into a gang banger or victim. But to the test subject born in the ghetto, it creates the desire and instinct to leave the ghetto. DNA has changed the environment.
Nobody who has looked into IQ believes that it measures an effect that is 100% genetic.
Some people in white supremacy and the Alt Right use epigenetics as a justification for why blacks are always inferior on a cultural and civilization level than whites. They say this means the races should never “mix” because it is mud sharking.
But what does that have to do with Neo and her commenters?
John Moore: ” Genetics account for, very roughly, half of IQ variation, which means the rest is environmental, whether in the womb, early childhood, schooling, playground environment or whatever.”
We can all agree that improving the population’s IQ is a desirable thing. The value from quantifying the inheritance component is a clarification on what we can and cannot realistically accomplish with policy and funding.
Assigning 50% to environment is very generous and implies that improved policy can improve population IQ, but what specific environment items are changeable? This link has some interesting suggestions: http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2013/04/24/11-ways-to-increase-your-iq-score-intelligence-quotient/. Like you John, it suggests that a child’s learning environment makes a difference. We know that kids do better at school when they have a mother and father at home that closely supervise the child’s schoolwork. Yet at the same time we know that identical twins raised in different environments strongly tend to have the same IQ, regardless of the environment difference. Plus, if kids inherit intelligence, and the parents have the smarts to ride herd over their kid’s schoolwork, is that contribution to the child’s IQ attributed to environment or to inheritance?
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The one that gets me is vegans score 5 points higher on IQ. I think they self-select – – you’d have to be pretty dodgam smart to talk yourself into that.
We can all agree that improving the population’s IQ is a desirable thing.
I don’t think so.
Humans making these assumptions of part of the reason why there is so much dissension on this topic. The moment the government gets involved, things will escalate, as it did with global warming and all those “light bulbs” you can’t buy any more.
AVI: “There are many excellent summaries of why Ashkenazi Jews have IQ’s that are 1SD higher, ….”
Aha moment. I recently had my DNA analyzed by 23 and Me. (My motivation was to learn more about my medical weaknesses.) Mostly Viking and German DNA, but surprise – 5% Ashkenazi Jew. Big shock and unexpected. Where did that come from? And was I the only one of my brothers to inherit that gene combo? I will never know. My older brother passed away some years ago. My younger brother sees no need to have his DNA tested. Interesting – at least for me.
If 40-50% of IQ is genetic, it does not follow that the rest is environment. That is a natural conclusion, but it is wrong. The remaining 50% seems to be random we-don’t-know, but there’s no indication that it is environmental. (Prenatal influences may turn out to be predictive, as they are for schizophrenia, depression, and male homosexuality. The data is just starting to come in on those.) At least, there are no identified environmental effects that hold up, not two parents, not number of books in the home, not Montessori school, not Flintstone vitamins. If we are calling environment such things as eating lead, malaria, starvation, or being hit by a 2×4, then yes, environment counts. Otherwise, a little but not much.
Epigenetics is promising to be the theory of everything, and there is some evidence that circumstances can turn certain genes on. The “junk DNA” might include things sitting around waiting to get activated. However, this is not turning out as hoped. It’s pretty sparse at this point.
There has been some discussion here what the General Impression is about IQ in our culture. In everyday conversation, people do treat it as if it has a large genetic component, and it has been that way for decades. However, in academia this is not so. In the press you had better not say that. I wouldn’t say it too loudly at a PTA meeting. For example, Charles Murray does not claim that racial difference is all genetic. He states repeatedly that he thinks it is only partly so, and cultural factors play an important role. Yet even this is too much for colleges, where people riot and will not even hear him speak, calling him racist for revealing that the numbers are what they are, and have not changed in 90 years. His evidence for environment is actually not that good, but he sticks with it, for the same reason everyone does: we don’t like to contemplate the alternative.
Re: The Outsiders. I remember when the essay came out, and was corresponding with Grady Towers at the time. A strange, brilliant man, who was murdered horribly in 2000. He comes into the story of William James Sidis, who supposedly had the highest IQ ever, who I wrote a series about years ago. The essay that includes Grady is here. http://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2011/12/and-another-one-bites-dust-part-one.html
Assistant Village Idiot:
I’m not sure what you mean by “hold up.” It is notoriously difficult in human research to find something that is proven to cause something else. With IQ it’s no different.
But as I wrote in this post, both years of schooling and nutrition seem to be environmental factors that correlate with IQ with at least some consistency. The jury is still out on all of this, and probably will be for a long, long time.
People who have high-IQ parents have better nutrition, and their bright kids tend to have as many years of schooling as they can manage. People with high-IQ tend to go to more years of school. Years of education are not the horse, they are the cart.
Run the experiment going forward. When you see supposed evidence of some environmental advantage that high-IQ, or educated, or middle-class, or Jewish people have, ask immediately whether having smarter birth-parents explains this just as well (or better.) This is what you will find: you will see that “Yeah, having better genetics actually could be just as good an explanation,” but the article, or the abstract of the study will be lauding how much this shows that Head Start, or parent-coaching, or less sugar improves student outcomes. You will find that even the possible genetic components has even been considered by the researchers. And these are the studies and articles we have all been reading our entire lives. They convince us to not even look at genetics. ( It’s your aunts and neighbors who will do that.)
Caveat, some things work temporarily and work very well in education: sleeping later and better, and graduated incentives. Whether these help in the long run is not known, but it doesn’t look like a lot.
When I say “hold up,” I mean that there is virtually nothing that can be shown to be independent of genetics. If you find something and publish it, it will make you famous for life. Everyone has been dying to find something that is not just correlation, and thus easily caused by third, underlying factors (like genetics or pre-natal exposures). My point is that the jury is not really out, not for most of the charges. We just keep hoping it is.