I want to push back on the chain-of-logic that contends
- IQ is predetermined at birth and does not change
- Race determines IQ
- Since IQ is destiny, then race IS destiny
IQ is predetermined at birth and does not change
It is my personal belief that the human brain is very plastic. It rewires to optimize itself for changing environments.
A quick "proof": If I read off or showed 3, seven-digit numbers to a Boomer and a Gen Z, I am confident that the Boomer will almost always be able to repeat back the numbers five minutes later with greater fidelity than the Gen Z person.
The reason is that Boomers remembered the land-line numbers of their friends and family. I can still tell you the land-line number of my grandparents and the home number where I grew up. Phone numbers, back in the day, were seven digits long. Our brains rewired to optimize the retrieval of seven-digit strings of numbers.
Second piece of evidence: There as a very large, longitudinal health study in Britain. One of the pieces of data they tracked was I.Q.
A group of people who shared one attribute scored significantly higher than the group of people who did NOT share that attribute. More interesting, the gap in test scores steadily increased over the years. It did not stay constant.
The attribute? The group that scored higher on the IQ tests were readers. Educators tell us that the single best predictor of whether a child will be a reader is if the family demonstrates the culture of readers. There are books and magazines in the home. The parents read. The parents read to the children.
How many of you who insist that IQ is entirely genetic would actually expect Ben Carson's mother to score within 5 IQ points as Ben? His mother, Sonya Carson, was functionally illiterate.
Third piece of evidence: Trauma rewires brains.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder is just "twitchy feelings". It has been widely recognized since the the year 2000 that "Neuroimaglng studies in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have revealed changes in brain structure and function..."
People who are in combat are focused on second-to-second survival and "appropriately discounting the long term costs of behaviors" is a distraction that can get you killed. Ergo, many soldiers take up smoking while down-range.
Fourth piece of evidence: Drugs change brains
Smoking weed kills one's give-a-golly. Since the mid-twenty-teens the literature is full of peer reviewed studies with conclusions like "...regular cannabis use is associated with gray matter volume reduction in the medial temporal cortex, temporal pole, parahippcampal gyrus, insula and orbitofrontal cortex..."
Those areas are critical for longterm memory and processing emotions.
Harder drugs kill every desire that gets in the way of the next fix.
Fifth piece of evidence: Elites from the Caribbean and Africa
Mrs ERJ's uncle was a chaplain at Southern University. SU is a traditionally-Black University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
According to him, the US born students HATED the students from the Caribbean and Africa who had been schooled using the traditional, legacy UK system.
The professors graded on a curve. The Caribbean and African students invariably earned 100% on their tests. They mastered all of the assigned material. A single student from either of those place was enough to "spike" the curve and turn it into straight-scale.
The irony is that most of the Caribbean and African students were much darker than the US born students.
The "Race" to "IQ" link is highly confounded
The "Black Culture" that is enabled by WOKE Progressives sabotages most Black students on every count mentioned above.
Demographically, Blacks are younger than white people.
Pro-union, WOKE cities insist that education is the province of the education industry and unionized teachers.
Culturally, Black people are exposed to more random, capricious violence and WOKE jurisdictions do nothing to suppress that violence.
Culturally, Black people are more likely to be heavy users of cannabis in their adolescence and as young adults than every other ethnic group other than Native American. That is the period when brains are developing.
WOKE culture enables mediocre performance from Black people. It is the soft racism of low expectations.
ERGO, it is nearly impossible to untangle cultural and genetic factors.
A high IQ is like a powerful motor
A high IQ is like a powerful motor. But to be a useful truck or a fast race car, that engine needs appropriate tires and a transmission and a suspension and operator controls to be useful. It needs a road. It needs an operator to work the steering wheel, brakes and throttle.
People WANT IQ to mean more than it does. Just because you desperately want something to be true does not make it so.
I don't expect this post to change anybody's mind. I just want to go on-record for where I stand on the topic.
IQ is a motor... I never thought of it that way before but it's true. I hae a cousin that is very intelligent. He's also a felon... And there's a lot of very intelligent white collar criminals. It takes a lot more than just brains to succeed. High IQ helps, but it doesn't tell the whole story.
ReplyDelete"The professors graded on a curve. The Caribbean and African students invariably earned 100% on their tests. They mastered all of the assigned material. A single student from either of those place was enough to "spike" the curve and turn it into straight-scale.
ReplyDeleteThe irony is that most of the Caribbean and African students were much darker than the US born students. "
Pardon my slowness Joe, but I am unable to extract meaning from this clip. I can't see where you're going with this example.
Nature (and random chance) determines an individual's potential, Nurture determines how close to their limits an individual performs. In this case a culture of respect for education (Nurture) allowed the students from overseas perform at the highest level at SU.
DeleteA corollary of the "race is destiny" hypothesis is that the more "white blood" you have in you, the smarter you will be. The average American born, Black person carries approximately 25% "white DNA". If the corollary were true, then the results of the Southern University grades would be reversed.
DeleteAmerican Blacks may have the potential for higher IQs but the predominant Black culture makes it VERY unlikely a victim will actual approach their limits. Ben Carson and Justice Thomas were raised FAR outside the Black mainstream for their time (or now).
DeleteIn addition, most native africans (lets call them purebloods) have less than stellar IQ's. The Caribbeans have a mix of white, indian and african. Haiti is an example of more or less pureblood africans in a different environment. And they too have IQ's in the low 90's on average. lust like the average Africans.
DeleteWhich is not say that there are not stellar individuals from both places, but genetics must play a very large part. Culture may well be the largest factor after genetics, but genetics is the largest driver, from what I have observed.
I do think that you are putting observations from white cultures and forcing them onto other races in an attempt to make some sense and to deny what is somewhat obvious...that there is a genetic component to intelligence.
Even the army in the 50's and 60's, which wanted so terribly much to integrate everyone from every genetic and cultural group found significant differences in the bell curve of IQ. This was well before the culture of black was changed to what it is today
Your observations have merit but are flawed at the basic level.
Sorry about pointing that out.
I have found that people are smart...sometimes genius, at what they love. I knew a guy who was considered slow, but knew every record title, label and artist going back decades. Another was that way about sport stats of all kinds. Both were absolutely geniuses at what they loved. I have seen many, many people like that.
ReplyDeleteLondon (UK) taxi drivers have to learn "The Knowledge" - routes through London to and from thousands of places. Brain imaging of them has shown much greater enlargement of the areas responsible than in the general population. So actual brain development can be influenced.
ReplyDeleteOR the London Taxi Drivers THAT SUCCEED in their jobs already have decent base brain development for the task?
DeleteThey don't have unions to keep the less productive going.
SNIP In London, taxi drivers are primarily self-employed, which means they are not universally unionized.
"Wicked smart" does not translate to success. I've known very very smart people that are barely able to function in society.
ReplyDeleteMy cousin was super gifted mechanically and logically, but he wound up homeless living under a bridge.
IQ is NOT plastic. You can restructure IQ tests toward race and geography and culture - but the results are consistent: the same guys do well, and the same guys do poorly. If you have an IQ below 80, you will struggle with the most mundane tasks. Go further down and your memory starts to erode. Tests have been done where subjects simply can’t even fold a business letter into an envelope after hours of training by clinical psychologists. The subjects simply don’t have the hardware to run the software. It is not plastic or malleable. 40% of blacks are too dumb to work at McDonald’s. For whites it’s around 11%. Bear with me - I’m just sayin’.
ReplyDeleteAs for race… welp look at Africa. Look at Washington, Detroit, New Orleans, Chicago. I only see one common factor, Joe.
Race and IQ are not destiny in themselves but they ARE extremely powerful influencers. There are exceptions to every rule… but they ARE the exceptions.
Explain Africa, the entire freaking continent for all its history. Cradle of life, literally, yet they're all starving to death? Not one single functional government, ever, save brutal dictators and.... white south africa.
DeleteSeen enough, not playing the stupid games anymore. Call me racist, don't care. The term isn't a slur, means realist to me.
Sure, I'll take a whack at that.
DeleteThe way European powers were able to project their power and rule colonies in B.F. Africa was to organize and supply technology to the apex warlords. We didn't bring civilization and good government to Africa, we reinforced their dysfunctions while carving out tiny, white safe-spaces as a matter of convenience.
The continent of Africa is pretty F-ed up. For its size, it isn't all that rich in petroleum or coal. Except for diamonds and heavy-metals, it isn't that rich in minerals. It has a very narrow band of phosphorous deposits in the western Med region but fertile soil is not that abundant. Africa is an old, leached out continent and most of the geology are the oldest, least fertile types of igneous and metamorphic bedrock.
And the population has been encouraged to grossly overshoot the continents natural carrying capacity.
Nonsense. That argument might have flown 65 years ago to the uninformed, but today the writing is on the wall. Be honest: we also gave them the wheel, writing, math and science. Africa is still Africa. Apartheid WORKED in South Africa, Rhodesia and the Euro colonies. Everyone had a job, enough to eat, and rudimentary standards of living.
DeleteHaving tons of kids was not encouraged, it was a viable survival trait - as was tribalism and savagery.those countries all collapsed when Whitey was driven out. Our esteemed blog host is right when you consider blacks individually. There are any number of blacks that are smart, articulate, and productive. Conditioning and training - done correctly - can often trump genetics and environment. But you need the core basic brain power and the wherewithal to bring about a civilized citizen. In any population you will have a percentage of those that are incapable of it. As far as the “out of Africa” theory… recent discoveries are tearing that old trope to shreds. Likewise classical Darwinian theory is headed for the trash can too.
I am not saying that intellect=virtue; I am saying we’ve all seen brilliant psychotics and gentle, kind hearted morons.
For me, I take blacks one at a time, same as white people. Or horses, or dogs. Embrace the good ones - but stop making excuses for the bad ones.
I hate to say this, because I generally think Filthie is an ass , but he is right here.
DeleteConcur with B.
DeleteSigh...again??? And PTSD goes back to time immemorial... Hell, documentation goes back to at least Roman times
ReplyDeleteYeah. Again.
DeleteThe argument is similar to Frequency Domain vs. Time Domain or Aggregate Statistics vs. Time-ordered stream of data. All cases involve collecting and using data to make inferences about "reality" and to predict future outcomes.
Depending on the situation, one side of the vs. is likely more appropriate or elegant than the other. A practitioner can "forget" about the other alternative if they always use one mode.
Some problems are best solved using both modes. Future position of target determined from multiple sensors, for instance, benefits from Doppler shifts (frequency domain) for velocity and time-to-max pressure in a pulse for current position. It would be a hairy-bitch to make that prediction without using both "tools".
The concept of IQ is an attempt...and a piss poor one...to understand how the human mind works and functions. The tests themselves are a best guess attempt to measure brain function and many people are smarter than the people who created the tests. The single best way to judge a persons intelligence is to watch what they do over a period of time. And even that's not a great way to measure it.
ReplyDeleteNonsense. A rudimentary intellect is a necessity for a high trust, merit driven society. Individuals must be able to make good life decisions, adapt to changing environment and conditions, and enable restraint. Unfortunately in our times we flat out refuse to see or acknowledge that stupidity and poverty often go hand in hand. I used to think that modern psychology is a load of codswallop too… and granted - a lot of it still is. But reality is what it is. Right now all the sciences are under assault by ideologues with retarded social agendas. In real science, everything is open to scrutiny and doubt. I personally am interested in that dog fight and try to understand the ins and outs of the various factions and try to take them all seriously. That is what science actually is. Feelings and agendas are just that. To all the virtue signalling rubes and intellectual poseurs… all I can say is maybe YOU need a couple thousand Somalian families, fresh off the boat - dropped in YOUR neighborhood.
DeleteI think reading has a lot to do with IQ or intelligence or logical thinking, whatever. Encouragement by the parents goes a long way too. Discussion of read material with parents or friends helps the thinking process.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think my attention span, comprehension, and retention has all suffered from too much internet perusing. I still read, but the internet is a siren song for easier info, little bites without enough substance.
Southern Nh
Where I grew up phone numbers were three digits. We all found it challenging to remember pi to beyond 3.14.
ReplyDeleteWhen I got to university I found that in my Hall there were five of us from the same patch of countryside, who had grown up within a six mile radius. We were conspicuously the cleverest bunch of students there. It's a funny old world.
This area has always fascinated me. I look at IQ as an imperfect representation of potential. Much like an athlete, a high IQ person may never reach anything close to what they could achieve do to lack of drive or opportunity. They may not value what a basic education could bring them. The African and Caribbean students you described do. They maybe the exception, not the rule, looking at where they came from.
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked in R&D, one day at lunch the discussion among the techs was which PHd could change the oil and plugs in their car? Out of a population of 20+ we identified one for sure and one maybe. One of my fellow techs was a Mensa member but consistently had trouble doing the simplest mechanical operations. I am unsure if the standard IQ test would have identified practical intelligence or lack of.
I do agree reading from an early age does seem to help people reach more of their potential.