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.
ReplyDelete"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.