The "science" of IQ

A reversal of stance along the way to the trap of "proving" the naturally observable

This post was given an introduction, to explain to the reader why I am furthering my discussion of IQ from the other day. I moved it to the bottom, however, as it ran long.

Summary: In setting out to defend my previous negative position regarding “hereditarianism” and scientific race realism, I wrote the opposite of that.

If “IQ science” is correct, then it is unnecessary

i. Science as a box

Regular readers are likely aware that this journal is critical of science (as the term is understood in America and the West). This is because the journal is written by someone with a brain.

Consider my motives: If I create a box that contains statements asserted by science, then I have created a box that from day to day will continually contradict itself in important points. I have created a box that asserts such preposterous and facially idiotic things as “Original Antigenic Sin,” or that spends three full years believing that people are being killed by “cytokine storms” when absolutely no medical evidence supports the idea. In short, my box cannot be considered to be free of false claims.

Because my box is merely a proxy for what the West calls science, then the same fact is true of science, at all times. It does not matter that science, unlike my box, is full of credentialized serious thing-sayers that go to buildings and have books on shelves and say serious things seriously. Science has at all moments the exact same unreliability as my box.

Of course, surely some things in my box of claims are true. But the mere virtue of being in the box — of being science — is obviously not enough to determine (however provisionally) that they are. So how is this truth determined? In practice, by validation entirely outside of the box. Whatever my box of claims says about electricity, I take to be provisionally true, because my lights turn on. Etc.

ii. Heredity in twins

Suspending the thought experiment in the main header for just one more moment, there are certainly times I might indulge in taking guesses about whether claims and sets of claims are true based on the process and context that led to the same claims. For example, this is exactly the system I used to conclude and argue that Original Antigenic Sin and “cytokine storm” are not real — I looked at the research, and concluded that it was nonsense or nonexistent, respectively.

So in this context it is rather unfortunate and embarrassing that IQ fetishists — or “hereditarians,” to be consistent with the previous post — place high stock in so-called twin studies. There are obvious on-the-record problems with the concept that observing similarities in twins (separated or otherwise) is particularly more decisive of the nature / nurture question than natural observation of animal and human offspring (see wikipedia).

Particularly, when statistical calculations tell us that some portion of the difference in any given trait are “explained” by twins being twins, that doesn’t tell us those differences are explained by nature (heredity) rather than nurture. Twins are conceived and birthed together, meaning they spend nine or so months being nurtured together. One cannot be malnourished and premature unless the other is as well; likewise for being nourished and timely. These are things outside of genes.

Without twin studies, the hereditarians have almost nothing to tell us regarding the heritability of IQ aside from the negative — statistics have trouble showing that IQ can be improved by any deliberate efforts. Note that both the notion that individual intelligence is inherited (innate) and can’t be greatly expanded by tutelage is merely consistent with natural observation; they don’t tell humans something we didn’t already think we know.

iii. Assume races are differently intelligent

Now we get to the real problem (except not, as it will turn out). Within the box of claims that I have created to proxy for science are many studies from decade after decade which find, let’s be blunt, that giving Black people IQ tests is not a good method to generate three-digit numbers; low scores are also produced on other tests (SATs).

A random graph from the internet. Graphs mean “science” is happening. “Science,” here, tells us pens = 2.

Now let us assume that these studies are reporting a true fact; i.e. that these lower scores on these tests reflect lower intelligence.

Well, we run into a “problem” here, in that intelligent humans already have a built-in intelligence test. The built-in intelligence test of intelligent people functions the following way: Just talking to other people. If I make a comment to a stranger, their response reveals whether they grasp the comment (and non-response can indicate grasping, at times).

Extremely common California stoner example

“Oh, I thought that guy was with you.”

“Hey. You’re OK, don’t worry.”

This is wrong: The original comment did not introduce a context that implied worry which needed to be alleviated, or uncertainty of OK-ness. The reply indicates total non-comprehension.

IQ tests and the SAT Reading test function the same way as just having a conversation.¹ This is all, again, naturalistic, and perhaps best demonstrated by imagining how in fiction a writer would demonstrate intelligence, i.e. wit, to the reader — by conversation, by reciprocal perception of intention, by imaginative humor. One is unlikely to read,

Joe was very quickly impressed with Sarah’s intelligence (he gave her an IQ test while they were sitting in silence doing nothing).

Yet somehow, fictional characters are found to be intelligent, often within seconds of contact with each other.

So, if it is the case that different races have different levels of intelligence, then any intelligent person who encounters different races without a positive selector for intelligence (such as only encountering successful car salesmen, or whatever), who interacts with them however casually, will observe the same differences found by tests with their own eyes. Likewise for criminality, conscientiousness, and anything else the “scientific” race realists wish to alert society about. These observations will be especially unavoidable when working with other races day-to-day in the same company, especially if there are diversity initiatives that lower the bar for entry.

Of course, all I have described is racial stereotypes. But it is important to understand that there is no way for giving IQ tests to different races to magically produce a different result than just talking and working with different races. (Intelligent) humans can tell the intelligence and race of other people for themselves.

The need for me to put “intelligent” in front of “humans” explains one of the reasons IQ tests are used in place of just talking to people — it is not practical to just have one intelligent person go personally meet every test subject. IQ tests allow the use of unintelligent administrators. (Obviously, they also allow for finer scoring, but this isn’t particularly important for the race question.) But they aren’t “measuring” (in quotes because their validity is debated) anything that can’t be observed naturalistically.

Still, and it is an unfortunately important point in this thought-experiment, the “built-in” ability to observe different intelligence in different races would not be evenly distributed. The resulting information asymmetry in this thought experiment would force any society of both races to choose between overt, Progressive-era paternalism (if not apartheid) or making the topic taboo so that norms of civic equality can be maintained.

iv. Assume races are not differently intelligent

If in fact races are all on balance equally intelligent, then two things would be true: Blacks (in the West) and Africans wrongly score very low on tests for intelligence, conscientiousness, and other qualities that are naturally observable, and intelligent white people who have spent time engaging with other races largely hold horrible and wrong stereotypes about the same qualities in Blacks.

I cannot speak for the scientific race realists, but I feel I have accidentally crafted a defense for their mindset. It does strike as too much to participate in a collective belief of the above two bold claims. It isn’t serious. And being serious — grounding a race realist politics in natural observation and pragmatic politics rather than fussing over a bunch of statistics and graphs that will never convince anyone not primed to already believe them — was the motive for my stance on hereditarianism. My wholly stereotypically fictional and wrong need to insist on purported truth bristles.

Thus in trying to trap the IQ fetishists by showing that their studies would be redundant, I feel I have instead trapped myself into recantment.²

Moreover, it is reasonable to use IQ test data to resolve politically the otherwise intractable problem of information asymmetry that would come from relying on the built-in intelligence test that is only available to intelligent people (even if IQ test data ultimately can never be self-validating); and it is reasonable to use IQ test data to highlight that American society has chosen to suppress discussion of racial differences rather than respond to them (however futile the effort must be, since expert consensus will always denounce the findings).

I feel I cannot really fault the “eugenicons” for their fixation on tests and studies at this point, even if I remain just as sympathetic to nurture explanations for different race outcomes than nature (I even believe systemic racism is real, and bad; I just don’t think there’s anything non-counterproductive about trying to counteract it at this point).

Contra Lind (the introduction at the bottom of the post)

Because I positively reviewed the central argument of Michael Lind’s essay denouncing the “eugenicons” the other day (here), I feel I should mention two works of criticism written against the same, one by Steve Sailer (a target of Lind) and another by Brian Chau (cliff-noted in a twitter thread here).

Both writers, I believe, spend too much time simply parading faults in Lind’s essay, but Chau’s especially has made me less sanguine about the same faults (the existence of which I acknowledged the other day), is it argues persuasively that these extraneous flaws stem from Lind’s legalistic attempt to contort his commentary to fit the incongruent and parochial political end of explaining why IQ fetishization is bad for the Republican Party.

Here we can notice a very important omission. What is race realism and libertarianism incompatible with, according to Lind. He doesn’t say it’s incompatible with the interests of working-class Americans. Lind wouldn’t be able to explain Steve Sailer and Bo Winegard, who have extremely similar policy views, if he said that. He also doesn’t say it’s broadening the appeal of the Republican party in general. Creating a Libertarian-Nietzschian-Neoliberal-Democrat alliance, as improbable as that is, would do precisely the opposite. 

Instead, it’s incompatible with “broadening the appeal of the Republican Party to working-class Americans of all races”. It’s incompatible with Lind’s job, as an Attorney. Lind is nothing more than a good little manager, acting in his own class interest.

Despite now having buyer’s remorse for the essay at large, I nonetheless believe that the core claim made by Lind, which I quoted in my post — is a sharp insight.

For libertarians at a loss to explain why wealth and power are concentrated in market societies, eugenicons have an answer: Rich people and rich families are genetically superior. And for eugenicons in search of a political program short of radical “ethnostate” proposals, libertarianism provides a second-best solution. The danger that resources will be redistributed from the productive, eugenic rich to the parasitic, dysgenic masses can be minimized by shrinking the state and lowering taxation. So can transferring functions from the government, where numbers count, to the market, dominated by a small number of wealthy capitalists defined as “the cognitive elite.”

And I stand by my (I think obvious) argument for why “scientific” hereditarianism is a dead-end (it will never receive the endorsement of the expert nexus, and so lay people will never credit it), even if, in this post, I wound up sympathizing with the same venture on principle.

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1. But without that one question per test where a more nuanced reading is wrongly not the correct answer, thwarting a perfect run.

2. Apparently “not a word.” I disagree.