In a world where culture was either not present or not transmissible; and where it was possible to establish each individual's particular level of "training", then we could come to conclusions about group intelligence that would be generally true for the group even if not nearly so useful in considering a particular member of the group. That is not the world we live in. Instead, we live in a world where racial groups have been homogenized in-group around cultural poles via television, radio and other forms of interaction and communication. Do not underestimate the impact of culture on the "training" levels of individuals across a great many categories of skills.
I don't - as I say at the end (right before the introduction).
As far as usefulness, any given stereotype can lead to a false positive or false negative (depending on whether the "use" is positive (action) or negative (avoid action)). But in sum that leaves a calculation for the person employing the stereotype, and this is why over and over again the state has to come in to force private business not to apply different standards. It isn't "hate" it's just opting out of a category of work that isn't worth it. Of course I'm talking about Finlanders and Peruvians here, I hope that's clear to everyone reading.
Absolutely. My comment provided no practical utility whatsoever - it was just reflexive finger-wagging. Race is a visible proxy for culture: it may not be logical to discriminate based on race, but to do so may provide better long-term results than not doing so.
Obviously if Finland was at a much higher elavation and you had a culture of hot saunas and frolicking naked in snow in Peru, there would be no differences between the two.
Aug 25, 2023·edited Aug 25, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
Good and thought provoking article. Some random thoughts...
I feel that 'supposed' intelligence whether real or not can make one more vulnerable to propaganda and ideological buy in, because hardly anyone wants to be the odd one out in their supposedly intelligent in-group.
And the pandemic handily proved that Malcom Gladwells 10000 hours of experience was easily trumped by Upton Sinclairs "...difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Finally, the whole misinformation and anti conspiracy narrative is a clever way to distract the successfully propagandised 'intelligent' people from realising they've been had.
Why? Race denialist don't actually believe that race is a social concept and races have the same intelligence. Race denial is an emotional and / or political stance, not a scientific one.
They don't need more information; they need to stop lying.
The line between a collectivistic personality denying race and a collectivitic personality advocating for apartheid (Or worse) is extremely thin.
They fear their inner demons. Thus they lie. The more the truth stares them in their face, the harder they need to prostrate themselves before their lies.
This is simultaneously a religious, philosophical, political, legal, and scientific question.
Try explaining to a cop that since everyone is going 1.3M mph you were just keeping up with traffic, and I'm sure some physicist has argued that he was traveling at 0 mph and it was everyone else doing 100.
Galileo wasn't able to change the answer to the religious, philosophical, political, and legal questions but he did shift the scientific debate and helped end geocentrism as a serious scientific study. Think of how much time was wasted on epicycles because it was assumed that the Earth was the center of the universe.
This is my problem with Systemic Racism and Critical Theory. If you assume that there are no genetic differences in potential among groups and in fact there are; then you will spend eternity inventing theories that get ever more complex, involved, and useless just like epicycles because they do not explain observed reality.
If there truly are differences in potential (and in my observation there are) then even if a racism free society could be arrived at it would be indistinguishable from a racist state. Proving that these differences exist scientifically (even if imperfectly) will not win the religious, philosophical, political, and legal debates (nor should they) but perhaps it will shift effort from useless "scientific" studies that are dead ends and we can put these ridiculous theories behind us.
"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."
Except in the interesting, and not all that uncommon, cases where one twin outcompetes the other for placental access and you end up with one growing normally and one stunted.
In which case there is still no obvious reason to credit genes vs prenatal conditions for lifetime outcomes. Only if you bluntly stipulate nurture does not matter before birth, do twin outcomes say anything about nature. In which case all measurements are pointless because the conclusion is presupposed.
Aug 23, 2023·edited Aug 23, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
Exactly. And that inequality may be completely normal in twins, just a question of *degree*.
Also: "placenta bully" (chuckles)
Was simply pointing out that twin studies really aren't the gold standard that "the science" makes them out to be. They're all based on a really, really flawed assumption that twins are experiencing equal conditions in utero, and that is almost certainly not the case. It is like assuming that all kids growing up in the same household experience the same parenting conditions. They really don't. It is *extremely* common for one kid to be the favorite kid, or worse, one kid to be the scapegoat, to such a degree that even a very close-in-age sibling will experience a very different home environment and have a completely different "nurture" experience. Show me two siblings with vastly different outcomes, raised in the same house... and I can tell you which one had severe colic and failed to bond with mother.
Or like... my own parents. Four kids-- two born when they were very young, then a decade gap, then two more. The older two were raised by hippies. The younger two were raised by 80s whitecollar churchgoing squares. Same parents (shrugs).
I just don't see how it's even possible to have good data when it comes to nurture-- which is going to screw with anything you want to generalize about the nature half of things, too. It's like a whole box of wrenches dumped into the machinery of a very neat, mechanical, pristine theoretical equation.
A pleasant read (whichever one I clicked on). But ignores that both per capita GDP and mean IQ in white countries are going to be artifacts of geographical resources, geopolitics, trade policy, culture, arbitrary boundary drawing*, emigration and immigration. "Smart fraction" doesn't make sense because ratios are determined as much by B as A. Also, 108 as a threshold for high productivity doesn't make sense, and anyway, then just get the actual "fraction" if you want to validate the theory, rather than modeling it based on mean IQ.
*Worse case is "Hong Kong" as a country, but that is in the asian outlier set anyway.
In a world where culture was either not present or not transmissible; and where it was possible to establish each individual's particular level of "training", then we could come to conclusions about group intelligence that would be generally true for the group even if not nearly so useful in considering a particular member of the group. That is not the world we live in. Instead, we live in a world where racial groups have been homogenized in-group around cultural poles via television, radio and other forms of interaction and communication. Do not underestimate the impact of culture on the "training" levels of individuals across a great many categories of skills.
I don't - as I say at the end (right before the introduction).
As far as usefulness, any given stereotype can lead to a false positive or false negative (depending on whether the "use" is positive (action) or negative (avoid action)). But in sum that leaves a calculation for the person employing the stereotype, and this is why over and over again the state has to come in to force private business not to apply different standards. It isn't "hate" it's just opting out of a category of work that isn't worth it. Of course I'm talking about Finlanders and Peruvians here, I hope that's clear to everyone reading.
Absolutely. My comment provided no practical utility whatsoever - it was just reflexive finger-wagging. Race is a visible proxy for culture: it may not be logical to discriminate based on race, but to do so may provide better long-term results than not doing so.
Obviously if Finland was at a much higher elavation and you had a culture of hot saunas and frolicking naked in snow in Peru, there would be no differences between the two.
Good and thought provoking article. Some random thoughts...
I feel that 'supposed' intelligence whether real or not can make one more vulnerable to propaganda and ideological buy in, because hardly anyone wants to be the odd one out in their supposedly intelligent in-group.
And the pandemic handily proved that Malcom Gladwells 10000 hours of experience was easily trumped by Upton Sinclairs "...difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Finally, the whole misinformation and anti conspiracy narrative is a clever way to distract the successfully propagandised 'intelligent' people from realising they've been had.
Suggest you read The Neuroscience of Intelligence by Haier. Cambridge University Press
Why? Race denialist don't actually believe that race is a social concept and races have the same intelligence. Race denial is an emotional and / or political stance, not a scientific one.
They don't need more information; they need to stop lying.
The line between a collectivistic personality denying race and a collectivitic personality advocating for apartheid (Or worse) is extremely thin.
They fear their inner demons. Thus they lie. The more the truth stares them in their face, the harder they need to prostrate themselves before their lies.
Is the Earth the center of the Universe?
This is simultaneously a religious, philosophical, political, legal, and scientific question.
Try explaining to a cop that since everyone is going 1.3M mph you were just keeping up with traffic, and I'm sure some physicist has argued that he was traveling at 0 mph and it was everyone else doing 100.
Galileo wasn't able to change the answer to the religious, philosophical, political, and legal questions but he did shift the scientific debate and helped end geocentrism as a serious scientific study. Think of how much time was wasted on epicycles because it was assumed that the Earth was the center of the universe.
This is my problem with Systemic Racism and Critical Theory. If you assume that there are no genetic differences in potential among groups and in fact there are; then you will spend eternity inventing theories that get ever more complex, involved, and useless just like epicycles because they do not explain observed reality.
If there truly are differences in potential (and in my observation there are) then even if a racism free society could be arrived at it would be indistinguishable from a racist state. Proving that these differences exist scientifically (even if imperfectly) will not win the religious, philosophical, political, and legal debates (nor should they) but perhaps it will shift effort from useless "scientific" studies that are dead ends and we can put these ridiculous theories behind us.
...unconvincing.
...nnnng
"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."
Except in the interesting, and not all that uncommon, cases where one twin outcompetes the other for placental access and you end up with one growing normally and one stunted.
In which case there is still no obvious reason to credit genes vs prenatal conditions for lifetime outcomes. Only if you bluntly stipulate nurture does not matter before birth, do twin outcomes say anything about nature. In which case all measurements are pointless because the conclusion is presupposed.
Exactly. And that inequality may be completely normal in twins, just a question of *degree*.
Also: "placenta bully" (chuckles)
Was simply pointing out that twin studies really aren't the gold standard that "the science" makes them out to be. They're all based on a really, really flawed assumption that twins are experiencing equal conditions in utero, and that is almost certainly not the case. It is like assuming that all kids growing up in the same household experience the same parenting conditions. They really don't. It is *extremely* common for one kid to be the favorite kid, or worse, one kid to be the scapegoat, to such a degree that even a very close-in-age sibling will experience a very different home environment and have a completely different "nurture" experience. Show me two siblings with vastly different outcomes, raised in the same house... and I can tell you which one had severe colic and failed to bond with mother.
Or like... my own parents. Four kids-- two born when they were very young, then a decade gap, then two more. The older two were raised by hippies. The younger two were raised by 80s whitecollar churchgoing squares. Same parents (shrugs).
I just don't see how it's even possible to have good data when it comes to nurture-- which is going to screw with anything you want to generalize about the nature half of things, too. It's like a whole box of wrenches dumped into the machinery of a very neat, mechanical, pristine theoretical equation.
Agreed.
Or where twins merge and become chimeras to varying degrees.
In terms of IQ science, the only thing that has "real usefulness" over natural observations is smart fraction theory.
Some writings:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft.htm
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft2.htm
Some more modern stats: https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2023/01/smart-fraction-theory-vindicated/
A pleasant read (whichever one I clicked on). But ignores that both per capita GDP and mean IQ in white countries are going to be artifacts of geographical resources, geopolitics, trade policy, culture, arbitrary boundary drawing*, emigration and immigration. "Smart fraction" doesn't make sense because ratios are determined as much by B as A. Also, 108 as a threshold for high productivity doesn't make sense, and anyway, then just get the actual "fraction" if you want to validate the theory, rather than modeling it based on mean IQ.
*Worse case is "Hong Kong" as a country, but that is in the asian outlier set anyway.