Hacker News Reader

Comment by phs318u | Hacker News Reader

Please then provide some references to the e literature you’ve read supporting your claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof as the saying goes.

View on HN

Claiming that the skills tested by IQ tests are in part heritable—like height, strength, weight, eye color and every other physical characteristic—is not an extraordinary claim. Indeed, the opposite claim would be more extraordinary. Why should this be the exception to the rule?

It would be far more beneficial to equity to push back on the purported implications of this fact than to try to fight a losing battle against reality. The value we place on the skills that IQ tests measure is highly suspect and should be questioned, not the idea that IQ varies between populations.

>The value we place on the skills that IQ tests measure

It's not even that. Imagine there is an isolated population on a remote island that is legitimately very low on general intelligence, "nobody can ever learn to count past ten" kinda low, yet undeniably human.

What would be a reasonable policy toward such people?

The same as you'd have to the severely mentally impaired in general, I imagine.

To apologise for such a unidimensional interpretation of intelligence? Maybe they harness their intelligence to survival in their environment. What would the measure of such an intelligence be? What if you've never been posed a logical puzzle before, or even had a written language, just oral tradition. Are we saying that the western definition of intelligence discounts all other forms of mentation and application of that mentation to significant survival advantage? Perhaps these people score low on "curiosity" rather than intelligence per se? How do we even define intelligence in these discussions? Is Elon Musk intelligent? By some measures, clearly yes. By others, clearly not. What is the point of these discussions of not to partition the room? Personally, I'd like to see a broad-spectrum array of measures relating to different modes of mentation. Then we may be able to get somewhere. Until then, whenever I see a discussion mentioning "whites", "blacks", "Asians", "Africans" as if these are a homogenous mass (which is utterly ludicrous), then I'll continue to suspect ulterior motives.

A lot of assumptions here. What intellectual advantages do chimpanzees have over humans? Their survival advantages over us are in other planes. Clearly at some stage between the last common ancestor and us there was an intellectually inferior, yet more or less human. Sure they could maybe sleep naked in the cold, run marathons in 1:30 or even, as a facet of mental ability, have superhuman reaction time, but they would just have no place in the human society. Your refusal to even consider a genetically defined human subset of inferior intellect is quite typical, I suppose because you don't like the conclusions for if it existed.

A controversial 2005 paper https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jb... claims:

  Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group for which there are reliable data. They score 0.75 to 1.0 standard deviations above the general European average, corresponding to an IQ 112-115. This has been seen in many studies (Backman, 1972; Levinson, 1959; Romanoff, 1976), although a recent review concludes that the advantage is slightly less, only half a standard deviation Lynn (2004).

The controversy is discussed here: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/30/21042733/...

The fact that none of the cited sources (Backman, 1972; Levinson, 1959; Romanoff, 1976) provide evidence of or back the that Ashkenazi IQ is close to a standard deviation above the European average might be why that paper is controversial.

While what you say logically makes sense, it's very difficult to handle the thought for most people. Most people are either racist and disagree with the latter part of what you say, or are anti-racist and reject even the possibility of any intelligence disparity.

I find it uncomfortable, and I personally don't accept it as a fact (there is pretty significant evidence that points at many possible conclusions, as well as many many confounding factors), but I can't, as a reasonable person, reject the possibility.

I would never even voice that opinion in public, though. Even a position like this could make me a social pariah.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/doc/10.1.1.372.6092 Meta-analysis of the results of over six million participants tested for cognitive ability or aptitude that found a difference in average scores between Black and White individuals of 1.1 standard deviations.

And if you are curious about the relationship between IQ and genetics this Wikipedia page has a ton of cited research: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

Also I don't think I'm the one making extraordinary claims here...

That's not a genetic study. The authors specialize in organizational/management science. For the Wikipedia article, you should read it yourself. A ctrl-f for "no evidence" would do you well.

It appears to be a meta-analysis of literature in the field of psychology.

I fail to see how insulting the authors academic credentials brings more to this discussion than critiquing the methodology or providing a study to the contrary.

I also have read the Wikipedia article and have no idea what you are talking about. Claiming there is "no evidence" to any of the sides of this very complex issue is utterly ridiculous.

If the contention is that there is a genetic basis for differences in intelligence, a study that doesn't consider genetic evidence is a poor place to start. This is a methodological critique.

From the article:

>Mackintosh, Nisbett et al. and Flynn have all concluded that the slight correlation between g-loading and the test score gap offers no clue to the cause of the gap.[86][87][88] Further reviews of both adoption studies and racial admixture studies have also found no evidence for a genetic component behind group-level IQ differences.[89][90][91][92]

The poster I originally responded to claimed there was "no scientific evidence" for differences in IQ being based on genetics. There is significant evidence for genetics being the largest reason for IQ differences between individuals. Regardless of the semantics of the quote you posted, a reading of the full article elucidates that there is an open debate as to what role genetics plays in group differences in IQ, with lots of varying opinions and evidence.

South Korean IQs went up by an entire standard deviation for people born between 1970 and 1990. Japanese IQs went up by more than a standard deviation between 1940 and 1965. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...

If you truly believe your extraordinary claims, you must believe these countries performed large scale human genetic engineering during these periods in a conspiracy hidden from the rest of the world.

South Korea and Japan had severely malnourished populations -- which was also reflected in their heights.

Are you claiming that African-Americans are similarly malnourished? Would they become giants if, somehow, they could be properly fed?

I'm claiming that if they were properly educated, their intelligence would increase. Indeed, the gap between black American IQs and white American IQs has been steadily closing, with a 1/3 reduction between 1972 and 2002, the gap between black American IQs and white American IQs is smaller than the gap between black African IQs and white American IQs, and black Americans in 1995 have the same IQ as white Americans in 1945. This is explainable by reduction in school segregation and increases in white collar job opportunities for blacks in the US, leading to slow increases in education culture in black communities. There is a nutritional component as well, with the average heights of black males almost catching up to the average height of white males: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Height-cm-of-Americans-b...

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/heres-why-the...

Ever heard of the Lothian Birth-Cohort Studies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothian_birth-cohort_studies

IQ can be measured quite well at the age of 10-11, before the children have had much education. It also turns out to be quite stable... and doesn't really go up if somebody goes all the way to a bachelor's degree.

This means that your education excuse either isn't true at all (most likely) or that it has really, really important, huge, big, great confounders (highly unlikely).

Your height figure tells me that there really isn't much of a height difference between whites and blacks in the US. There is a clear (but small) height difference between age cohorts but it is utterly dwarfed by the differences between age cohorts in South Korea and Japan (and by the height differences between North Korea and South Korea).

This means that your nutrition excuse either isn't true at all (most likely) or that it has really, really important, huge, big, great confounders (highly unlikely).

Or maybe Watson was on to something, whether we like or not. You clearly don't, I don't either, and I am pretty sure Watson doesn't like it one bit either.

> IQ can be measured quite well at the age of 10-11, before the children have had much education.

That's utter nonsense that children have not had much education at the age of 10-11. I've personally seen kids reading books independently at the age of two (because their parents taught them, not because their genes made them know how to read). Yes, black two year olds can do this too: https://abc7ny.com/2-year-old-mensa-american-kashe-quest-iq-.... By the time they're 11, they're doing college level mathematics. The intelligence gap is vast versus cousins who were not brought up the same way.

Even today, black children have higher childhood exposure to lead and higher incidence of iodine deficiency, both of which have large impacts on IQ. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33394180/

Despite the strong evidence against it, white men (like you and Watson) are much more likely to believe in large genetic differences in intelligence by race, and that is either due to genetic mental deficiency among white men (highly unlikely) or racism in developmental environment (most likely).

> That's utter nonsense that children have not had much education at the age of 10-11.

In that case, the IQ measured later, say at 30, should be very different from the IQ measured at age 10-11. It isn't, though...

It should also go up (a lot) if the kid ends up with lots of education compared to a child with the same childhood score that doesn't end up with lots of education. It doesn't, though.

In other words, it is NOT utter nonsense.

I have flagged you.

> It should also go up (a lot) if the kid ends up with lots of education compared to a child with the same childhood score that doesn't end up with lots of education. It doesn't, though.

Of course it does. Did you fail to verify your claim prior to making it because of genetic mental deficiency (highly unlikely) or due to environmental racism leading you to believe that it couldn't be possible (most likely).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6088505/ shows that each additional year of mediocre classroom education is worth ~5 IQ points.

> each additional year of mediocre classroom education is worth ~5 IQ points.

"we found consistent evidence for beneficial effects of education on cognitive abilities of approximately 1 to 5 IQ points for an additional year of education"

1-5 is not 5. Besides, it is contradicted by the Lothian Birth-Cohort Studies (and many others).

You should not misrepresent your sources. On the other hand, it is good you have started citing real research instead of Mother Jones. Ritchie is a real, serious researcher, whether he is right in this case or not.

> 1-5 is not 5

You failed to understand the study. The 1 case is the marginal effect of a year of education on students who were about to drop out of school, which is a very special type of unmotivated population. 5 is for an additional year of compulsory "mediocre classroom" education on the entire population of students. Is your failure to understand due to genetic inability (highly unlikely) or due to your strong priors influenced by racism in development environment forcing you to conjure up a favorable interpretation for your argument (much more likely)?

The Lothian Birth-Cohort studies were not designed to measure genetic differences in mental ability by race nor to measure the impact of education on mental ability, and your article does not claim it was nor draw any conclusions in that regard. It merely shows a correlation of 0.66 between mental ability at age 11 vs. age 79, which leaves a lot of variability to be explained by environment after age 11. Multiple studies have shown that intentional changes in educational environment cause large differences, with Bloom's 1-on-1 educational coaching causing the largest differences of two entire standard deviations, the difference between median and genius ability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem

I don’t see anything in that met analysis relating to genetics. This is far more likely to be as a result of systemic racism in your country affecting outcomes from early learning onwards.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com