Some comments about "race" and "intelligence"

Bill,

You said, "Steve wants us to work hard at racial mixing..."

Sorry about that, Bill. It was unfortunate wording on my part. I wasn't being serious about that - I intended it to be humorous. I was smiling at the metaphor of 'mixing' which implies individuals, having sex to do their part in grand social scheme.

Please don't think that I'm telling you to 'work hard' seeking out a dark-skinned woman that you would then need to impregnate as part of some great program to institute world change. :-)

Come on, Bill. That's not me! Are you just feeling contentious today? :-)

I do NOT (contrary to my unfortunate wording that failed to carry the intended irony or humor) propose any grand schemes to change racial characteristics that we should all be involved with .

I think that people should pick their own individual goals, for reasons of self-interest, and in the arena or romantic partners, people should pick the person that makes them happiest and be with them for the joy of it, and not to change the world's racial mix.

If the unintended result of whatever 'mixing' does take place in the future, then this issue of racism will end... but only in its current form. But there is an unfortunate psychological tendency some people have to boost their pseudo-self-esteem by finding other 'markers' of groups to illogically cast as inferior. If we are all the same skin tones, this kind of person will pick some other superficial trait to rationalize their hateful attacks.

Post 121

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 8:27am

Bill,

Just as a side note, I want to say that you should know me well enough after these many years to not lump me with collectivists. Am I wrong on that?
-------------

On another note... you said (referring to Brad's post) "...people tend to choose partners who are close to their own level of intelligence anyway, so in a free society, I don't think one has to worry about any leveling to 'mediocrity' due to miscegenation."

1. Many people, for reasons that are cultural or personal, don't choose for an equal level of intelligence. Ask any intelligent woman who has dated for a number of years how many men were turned off by her intelligence. Here in the US there are many men who choose for looks and many women who chose for status or wealth or looks. And it nearly takes a psychologist to unweave the many strands that generate a particular individual's basis of sexual/romantic attraction.

2. But even if people did choose for intelligence, we need to remember that it is not genetically transmitted. All that is transmitted genetically is a rough potential for certain mental capacities - capacities that, by themselves, do not begin to account for what is required for functional intelligence - real intelligence. You grant Brad's ugly premise (which carries within it, the epistemological requirement for innate ideas and an absence of choice, and the elimination of critical thinking, psychological clarity, and a host of other important considerations) when you phrase your statement using the words you used. Intelligence isn't inherited, it is a potential that is developed and the intellectual development is the most important contributor to the outcome. ("Outcome" is also to be seen as dynamic. Many of continue to develop our level of real intelligence as the years pass - producing a new outcomes, on and on, despite being many decades removed from the original 'mixing' that led to our conception.)

Post 122

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 12:10pm

Brad,

Who appointed you dictator of other people's romantic choices? Are you seriously telling me that people aren't justified in marrying a person of a different race -- that they should be discouraged from doing so in order to preserve racial "phenotypes"? You say that Rand romanticized Nordic and Caucasian features in her novels, and you worry about the demise of the latter due to interracial marriage. You remind me a black guy I once knew who told me that he thought Rand was a racist, because her heroes had Nordic and Caucasian features. Now you're saying basically the same thing, but on her behalf. Rand had her physical preferences, as do a lot of people. That doesn't mean that she was a racist or that she was romanticizing racial stereotypes. (By the way, she once said that Mohammad Ali was one of her heroes, because of the unabashed pride that he took in his own accomplishments.)

Moreover, if what you're concerned about is a more intelligent person's marrying someone less intelligent and thus having offspring whose intelligence is "mediocre," then that can happen between members of the same race. So are you saying that no one should marry someone who is not their intellectual equal, regardless of their race? In that case, what about a black man and a white woman who are of equal intelligence? Shouldn't you prefer their relationship over one involving two whites of unequal intelligence?

In this case, you are lumping all people together on the basis of race. You're not viewing them as individuals with their own particular level of intelligence. You're inveighing against inter-racial dating and marriage as such, regardless of the intelligence of the people involved. This is a collectivist mantra; it is quintessentially anti-individualist.

What's funny about your position is that it fits right in with multicultural diversity and identity politics.

I wrote that "people tend to choose partners who are close to their own level of intelligence anyway, so in a free society, I don't think one has to worry about any leveling to 'mediocrity' due to miscegenation." Steve disagreed:

1. Many people, for reasons that are cultural or personal, don't choose for an equal level of intelligence. Ask any intelligent woman who has dated for a number of years how many men were turned off by her intelligence. Here in the US there are many men who choose for looks and many women who chose for status or wealth or looks. And it nearly takes a psychologist to unweave the many strands that generate a particular individual's basis of sexual/romantic attraction.

Well, sure, men prefer attractive women; and women, successful men, but neither is going to marry someone who is not at their level of intelligence. What man wants to marry and live in a permanent relationship with a bimbo whom he can't relate to or communicate with? Such a marriage, if it were to occur, would not last for long.

2. But even if people did choose for intelligence, we need to remember that it is not genetically transmitted. All that is transmitted genetically is a rough potential for certain mental capacities - capacities that, by themselves, do not begin to account for what is required for functional intelligence - real intelligence. You grant Brad's ugly premise (which carries within it, the epistemological requirement for innate ideas and an absence of choice, and the elimination of critical thinking, psychological clarity, and a host of other important considerations) when you phrase your statement using the words you used.

I made it clear that I was referring to potential, not to the actualization of that potential, which of course is not inherited. I also said that Objectivism is opposed to the doctrine of innate ideas -- that it supports the view that man is born tabula rasa, which is obviously something I agree with.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 5/22, 12:19pm)

Post 123

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 1:32pm

Bill, I think we are mostly in agreement, but a couple of minor points:

Such a marriage [e.g., where the woman is a bimbo and the man could not relate or communicate with her], if it were to occur, would not last for long.

When I did couples counciling, and in my private life, I've met many such couples. And many of those marriages have lasted for 30 or 40 or more years. Some people don't 'communicate' or 'relate' in a way that you or I would expect or want. Sometimes couples just fulfill social, economic and psychological roles that don't need much intellectual/thinking types of communication or relating. There are, sadly, many couples that would find clear communications disturbing to their relationship. Some couples relate with some degree of defensive bobbing and weaving - to set little boundaries. And this is a really sizable portion of most populations.
-------------

The other point I'd make is that we respond to another person's real intelligence (as we perceive it) not to an IQ score, or to some theoretical but undeveloped potential. And, because that real intelligence is so far different and so much more crucial to our functioning and to our overall intellectual/emotional demeanor than anything we inherited, our attraction is NOT based upon genetic traits related to the brain. Cultural values, individual values and individual psychology have overwhelmed any biological genetic natural selection that might have related to IQ scores - totally.
--------------

p.s., I KNOW you oppose the concept of Innate Ideas and that you support the concept of tabula rasa... That's why I pointed out that Brad's position, where he treats IQ scores as equivalent of real intelligence, requires agreement with innate ideas and violates tablua rasa (no matter how many times he might disagree).

p.s.s, I liked the way to cut to core of Brad's drive for racial segregation of some sort (forced or other) - his fear is that races will mix. I doubt that is his concern is totally about intelligence (which he gets wrong), but more about a feeling of superiority driven by focusing on supposed inferiority [my guess] otherwise, why is he getting into talking about hair color, eye color, etc.? He didn't use the "mud people" language of our homegrown, redneck racists, but this is getting pretty close: "I value the preservation of the Swedish blonde phenotype and the Japanese oriental phenotype purely as a matter of esthetics. I wouldn't want to see Sweden and Japan mixed so thoroughly that you couldn't tell them apart anymore..."
(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 5/22, 1:52pm)

Post 124

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 2:00pm

Trun wrote in post 111: "The point is, we shouldn't be surprised or morally outraged that in professions requiring high-level mental functioning, blacks will be relatively scarce absent Affirmative Action interventions. Denial of racial differences in distributions of cognitive capacity will tend to foster surprise, moral outrage, and demands for Affirmative Action in response to what is natural and entirely predictable."

That's very convoluted reasoning.

Only people who go around counting the percentage of people doing this or that by skin color are going to be opposing or promoting hiring based upon skin color.

Note that the racists of the right (Nazi's, KKK members, some rednecks, etc.) are upset if too many blacks are here or there. And, in a similar fashion, the racists of the left (many liberals, race agitation professionals, some of the angry blacks, and the progressives) are upset if not enough blacks are here or there.

Those of us who judge individuals, not races, and by their character and on merit, not skin color, are focusing on the proper context and will never find ourselves all filled with rage, subject to surprise, or moral outrage and make demands for the government to do something about things we know are irrelevant.

Post 125

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 4:17pm

Ed,

I've concluded that the purpose of your commentary here isn't to help us draw a reasonable inference to the best explanation for the consistency and persistency of racial IQ variances based on evolutionary theory and empirical observations. All the evidence shows that while the IQ gaps narrow when raising up people from extremely impoverished environments to better ones, the gaps remain in all environments. Malnourished Asians not only outperform malnourished Africans, but also middle class Africans and Africans adopted into middle class white families.

Winick et al. [160] studied 141 Korean children malnourished-in-infancy and then adopted as infants by American families. They found that by 10 years of age the children exceeded the national average in IQ and achievement scores: A severely-malnourished group obtained a mean IQ of 102; a moderately-nourished group obtained a mean IQ of 106; and an adequately-nourished group obtained a mean IQ of 112.

We know that genetic differences among races have some part in explaining why they perform differently on IQ tests. The question is what is the best estimate of the heritabile component of the gaps? Exactly 0% for all race gaps everywhere is not a serious answer scientifically, but is rather evidence of one closing oneself off from evidence and being driven entirely by ideological pre-conceptions. (See The Race Debate They DON'T Want to Have.)

You've refused to state whether innate equality is your actual position. You offer only ad hoc snipes, not actual, germane arguments for a coherent theory that seeks to explain the totality of the evidence.

In argumentation, an ad hoc argument is one that is hastily constructed to support or explain something without any underlying sense or logical framework. Because of this haste and lack of a consistent frame-work, the explanation is likely to contradict existing thought or other arguments. Usually it happens if someone is put on the spot to explain something - they can either deal with it in a consistent manner (meaning that their arguments are consistent for all eventualities so far), change their consistent beliefs to match, or produce an ad hoc explanation off-the-cuff to dismiss it.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ad_hoc

You've offered no hint of any evidence of how levels of harmful chemicals vary in aggregate among races. Or how these chemical variations, if they do exist, give blacks advantages in athleticism and disadvantages in IQ relative to whites and orientals. You thus have not an argument but a red herring. There is no useful purpose in responding to non-arguments with arguments. You can, have, and will make a litany of non-arguments. The fact that I choose not to waste my time on them anymore doesn't make me intellectually dishonest.

The following is excerpted from Robert J. Sternberg's Handbook of Human Intelligence:

Post 126

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 6:48pm

William,

I'm disappointed in your defensive/accusatory response to my stated personal esthetic preferences and your lack of response to my questions about whether you have a fixed neutral attitude toward any and all extents of racial changes in societies.

I could ask you about your views on films, fashion, or rates of alcoholism, and I suspect that to some extent you wouldn't be neutral. Even though people are free individually to produce nihilistic movies, wear trashy clothes, and get drunk, I don't refrain from judging those manifestations of people's choices in relation to my values. Pointing out that high rates of alcoholism have negative social consequences across the board and stating a preference for lower rates of alcoholism doesn't make me a prohibitionist or a collectivist.

Tabooizing an esthetic preference for Nordic (or Oriental or Nubian) facial features by calling it "racist" (by whatever definition you may hold) isn't an argument for why people shouldn't have any such preferences. What types of people one finds attractive sexually and otherwise is largely innate. If you walk the shopping districts in Tokyo (as I have), you will find an abundance of European faces on ads on storefronts selling clothes, purses, jewelry, etc. and a complete absence of African faces. It's neither morally commendable nor condemnable for Japanese to have this esthetic preference per se, but it is commendable that they are unashamed to express it. It would be in violation of one's rational self-interest and therefore immoral to deny or suppress one's actual esthetic values in deference to a "thou shalt not" equalitarian ideology imposed externally.

(Edited by Brad Trun on 5/22, 6:51pm)

(Edited by Brad Trun on 5/22, 8:12pm)

Post 127

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 9:20pm

Brad,

All the evidence shows that while the IQ gaps narrow when raising up people from extremely impoverished environments to better ones, the gaps remain in all environments. Malnourished Asians not only outperform malnourished Africans, but also middle class Africans and Africans adopted into middle class white families.

All the evidence? That's not true. Forget getting adopted for a minute, you can't even get siblings (genetically-related, non-adopted kids) to correspond well to one another:

One of the most important findings that has emerged from human behavioral genetics involves the environment rather than heredity, providing the best available evidence for the importance of environmental influences on personality, psychopathology, and cognition. The research also converges on the remarkable conclusion that these environmental influences make two children in the same family as different from one another as are pairs of children selected randomly from the population.

--Why are children in the same family so different from one another?

Now, if even genetically-close siblings don't correspond well to one another (any better than children selected randomly from the population), then what can adoption studies ever tell you? What inference can you rationally draw? What generalization can you logically make?

We know that genetic differences among races have some part in explaining why they perform differently on IQ tests. The question is what is the best estimate of the heritabile component of the gaps? Exactly 0% for all race gaps everywhere is not a serious answer scientifically, but is rather evidence of one closing oneself off from evidence and being driven entirely by ideological pre-conceptions.

As I've repeated before, I'm not a 0%-er'. I'm not part of the 0% crowd. I've made that clear before in this thread. You should move toward accepting that.

You've refused to state whether innate equality is your actual position.

See above.

You've offered no hint of any evidence of how levels of harmful chemicals vary in aggregate among races. Or how these chemical variations, if they do exist, give blacks advantages in athleticism and disadvantages in IQ relative to whites and orientals.

Well, here's a hint, then ...

Lead
99% of the kids with blood lead levels over 20 mcg/dL are in developing countries **-- and it's a truism that most developing countries are populated by folks who do not happen to have blue eyes and blonde hair. Now let me ask you this: What % of the studies that you have cited have utilized data from developing countries -- only to extrapolate their "racial" findings back to the developed countries? That's dumb. You can't take data from such lead-laden countries, conclude that lower IQ scores there are "heritable", and then extrapolate findings back to, say, the USA.
**A Strategy for Comparing the Contributions of Environmental Chemicals and Other Risk Factors to Neurodevelopment of Children

Ed

p.s., Also, maternal education affects the IQ of offspring, and a case can be made that collectivist social engineers -- many of whom are racists -- hamper or mitigate education in women who are so-called racial minorities. Think of an African-American woman who is told that if she gets pregnant, then she can just drop out of school and go on welfare. Larry Elder made a case that that is a disproportionately familiar theme to African-American women in the US. If, because of the racism of collectivists, money gets thrown at some group of people, then you get a self-fulfilling prophecy -- where your initial racial bias creates and concentrates uneducated mothers into a discriminated group (thereby lowering the IQ of their offspring).

Post 128

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 10:33pm

Ed,

Previously you had resisted the idea that any hereditary component to the racial IQ gaps exists and quoted Thomas Sowell to that effect.

What we have learned from adoption studies is that that the IQs of adopted children more closely correlate with the IQs of their biological parents and siblings than with the IQs of their adoptive parents and their biological children. Cross-racial adoption studies in particular show that race is a better predictor of IQ than upbringing.

I focus mainly on U.S. racial gaps. The more similar the environment and culture that races share, the more precisely we can identify the extent to which inherited factors explain extant racial IQ gaps. But global data across a broad range of environments and cultures do tell us that there is a powerful constant in heritability. As it happens, India and China suffer from the worst air pollution in the world. Blue eyed, blonde haired Russians and Eastern Europeans suffer from some of the worst rates of fetal alcohol syndrome in the world.

Post 129

Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - 1:26am

Brad wrote,

William,

I'm disappointed in your defensive/accusatory response to my stated personal esthetic preferences and your lack of response to my questions about whether you have a fixed neutral attitude toward any and all extents of racial changes in societies.

You can have your esthetic preferences. I don't begrudge you that. But to argue that the rest of the world should conform to them by basing their romantic choices on those preferences is a bit presumptuous, don't you think? If you have a right to your esthetic preferences, don't others have a right to theirs? If another (white) man's esthetic preference runs to women of color, who are you to claim that your esthetic preference should trump his -- that he shouldn't marry a darker skinned woman, because esthetically you would prefer that he didn't?

I could ask you about your views on films, fashion, or rates of alcoholism, and I suspect that to some extent you wouldn't be neutral. Even though people are free individually to produce nihilistic movies, wear trashy clothes, and get drunk, I don't refrain from judging those manifestations of people's choices in relation to my values. Pointing out that high rates of alcoholism have negative social consequences across the board and stating a preference for lower rates of alcoholism doesn't make me a prohibitionist or a collectivist.

To begin with, I'm not saying that you would legally prohibit interracial marriage; you're certainly not collectivist in that sense of the term. Where I viewed you as a collectivist is in your blanket denunciation of interracial marriage irrespective of the individuals involved. I understood you to say that no white person should marry a black person, regardless of who the white or black person is. That's collectivist -- that's racist.

When I asked, "Who appointed you dictator of other people's romantic choices?" I meant it in the sense of proscribing interracial choices based simply on your esthetic preference. Is it your view that people shouldn't choose to marry someone of another race, even if they'd be happier doing so? How is that in their rational self-interest? I would certainly say that, other things being equal, people would do better to marry someone more or less at their intellectual level (regardless of race), because I think they'd be happier in such a relationship, but I would never base my standard of romantic choice on race itself.

Tabooizing an esthetic preference for Nordic (or Oriental or Nubian) facial features by calling it "racist" (by whatever definition you may hold) isn't an argument for why people shouldn't have any such preferences.

But that's not the point I was making. I wasn't saying that a preference for a particular racial appearance is racist. I was saying that prescribing other peoples romantic choices strictly on the basis of race is racist.

What types of people one finds attractive sexually and otherwise is largely innate.

I don't think that's true, if only based on personal experience, because my preference has changed over the years. I think that sexual preference has a lot to do with one's social context and upbringing, but that's a matter better addressed by the science of psychology.

If you walk the shopping districts in Tokyo (as I have), you will find an abundance of European faces on ads on storefronts selling clothes, purses, jewelry, etc. and a complete absence of African faces. It's neither morally commendable nor condemnable for Japanese to have this esthetic preference per se, but it is commendable that they are unashamed to express it.

Why would you think they'd be ashamed to express it? In any case, it's hard to know the reason for the presence of European faces and the absence of African faces on Japanese ads. It may have more to do with economics than esthetics. Perhaps it's less costly to use European models, since I would have expected the ads to feature Japanese models, who resemble the customers the ads are appealing to.

It would be in violation of one's rational self-interest and therefore immoral to deny or suppress one's actual esthetic values in deference to a "thou shalt not" equalitarian ideology imposed externally.

I am not suggesting that you deny or suppress your esthetic values. My point is that others shouldn't deny or suppress their esthetic values in deference to yours. For it is also a violation of one's rational self-interest and therefore immoral to deny or suppress one's desire to marry a person of another race in deference to a "thou shalt not" racist ideology.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 5/23, 7:56am)

Post 130

Saturday, May 26, 2012 - 3:24pm

I believe Ayn Rand's predominant ancestry was Ashkenazi. Steven Pinker offers some interesting thoughts on the high IQs of Ashkenazi Jews and also assesses some of the core claims of egalitarian deconstructionists starting @17:20:

http://youtu.be/60PUShAOF3M

Post 131

Saturday, May 26, 2012 - 3:54pm

Brad,

I don't know of a nice way to say this, so I am just going to say it. I believe that you are not what it is that can be referred to as a "Laisser Faire" individualist (e.g., an Objectivist), but instead, that you are a progressive social engineer (a champion of pragmatism, scientism, and statism). You seem to want to interfere with social or racial mixing. But check out this quote from a now-prominent American Jew (Jonah Golberg):

The minimum wage was defended by progressive economists with explicitly Social Darwinist language. The fear was that since black and, especially, Chinese laborers needed so much less to get by, the unfittest might survive at the expense of the fittest (i.e., Whites). Or, as Ross put it, "The Coolie cannot outdo the American, but he can underlive him." (11) Raising the minimum wage to a white man's worth would help lock out the unfit and, hopefully, cause them to die out of destitution. "No consistent eugenist [sic] can be a 'Laisser Faire'[sic] individualist," wrote the hugely influential British socialist Sidney Webb, "unless he throws up the game in despair. He must interfere, interfere, interfere!" (12)

--The Tyranny of Cliche`s: How liberals cheat in the war of ideas, p 106

What is your position on minimum wage law, Brad?

Ed

Post 132

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 8:28pm

Two relevant quotes:

Mingroni (2007) proposed that heterosis or hybrid vigor may be the principal driver of the Flynn effect--the tendency for IQ scores to increase at a rate of approximately 3 points per decade. This model was presented as a resolution to the IQ paradox--the observation that IQ scores have been increasing despite their high adult heritability--on the basis that substantial changes in IQ can only be accounted for by changes in underlying genetic factors.

--Heterosis doesn't cause the Flynn effect: a critical examination of Mingroni (2007).

Recap:
IQ scores increase by about 3 points each decade, which introduces the IQ paradox: only environmental factors, not genetic factors (i.e., not heritability) could explain such a high rate of change in IQ scores.

(b) Almost no genetic polymorphisms have been discovered that are consistently associated with variation in IQ in the normal range. (c) Much has been learned about the biological underpinnings of intelligence. (d) "Crystallized" and "fluid" IQ are quite different aspects of intelligence at both the behavioral and biological levels. (e) The importance of the environment for IQ is established by the 12-point to 18-point increase in IQ when children are adopted from working-class to middle-class homes. (f) Even when improvements in IQ produced by the most effective early childhood interventions fail to persist, there can be very marked effects on academic achievement and life outcomes. (g) In most developed countries studied, gains on IQ tests have continued, and they are beginning in the developing world. (h) Sex differences in aspects of intelligence are due partly to identifiable biological factors and partly to socialization factors. (i) The IQ gap between Blacks and Whites has been reduced by 0.33 SD in recent years.

--Intelligence: new findings and theoretical developments.

Recap:
(b) There isn't good positive evidence (e.g., genetic alterations that correlate with IQ scores) of a genetic component to the standard normal variation in IQ. Instead of having positive evidence, an association is simply inferred from twins studies interpreted in the context of popular assumptions.

(e) Poor kids score 12-18 points higher (which is already 20-30% of the total, 60-point, standard normal variation in IQ) when just a single environmental factor changes: i.e., when they get adopted into higher socioeconomic-class families.

(i) The IQ gap between Blacks and Whites has been reduced by 0.33 SD in recent years.

Ed

Post 133

Saturday, June 2, 2012 - 12:39am

Obamney
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OElNJhlcWhk

Not a dime's worth of difference between the Republican and Democrat candidates as far as restoring freedom or ameliorating the United States' major long-term demographic and economic declines are concerned.

(No, I don't support minimum wage laws.)

Post 134

Saturday, June 2, 2012 - 11:57pm

Trun's racism is kinda obvious. No one even has to look hard:

...United States' major long-term demographic... declines...

Translation: United States' major long-term decline is too many people with colored skin.

Post 135

Sunday, June 3, 2012 - 12:51am

You see, the problem for Brad is how one prevents what he views as "the long term demographic decline" which he sees as equivalent to a decline in average intelligence. He seems to think that preventing inter-racial marriage is the way to do it. But you can also have a marriage between two people of the same race with different levels of intelligence, and if he is correct, then that could also result in less intelligent offspring than if the more intelligent partner married someone of equal intelligence.

He'd have to set up an intelligence test for each couple, regardless of race, to determine if they're qualified to get married. Any difference in intelligence would disqualify them.

Seriously, Brad? Seriously?

Post 136

Sunday, June 3, 2012 - 1:34am

You are so correct, Bill. UNLESS, it turned out that IQ wasn't intelligence, and/or that race turned out not to correlate with intelligence, AND he decided that didn't matter... because he believed were OTHER reasons why races shouldn't mix.

Oh, wait, he already said something about aesthetics, didn't he?

So the great protector standing guard against some terrible American decline is really just not wanting us to have so many people with dark skin color.

Post 137

Sunday, June 3, 2012 - 1:49am

Flynn has begrudgingly admitted that dysgenic mating patterns among blacks cause an innate loss of one-third or more of an IQ point per generation within the black population (Egalitarian Fairy Tales Destroyed, Part 2: http://libertarianrealist.blogspot.com/2012/05/egalitarian-fairy-tales-destroyed.html). This is the "Flynn effect" that is metaphysical and socially intractable.

Pointing out genetic declines in IQ within races would make Flynn a "racist" according to Steve, even though Flynn is a perpetual optimist about IQ gaps narrowing. Anyone who points out racial realities besides those that are superficial can be branded a racist. But the realities described won't go away.

Seriously, William, you aren't even taking this issue seriously anymore. I never advocated marriage restrictions based on IQ tests. Your ideology inhibits you from making rational value judgments, even esthetic ones, about people or their behaviors (you refused twice to answer my question). So you assign an authoritarian position to me to convert the discussion into a political one for which your ideology has a ready-made response.

The reality is that two blacks with IQs of 100 are likely to produce children with IQs closer to the black mean of 85, because people pass on random variations of their genotype. It's regression toward the mean. Whites with IQs of 100 are likely to produce children with IQs close to 100 (on average). Most of the children of whites with IQs of 135 will not attain IQs of 135, though they will have better odds than if their parents had below-average IQs.

Post 138

Sunday, June 3, 2012 - 9:22am

The reality is that two blacks with IQs of 100 are likely to produce children with IQs closer to the black mean of 85, because people pass on random variations of their genotype. It's regression toward the mean. Whites with IQs of 100 are likely to produce children with IQs close to 100 (on average).

No, the reality is that black children adopted into higher socioeconomic families -- families either black or white -- have IQs close to 100 (on average). This is because of ...

... the 12-point to 18-point increase in IQ when children are adopted from working-class to middle-class homes.

--[ref: see 2nd hyperlink in post 132]

If IQs jump 15-points (on average) when kids are adopted into richer families, and if there just so happens to be a 15-point "racial" spread in IQ that needed to be explained in the first place, then how do go about estimating the relative proportion of causation (of IQ below 100) to race vs. the relative proportion of causation to socioeconomic status? How do integrate that with your theory? Lemme' guess. You don't. You don't integrate all of the facts.

Ed

Post 139

Sunday, June 3, 2012 - 1:50pm