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In a new paper at the (conveniently open) journal The Winnower (h/t @whyvert), building on his earlier work, geneticist Davide Piffer has tried to calculate the genotypic IQs of various world populations, and how they compare to measured phenotypic IQ:
Piffer, David – Estimating the genotypic intelligence of populations and assessing the impact of socioeconomic factors and migrations.
Here is the abstract:
Factor analysis of allele frequencies was used to identify signals of polygenic selection on human intelligence. Four SNPs which reached genome-wide significance in previous meta-analyses were used. Allele frequencies for 26 population were obtained from 1000 Genomes. The resulting factor scores were highly correlated to average national IQ (r=0.92). A regression of IQs on genetic factor scores of developed countries was used to estimate the predicted genotypic IQs of developing countries. The residuals (difference between predicted and actual scores) were negatively correlated to per capita GDP and Human Development Index, implying that countries with low socioeconomic conditions have not yet reached their full intellectual potential.
As far I can see, the methodology is sound (perhaps apart from a few quibbles over phenotypic IQ sources). But this is exceedingly minor, and doesn’t really change anything in a material way. So I will focus here mostly on the real world impacts these findings would imply.
As one might expect, there is a gap – usually a very significant one – between calculated genotypic and measured phenotypic IQ in developing countries. This is only logical, since developing countries frequently suffer from a variety of maladies, such as malnutrition and parasitic disease load, that are almost entirely absent in the First World. These maladies have a negative impact on IQ. (To a very large extent this also explains the Flynn Effect of secular rises in IQ in the developed world. Effectively, developing nations may be considered as living in the the First World’s past).
Not good for IQ.
Below is a table showing measured IQ in developed countries and predicted IQ from the paper.
| IQ developed countries | Predicted (G.wich) IQ | |
| Vietnam | 105.9 | |
| HanChineseBejing | 105 | 104.3 |
| HanChineseSouth | 105 | 103.6 |
| Japanese | 105 | 103 |
| Chinese Dai | 102.7 | |
| British | 100 | 100 |
| UtahWhites | 99 | 99.3 |
| Finns | 101 | 99 |
| Spanish | 97 | 98.1 |
| TuscanItaly | 99 | 97.9 |
| Gujarati Ind. Tx | 97.1 | |
| Mexican LA | 95.1 | |
| Indian Telegu UK | 95 | |
| Punjabi Pakistan | 94.9 | |
| Puerto Rican | 93.5 | |
| Colombian | 92.5 | |
| Bengali Banglade | 91.4 | |
| Peruvian | 91 | |
| SriLankanUK | 88.7 | |
| US Blacks | 85 | 84 |
| Mende Sierra Leo | 83.7 | |
| Afr.Car.Barbados | 83.6 | |
| Esan Nigeria | 82.1 | |
| Gambian | 82.1 | |
| Yoruba | 82 | |
| Luhya Kenya | 81.4 |
And here is another table, displaying, for peoples in developing nations, predicted IQ (relative to the standard “Greenwich mean” of 100 for the UK); 100 in the UK); the difference between the predicted and the measured IQ; and GDP per capita in purchasing power terms. They are arranged in order of the size of the phenotypic/genotypic difference.
| Predicted (G.wich) IQ | “Pseudoresiduals” (Predicted minus measured IQ) | GDP per capita PPP (2010-2013) | HDI (2012) | |
| Gambian | 82.1 | 20.1 | 1613 | 0.438 |
| Mende Sierra Leo | 83.7 | 19.7 | 1432 | 0.368 |
| Esan Nigeria | 82.1 | 11.1 | 5303 | 0.5 |
| Yoruba | 82 | 11 | 5303 | 0.5 |
| Punjabi Pakistan | 94.9 | 10.9 | 4353 | 0.535 |
| Bengali Banglade | 91.4 | 10.4 | 2679 | 0.554 |
| Puerto Rican | 93.5 | 10 | 34183 | |
| SriLankanUK | 88.7 | 9.7 | 0.745 | |
| Colombian | 92.5 | 9 | 11540 | 0.708 |
| Luhya Kenya | 81.4 | 7.4 | 2626 | 0.531 |
| Mexican LA | 95.1 | 7.1 | 15813 | 0.755 |
| Vietnam | 105.9 | 6.5 | 4851 | 0.635 |
| Peruvian | 91 | 6 | 10756 | 0.734 |
| Afr.Car.Barbados | 83.6 | 0.6 | 15324 | |
| HanChineseBejing | 104.3 | -0.7 | 10485 | 0.715 |
| HanChineseSouth | 103.6 | -1.4 | 10485 | 0.715 |
| Gujarati Ind. Tx | 97.1 | |||
| Indian Telegu UK | 95 |
Some observations we can consequently make:
Africa: The biggest gaps are all in West Africa. Not only is the region grindingly poor, but it also has perhaps the world’s most acute parasitic disease load, thanks to the hot, humid equatorial climate and low-lying, swampy geography (which the region’s disorganized and resource-pool governments are unable to mitigate) . The gap is lower in Kenya, which as a hilly country can be expected to have a lower parasitic disease load, and non-existent amongst Afro-Caribbean Barbadians, who live in a relatively prosperous country (likely in large part thanks to its “smart fraction”) with one of the most salubrious climates on the planet. On average, it appears that their phenotypic IQ is ~high 60s and their genotypic IQ is ~low 80s. US Black IQ is given as 85, but bear in mind that they have 20% admixture with Caucasoids. (Though on the other hand, US Blacks do slightly better according to PISA, at ~88. If this figure is substituted for in the calculations, then the genotypic estimate for Africans would also rise, though not by very much). Either way, there is thus very substantial room for improvement, but even were that to happen, the overall outlook for self-sustained African convergence to developed world living standards would remain grim.
Latin America: Has a phenotypic IQ of ~mid 80s and genotypic IQ of ~low 90s. As expected, the gap is smaller than in Africa or India (Latin American countries are after all far more socially developed than in West Africa or India, albeit one should should treat straight GDP per capita figures with caution due to the massive levels of inequality). In the developed US, it is basically non-existent, what with Latinos scoring ~low 90s in the PISA tests. The big gap seen in Puerto Rico is intriguing, considering that its close economic ties with the US has allowed it to have a very high GDP per capita relative to its IQ, so lack of money can’t be a limiting factor. But in general, Latin America is already pretty much “where it should be” in terms of prosperity as implied by its level of human capital.
South Asia: Has a phenotypic IQ of ~low 80s and genotypic IQ of ~low to mid 90s. The gap is much bigger than for Latin America, – indeed, comparable to West Africa’s – which is perhaps explainable by dint of India’s greater parasitic disease load, high rates of malnutrition (which is perhaps even higher than in Sub-Saharan Africa), and, in the case of the Punjabis and Bengalis, a strong tradition of FBD marriage, which has very strong negative effects on IQ [AK edit: See also Razib’s comment]. But on the whole, this is positive news. Countries with an average IQ of ~95 include Romania, Greece, Turkey, and Israel (!). If the South Asian continent could successfully resolve its malnutrition, parasitic disease load, and inbreeding issues – admittedly, no small challenge – then it could well expect to eventually rise close to southern European living standards.
Vietnam: Phenotypic IQ of 99, versus a genotypic IQ of 106. Certainly a major surprise, considering it is even higher than China. The gap is substantial, but smaller than in India or Africa. This is not surprising, since although Vietnam has the GDP per capita (PPP) of India, it is led by conscientious Communists and is much better off in terms of social development and nutrition (e.g. meat consumption per person is equivalent to that of neighboring, much richer countries). This makes its excellent performance in PISA 2012, which I wrote about in my introductory post on this site, much easier to explain. Consequently, it would also be a strike against Ron Unz’s theory of the East Asian Exception (i.e. that East Asian IQs are very resilient to negative socio-economic and environmental factors). There would still be a substantial gap between Vietnamese genotypic and phenotypic IQ; it’s just that the former are so phenomenally high that the latter can’t help but be very high as well, since Vietnam is at least in terms of social provision no longer a truly Third World country.
China: No gap. Phenotypic IQ (~105) actually higher than genotypic (~104), which is very unusual for a developing country. Here, however, I must stress two things. First of all, with a GDP per capita (PPP) of $12,000, China has already substantially passed the point at which wealth or the absence of it is a significant limiting factor to realizing genotypic IQ potential. Consult this post where I go into this in greater detail in my debate with Ron Unz. Second, I believe that 105 is, at least today, a substantial overstatement of Chinese IQ. My own estimate based on declassified PISA data is 102.5. So that’s already a gap, even if a very small one. But note also that Asian-Americans scored ~107 in PISA 2009, and Asian-Americans in the US include relatively lower IQ Thais, Filipinos, etc. If we set that as the genotypic IQ of the Han people, then there is still very substantial room for further improvement (with the consequence that the Flynn Effect really does apply very much to East Asians too).
Regardless, short of them embarking on some new Maoist adventure, or getting flooded off the world map by runaway global warming, or getting nuked, or some other similarly apocalyptic scenario, China’s and Vietnam’s convergence to at least Japan’s level is all but certain in the long run.
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nice to have you on board!
minor quibble:
Punjabis and Bengalis,
the 30% of ethnic punjabis are sikh and hindu. they do not practice cousin marriage, though pakistani punjabis, like most ethnic groups in pakistan, do practice it a lot. though caste endogamy probably simulates some of the inbreeding effects of cousin marriage even among hindus and sikhs. second, cousin marriage does not occur much among the 40% of bengalis who are hindu. among the muslim bengalis cousin marriage exists, but at a much lower frequency from what i have seen in the literature than in pakistan.
also, i wouldn’t make much out of these 4 SNPs. very small effect.
minor quibble:
Punjabis and Bengalis,
the 30% of ethnic punjabis are sikh and hindu. they do not practice cousin marriage, though pakistani punjabis, like most ethnic groups in pakistan, do practice it a lot. though caste endogamy probably simulates some of the inbreeding effects of cousin marriage even among hindus and sikhs. second, cousin marriage does not occur much among the 40% of bengalis who are hindu. among the muslim bengalis cousin marriage exists, but at a much lower frequency from what i have seen in the literature than in pakistan.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @vijay
Thanks!
I must inevitably bow down before your expertise in genetics, but could you please explain why, for my and other readers’ benefit? This, at least:
… sounds to me, as a non-specialist, like a pretty solid argument.
… sounds to me, as a non-specialist, like a pretty solid argument.
if you draw 4 random SNPs out of the population they’re highly likely not to reflect population relationships from genome-wide data. there’s a lot of random noise in there. my intuition for the grain of human genetic relationships here is if you are selecting randomly you’d need on the order of 100 markers. highly ancestrally informative markers (so pre-screened to reflect relationships you know ahead of time) need around 10 to be very good on an individual basis.
I am not happy when people misunderstand my work. Putting out something new can result in misrepresentations and this really upsets me. People should think more before coming to rash judgments. I am not gonna discuss this further here, as I know that endless forum threads and rude comments can only damage a people's health.
Anyway, whether you trust my arguments or not, I am coming up with another paper with even more solid evidence. Keep connected..I'll update via Twitter.
if you draw 4 random SNPs out of the population they're highly likely not to reflect population relationships from genome-wide data. there's a lot of random noise in there. my intuition for the grain of human genetic relationships here is if you are selecting randomly you'd need on the order of 100 markers. highly ancestrally informative markers (so pre-screened to reflect relationships you know ahead of time) need around 10 to be very good on an individual basis.Replies: @Davide
These are not ancestry informative markers. The factor extracted from these 4 SNPs does NOT represent human migrations. It likely represents selection on intelligence. Cavalli-Sforza used PCA on a few markers to identify migrations, but he didn’t care whether the alleles all loaded in the same direction on the component or whether they were correlated to a phenotype. The good thing about these results is that all 4 alleles have high positive loadings on the factor and the factor is highly correlated to population IQ, even after accounting for migration. This rules out migration and random drift. This is an entirely new methodology and people are not familiar with it, hence it’s normal to misunderstand it. I never claimed that these 4 SNPs reflect population relationships. Actually, this is what they are NOT supposed to do!! If you read my paper carefully, you will see that in the discussion I compared the genetic distances obtained from ancestry informative markers or other genome-wide data (reflecting migrations) to the distances obtained using the 4 SNPs, and they do not match very well.
I am not happy when people misunderstand my work. Putting out something new can result in misrepresentations and this really upsets me. People should think more before coming to rash judgments. I am not gonna discuss this further here, as I know that endless forum threads and rude comments can only damage a people’s health.
Anyway, whether you trust my arguments or not, I am coming up with another paper with even more solid evidence. Keep connected..I’ll update via Twitter.
the Flynn Effect really does apply very much to East Asians too
I have looked at this issue and have found the data to be frustrating. Richard Lynn seems to have done the most work to publish research on it, and his conclusion appears to be that Asia, Taiwan, in particular, have weak Flynn Effects. The Japanese improvement happened mostly in the years following WWII, and South Korea’s improvement slowed, as well. However, I analyzed SAT and ACT data. Keep in mind that the editors for the journal Intelligence insist in their studies that the SAT and the ACT are IQ tests. Asian improvements on both of these tests are huge and show little evidence of slowing. Furthermore, foreign student SAT score improvements closely match the larger Asian group. Most foreign SAT students are Asian, which makes me think that the score improvements truly are common to both Asian Americans and overseas Asians. There have been claims without much evidence that third-generation Asian Americans perform poorly on tests and in educational accomplishment. One blogger has written about skepticism of Asian scores based on cheating scandals, but I think that would require a massive racialist conspiracy that affects all Asians for both the SAT and the ACT. So how shall we reconcile the data? Should we trust small-sample IQ studies more than tens of millions taking these tests? I read a number of studies claiming that the Flynn Effect had stopped in Western countries prior to that meta-analysis that reached the opposite conclusion. Should we question the relationship between the SAT and IQ? We still don’t know the g-loading of the SAT. I would take issue with certain aspects of those studies, particularly the “conversion formulae.”
Scholastic assessment or g? The relationship between the scholastic assessment test and general cognitive ability.
Validation of the Frey and Detterman (2004) IQ prediction equations using the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales.
@Cpluskx,
That would be very likely.
Are people from the Pacific Islands such as Fiji , Tonga, New Zealand, Phillipine, Indonesia "Asian Americans? How about Malays, the Viets, the Laosians...?
Are Indians "Asian Americans"? Are Pakistanis "Asian Americans"?
Surely the ethnic Saudis , Syrians and Lebanese should be "Asian Americans"?Replies: @nooffensebut
Nice to see some attention to Piffer’s studies outside OpenPsych and Twitter.
Regarding IQ and SAT, there are at least two studies.
Frey, M. C., & Detterman, D. K. (2004). Scholastic assessment or g? The relationship between the scholastic assessment test and general cognitive ability. Psychological science, 15(6), 373-378.
Beaujean, A. A., Firmin, M. W., Knoop, A. J., Michonski, J. D., Berry, T. P., & Lowrie, R. E. (2006). Validation of the Frey and Detterman (2004) IQ prediction equations using the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales. Personality and individual differences, 41(2), 353-357.
Corrected correlations of about .583 to .857.
Bridgeman, B. (2005). Unbelievable results when predicting IQ from SAT scores. Psychological Science, 16(9), 745-6.
Frey, M.C., & Detterman. (2005). Regression basics. Psychological Science, 16(9). 747.
Also, note the erratum for Frey & Detterman, 2004.
The basic claim that a correlation between IQ and SAT is fine, but the correlation is far from perfect, and Frey & Detterman don't want people "focusing" on their equations. I graphed racial averages based on those equations over time, since equation 1 is supposed to apply to scores before the 1996 re-centering. The graph shows that the equations poorly correspond with each other, as described by Bridgeman. Equation 2 is based on a small number of high-scoring students, so Frey & Detterman don't stand by its usefulness at lower ranges, yet Beaujean et al favored it over equation 1 while wanting to substitute the math variable with the verbal variable. Equation 2 only gives a verbal coefficient of 0.003. So, I don't know how well the SAT relates to the Flynn Effect, if doesn't even fit well with the average range with its best equation, and its only corroborating study wants to radically change that equation.
Turkey was almost fully iodine deficient until 1998 (salt iodization became mandatory) I wonder if incoming iodine sufficient generations will have higher iq’s than 95.
Relationship of SNPs and pale skin will be very different between East Asian and Europeans due to different alleles producing light skin.
If mental ability with similar alleles difference, then you should treat this paper with caution.
If the intelligence correlated SNPs are found in all human populations then their frequency can be used as indicators of selection pressure, right? This doesn’t negate the genetic architecture for intelligence in different populations being due, in part, to alleles unique to those populations.
Davide wrote:I wish Davide would stick around to clear up misunderstandings, at least until the comments do start to degenerate into rudeness (which I hope they never do). Surely, discussing your work with people who are interested in it and appreciate it can only be good for your health.Replies: @AG
minor quibble:
Punjabis and Bengalis,
the 30% of ethnic punjabis are sikh and hindu. they do not practice cousin marriage, though pakistani punjabis, like most ethnic groups in pakistan, do practice it a lot. though caste endogamy probably simulates some of the inbreeding effects of cousin marriage even among hindus and sikhs. second, cousin marriage does not occur much among the 40% of bengalis who are hindu. among the muslim bengalis cousin marriage exists, but at a much lower frequency from what i have seen in the literature than in pakistan.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @vijay
However, his Punjabi sample is all Punjabi Pakistan, and hence if he says Punjabi Muslims (meaning Pakistanis), then his point is valid; your point is valid for both, Bengali Hindus and Muslims where the cousin marriage is small; for the Telugu speaking people, cousin marriage is much larger, lower than Punjabi Pakistanis but higher than Bengalis. All of this goes back to Razib’s point that India cannot be reduced to one paragraph; the variation within the country is very large.
Yeah, countries who have lower actual IQ than the genotype IQ Piffer calculates will tend to have lower GDP per capita / HDI than the ones that are “correctly” estimated (largely Europeans in whom the SNPs were ascertained).
Thus a negative correlation between GDP per capita / HDI and the size of residuals.
Doesn’t mean Vietnamese are secretly smarter than they look necessarily.
I have looked at this issue and have found the data to be frustrating. Richard Lynn seems to have done the most work to publish research on it, and his conclusion appears to be that Asia, Taiwan, in particular, have weak Flynn Effects. The Japanese improvement happened mostly in the years following WWII, and South Korea's improvement slowed, as well. However, I analyzed SAT and ACT data. Keep in mind that the editors for the journal Intelligence insist in their studies that the SAT and the ACT are IQ tests. Asian improvements on both of these tests are huge and show little evidence of slowing. Furthermore, foreign student SAT score improvements closely match the larger Asian group. Most foreign SAT students are Asian, which makes me think that the score improvements truly are common to both Asian Americans and overseas Asians. There have been claims without much evidence that third-generation Asian Americans perform poorly on tests and in educational accomplishment. One blogger has written about skepticism of Asian scores based on cheating scandals, but I think that would require a massive racialist conspiracy that affects all Asians for both the SAT and the ACT. So how shall we reconcile the data? Should we trust small-sample IQ studies more than tens of millions taking these tests? I read a number of studies claiming that the Flynn Effect had stopped in Western countries prior to that meta-analysis that reached the opposite conclusion. Should we question the relationship between the SAT and IQ? We still don't know the g-loading of the SAT. I would take issue with certain aspects of those studies, particularly the "conversion formulae."Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @PandaAtWar
Here are links to the two papers Emil cites.
Scholastic assessment or g? The relationship between the scholastic assessment test and general cognitive ability.
Validation of the Frey and Detterman (2004) IQ prediction equations using the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales.
@Cpluskx,
That would be very likely.
I have looked at this issue and have found the data to be frustrating. Richard Lynn seems to have done the most work to publish research on it, and his conclusion appears to be that Asia, Taiwan, in particular, have weak Flynn Effects. The Japanese improvement happened mostly in the years following WWII, and South Korea's improvement slowed, as well. However, I analyzed SAT and ACT data. Keep in mind that the editors for the journal Intelligence insist in their studies that the SAT and the ACT are IQ tests. Asian improvements on both of these tests are huge and show little evidence of slowing. Furthermore, foreign student SAT score improvements closely match the larger Asian group. Most foreign SAT students are Asian, which makes me think that the score improvements truly are common to both Asian Americans and overseas Asians. There have been claims without much evidence that third-generation Asian Americans perform poorly on tests and in educational accomplishment. One blogger has written about skepticism of Asian scores based on cheating scandals, but I think that would require a massive racialist conspiracy that affects all Asians for both the SAT and the ACT. So how shall we reconcile the data? Should we trust small-sample IQ studies more than tens of millions taking these tests? I read a number of studies claiming that the Flynn Effect had stopped in Western countries prior to that meta-analysis that reached the opposite conclusion. Should we question the relationship between the SAT and IQ? We still don't know the g-loading of the SAT. I would take issue with certain aspects of those studies, particularly the "conversion formulae."Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @PandaAtWar
It would be nice if you could give a definition on who are included in these “Asian Americans”.
Are people from the Pacific Islands such as Fiji , Tonga, New Zealand, Phillipine, Indonesia “Asian Americans? How about Malays, the Viets, the Laosians…?
Are Indians “Asian Americans”? Are Pakistanis “Asian Americans”?
Surely the ethnic Saudis , Syrians and Lebanese should be “Asian Americans”?
SAT data includes an other category, and some students don't respond, but those groups are much smaller than the Asian group. Hispanics are considered a race, but not people from the Middle East/SW Asia/N Africa. ACT data now separates Asians from Pacific Islanders.
So Vietnam has genotypic IQ of 106, even higher than the Han Chinese.
Right… Is this Whyvert guy serious? Or has he been already long on some SE Asia Fund or sth? I´d triple-check the raw data if I were him.
Regarding IQ and SAT, there are at least two studies.
Frey, M. C., & Detterman, D. K. (2004). Scholastic assessment or g? The relationship between the scholastic assessment test and general cognitive ability. Psychological science, 15(6), 373-378.
Beaujean, A. A., Firmin, M. W., Knoop, A. J., Michonski, J. D., Berry, T. P., & Lowrie, R. E. (2006). Validation of the Frey and Detterman (2004) IQ prediction equations using the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales. Personality and individual differences, 41(2), 353-357.
Corrected correlations of about .583 to .857.Replies: @nooffensebut
Thanks for the Beaujean study. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen that. Here’s more:
Bridgeman, B. (2005). Unbelievable results when predicting IQ from SAT scores. Psychological Science, 16(9), 745-6.
Frey, M.C., & Detterman. (2005). Regression basics. Psychological Science, 16(9). 747.
Also, note the erratum for Frey & Detterman, 2004.
The basic claim that a correlation between IQ and SAT is fine, but the correlation is far from perfect, and Frey & Detterman don’t want people “focusing” on their equations. I graphed racial averages based on those equations over time, since equation 1 is supposed to apply to scores before the 1996 re-centering. The graph shows that the equations poorly correspond with each other, as described by Bridgeman. Equation 2 is based on a small number of high-scoring students, so Frey & Detterman don’t stand by its usefulness at lower ranges, yet Beaujean et al favored it over equation 1 while wanting to substitute the math variable with the verbal variable. Equation 2 only gives a verbal coefficient of 0.003. So, I don’t know how well the SAT relates to the Flynn Effect, if doesn’t even fit well with the average range with its best equation, and its only corroborating study wants to radically change that equation.
“It would be nice if you could give a definition on who are included in these “Asian Americans”.
Are people from the Pacific Islands such as Fiji , Tonga, New Zealand, Phillipine, Indonesia “Asian Americans? How about Malays, the Viets, the Laosians…?
Are Indians “Asian Americans”? Are Pakistanis “Asian Americans”?
Surely the ethnic Saudis , Syrians and Lebanese should be “Asian Americans”?”
Russell Crowe is from New Zealand. Is he Asian ?
Are people from the Pacific Islands such as Fiji , Tonga, New Zealand, Phillipine, Indonesia "Asian Americans? How about Malays, the Viets, the Laosians...?
Are Indians "Asian Americans"? Are Pakistanis "Asian Americans"?
Surely the ethnic Saudis , Syrians and Lebanese should be "Asian Americans"?Replies: @nooffensebut
I assume most data on Asian race comes from self-identification without more detailed ethnic choices. Generational differences in Asian SAT scores come from apparently small samples in TIMSS. NLSAH shows this for GPA.
SAT data includes an other category, and some students don’t respond, but those groups are much smaller than the Asian group. Hispanics are considered a race, but not people from the Middle East/SW Asia/N Africa. ACT data now separates Asians from Pacific Islanders.
If mental ability with similar alleles difference, then you should treat this paper with caution.Replies: @Harold
I am by no means an expert so maybe someone more knowledgeable can comment but…
If the intelligence correlated SNPs are found in all human populations then their frequency can be used as indicators of selection pressure, right? This doesn’t negate the genetic architecture for intelligence in different populations being due, in part, to alleles unique to those populations.
Davide wrote:
I wish Davide would stick around to clear up misunderstandings, at least until the comments do start to degenerate into rudeness (which I hope they never do). Surely, discussing your work with people who are interested in it and appreciate it can only be good for your health.
As JayMan pointed out, the predicted and actual IQ gap might be enviromental but also might be indication of flaw of the model itself. We do not know yet.
This model (or study) try to expain genetic information regarding IQ in general. But the very fact of intelligent profile difference regarding visual and verbal ability among different populations is clue about genetic architecture difference of intelligence. Thus this model is obviously far from perfection. But this is very good first step.
So try to pigeon holing every thing into this research finding will be likely wrong on some thing. However, this debate actually will help the direction of next research step.
OK, so finally having a chance to read the paper, here’s my thoughts.
First of all, this is great work! It’s nice to have a totally new method to look at the genetic relationship to IQ. Naturally, we can only expect more in this direction as more variants become reliably associated with IQ.
That said, for a variety of reasons, it’s probably much too early to read into the “residuals” too much. There is easily quite a few reasons why a population’s average IQ might not line up with the predictions made by this method, and I don’t mean because of environmental suppression.
Strictly speaking, we don’t have a lot of firm evidence for any of that. It’s all “circumstantial,” so to speak.
That said, I do suspect sub-Saharan African measured IQ are somewhat depressed. It’s only too bad we don’t have much by way of representative immigrant sub-population to the developed world to see what happens to average IQ in the next generation.
Congrats on your new blog Anatoly!
This strikes me as an interesting exercise. Worth doing. Thank you Mr. Piffer.
But isn’t the obvious caveat here that it’s only four SNPs?
I think it’s pretty obvious–to those not completely blinded by leftist or religious dogma–that the *main* selection that’s been going on amongst human beings this last 100,000 years–and before that–has been in mental traits. Sure we have some–very important–other stuff, like adjusting to an adaptations to high latitude, handling an agricultural diet (ex. lactose persistence), disease resistance (with the huge increase from animal husbandry). But accompanying that the main event–the main grinder of selection–is going to have been on mental traits. IQ, conscientiousness, cooperation (getting along with and getting aid form others), etc. etc. Everything that has some people making wise choices, work hard and have productive relations with folks and others … not so much. That’s where the action has been and there are probably thousands of SNPs involved.
For instance … Vietnam. Does anyone really believe they are smarter than the Chinese? This is a “Chinesey” population but blended with tropical folks and without an as extensive exam system giving “book smarts” a high reproductive payoff for a centuries. Those two factors alone should be worth at least five or more IQ points. I’d suggest they just happen to be enriched in one of these SNPs, but are deficient in some others that selection has favored in the Chinese, but which aren’t one of the four in this sample.
Again, this strikes me as a useful exercise. It’s basically confirming the rough but pretty clear picture we have–a rough ranking of populations on IQ and a rough handle on the sort of hit underdevelopment takes in populations.
More confirmation for what people really should know by now–Ghana’s not about to become Korea anytime soon.
But until we have more SNPs to throw into the mix–a better picture (even if statistical and very fuzzy) of the genes behind intelligence variation–i think that’s about the level of certainty we have.
1)As promised, I've added an important analysis to my paper ( for updated version, same link: https://thewinnower.com/papers/estimating-the-genotypic-intelligence-of-populations-and-assessing-the-impact-of-socioeconomic-factors-and-migrations )
In this updated analysis, I control for genome wide genetic distances between continental groups and show that they are not significantly correlated to IQ, but they're correlated to the genotypic intelligence factor. However, the genome-wide genetic distances do not predict national IQs above genotypic intelligence. Actually after controlling for genotypic intelligence there is a reversal, with greater distances associated to less IQ differences! This paradoxical finding implies that the association is not driven by genome-wide evolutionary processess such as migration or drift (which are revealed by Fst genetic differentiation) but by differential natural selection.
2) I have fruitfully employed the same methodology on a very emotion-free phenotype, such as height. The results using 66 SNPs and 5 SNPs are remarkably similar, and this shows that even using a handful of SNPs can get us a reliable model. I showed that a factor indicating genotypic height can be extracted from just 5 SNPs and is strongly correlated to average country height. This work has just been published on f1000 Research: http://f1000research.com/articles/4-15/v1Replies: @rec1man
Vietnam is Chinesey in culture, not genetics. Academic achievement of overseas Vietnamese is consistently high along side with that of the other Chinesey peoples, i.e. Chinese, Korean, Japanese. Overseas Chinese, Korean, Japanese are essentially all elite, or self-selected, immigrants. Most overseas Vietnamese are "boat people", or are their offspring.
Because Vietnam was a Chinese province during the first millennium, it, the people, were Confucian centuries before their counterparts in Japan and Korea, or for that matter, many parts of what is now modern day China.
Vietnamese Australian PISA scores were higher than Chinese Australian PISA scores.
BTW, what is the genetics of southern Han?
Excellent data based article. This is the kind of writing I come to Unz Review for. Your previous article on Russia’s demographics was equally impressive. Thank you.
If the intelligence correlated SNPs are found in all human populations then their frequency can be used as indicators of selection pressure, right? This doesn’t negate the genetic architecture for intelligence in different populations being due, in part, to alleles unique to those populations.
Davide wrote:I wish Davide would stick around to clear up misunderstandings, at least until the comments do start to degenerate into rudeness (which I hope they never do). Surely, discussing your work with people who are interested in it and appreciate it can only be good for your health.Replies: @AG
In a way, JayMan has stated my point. This paper is a great work which might be the first step in right direction. But this is not whole picture yet. So I caustion people should not expect it explain every thing.
As JayMan pointed out, the predicted and actual IQ gap might be enviromental but also might be indication of flaw of the model itself. We do not know yet.
This model (or study) try to expain genetic information regarding IQ in general. But the very fact of intelligent profile difference regarding visual and verbal ability among different populations is clue about genetic architecture difference of intelligence. Thus this model is obviously far from perfection. But this is very good first step.
So try to pigeon holing every thing into this research finding will be likely wrong on some thing. However, this debate actually will help the direction of next research step.
Does anyone notice that the slum image actually looks a lot like the outskirts of Beijing, c. 2000? So, how did China manage to have both slums and solid IQ and India has only slums?
In China, rural to urban migration is tightly controlled through the hukou system. It usually manages to plan and build up a decent infrastructure before flooding the cities with rural migrants (hence the overblown doom-mongering over so-called "ghost towns"... they are inevitably filled up, just not straight away. Certainly preferable over the uncontrolled flood of bodies that you typically see in less organized Third World countries). Yes Chinese slums do exist, and there were more of them two decades ago, but there were always way less of them than in India, Africa, or even most of Latin America, and even those that did exist probably had better amenities.
@Jefferson,Argentina is an outlier, but its puzzle has probably been solved.
Argentina does not score very well on PISA tests despite having significantly less Amerindian and Sub Saharan African admixture than other Hispanic groups like Cubans and Mexicans.
Chinese slums aren’t really Indian slums, though.
In China, rural to urban migration is tightly controlled through the hukou system. It usually manages to plan and build up a decent infrastructure before flooding the cities with rural migrants (hence the overblown doom-mongering over so-called “ghost towns”… they are inevitably filled up, just not straight away. Certainly preferable over the uncontrolled flood of bodies that you typically see in less organized Third World countries). Yes Chinese slums do exist, and there were more of them two decades ago, but there were always way less of them than in India, Africa, or even most of Latin America, and even those that did exist probably had better amenities.
@Jefferson,
Argentina is an outlier, but its puzzle has probably been solved.
But isn't the obvious caveat here that it's only four SNPs?
I think it's pretty obvious--to those not completely blinded by leftist or religious dogma--that the *main* selection that's been going on amongst human beings this last 100,000 years--and before that--has been in mental traits. Sure we have some--very important--other stuff, like adjusting to an adaptations to high latitude, handling an agricultural diet (ex. lactose persistence), disease resistance (with the huge increase from animal husbandry). But accompanying that the main event--the main grinder of selection--is going to have been on mental traits. IQ, conscientiousness, cooperation (getting along with and getting aid form others), etc. etc. Everything that has some people making wise choices, work hard and have productive relations with folks and others ... not so much. That's where the action has been and there are probably thousands of SNPs involved.
For instance ... Vietnam. Does anyone really believe they are smarter than the Chinese? This is a "Chinesey" population but blended with tropical folks and without an as extensive exam system giving "book smarts" a high reproductive payoff for a centuries. Those two factors alone should be worth at least five or more IQ points. I'd suggest they just happen to be enriched in one of these SNPs, but are deficient in some others that selection has favored in the Chinese, but which aren't one of the four in this sample.
Again, this strikes me as a useful exercise. It's basically confirming the rough but pretty clear picture we have--a rough ranking of populations on IQ and a rough handle on the sort of hit underdevelopment takes in populations.
More confirmation for what people really should know by now--Ghana's not about to become Korea anytime soon.
But until we have more SNPs to throw into the mix--a better picture (even if statistical and very fuzzy) of the genes behind intelligence variation--i think that's about the level of certainty we have.Replies: @Davide, @Joe Cosmonaut
Two important updates:
1)As promised, I’ve added an important analysis to my paper ( for updated version, same link: https://thewinnower.com/papers/estimating-the-genotypic-intelligence-of-populations-and-assessing-the-impact-of-socioeconomic-factors-and-migrations )
In this updated analysis, I control for genome wide genetic distances between continental groups and show that they are not significantly correlated to IQ, but they’re correlated to the genotypic intelligence factor. However, the genome-wide genetic distances do not predict national IQs above genotypic intelligence. Actually after controlling for genotypic intelligence there is a reversal, with greater distances associated to less IQ differences! This paradoxical finding implies that the association is not driven by genome-wide evolutionary processess such as migration or drift (which are revealed by Fst genetic differentiation) but by differential natural selection.
2) I have fruitfully employed the same methodology on a very emotion-free phenotype, such as height. The results using 66 SNPs and 5 SNPs are remarkably similar, and this shows that even using a handful of SNPs can get us a reliable model. I showed that a factor indicating genotypic height can be extracted from just 5 SNPs and is strongly correlated to average country height. This work has just been published on f1000 Research: http://f1000research.com/articles/4-15/v1
you have done the first step in doing various linguistic groups, but within each linguistic group, there is wide variation in IQ, due to caste system. Some castes need affirmative action and some get reverse discrimination for each linguistic group
Sri Lankan Tamils in UK - variation between high caste Velala vs rest low castes
Telegu - variation bet high caste brahmin, Kamma, Reddy vs rest low castes
Gujurati - variation between high caste brahmin, Jains, merchants vs medium caste Patels ( about 80% of sample )Replies: @Anonymous
“UPDATE: The Argentina outlier is solved. According to Steve Sailer, Argentina’s low score is thanks to the scrupulousness of its school administrators, who – unlike most other countries – took the effort to track down the truants and drop-outs, who constituted 39% of its school-age population.”
Why is the school drop out rate so high in Argentina when supposedly most of it’s population is not Brown and Black ? Argentina must be full of poor White trash, either that or a lot of the people self identifying as “White” in Argentina are actually Multiracial like Diego Maradona for example.
The Flynn effect in the Third World is underwhelming. I checked Flynn’s book “Are We Getting Smarter?” and he cites only a few studies for developing nations. One gave Kenya almost 1 added IQ point per year over 14 years, by far the speediest Flynn effect of any. A study of Saudi Arabia 0.3 points per year over 33 years. Dominica 0.5 gain per year. Turkey 0.5 per year. Sudan 0.2. Brazil 0.2 gain per year. (Note: I doubt if any of these studies is particularly high-powered.)
This is not significantly faster than the Flynn effect has been developed countries (ranging from about 0.2-0.8 points gained per year).
Why, I wonder, would Kenya have lots of Flynn effect increase and those others less (if the figures are valid)?
1)As promised, I've added an important analysis to my paper ( for updated version, same link: https://thewinnower.com/papers/estimating-the-genotypic-intelligence-of-populations-and-assessing-the-impact-of-socioeconomic-factors-and-migrations )
In this updated analysis, I control for genome wide genetic distances between continental groups and show that they are not significantly correlated to IQ, but they're correlated to the genotypic intelligence factor. However, the genome-wide genetic distances do not predict national IQs above genotypic intelligence. Actually after controlling for genotypic intelligence there is a reversal, with greater distances associated to less IQ differences! This paradoxical finding implies that the association is not driven by genome-wide evolutionary processess such as migration or drift (which are revealed by Fst genetic differentiation) but by differential natural selection.
2) I have fruitfully employed the same methodology on a very emotion-free phenotype, such as height. The results using 66 SNPs and 5 SNPs are remarkably similar, and this shows that even using a handful of SNPs can get us a reliable model. I showed that a factor indicating genotypic height can be extracted from just 5 SNPs and is strongly correlated to average country height. This work has just been published on f1000 Research: http://f1000research.com/articles/4-15/v1Replies: @rec1man
Regarding the South Asian section,
you have done the first step in doing various linguistic groups, but within each linguistic group, there is wide variation in IQ, due to caste system. Some castes need affirmative action and some get reverse discrimination for each linguistic group
Sri Lankan Tamils in UK – variation between high caste Velala vs rest low castes
Telegu – variation bet high caste brahmin, Kamma, Reddy vs rest low castes
Gujurati – variation between high caste brahmin, Jains, merchants vs medium caste Patels ( about 80% of sample )
I thought it looked like a city being attacked by a fungus.
“Yes Chinese slums do exist, and there were more of them two decades ago, but there were always way less of them than in India, Africa, or even most of Latin America, and even those that did exist probably had better amenities.”
Chinese slums are mostly found in the rural areas correct ? Unlike in India, Latin America, and Africa were slums are extremely visible in the big cities.
You are more likely to see a slum in Caracas, Venezuela than in Shanghai.
It’s interesting that when the Chinese only have a small population to deal with unlike the billions in Mainland China, they create societies that are more successful and prosperous than most European countries. Hong Kong and Singapore have a Higher Human Development Index than most European countries. It’s like Hong Kong and Singapore received most of Mainland China’s cream of the crop population.
While Hong Kong and Singapore do likely have a significant cognitive clustering effect, in Singapore in particular it is surely canceled out by the Indian and Malay minorities. In China proper, the cognitive clustering effect for both Shanghai and Beijing is very likely much bigger.
No. Thanks to colonialism, they got the West’s cream-of-the-crop thought, while the Mainland got the dregs.
That, or the not inconsequential fact that they didn’t go through 30 years of Maoist idiocy, which put Soviet planners to shame in its level of economic illiteracy.
While Hong Kong and Singapore do likely have a significant cognitive clustering effect, in Singapore in particular it is surely canceled out by the Indian and Malay minorities. In China proper, the cognitive clustering effect for both Shanghai and Beijing is very likely much bigger.
Could China/Vietnam be a function of averages?
For example
1) A social structure that strongly selected for very high IQ among the top 20% but ignored the rest vs a social structure that was more egalitarian?
or
2) Iodine aka fish aka China maybe having a very high average IQ along the fish eating coast and high among the milk drinkers on the frontier but lower inland while Vietnam is almost all along the coast?
.
Based on nothing but my experience of human nature that sounds like a crock to hide embarrassment.
Has anyone tried to correlate for Amerindian mtdna?
“No. Thanks to colonialism, they got the West’s cream-of-the-crop thought, while the Mainland got the dregs.”
There is no significant White population in Singapore and Hong Kong nor is there a significant Mixed Race population there that have a lot of Euro DNA in them, so no the West’s cream of the crop are not the main reason those 2 islands are successful.
This is truely breakthrough research if this is the first ever publication on SNPs and g factor.
Great job!
First publication on this idea I think was:
Factor Analysis of Population Allele Frequencies as a Simple, Novel Method of Detecting Signals of Recent Polygenic Selection: The Example of Educational Attainment and IQ. D Piffer
D Piffer
Mankind Quarterly 54 (2), 168-200
Others:
Statistical associations between genetic polymorphisms modulating executive function and intelligence suggest recent selective pressure on cognitive abilities.
D Piffer
Mankind Quarterly 54 (1), 3-25
Opposite selection pressures on stature and intelligence across human populations
D Piffer
Open Behavioral Genetics
The genetic correlation between educational attainment, intracranial volume and IQ is due to recent polygenic selection on general cognitive ability
D Piffer, E Kirkegaard
Open Behavioral Genetics
The ADHD one is still in preparation. The draft is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Sb68X4TImRK5_QhUkUftokBpKrXyO8H5cT2Ou8H75xk/editReplies: @unpc downunder
Is the lower than expected Puerto Rico score due to a brain drain to the US mainland?
Jefferson, you’ve missed Reg Cæsar’s point: Singapore and Hong Kong have been run according to one set of Western principles (capitalism, more or less), while Mainland China was run, from the 40s until the 80s, under a different set of Western principles (Marxism, more or less). The mainland hasn’t fully recovered from that mistake, though it certainly seems to have been faster to catch up than many other countries which abandoned Communism.
Argentina is badly-run, and so the returns to education there aren’t as great as they might be. So middling students might not see the advantage to remaining in school that they might in other countries. Without having looked into it, it’s also possible that the way Argentina funds schools provides less incentive to school administrators to keep kids actually showing up in school than in other countries.
“Is the lower than expected Puerto Rico score due to a brain drain to the US mainland?”
Not really, because most Puerto Ricans in the mainland are not exactly cream of the crop immigrants either. Puerto Ricans in Florida, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York have a high poverty rate.
Your average Puerto Rican in New York City is more likely to live in a neighborhood that has a high percentage of African Americans than to live in a neighborhood that is predominantly White.
Great job!Replies: @Emil O. W. Kirkegaard
It is not. We, that is mostly Piffer, published on it before. One sees a similar pattern with the ADHD SNPs, which is expected because ADHD has been found to correlate genetically with IQ in studies.
First publication on this idea I think was:
Factor Analysis of Population Allele Frequencies as a Simple, Novel Method of Detecting Signals of Recent Polygenic Selection: The Example of Educational Attainment and IQ. D Piffer
D Piffer
Mankind Quarterly 54 (2), 168-200
Others:
Statistical associations between genetic polymorphisms modulating executive function and intelligence suggest recent selective pressure on cognitive abilities.
D Piffer
Mankind Quarterly 54 (1), 3-25
Opposite selection pressures on stature and intelligence across human populations
D Piffer
Open Behavioral Genetics
The genetic correlation between educational attainment, intracranial volume and IQ is due to recent polygenic selection on general cognitive ability
D Piffer, E Kirkegaard
Open Behavioral Genetics
The ADHD one is still in preparation. The draft is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Sb68X4TImRK5_QhUkUftokBpKrXyO8H5cT2Ou8H75xk/edit
My take on this is that they are writing books and articles for reasonably bright middle class people with mild to moderate problems with impulsiveness and inattention. However, these people don't represent the average person with serious ADHD problems.
Interestingly, one German study found inattentiveness without hyperactivity was more common in German school kids than American school kids. It's possible that inattentiveness without hyperactivity is correlated with north European traits like introversion.
Regarding the claim that so few SNPs could not provide useful information, I would point out that an index of fewer than 30 obesity alleles that could only account for 2 to 4 percent of the estimated heritability still had useful predictive power for individuals, and I showed that the weighted allele frequencies would suggest that Asians would have less obesity. Another reason why this might be the case is that Ehret et al found that some missing heritability is hidden within identified loci with multiple association signals.
It probably doesn’t seem very likely but considering one of the odd things about Argentina is that it has mostly Euro dna combined with a lot of Amerindian mtdna then it makes me wonder if there’s something in euro mtdna that might effect early brain development e.g. via breast milk.
The percentage of Argentines who self identified themselves as White has seen a decrease from 97 percent to 85 percent. I wonder why that is ?
I wonder if it is due to immigration from poorer and darker South American countries like their neighbors the Bolivians for example. Or maybe some Argentine Multiracials stopped self identifying as “White” and started embracing their mixed race roots.
Jefferson: Argentina does not score very well on PISA tests despite having significantly less Amerindian and Sub Saharan African admixture than other Hispanic groups like Cubans and Mexicans.
I don’t think international educational rankings are good measures of national IQs.
There are divergences between European nations contrary to published IQ data, and you get results like African Americans outscoring or pulling equal to a number of European origin countries (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4ify7vDXrDs/TRFeGl7ocuI/AAAAAAAAGzo/Or4W468_WK4/s1600/PISA_Intl_Scores.png) Uraguay, Chile, Argentina.
Similarly, in the TIMMS 2003, where Singapore gave disaggregated ethnic performances, the Singapore Malays in mathematics “performed as well (in fact a little better on average) as students in Netherlands and Belgium, who were the top performing European countries in the study. They also performed significantly better in Mathematics than students in the United States, Australia, Sweden and Israel” (cf http://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/bitstream/handle/10635/12980/Singapore%20Malays%20Attitude%20Towards%20Education.pdf?sequence=1 – page 100). Singapore though, has not given any data like this subsequently, but it doesn’t seem particularly surprising.
Like SAT scores, international school comparisons yield problems for estimates of IQ scores.
Much of the reason that IQ tests probably correlate well with international educational systems is that educational system performance is probably a function to a large extent of the intelligence, yes, but the intelligence of *teachers*, with much noise in terms of how interested in education the country is (e.g. some countries care less about qualifications or early education and more about college, post-grad and work, so perform worse in the former areas relative to their performance in the latter).
Students intellectual performance actually probably contributes only a small part.
Yes. Also, Argentina, though settled by Europeans, was largely settled by very poor, uneducated ones from southern Europe who worked as laborers. Such people also came to North America in large numbers too, but they were not the dominant group in North America and acculturated to the more successful northwestern Euro culture. In Argentina, where the native elite were Spanish creole aristocratic landowners rather than WASPS and those similar to them, this did not happen. Nor did the relatively small numbers of German, British etc. immigrants come to really shape the Argentine culture.
“Yes. Also, Argentina, though settled by Europeans, was largely settled by very poor, uneducated ones from southern Europe who worked as laborers. Such people also came to North America in large numbers too, but they were not the dominant group in North America and acculturated to the more successful northwestern Euro culture. In Argentina, where the native elite were Spanish creole aristocratic landowners rather than WASPS and those similar to them, this did not happen. Nor did the relatively small numbers of German, British etc. immigrants come to really shape the Argentine culture.”
Jewish Argentineans probably perform quite well in PISA tests.
A quote from a commentator who goes by the name ‘YoungWeber’ on The Economist which I think broadly applies to this post:
You sir, are broadly symptomatic with what is wrong with Western Civilization; a return to superstition and magical thinking. Five hundred years ago people were talking about fate determined in the star; now, it is fate determined by your genes. The West is dying, among other reasons, because of a loss in the belief in the power of human agency.
As for the magic/ mythical “G” factor; what does it mean; does it trump all other factor; in what condition does it appear? Two case standout; prior to 1870 Germany was poor and backward, but in a forty-four year period between 1870-1914 German emerged as the most scientifically advanced nation in the world. Was it that “German genes” kicked in; was it that those great German scientist who were the sons of Lutheran minister all of a sudden began expressing dormant genetic traits? Perhaps, the fact the Prussia won the Franc-Prussian war, uniting all of Germany, and received five billion gold Francs in compensation, allowing more iron works and manufacturing facilities to built in four years than had be built in the previous seventy (and more 6,000 times more capital invested and one billion gold Francs in R&D) was the main factor.
Again, in 1961, per capita GDP in South Korea was significantly lower than almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa, but by 1979 South Korea was the world’s 10th largest exporter and today hold more patents “enforce” than the UK, France, or Germany; did the Korean genes become active? Perhaps, the success of South Korea had more to do with the discipline, organization, and drive of the dictatorship of Park Chung Hee.
Prior to the industrial revolution all countries were very poor because of the Malthusian limits. Germany had produced very high population densities in an otherwise moderately favorable environment and they probably produced one of the finest cultures in the world, with their philosophers, composers, poets and writers, cathedrals, etc.
Korea also had a highly refined culture and very high population density in 1960. North Korea is also a success story: they didn't get much richer (because of the idiotic economic system), but they managed to build a functioning nuclear plant, intercontinental missiles, sent a satellite to space, and hacked Sony - none of them trivial achievements, and I'd bet none of these could be replicated with any other equally poor country. Though I'd suspect if we somehow teleported Bismarck's poor Prussia to the present day world, they might be just as poor as North Korea, but probably could build a nuclear plant after a few decades if they had the same access to outside technologies as North Korea.
Continued…
(Again quoted from YoungWeber on The Economist)
So, you attribute the rise of the West to “genetic factors”? 500 years ago the average European was a toothless, superstitious, illiterate, innumerate, peasant serf; you would have been one of those opposed to the Great Reformers (like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox) crying “serfs can’t learn to read and reason from the bible themselves, they don’t have the innate intellect, we should just teach them simple parables”. It was the action of the Great Reformer Knox, in his creation of parish schools, who believed everyman had a God given obligation to develop his intellect that saw literacy rates in Scotland go from 2% to 65% and set the stage for the Scottish Enlightenment that would produce Hume, Mills (James), Smith, Richard and many others. Read any history of Scotland and you would know it was a savage place in 1700, but the model of civilization (except for the drunkenness, still a problem) by 1750. True, no matter what you do, half your population will be below average, but you can still increase the average. In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s policy of mass industrialization involved the mass education of peasants; people for whom no in their families from time immemorial had received an education. Yet, Stalin turned peasants, themselves not their sons and daughters, into scientist, doctors, and engineers. Artem Mikoyan was a peasant, illiterate and innumerate until age 25; Stalin’s policy forced him into education. By 1939, Mikoyan was designing jet aircraft and went on to design the “Mig” (named after him). Was Stalin brutal, absolutely; I guess he beat those “smart genes” out of being dormant?
Once Nubian erected great building and Germans lived in mud huts; now, Germans erect great building and Nubian live in mud huts; such is the tide of history. A genetic argument does not explain why France was once a brilliant nation, but today South Koreans are 8.87 times more innovative (by patents granted); did bad gene sneak in? South Korea, alone, produces more than 1.7 times more patents than all of Europe; 6.4 times more than Australia, a nation that operated a “Whites only” immigration policy. Again, in 1961, Gabon (in Sub-Saharan Africa) was four times richer; explain the gene factor?
Even recently, the PISA scores in math and science for Kazakhstan went from 405 and 400, respectively, in 2009 to 432 and 425, respectively, in 2012; again, was that a genetic awakening? Kazakhstan was once as poor a Zimbabwe, circa 1995, but today, thanks to the discipline and dictatorship of Nazabeyev, the country’s GDP per capita (PPP) is on par with Greece and still growing. Of course, what do test scores matter; many European nations outscore Germany, but Germany is the only productive European nation(i.e the only country in the EU that significantly runs a net trade surplus with NON EUROZONE countries thus holding the value of the Euro).
We are all descended from the upper classes (not only nobility but also richer peasantry) of the middle ages and the genetic contribution of the poor peasantry is minuscule, even the middle peasantry is smaller.
...
The original deed promoted "godliness and good learning" and established that any boy showing sufficient academic ability, regardless of background, might attend, free of charge. The school was situated between Manchester Cathedral, then a collegiate church, and the church's domestic quarters1521: Spanish Catholic illiterate peasant blacksmiths manufacture technologically advanced steel weapons and cannons that allow 500 Spaniards to conquer Aztec Empire.1522: Portugese Catholic illiterate peasant shipbuilders construct ships capable of circumnavigating the globe.
Antiquity Nubian commoners lived in mud huts also.
“Was it that “German genes” kicked in” “did the Korean genes become active?”
Thats exactly what happened. How did the prussians defeat the french? They had intelligence to do so.. the genes kicked in when given the chance..same with south korea. Are you gonna now tell me if a country like say nigeria all of a sudden had park chung hee or bismarck they would become sk or germany..yeah didnt think so. Btw where does this discipline and organization come from ..thats right from the genes. G isnt everything but you gotta have the genes in the first place!
You sir, are broadly symptomatic with what is wrong with Western Civilization; a return to superstition and magical thinking. Five hundred years ago people were talking about fate determined in the star; now, it is fate determined by your genes. The West is dying, among other reasons, because of a loss in the belief in the power of human agency.
As for the magic/ mythical "G" factor; what does it mean; does it trump all other factor; in what condition does it appear? Two case standout; prior to 1870 Germany was poor and backward, but in a forty-four year period between 1870-1914 German emerged as the most scientifically advanced nation in the world. Was it that "German genes" kicked in; was it that those great German scientist who were the sons of Lutheran minister all of a sudden began expressing dormant genetic traits? Perhaps, the fact the Prussia won the Franc-Prussian war, uniting all of Germany, and received five billion gold Francs in compensation, allowing more iron works and manufacturing facilities to built in four years than had be built in the previous seventy (and more 6,000 times more capital invested and one billion gold Francs in R&D) was the main factor.
Again, in 1961, per capita GDP in South Korea was significantly lower than almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa, but by 1979 South Korea was the world's 10th largest exporter and today hold more patents "enforce" than the UK, France, or Germany; did the Korean genes become active? Perhaps, the success of South Korea had more to do with the discipline, organization, and drive of the dictatorship of Park Chung Hee.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Hippopotamusdrome
This comment is not very well thought-out.
Prior to the industrial revolution all countries were very poor because of the Malthusian limits. Germany had produced very high population densities in an otherwise moderately favorable environment and they probably produced one of the finest cultures in the world, with their philosophers, composers, poets and writers, cathedrals, etc.
Korea also had a highly refined culture and very high population density in 1960. North Korea is also a success story: they didn’t get much richer (because of the idiotic economic system), but they managed to build a functioning nuclear plant, intercontinental missiles, sent a satellite to space, and hacked Sony – none of them trivial achievements, and I’d bet none of these could be replicated with any other equally poor country. Though I’d suspect if we somehow teleported Bismarck’s poor Prussia to the present day world, they might be just as poor as North Korea, but probably could build a nuclear plant after a few decades if they had the same access to outside technologies as North Korea.
The high score for Vietnam on the 2012 PISA test is related to only about 55% or so of the sample of 15 year olds showing up to take the test.
The easiest way to boost your test scores is to not be able to find your dropouts. In contrast, Argentina has a very bad PISA score but in part it’s because they try harder than comparable countries to round up kids who aren’t very school-oriented. The missing fraction of the sample is about twice as big in higher scoring than in Argentina.
By the way, the famous high scores of Finns seem legit: they got 96% compliance.
They look well nourished, etc. How could a genotypic IQ be imagined for them...at the commonly reported average IQ of (phenotypic) 85?Then there is the matter of brain size. I often see Black brains reported as about 100 cc s less than White brains. Is this American Blacks, or African Blacks? Then there is also the variously reported East Asian brains at about 25 cc s more than Whites.I have not seen a qualitative look at this brain size issue. It's what's up front that counts, not elsewhere in the brain, as far as IQ is concerned. The pre-frontal cortex would seem to be where size matters. If, for example, Blacks were found to be particularly disadvantaged, with regard to that alleged missing 100 cc s, in the pre-frontal cortex...then it would explain a lot. Ditto Whites with regard to East Asians, or Jews.With all this imaging technology we have now, are there not some answers here? Also, with regard to Argentina, Lynn gives it a 93. As I understand it, there are almost no Indians there, a large number having been killed off around 1900. And yes, it was southern Europeans who apparently mostly migrated there. Lynn, in his later edition of IQ and Global Inequality( 2012 I think, and right now not available) breaks down southern Europe IQ scores more fully. As I recall, from his words recently here at Unz Review, he gives southern Italy about a 95 IQ average. Then there would be southern Spain as well which I guess has more Arab blood that northern Spain, the home of the Goths after Rome fell.The scholarly restraint is admirable, but...I have not seen anybody comment on the Global North selecting for high IQ cuz of ice and cold de-selecting the least fit, while the Global South had no comparable climatic dynamic.Is it politically incorrect here to offer up such speculation? With no other hypothesis to explain the steady fall of IQ going south from the North where the smart East Asians and Whites have sojourned for tens of thousands of years, why is this not discussed. The only exception to this general truth are the Jews and Amerindians. The Jews have had their selective breeding program for centuries, and apparently the 3 waves of Amerindians that washed down from the north came out of Asia, and we don't know where except that maybe it was Mongolian types or Siberian types, and we don't know anything about it beyond that, at least that is what I understand.A possible explanation of why Amerindians started out relatively dim witted is not known, but generally, smarter people push out dummies. I think the Hmong of Vietnam, what we called the Montagnards during the Vietnam war (mountains in French) were and are probably stupider than the Vietnamese who held the better rice growing lands. In other words, the lowlands are held by smarter and better organized people for farming and the dummies get pushed into the hills. (That is now reversed in affluent White man lands, with the rich getting the views, etc.)So, it is therefore possible that the Amerindians were pushed out of Asia, etc.If we are talking Darwin, and Fitness, there are other areas of fitness that are very important, not just IQ. Most important, for Civilization, would be Individualism vs. Collectivism. The Chinese where I live in Silicon Valley, are getting a very bad reputation. Cheats and thieves is the standard criticism coming from Whites who work with them. I have no experience here except for on the street. Watch out for Asian women in SUVs. Then there is their absurd superstitiousness, fortune cookies , feng shwey, Luck factors when buying real-estate. That computational brain goes into magical thinking when numbers can't tell the story. In short there seems to be no there there.What is so odd is that liberals refuse to believe that where one comes from might say something about your character. You bring in a Chinese from a totalitarian communist(or whatever it is) country and expect a White man or woman , interested in the Public Interest or the Common Weal? Or a Haitian, or an Arab, or a Kenyan? For a people without a History (that's us these days, aided and abetted by
commercialism , consumerism, and liberal and Jewish lies about Creeds and Change! and Propositions...all men are creat..) What folly...at best. And at worst, creating civil war, a failed state, which I suspect is what the Jewish Power wants for us as well what they purposed for the Arabs.Especially for the Jews to trumpet Liberalism and creeds and multi-racialism...with Israel as their ace-in-the-hole, and Spiritual Home....you believe this ? The Jews and the OT are a Darwinian discourse with Agency.
Joe Webb
You're assuming Vietnamese drop outs are dumb. Do you know for sure that the 15 year olds who didn't show up for PISA 2012 didn't show up due to economic reasons?
Even Amy Chua who left the Vietnamese out of her group of elites, i.e. Chinese, Jews, Nigerians, Mormons, etc., has curiously spoken of blue collar Vietnamese Americans outperforming their white collar white counterparts in school.
More over, Jason Malloy puts Vietnamese American "AQ" at 104 and rising, and Vietnamese Australian "AQ" at 109.
VIETNAMESE CULTURE IS CONFUCIAN. It puts paramount emphasis on education. That is why blue collar Vietnamese will outperform white collar whites. The drop-out who didn't show up for 2012 PISA would still on average do better than his/her white collar counterpart in the US of A.
If you don't understand confucianism, you might be confused. Git er done!
(Again quoted from YoungWeber on The Economist)
So, you attribute the rise of the West to "genetic factors"? 500 years ago the average European was a toothless, superstitious, illiterate, innumerate, peasant serf; you would have been one of those opposed to the Great Reformers (like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox) crying "serfs can't learn to read and reason from the bible themselves, they don't have the innate intellect, we should just teach them simple parables". It was the action of the Great Reformer Knox, in his creation of parish schools, who believed everyman had a God given obligation to develop his intellect that saw literacy rates in Scotland go from 2% to 65% and set the stage for the Scottish Enlightenment that would produce Hume, Mills (James), Smith, Richard and many others. Read any history of Scotland and you would know it was a savage place in 1700, but the model of civilization (except for the drunkenness, still a problem) by 1750. True, no matter what you do, half your population will be below average, but you can still increase the average. In the Soviet Union, Stalin's policy of mass industrialization involved the mass education of peasants; people for whom no in their families from time immemorial had received an education. Yet, Stalin turned peasants, themselves not their sons and daughters, into scientist, doctors, and engineers. Artem Mikoyan was a peasant, illiterate and innumerate until age 25; Stalin's policy forced him into education. By 1939, Mikoyan was designing jet aircraft and went on to design the "Mig" (named after him). Was Stalin brutal, absolutely; I guess he beat those "smart genes" out of being dormant?Once Nubian erected great building and Germans lived in mud huts; now, Germans erect great building and Nubian live in mud huts; such is the tide of history. A genetic argument does not explain why France was once a brilliant nation, but today South Koreans are 8.87 times more innovative (by patents granted); did bad gene sneak in? South Korea, alone, produces more than 1.7 times more patents than all of Europe; 6.4 times more than Australia, a nation that operated a "Whites only" immigration policy. Again, in 1961, Gabon (in Sub-Saharan Africa) was four times richer; explain the gene factor?Even recently, the PISA scores in math and science for Kazakhstan went from 405 and 400, respectively, in 2009 to 432 and 425, respectively, in 2012; again, was that a genetic awakening? Kazakhstan was once as poor a Zimbabwe, circa 1995, but today, thanks to the discipline and dictatorship of Nazabeyev, the country's GDP per capita (PPP) is on par with Greece and still growing. Of course, what do test scores matter; many European nations outscore Germany, but Germany is the only productive European nation(i.e the only country in the EU that significantly runs a net trade surplus with NON EUROZONE countries thus holding the value of the Euro).Replies: @reiner Tor, @Hippopotamusdrome, @Hippopotamusdrome, @Hippopotamusdrome
You are surely aware that your “average European” had less than average descendants: it was the upper peasantry (the healthier, toothier, less superstitious, more hardworking, and 500 years ago already increasingly literate ones) who did the bulk of the reproduction business. Poor peasants were essentially unable to marry, or only married at a very late age, and most of their children – if they even had any – died at a very young age due to malnutrition or outright starvation. It’s interesting to note that the upper classes were largely immune to diseases such as the plague – either because their circumstances protected them (cleaner water supplies, no contact with rats), or because they had better nutrition and so stronger immune systems. Or both. Apparently the poorer you were, the higher the chances of a bug killing you, and the lower the chances of you having descendants at all.
We are all descended from the upper classes (not only nobility but also richer peasantry) of the middle ages and the genetic contribution of the poor peasantry is minuscule, even the middle peasantry is smaller.
Lots of cool theory and math. However, a lifetime of living in Calif cities with large mexican populations, I am convinced that their mean IQ is nowhere near 95. What would raise their IQ? Nutrition, 1st world schools, govt enrichment programs? They have all that. Even their college grads top out at 105-110 compared to all the eggheads invading the state. Certainly above the AA IQ of 85 but nowhere near 95.
Most of the comments relating to this pseudoscientific article seem to be based on Eugenics.
First publication on this idea I think was:
Factor Analysis of Population Allele Frequencies as a Simple, Novel Method of Detecting Signals of Recent Polygenic Selection: The Example of Educational Attainment and IQ. D Piffer
D Piffer
Mankind Quarterly 54 (2), 168-200
Others:
Statistical associations between genetic polymorphisms modulating executive function and intelligence suggest recent selective pressure on cognitive abilities.
D Piffer
Mankind Quarterly 54 (1), 3-25
Opposite selection pressures on stature and intelligence across human populations
D Piffer
Open Behavioral Genetics
The genetic correlation between educational attainment, intracranial volume and IQ is due to recent polygenic selection on general cognitive ability
D Piffer, E Kirkegaard
Open Behavioral Genetics
The ADHD one is still in preparation. The draft is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Sb68X4TImRK5_QhUkUftokBpKrXyO8H5cT2Ou8H75xk/editReplies: @unpc downunder
In popular books and articles about ADHD doctors often say that ADHD isn’t correlated with IQ, yet these same doctors also say that a high proportion of the prison population has ADHD. Surely if a high percentage of prisoners have it then there must be a correlation with IQ.
My take on this is that they are writing books and articles for reasonably bright middle class people with mild to moderate problems with impulsiveness and inattention. However, these people don’t represent the average person with serious ADHD problems.
Interestingly, one German study found inattentiveness without hyperactivity was more common in German school kids than American school kids. It’s possible that inattentiveness without hyperactivity is correlated with north European traits like introversion.
Speaking of genetics, it is interesting that this White girl has zero percent Sub Saharan African admixture according to 23AndMe, even though she has a broader nose and fuller lips than the average White person.
I took a look at some of the other articles on The Winnower. I could be wrong, but it appears as though the “open post-publication peer review” process consists of just anybody making comments beneath the article. So, how is the The Winnower different from a blog? Indeed, it appears that the founder of the “journal” proudly declares it to be a blog.
The fact that comments are subject to preemptive moderation indicates censorship. I suspect a white supremacist, male chauvinist agenda.
prior to 1870 Germany was poor and backward, but in a forty-four year period between 1870-1914 German emerged as the most scientifically advanced nation in the world.
To quote the song, YoungWeber don’t know much about history. There was no “Germany” as such prior to 1871 but there were Germans, and they were an exceptionally intelligent and productive and scientifically advanced people.
Make of this what you will, but keep in mind that folks 'round these parts like to stress the general accuracy of stereotypes (after all, they wouldn't be stereotypes if they weren't mostly accurate, right?).Replies: @Pincher Martin
To quote the song, YoungWeber don't know much about history. There was no "Germany" as such prior to 1871 but there were Germans, and they were an exceptionally intelligent and productive and scientifically advanced people.Replies: @matt
If anyone would like to know what prominent Europeans thought of Koreans and Germans, economist Ha-Joon Chang collected some interesting quotations for his book Bad Samaritans. You can find them here, on pp. 2-3 of this excerpt. Turns out there was a widespread impression that Germans, in particular, were lazy, indolent, dull-witted, and highly emotional, and unpunctual (!).
Make of this what you will, but keep in mind that folks ’round these parts like to stress the general accuracy of stereotypes (after all, they wouldn’t be stereotypes if they weren’t mostly accurate, right?).
Look up Theodore Roosevelt's views on Japan for a more sophisticated insight into its people. Even H. L. Mencken said of the Japanese in the 1930s:Chang doesn't make a good faith effort to actually discover what most informed people thought about Japan and Germany in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Do you really believe, for example, that German were considered slow-witted in the nineteenth century at a time when German universities were becoming models for the rest of the world?
I also hope you realize that the number of nineteenth-century German-speaking intellectuals in various disciplines - math, biology, physics, chemistry, philosophy, sociology, music, etc. - is astonishing.
Here is a selection from The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1876 by Robert Bruce.So it's more than a little ridiculous to pretend that the Germans were fairly perceived as dull-witted before 1870 just because some British travel writer thought the people too contented.Replies: @matt
Well, I don’t know about that. It seems more likely that it is merely a small, not-very-prestigious, open-access journal/blog that has existed for only a little over a year, with a lack of willingness to publicize their impact factor (here is the The Winnower‘s founder denouncing “high-impact factor journals” like Science), and which uses a, ahem, highly unorthodox system of “peer-review”.
Mainland China did an IQ survey of 8-10 year olds back in 2005. The average came out to be 103.4. It is also broken out by region.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/asia/126063d1393495408-iq-8-10-yo-children-chinese-2.pngReplies: @AG
It seems provinces with less Han tends to have lower IQ with a few exception. This pattern favors genetic root of IQ. 兵团（veterans corps) are product of entire military units (from soldiers to officers) discharged into farming corps and stationed in unpolulated regions near borders. Chinese army are all volunteer soldiers with higher percentage of Han origin. Vet corps with IQ 119 is equal or above most western college students bordering graduate school. No wonder Chairman Mao said “PLA is revolutionary university (解放军是个革命大学校)”
Make of this what you will, but keep in mind that folks 'round these parts like to stress the general accuracy of stereotypes (after all, they wouldn't be stereotypes if they weren't mostly accurate, right?).Replies: @Pincher Martin
The quotes in that chapter from Ha-Joon Chang are from a fairly random collection of nitwits. American missionaries, travel writers, gallivanting socialists, etc. Who cares, for example, what Beatrice Webb thought of Japan in 1912 when there were much sharper observers of the international scene around that time who saw Japan was making up impressive ground.
Look up Theodore Roosevelt’s views on Japan for a more sophisticated insight into its people. Even H. L. Mencken said of the Japanese in the 1930s:
Chang doesn’t make a good faith effort to actually discover what most informed people thought about Japan and Germany in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Do you really believe, for example, that German were considered slow-witted in the nineteenth century at a time when German universities were becoming models for the rest of the world?
I also hope you realize that the number of nineteenth-century German-speaking intellectuals in various disciplines – math, biology, physics, chemistry, philosophy, sociology, music, etc. – is astonishing.
Here is a selection from The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1876 by Robert Bruce.
So it’s more than a little ridiculous to pretend that the Germans were fairly perceived as dull-witted before 1870 just because some British travel writer thought the people too contented.
Emerging information about covert activities in the late 1980’s with the Batwa pygmies of Central Africa indicated a lot of use for a limited time of camcorder video taping in order to make adaptive behavior assessments. An indicated aim was to select out of this population (IQ estimate around
60) those who would intellectually be most able to be relocated to their own satisfaction. Project
seems to have been interrupted–maybe by the emerging Rwandan civil war?
The easiest way to boost your test scores is to not be able to find your dropouts. In contrast, Argentina has a very bad PISA score but in part it's because they try harder than comparable countries to round up kids who aren't very school-oriented. The missing fraction of the sample is about twice as big in higher scoring than in Argentina.
By the way, the famous high scores of Finns seem legit: they got 96% compliance.Replies: @Joe Webb, @Joe Cosmonaut
Yes Steve…and Richard Lynn gives Vietnam a 94 IQ. It is also apparent where I live on the SF peninsula that Vietnamese mostly do nail and hair salons, at least that is what is visible. I go to a print shop owned and run by a Vietnamese guy… smart and not just agreeably Asian.
As a non-expert on all this stuff, I do not understand how a “genotypic” IQ can be theorized especially when the phenotypic IQ is more or less known. I assume that this is a guess with regard to nutrition and health that can be improved.
Look at American Black athletes, and for that matter, virtually all Blacks that one can see about.
They look well nourished, etc. How could a genotypic IQ be imagined for them…at the commonly reported average IQ of (phenotypic) 85?
Then there is the matter of brain size. I often see Black brains reported as about 100 cc s less than White brains. Is this American Blacks, or African Blacks? Then there is also the variously reported East Asian brains at about 25 cc s more than Whites.
I have not seen a qualitative look at this brain size issue. It’s what’s up front that counts, not elsewhere in the brain, as far as IQ is concerned. The pre-frontal cortex would seem to be where size matters. If, for example, Blacks were found to be particularly disadvantaged, with regard to that alleged missing 100 cc s, in the pre-frontal cortex…then it would explain a lot. Ditto Whites with regard to East Asians, or Jews.
With all this imaging technology we have now, are there not some answers here?
Also, with regard to Argentina, Lynn gives it a 93. As I understand it, there are almost no Indians there, a large number having been killed off around 1900. And yes, it was southern Europeans who apparently mostly migrated there. Lynn, in his later edition of IQ and Global Inequality( 2012 I think, and right now not available) breaks down southern Europe IQ scores more fully. As I recall, from his words recently here at Unz Review, he gives southern Italy about a 95 IQ average. Then there would be southern Spain as well which I guess has more Arab blood that northern Spain, the home of the Goths after Rome fell.
The scholarly restraint is admirable, but…I have not seen anybody comment on the Global North selecting for high IQ cuz of ice and cold de-selecting the least fit, while the Global South had no comparable climatic dynamic.
Is it politically incorrect here to offer up such speculation? With no other hypothesis to explain the steady fall of IQ going south from the North where the smart East Asians and Whites have sojourned for tens of thousands of years, why is this not discussed. The only exception to this general truth are the Jews and Amerindians.
The Jews have had their selective breeding program for centuries, and apparently the 3 waves of Amerindians that washed down from the north came out of Asia, and we don’t know where except that maybe it was Mongolian types or Siberian types, and we don’t know anything about it beyond that, at least that is what I understand.
A possible explanation of why Amerindians started out relatively dim witted is not known, but generally, smarter people push out dummies. I think the Hmong of Vietnam, what we called the Montagnards during the Vietnam war (mountains in French) were and are probably stupider than the Vietnamese who held the better rice growing lands. In other words, the lowlands are held by smarter and better organized people for farming and the dummies get pushed into the hills. (That is now reversed in affluent White man lands, with the rich getting the views, etc.)
So, it is therefore possible that the Amerindians were pushed out of Asia, etc.
If we are talking Darwin, and Fitness, there are other areas of fitness that are very important, not just IQ. Most important, for Civilization, would be Individualism vs. Collectivism. The Chinese where I live in Silicon Valley, are getting a very bad reputation. Cheats and thieves is the standard criticism coming from Whites who work with them. I have no experience here except for on the street. Watch out for Asian women in SUVs. Then there is their absurd superstitiousness, fortune cookies , feng shwey, Luck factors when buying real-estate. That computational brain goes into magical thinking when numbers can’t tell the story.
In short there seems to be no there there.
What is so odd is that liberals refuse to believe that where one comes from might say something about your character. You bring in a Chinese from a totalitarian communist(or whatever it is) country and expect a White man or woman , interested in the Public Interest or the Common Weal? Or a Haitian, or an Arab, or a Kenyan? For a people without a History (that’s us these days, aided and abetted by
commercialism , consumerism, and liberal and Jewish lies about Creeds and Change! and Propositions…all men are creat..) What folly…at best. And at worst, creating civil war, a failed state, which I suspect is what the Jewish Power wants for us as well what they purposed for the Arabs.
Especially for the Jews to trumpet Liberalism and creeds and multi-racialism…with Israel as their ace-in-the-hole, and Spiritual Home….you believe this ? The Jews and the OT are a Darwinian discourse with Agency.
Joe Webb
Turns out there was a widespread impression that Germans, in particular, were lazy, indolent, dull-witted, and highly emotional, and unpunctual (!).
I don’t see the relevance of these (mostly British) impressions of other peoples “character” to a discussion of intelligence. The modern British stereotype of the Germans is that they are industrious, intelligent, and unemotional – which is as accurate as their old stereotype of Germans as lazy, stupid, and emotional. The only moral to be gleaned from this is that basing your views of the national character of a people on the “conventional wisdom” as held by British writers is neither useful nor accurate.
The topic was intelligence, not character. And the Germans were, objectively speaking, as intelligent as any other group of people in Western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, as shown both by their standard of living and by the number of first rank thinkers they produced.
folks ’round these parts like to stress the general accuracy of stereotypes (after all, they wouldn’t be stereotypes if they weren’t mostly accurate, right?).
Oh? Whose stereotypes? I doubt if people around these parts are much interested in Japanese stereotypes of Americans, or British stereotypes of Americans, or German stereotypes of Americans.
Darwin, whom I have been reading around in, would reject any Great Convergence Over the Rainbow. Evolution keeps getting things more and more messy, if you like, that is, greater and greater complexity, heterogeneity, variety, dissimilarity, and so on. You can make up some more terms for Evolutionary dynamics.
Absolutely there is no trend toward Equality of any sort. The only equal things in the universe are Identical Twins, and even they have a few things unequal as I understand it, like fingerprint differences, and vulnerabilities to illnesses. Of course, the latter differences may be due to insult and injury, at the physical and even psychological levels..
Liberals are desperate and are grasping for straws. As an ex-letfish kind of guy who Changed! after some late mid-life reading and of course reflection on my somewhat childish ways, which are fine for children but not for adults, I have found that a solid understanding of genuine differences rooted in the genes (including gene expressions, etc) makes for more toleration, of course within limits.
For those with children, it helps family life to know not only your own limitations, but those of your children as well…especially in the light of Regression to the Mean in intelligence. Bright parents do not necessarily get bright kids.
One study I saw somewhere was of a group of professional White parents whose collective IQ was 120. Some had adopted Black kids and most had their own biological children as well. The Black adoptees did not improve their IQs from the Black average of 85, and their own biological children dropped a full 10 points on average from the White parents average of 120.
So contrary to liberal Belief, being conservative in a genetic context, makes one more tolerant , not less. Otoh, Liberals bring out the whip and the rack to get people to Change! They also tend to want to kill conservatives, or racialists. The biggest bigots today are liberals.
Race realists don’t want to harm anybody of another race, at least those that I know. We just want to be free to live with Whites, and if that means resegregation, so be it.
“Convergence” is a word that has been used by the dopey New Agers. Strange to me that any professional person working in the field of human behavior and so on, would come up with that neologism for a title of a paper.
Well, on second thought the ‘convergence’ here may just be the genotypic and the phenotypic. However, that whole position is problematic, especially when considering the sampling techniques.
Still, it is a liberal feel good kind of lingo….not scientific. The Great Convergence, Peace on Earth, etc.
Joe Webb
Also, Temperment is just as important as IQ. We know about Black Impulsiveness, time preference, violence tendencies, etc.
Certain White groups are supposed to be more violent, like the Scots-Irish. There may be some truth to that given several hundred years of fighting the Brits, etc. Certainly there is room for genetic tendencies toward aggression in warrior societies to be favored thru sexual selection.
Personally I welcome more aggression in White men. It will help save us from the ultra-violent hordes of third worlders, like Arabs, Mexicans, Blacks, and so on.
Whites are the race that does extreme sports…we dominate all of them. How Come? Adventure, courage, balls, individualism…all White traits in spades. That is how we became Great, along with intelligence, conscientiousness, cooperation, and sociability that is sort of a Goldilocks kind of sociability, not too much, and not too little.
Joe Webb
What percentage of The people in vietnam moved to vietnam from China over the past thousand years? What percentage of the people in Vietnam evolved in Southeast Asia? I ask because i have always read that the Chinese evolved differently from southeast asians
Look up Theodore Roosevelt's views on Japan for a more sophisticated insight into its people. Even H. L. Mencken said of the Japanese in the 1930s:Chang doesn't make a good faith effort to actually discover what most informed people thought about Japan and Germany in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Do you really believe, for example, that German were considered slow-witted in the nineteenth century at a time when German universities were becoming models for the rest of the world?
I also hope you realize that the number of nineteenth-century German-speaking intellectuals in various disciplines - math, biology, physics, chemistry, philosophy, sociology, music, etc. - is astonishing.
Here is a selection from The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1876 by Robert Bruce.So it's more than a little ridiculous to pretend that the Germans were fairly perceived as dull-witted before 1870 just because some British travel writer thought the people too contented.Replies: @matt
Yes of course there were people who presciently predicted the rise of Japan, but do you really think it’s a stretch to say that Europeans were generally surprised when it happened? Granted Webb was a little behind in 1912 given that many Europeans had already started taking notice after the Japanese beat Russia in 1905 (including, notably, Roosevelt). But then why was the Russo-Japanese War so surprising? Why wasn’t everyone predicting Japanese success much earlier?
As for Germany’s many impressive scientists and intellectuals, that’s a bit like trying to predict Greece’s future economic success from the existence of Thales, Euclid, Plato and Aristotle.
Why were so many people surprised by the result of the Russo-Japanese War? Perhaps because even so many Japanese leaders themselves didn't fully anticipate their victory or how dominant it would be. Perhaps because the Russian empire was considered a formidable opponent for anyone, let alone a much smaller country which had only embarked on military modernization two generations before. Perhaps because the Russian empire had over three times as many men as the Japanese empire.Are you just going to ignore what I said about German's universities and scientific publications? Those things became models for the rest of the world. American intellectuals in the nineteenth century flocked to Germany to learn those educational models and often to become educated in them.Replies: @Dismayed, @matt
Yes, the Russo-Japanese War surprised many people. It was the first time that a non-white country decisively defeated a European power in a modern war. But Japan’s military prowess had earlier been on display in the Sino-Japanese War a decade before its war with Russia. Many Western naval officers hired by the Japanese government to help build Japan’s navy had also been impressed by Japan’s modernization program. So even before 1905, informed observers were aware of Japan’s growing power and made quite reasonable inferences about Japanese ability based on it.
Why were so many people surprised by the result of the Russo-Japanese War? Perhaps because even so many Japanese leaders themselves didn’t fully anticipate their victory or how dominant it would be. Perhaps because the Russian empire was considered a formidable opponent for anyone, let alone a much smaller country which had only embarked on military modernization two generations before. Perhaps because the Russian empire had over three times as many men as the Japanese empire.
Are you just going to ignore what I said about German’s universities and scientific publications? Those things became models for the rest of the world. American intellectuals in the nineteenth century flocked to Germany to learn those educational models and often to become educated in them.
... of relevance to German contributions ...
Intellectual Mastery of Nature. Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein,
Volume 1: The Torch of Mathematics, 1800 to 1870
Volume 1: The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics, 1870 to 1925
While Germans certainly weren't the only people contributing, German researchers at German universities were key pioneers. The world, especially the industrial/scientific West, would look very different without their sustained contributions.
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Mastery-Nature-Theoretical-Einstein/dp/0226415821/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1EGS52X2EDCGZ0ATGF8MReplies: @Pincher Martin
Yes, the Academy and the Lyceum were great too.Replies: @Pincher Martin
Why were so many people surprised by the result of the Russo-Japanese War? Perhaps because even so many Japanese leaders themselves didn't fully anticipate their victory or how dominant it would be. Perhaps because the Russian empire was considered a formidable opponent for anyone, let alone a much smaller country which had only embarked on military modernization two generations before. Perhaps because the Russian empire had over three times as many men as the Japanese empire.Are you just going to ignore what I said about German's universities and scientific publications? Those things became models for the rest of the world. American intellectuals in the nineteenth century flocked to Germany to learn those educational models and often to become educated in them.Replies: @Dismayed, @matt
@ Pincher Martin January 30, 2015 at 6:21 pm GMT
… of relevance to German contributions …
Intellectual Mastery of Nature. Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein,
Volume 1: The Torch of Mathematics, 1800 to 1870
Volume 1: The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics, 1870 to 1925
While Germans certainly weren’t the only people contributing, German researchers at German universities were key pioneers. The world, especially the industrial/scientific West, would look very different without their sustained contributions.
Why were so many people surprised by the result of the Russo-Japanese War? Perhaps because even so many Japanese leaders themselves didn't fully anticipate their victory or how dominant it would be. Perhaps because the Russian empire was considered a formidable opponent for anyone, let alone a much smaller country which had only embarked on military modernization two generations before. Perhaps because the Russian empire had over three times as many men as the Japanese empire.Are you just going to ignore what I said about German's universities and scientific publications? Those things became models for the rest of the world. American intellectuals in the nineteenth century flocked to Germany to learn those educational models and often to become educated in them.Replies: @Dismayed, @matt
Are you just going to ignore what I said about German’s universities and scientific publications? Those things became models for the rest of the world.
Yes, the Academy and the Lyceum were great too.
... of relevance to German contributions ...
Intellectual Mastery of Nature. Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein,
Volume 1: The Torch of Mathematics, 1800 to 1870
Volume 1: The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics, 1870 to 1925
While Germans certainly weren't the only people contributing, German researchers at German universities were key pioneers. The world, especially the industrial/scientific West, would look very different without their sustained contributions.
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Mastery-Nature-Theoretical-Einstein/dp/0226415821/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1EGS52X2EDCGZ0ATGF8MReplies: @Pincher Martin
Thanks for the recommendation. Another more general work on nineteenth-century German culture is Peter Watson’s The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution and the Twentieth Century.
Watson makes the claim that Germany’s scientific and cultural development from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries was as significant for the West as the Italian Renaissance was four centuries earlier. I think that judgment is overstated. I can see ranking Germany first among equals in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but I don’t see the Germans as being that unparalleled in their accomplishments that they towered over that age in the same way the northern Italians loomed large over the Renaissance.
Whatever the case, the book’s compendium of biographical sketches would certainly fill an enormous hole in Matt’s head about how intellectually accomplished Germans were before 1870.
And it wasn’t just math and physics, as impressive as German feats were in those critical scientific areas. Think of music, history, art, classical studies, philology, philosophy. They would all look very different without German contributions before 1870.
You seem to be under the impression that I've never heard the names Kepler, Leibniz, Gauss, Euler, Kant or Goethe. But isn't it just possible that the educated elite could have been different from the masses? Has that never occurred before?
Since Thales and Euclid are over two thousand years distant from modern Greeks, and 19th-century German scientists are less than two centuries removed from modern Germans, I would hope that even you, Matt, might work your way through the small series of arguments for why your analogy doesn’t apply. Unless, of course, you think that classical Greek genes were petrified and passed down through the ages unaffected by over two thousand years of history, including population movements and different selection pressures?
What's the dysgenic explanation for the contrast between Classical, Hellenistic, and even Roman Greece on the one hand, and Byzantine stagnation on the other?Replies: @Pincher Martin
Yes, the Academy and the Lyceum were great too.Replies: @Pincher Martin
Which followed this earlier comment about classical Greece by Matt.
Since Thales and Euclid are over two thousand years distant from modern Greeks, and 19th-century German scientists are less than two centuries removed from modern Germans, I would hope that even you, Matt, might work your way through the small series of arguments for why your analogy doesn’t apply. Unless, of course, you think that classical Greek genes were petrified and passed down through the ages unaffected by over two thousand years of history, including population movements and different selection pressures?
Whatever the case, the book’s compendium of biographical sketches would certainly fill an enormous hole in Matt’s head about how intellectually accomplished Germans were before 1870.
You seem to be under the impression that I’ve never heard the names Kepler, Leibniz, Gauss, Euler, Kant or Goethe. But isn’t it just possible that the educated elite could have been different from the masses? Has that never occurred before?
Since Thales and Euclid are over two thousand years distant from modern Greeks, and 19th-century German scientists are less than two centuries removed from modern Germans, I would hope that even you, Matt, might work your way through the small series of arguments for why your analogy doesn’t apply. Unless, of course, you think that classical Greek genes were petrified and passed down through the ages unaffected by over two thousand years of history, including population movements and different selection pressures?
What’s the dysgenic explanation for the contrast between Classical, Hellenistic, and even Roman Greece on the one hand, and Byzantine stagnation on the other?
To people seeking truth
This post is about finding truth followed by a lot of great comments. But you all should be aware of political correctness in some of these comments. Most people are very familiar with typical political correctness for the liberal ideology. There is also political correctness for conservative or right wing ideology.
Despite of different political orientation, right-wingers methods and pattern are quite similar to the left wingers. First clue is their enthusiasm and tendency for right wing politics. Second is trying hard to discredit the fact or data contradicting to their right wing belief. The way trying to talking away fact or data is bordering to the point of ridiculous to scientific mind people (or mind of scientist). If the data does not fit their idea, the data must be false or cheating. If the data is not in their favor, they will give it all kinds of excuses like left wingers did. To people who embrace the same ideology, all excuses feel like `fact’ . If a person never admit a mistake, he most likely a stupid one. Always treat such individual’s claim or words with grain of salt. To idiots, admitting mistake is like weakness. Stupid ones never be able to figure out truth on their own. They only judge thing based on the limbic system (guts feeling) or use their ideology/religion as guidance.
To scientific minded people, you know consistency is best way to figure out truth. Anatoly way is typical example who looks for consistency out of chaotic information. Unz himself never hesitates to admit mistake he made. Unfortunately, smart people often mistake most people possessing similar ability due to Dunning Kruger effect. Truth is like mathematical answer which is always same no matter how you solve it – consistency. Truth is stubborn which can not be explained away.
Like left wing politics, there are two levels of right wing political correctness.
Level 1: Down right stupidity in their belief of right wing ideology is the reason. To them, all those right wing political correct stuffs are true.
Level 2: Master mind and political leader in right wing ideology who know the truth but in denial of truth in order to manipulate his followers is the reason. Just like a lot of left wing leaders, they are willing to lie about their politically correct stuff in order to achieve popularity. These politicians never care about telling the truth. All they care is popularity or voting ballots. They use stupid mass as tool for their personal gain.
The real scientists are weak ideology believers since they have hard time rejecting truth because they can figure out truth on their own.
(Again quoted from YoungWeber on The Economist)
So, you attribute the rise of the West to "genetic factors"? 500 years ago the average European was a toothless, superstitious, illiterate, innumerate, peasant serf; you would have been one of those opposed to the Great Reformers (like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox) crying "serfs can't learn to read and reason from the bible themselves, they don't have the innate intellect, we should just teach them simple parables". It was the action of the Great Reformer Knox, in his creation of parish schools, who believed everyman had a God given obligation to develop his intellect that saw literacy rates in Scotland go from 2% to 65% and set the stage for the Scottish Enlightenment that would produce Hume, Mills (James), Smith, Richard and many others. Read any history of Scotland and you would know it was a savage place in 1700, but the model of civilization (except for the drunkenness, still a problem) by 1750. True, no matter what you do, half your population will be below average, but you can still increase the average. In the Soviet Union, Stalin's policy of mass industrialization involved the mass education of peasants; people for whom no in their families from time immemorial had received an education. Yet, Stalin turned peasants, themselves not their sons and daughters, into scientist, doctors, and engineers. Artem Mikoyan was a peasant, illiterate and innumerate until age 25; Stalin's policy forced him into education. By 1939, Mikoyan was designing jet aircraft and went on to design the "Mig" (named after him). Was Stalin brutal, absolutely; I guess he beat those "smart genes" out of being dormant?Once Nubian erected great building and Germans lived in mud huts; now, Germans erect great building and Nubian live in mud huts; such is the tide of history. A genetic argument does not explain why France was once a brilliant nation, but today South Koreans are 8.87 times more innovative (by patents granted); did bad gene sneak in? South Korea, alone, produces more than 1.7 times more patents than all of Europe; 6.4 times more than Australia, a nation that operated a "Whites only" immigration policy. Again, in 1961, Gabon (in Sub-Saharan Africa) was four times richer; explain the gene factor?Even recently, the PISA scores in math and science for Kazakhstan went from 405 and 400, respectively, in 2009 to 432 and 425, respectively, in 2012; again, was that a genetic awakening? Kazakhstan was once as poor a Zimbabwe, circa 1995, but today, thanks to the discipline and dictatorship of Nazabeyev, the country's GDP per capita (PPP) is on par with Greece and still growing. Of course, what do test scores matter; many European nations outscore Germany, but Germany is the only productive European nation(i.e the only country in the EU that significantly runs a net trade surplus with NON EUROZONE countries thus holding the value of the Euro).Replies: @reiner Tor, @Hippopotamusdrome, @Hippopotamusdrome, @Hippopotamusdrome
500 years ago the average European was a toothless, superstitious, illiterate, innumerate, peasant serf
BTW, Europeans teeth rotted because of newly introduce sugarcane plantations in Carribean. Rich eat more expensive sugar and teeth rot more than poor. This is made possible by having advanced ship-building technology capable of open ocean travel.
(Again quoted from YoungWeber on The Economist)
So, you attribute the rise of the West to "genetic factors"? 500 years ago the average European was a toothless, superstitious, illiterate, innumerate, peasant serf; you would have been one of those opposed to the Great Reformers (like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox) crying "serfs can't learn to read and reason from the bible themselves, they don't have the innate intellect, we should just teach them simple parables". It was the action of the Great Reformer Knox, in his creation of parish schools, who believed everyman had a God given obligation to develop his intellect that saw literacy rates in Scotland go from 2% to 65% and set the stage for the Scottish Enlightenment that would produce Hume, Mills (James), Smith, Richard and many others. Read any history of Scotland and you would know it was a savage place in 1700, but the model of civilization (except for the drunkenness, still a problem) by 1750. True, no matter what you do, half your population will be below average, but you can still increase the average. In the Soviet Union, Stalin's policy of mass industrialization involved the mass education of peasants; people for whom no in their families from time immemorial had received an education. Yet, Stalin turned peasants, themselves not their sons and daughters, into scientist, doctors, and engineers. Artem Mikoyan was a peasant, illiterate and innumerate until age 25; Stalin's policy forced him into education. By 1939, Mikoyan was designing jet aircraft and went on to design the "Mig" (named after him). Was Stalin brutal, absolutely; I guess he beat those "smart genes" out of being dormant?Once Nubian erected great building and Germans lived in mud huts; now, Germans erect great building and Nubian live in mud huts; such is the tide of history. A genetic argument does not explain why France was once a brilliant nation, but today South Koreans are 8.87 times more innovative (by patents granted); did bad gene sneak in? South Korea, alone, produces more than 1.7 times more patents than all of Europe; 6.4 times more than Australia, a nation that operated a "Whites only" immigration policy. Again, in 1961, Gabon (in Sub-Saharan Africa) was four times richer; explain the gene factor?Even recently, the PISA scores in math and science for Kazakhstan went from 405 and 400, respectively, in 2009 to 432 and 425, respectively, in 2012; again, was that a genetic awakening? Kazakhstan was once as poor a Zimbabwe, circa 1995, but today, thanks to the discipline and dictatorship of Nazabeyev, the country's GDP per capita (PPP) is on par with Greece and still growing. Of course, what do test scores matter; many European nations outscore Germany, but Germany is the only productive European nation(i.e the only country in the EU that significantly runs a net trade surplus with NON EUROZONE countries thus holding the value of the Euro).Replies: @reiner Tor, @Hippopotamusdrome, @Hippopotamusdrome, @Hippopotamusdrome
500 years ago the average European was a toothless, superstitious, illiterate, innumerate, peasant serf
2015 – 500 = 1515
1515: Manchester Grammar Schoolthe largest independent day school for boys in the United Kingdom is founded.
…
The original deed promoted “godliness and good learning” and established that any boy showing sufficient academic ability, regardless of background, might attend, free of charge. The school was situated between Manchester Cathedral, then a collegiate church, and the church’s domestic quarters
1521: Spanish Catholic illiterate peasant blacksmiths manufacture technologically advanced steel weapons and cannons that allow 500 Spaniards to conquer Aztec Empire.
1522: Portugese Catholic illiterate peasant shipbuilders construct ships capable of circumnavigating the globe.
You sir, are broadly symptomatic with what is wrong with Western Civilization; a return to superstition and magical thinking. Five hundred years ago people were talking about fate determined in the star; now, it is fate determined by your genes. The West is dying, among other reasons, because of a loss in the belief in the power of human agency.
As for the magic/ mythical "G" factor; what does it mean; does it trump all other factor; in what condition does it appear? Two case standout; prior to 1870 Germany was poor and backward, but in a forty-four year period between 1870-1914 German emerged as the most scientifically advanced nation in the world. Was it that "German genes" kicked in; was it that those great German scientist who were the sons of Lutheran minister all of a sudden began expressing dormant genetic traits? Perhaps, the fact the Prussia won the Franc-Prussian war, uniting all of Germany, and received five billion gold Francs in compensation, allowing more iron works and manufacturing facilities to built in four years than had be built in the previous seventy (and more 6,000 times more capital invested and one billion gold Francs in R&D) was the main factor.
Again, in 1961, per capita GDP in South Korea was significantly lower than almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa, but by 1979 South Korea was the world's 10th largest exporter and today hold more patents "enforce" than the UK, France, or Germany; did the Korean genes become active? Perhaps, the success of South Korea had more to do with the discipline, organization, and drive of the dictatorship of Park Chung Hee.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Hippopotamusdrome
prior to 1870 Germany was poor and backward … Perhaps, the fact the Prussia won the Franc-Prussian war
They won the Franco-Prussian war because they had a more developed railroad network, allowing them to concentrate armies faster.
History of rail transport in Germany German Railway history began with the opening of the steam-hauled Bavarian Ludwig Railway between Nuremberg and Fürth on 7 December 1835.
(Again quoted from YoungWeber on The Economist)
So, you attribute the rise of the West to "genetic factors"? 500 years ago the average European was a toothless, superstitious, illiterate, innumerate, peasant serf; you would have been one of those opposed to the Great Reformers (like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox) crying "serfs can't learn to read and reason from the bible themselves, they don't have the innate intellect, we should just teach them simple parables". It was the action of the Great Reformer Knox, in his creation of parish schools, who believed everyman had a God given obligation to develop his intellect that saw literacy rates in Scotland go from 2% to 65% and set the stage for the Scottish Enlightenment that would produce Hume, Mills (James), Smith, Richard and many others. Read any history of Scotland and you would know it was a savage place in 1700, but the model of civilization (except for the drunkenness, still a problem) by 1750. True, no matter what you do, half your population will be below average, but you can still increase the average. In the Soviet Union, Stalin's policy of mass industrialization involved the mass education of peasants; people for whom no in their families from time immemorial had received an education. Yet, Stalin turned peasants, themselves not their sons and daughters, into scientist, doctors, and engineers. Artem Mikoyan was a peasant, illiterate and innumerate until age 25; Stalin's policy forced him into education. By 1939, Mikoyan was designing jet aircraft and went on to design the "Mig" (named after him). Was Stalin brutal, absolutely; I guess he beat those "smart genes" out of being dormant?Once Nubian erected great building and Germans lived in mud huts; now, Germans erect great building and Nubian live in mud huts; such is the tide of history. A genetic argument does not explain why France was once a brilliant nation, but today South Koreans are 8.87 times more innovative (by patents granted); did bad gene sneak in? South Korea, alone, produces more than 1.7 times more patents than all of Europe; 6.4 times more than Australia, a nation that operated a "Whites only" immigration policy. Again, in 1961, Gabon (in Sub-Saharan Africa) was four times richer; explain the gene factor?Even recently, the PISA scores in math and science for Kazakhstan went from 405 and 400, respectively, in 2009 to 432 and 425, respectively, in 2012; again, was that a genetic awakening? Kazakhstan was once as poor a Zimbabwe, circa 1995, but today, thanks to the discipline and dictatorship of Nazabeyev, the country's GDP per capita (PPP) is on par with Greece and still growing. Of course, what do test scores matter; many European nations outscore Germany, but Germany is the only productive European nation(i.e the only country in the EU that significantly runs a net trade surplus with NON EUROZONE countries thus holding the value of the Euro).Replies: @reiner Tor, @Hippopotamusdrome, @Hippopotamusdrome, @Hippopotamusdrome
Once Nubian erected great building and Germans lived in mud huts
Antiquity Nubian commoners lived in mud huts also.
You seem to be under the impression that I've never heard the names Kepler, Leibniz, Gauss, Euler, Kant or Goethe. But isn't it just possible that the educated elite could have been different from the masses? Has that never occurred before?
Since Thales and Euclid are over two thousand years distant from modern Greeks, and 19th-century German scientists are less than two centuries removed from modern Germans, I would hope that even you, Matt, might work your way through the small series of arguments for why your analogy doesn’t apply. Unless, of course, you think that classical Greek genes were petrified and passed down through the ages unaffected by over two thousand years of history, including population movements and different selection pressures?
What's the dysgenic explanation for the contrast between Classical, Hellenistic, and even Roman Greece on the one hand, and Byzantine stagnation on the other?Replies: @Pincher Martin
For so many German names to be prominent in so many important intellectual and cultural fields over so many years tells us something about the general population those elites were drawn from.
Even as early as the mid-eighteenth century, the German states had far more universities than most other European states. From Watson’s The German Genius:
What’s more, the German literacy rates were impressive and indicative of wide learning among the German people.
So, no, to answer your question, it’s not likely that the great names of the German educated elite (Kant, Goethe, Gauss, etc.) towered over the rest of the German population like a small set of isolated Kilimanjaro’s might tower over the African plains. What’s far more likely, given the evidence, is that those great names are simply the most accomplished men of what was becoming Europe’s most impressive society and culture, and that for every great German name you can think of, there were another two dozen or so German names of slightly lesser intellectual accomplishment who just missed out on being great because of chance or slightly less ability, and that those two dozen or so names sat on top of another large set of educated German men whose intellectual accomplishments were marginal if any.
I have no idea. But on principle, you should be wary of the kind of analogy by argument where you try to compare two dynamic populations, when one comparison (the Germans of today with the Germans of the early nineteenth century) is separated by only a few generations and another (classical Greeks with modern Greeks) is separated by more than a hundred generations.
As to the point you seem to be working towards, you don’t need to go back to classical history to make it. There are far more recent examples which are much better documented. East Asia, for example.
Intelligence is a polygenic trait with probably hundreds of allelles affecting it. Science is only at the beginning of discovering the genetics of intelligence. (See Steve Hsu and the Beijing genomics institute’s study that is underway). This knowledge is extremely limited atm so I don’t think you can draw any serious conclusions about different populations’ genetic potential IQ.
For a real in- depth study of this subject, I suggest you read the book:
A troublesome Inheritance, by Nicholas Wade.
None of you have any credibility, because none of you have any idea what “IQ” or “intelligence” is. You have such a weird soup of chat here — your personal opinions about Mexicans in California, the Russo-Japanese War, the supposedly underachieving Vietnamese (like you can get accurate IQ numbers on a Communist dictatorship anyway, haha), mosquitos, alleged viral loading, and countless other subjective opinions and speculated “invisible” blah blah blahs – that you’re like a sow in a slop rut – disgusting, and going nowhere, but enjoying the hell out of it.
Intelligence is nothing but a number derived through the exploratory technique of Principal Factors Analysis. Calling it “psychometric” is sheer arrogance, as no one knows what it is. “Intelligence” is just a subjective (but admittedly seductive) label, just like the other labels attached to the outputs of exploratory statistical techniques.
One thing that IS known is that intelligence is so highly correlated with literacy that it’s basically redundant. Have you noticed that all of these down-and-out countries you scorn have incredibly high illiteracy?
I know what you’ll come back with – that literacy depends on IQ. But – an identical twin study that’s been done seems to show the opposite.
Never mind that, though, I’d like to get you out of the dumpster you’re cluster-romancing each other in by posing a challenge, Define intelligence. Tell me what it is. This is open-book – feel free to web surf for the answer, or even go to the LIBRARY. It would be good for you to stop your armchair speculations and face facts.
–Professor Obvious
This is not significantly faster than the Flynn effect has been developed countries (ranging from about 0.2-0.8 points gained per year).
Why, I wonder, would Kenya have lots of Flynn effect increase and those others less (if the figures are valid)?Replies: @Proofessor Obvious
Kenya is on track to meet a goal to halve their illiteracy by this year. Changes in literacy rates are the actual cause of the Flynn effect.
Argentina’s population “whiteness” is not based on individual self identification. It is based on the self-imagen of the elite a hundred years ago and this “whiteness” still sticks to the country. In those times the country was among the wealthiest of the world, therefore white. The Argentine “Criollo” that is the local White is about 40% American Indian (on the female sides) just like the Costa Rican, Colombian and other Spanish American “White” populations. Moreover, the whitening effect of two three decades of South European immigration is being diluted, as these Europeans did not reproduce much and most (yes, most) emigrated back to Europe or the USA. Also, in the last one hundred years there had been continuous free immigration from Bolivia and Paraguay, that are basically Quechua and Guarani countries respectively, and to my surprise, today one finds growing Indian tribes that only a generation ago were unknown in the center as they had been almost exterminated and pushed to far-away margins. I dont think there ever be an Argentine census where race will be mentioned, so the best one can say is that it is a mixed population, basically Indian on the maternal side. Regarding the , noscrupulousness of Argentine school administrators – is it a joke, is it?
Right... Is this Whyvert guy serious? Or has he been already long on some SE Asia Fund or sth? I´d triple-check the raw data if I were him.Replies: @Anonymous
I am Vietnamese and I don’t believe the Vietnamese IQ potential is second only to the Jews.It is too good to be true and most likely it is not true.
The easiest way to boost your test scores is to not be able to find your dropouts. In contrast, Argentina has a very bad PISA score but in part it's because they try harder than comparable countries to round up kids who aren't very school-oriented. The missing fraction of the sample is about twice as big in higher scoring than in Argentina.
By the way, the famous high scores of Finns seem legit: they got 96% compliance.Replies: @Joe Webb, @Joe Cosmonaut
Steve-O,
You’re assuming Vietnamese drop outs are dumb. Do you know for sure that the 15 year olds who didn’t show up for PISA 2012 didn’t show up due to economic reasons?
Even Amy Chua who left the Vietnamese out of her group of elites, i.e. Chinese, Jews, Nigerians, Mormons, etc., has curiously spoken of blue collar Vietnamese Americans outperforming their white collar white counterparts in school.
More over, Jason Malloy puts Vietnamese American “AQ” at 104 and rising, and Vietnamese Australian “AQ” at 109.
VIETNAMESE CULTURE IS CONFUCIAN. It puts paramount emphasis on education. That is why blue collar Vietnamese will outperform white collar whites. The drop-out who didn’t show up for 2012 PISA would still on average do better than his/her white collar counterpart in the US of A.
If you don’t understand confucianism, you might be confused. Git er done!
But isn't the obvious caveat here that it's only four SNPs?
I think it's pretty obvious--to those not completely blinded by leftist or religious dogma--that the *main* selection that's been going on amongst human beings this last 100,000 years--and before that--has been in mental traits. Sure we have some--very important--other stuff, like adjusting to an adaptations to high latitude, handling an agricultural diet (ex. lactose persistence), disease resistance (with the huge increase from animal husbandry). But accompanying that the main event--the main grinder of selection--is going to have been on mental traits. IQ, conscientiousness, cooperation (getting along with and getting aid form others), etc. etc. Everything that has some people making wise choices, work hard and have productive relations with folks and others ... not so much. That's where the action has been and there are probably thousands of SNPs involved.
For instance ... Vietnam. Does anyone really believe they are smarter than the Chinese? This is a "Chinesey" population but blended with tropical folks and without an as extensive exam system giving "book smarts" a high reproductive payoff for a centuries. Those two factors alone should be worth at least five or more IQ points. I'd suggest they just happen to be enriched in one of these SNPs, but are deficient in some others that selection has favored in the Chinese, but which aren't one of the four in this sample.
Again, this strikes me as a useful exercise. It's basically confirming the rough but pretty clear picture we have--a rough ranking of populations on IQ and a rough handle on the sort of hit underdevelopment takes in populations.
More confirmation for what people really should know by now--Ghana's not about to become Korea anytime soon.
But until we have more SNPs to throw into the mix--a better picture (even if statistical and very fuzzy) of the genes behind intelligence variation--i think that's about the level of certainty we have.Replies: @Davide, @Joe Cosmonaut
Vietnam had a higher literacy rate than Japan, China, and Korea before the French colonized it for a long and rather destructive (genocidal) century. Vietnam’s, China’s and Korea’s literacy rates plumetted down to 15-20%, depending on the country, as a result of colonialism imposed by the West and Japan.
Vietnam is Chinesey in culture, not genetics. Academic achievement of overseas Vietnamese is consistently high along side with that of the other Chinesey peoples, i.e. Chinese, Korean, Japanese. Overseas Chinese, Korean, Japanese are essentially all elite, or self-selected, immigrants. Most overseas Vietnamese are “boat people”, or are their offspring.
Because Vietnam was a Chinese province during the first millennium, it, the people, were Confucian centuries before their counterparts in Japan and Korea, or for that matter, many parts of what is now modern day China.
Vietnamese Australian PISA scores were higher than Chinese Australian PISA scores.
BTW, what is the genetics of southern Han?
you have done the first step in doing various linguistic groups, but within each linguistic group, there is wide variation in IQ, due to caste system. Some castes need affirmative action and some get reverse discrimination for each linguistic group
Sri Lankan Tamils in UK - variation between high caste Velala vs rest low castes
Telegu - variation bet high caste brahmin, Kamma, Reddy vs rest low castes
Gujurati - variation between high caste brahmin, Jains, merchants vs medium caste Patels ( about 80% of sample )Replies: @Anonymous
Yes, 63 out of the 93 GIH samples belong to “Patels” (the rest are of various Caste/community backgrounds). But these Patels aren’t even Middle Caste, they’re actually Shudras and are basically upwardly mobile Tribals.