Ma gref=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJyxaWVpS1I”>Video of the Tujia people’s “hidden paradise”.

These would seem to be more hunter-gatherer than agriculturalist.

Michael Rienzi did a very thorough debunking of that PBS program for American Renaissance:

https://www.amren.com/archives/back-issues/june-2003/#article1

Yes, obviously Africans aren’t all retarded, or they could not survive. Yet we are supposed to believe that, for example, the San people of the Kalahari have an imbecile level of intelligence (mean IQ of 53). To believe such rubbish is simply nuts.

Oh boy. You are a science denier as well. You are denying the science of St Darwin the Evolutionist.

The San people, as with the Australian Aborigines, have lived for many thousands of years in an environment that does not require great intelligence. However, they were well adapted to the environments they lived in.

However, they have great difficulty living in the complex environments foisted on them by other peoples, and that is reflected in their performance on IQ tests.

It has largely been that way for a long time. Think of how Homo sapiens replaced Homo erectus.

So have some groups of Homo sapiens replaced other groups.

Ahhh, so real science is real because millions of average IQ normies “fucking love science” but those who question the narrative are the fakers.

Got it.

A good summing up.

… historical anti-Scottish Highlander propaganda tracts read very much like some of the material put out by today’s IQists and HBDers about Africans and African-Americans.

They began by despising us and but ended by imitating us:

Yet we are supposed to believe that, for example, the San people of the Kalahari have an imbecile level of intelligence (mean IQ of 53). To believe such rubbish is simply nuts.

At some point, we have to call people who believe these things what they are. They are stupid. Anybody who believes that San people are mentally retarded are themselves stupid. Nobody else on earth believes San people are retarded other than IQists and HBDers. Even the Boer settlers of South Africa, who weren’t exactly liberals or racial egalitarians, didn’t believe the San were retarded.

Having lived under different physical and social conditions to Europeans and Asians for thousands of years, one might well expect Africans to be a little different from the other groups in mentality.

Yes. The keyword is mentality as opposed to genomically. Whatever relatively minor differences exist genetically are not going to be expressed at the level of human culture. But you will still have the likes of Dr. Thompson, Piffer and Res trying desperately to cram the square peg of genetics into the round hole of culture.

I would expect, in fact, them to be somewhat similar to my Scottish Highland forebears who lived a tribal life

Very true. It’s quite remarkable how similar tribal cultures were across the globe. One of the reasons there are so many so-called lost tribes of Isreal in every corner of the world is due to the uncanny if coincidental similarities in ancient customs, traditions, burial rites, religious practices and so on.

But we of Scotch descent are by no means stupid, any more than I would expect Africans to be.

Human societies are shaped by the culture they practice. And as AaronB points out, cultures change, sometimes very quickly and very dramatically. One of the things I admire about Western culture is the emphasis on future generations and the total willingness to sacrifice for them. In Africa and in many other developing regions, there is a great deal of elder worship. Parents are venerated. Grandparents are sacrosanct. Aunts, uncles and other elders are given so much attention and respect and are such a focus of time and resources that the younger generations suffer as a result. Oftentimes, fathers and mothers are running around so much trying to meet the needs of their parents that they can’t meet those of their children. And, naturally, they will expect the same of their own children, creating an endless cycle that tends to retard societal progress.

This is probably an ethic vestigial of ancient tribal life when elders by dint of their experience were the most important people in society. The West has moved on from the debilitating effects of elder worship, perhaps going too far in the other direction with old folks being dumped and forgotten in nursing homes and such. But I think it’s still better than what they have in Africa and elsewhere.

What most interests me about this debate is to discover what motivates it. For the psychology professionals,

It’s a noxious mix of stupidity plus fear of the unknown, fear of encroaching change and fear of declining privilege. Interestingly, historical anti-Scottish Highlander propaganda tracts read very much like some of the material put out by today’s IQists and HBDers about Africans and African-Americans.

And for some of the followers, the satisfaction of being told of their own racial superiority, whatever their personal limitations, is likely a factor.

Most of them are American, a country whose founding myths are all about individualism, individual action and self-reliance. Collectivism is supposed to be a Marxist thing, or even an Eastern (Asian) thing. But now these guys are all collectivists if it means they can arrange society and the world according to their delusions, and insinuate themselves atop the pyramid as winners even as they are actually losers. This longed-for world order has no chance of actualizing, but they cling to it regardless, becoming increasingly agitated the further this dream recedes from their grasp.

It condemned both sides, me not less

It is worth considering who did it first or has done it more frequently before attempting to make a (false) equivalence. See your comment 249 and my comment 251 for what I believe to be the beginning of the “I am done. Don’t respond.” interaction.

but tomorrow I will be on a trip and will not write comments for a long time.

We shall see.

Yes, obviously Africans aren’t all retarded, or they could not survive.

Rats are able to survive, why shouldn’t Africans?

“Agreed. You might review your own comments with that in mind.”

Yes. I know and admit that my comment was exactly what I condemned, and I knew it when writing the last comment. It condemned both sides, me not less and I added it just to explain why I still write a comment to you. We just do not manage to stop this discussion in a civilized way, but tomorrow I will be on a trip and will not write comments for a long time.

The problem with this discussion from the very beginning is that I knew that you did not understand the problem, while you believed and assured me that you did understand the problem and implied that I did not. This is what caused me to think and express that you are very slow in understanding the problem and this discussion is pointless, maybe in an offensive way. So, my apologies for this, but I was and am correct on this: if you had understood the problem, you would have reacted differently.

Piffer’s straight correlation line is not a correlation where an objective measure from genes is plotted against an objective measure of intelligence. It is a line where a mimicker (predictor) of educational achievement plotted against IQ. All we can say is that the PGS predictor is well made (this time, by Lee et al) and that one predictor of educational achievement (PGS) correlates with another predictor of educational achievement (IQ). But the result is shown in a form that misleads one to think that PGS is genotype and IQ is phenotype and this line says something of heritability of intelligence. PGS is expressed by SNPs, but it is a sum of weights and these weights do not derive from the number of good genes in an individual but from the scores of educational achievement.

But then, if you have not tried to stop this discussion, there is no harm that I write this comment.

When you leave your friend on a street you say “see you later�, you do not shout after him “but you were wrong in this point�so that he has to return and answer. That is not a polite way to depart.

Agreed. You might review your own comments with that in mind. Especially since I have never said I am done, or leaving this conversation, etc.

Yes, obviously Africans aren’t all retarded, or they could not survive. Yet we are supposed to believe that, for example, the San people of the Kalahari have an imbecile level of intelligence (mean IQ of 53). To believe such rubbish is simply nuts.

Having lived under different physical and social conditions to Europeans and Asians for thousands of years, one might well expect Africans to be a little different from the other groups in mentality. I would expect, in fact, them to be somewhat similar to my Scottish Highland forebears who lived a tribal life, engaging in only the most primitive agriculture, living in sod huts, amusing themselves with singing and dancing, and engaging in intermittent warfare with neighboring tribes. But we of Scotch descent are by no means stupid, any more than I would expect Africans to be.

What most interests me about this debate is to discover what motivates it. For the psychology professionals, being in a position to grade the intelligence of humanity is, I suppose, a power trip. And for some of the followers, the satisfaction of being told of their own racial superiority, whatever their personal limitations, is likely a factor. But perhaps dopiness explains more than one might expect.

Thank you! Of course, your article was the source.
Thank you for your research and wonderful educational papers.

“Contrary to your bizarre assumption, I have no particular view about African people and their intelligence.”

CanSpeccy accusations towards the Unz Review: “not only denigration of African intelligence, but broad-brush anti-Semitism…â€�

— Not only you do not have courage, you also do not have a decent character.

If you hate and disrespect this forum so much, why do you frequent the site? This is a wrong forum for you. Particularly because you are a PC-warrior (conformist). As such, you are not able to appreciate the courage of either Dr. Thompson or Ron Unz.

Now this is a story of some real fake science:

“The Boasian School of Anthropology and the Decline of Darwinism in the Social Sciences”
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/chap2.pdf

Africans are said to score poorly on so-called IQ tests.

Of course, these people can never indicate who conducted these tests, who was tested, when, where, how, sample size, etc. The tests either never happened, or happened with such egregious scientific malpractice as to render the results worthless. Sometimes it’s a sample size of a few illiterate and malnourished village kids. Other times the data is massaged with high scores thrown out. Other times it’s retarded Spanish children used as proxies for Africans. And other times the numbers are simply fabricated out of thin air against the backdrop of the so-called researcher’s deeply-held biases and presumptions.

It is not by accident that these alleged African IQ numbers are never quoted or published in any credible media or scientific institution in any country on earth. Not even in countries that have never heard of political correctness. That’s because these media organs and scientific institutions do things like fact-checking and due diligence. And it wouldn’t take much fact-checking and due diligence to figure out that the African IQ numbers are fraudulent.

Media and scientific institutions around the world are not idiot trolls like Res and Annamaria who lap this stuff up. You’ll even see Res and some other morons quoting these fake African IQ numbers and posting the obviously fake “world IQ map” like it’s the gospel truth. You don’t even need anything more than below-average intelligence to appreciate the fraudulence of this data that claims that perfectly functional Africans have lower IQ’s than drooling retards who can’t even brush their own teeth or wipe their own asses. Yet Res believes it and appears willing to defend it to the death. That’s one of the reasons I have assessed Res to be a really, really, REALLY stupid individual.

Dr. Thompson in one of his other articles tried to suggest that Nigerian primary and secondary school children had retardation-level IQ’s. Little did he know that these same Nigerian students do immigrate to the United States, and in the United States they tend to out-perform their white American counterparts. Globalization and the free movement of people have pretty much destroyed the capacity of these to spread their garbage. Their “data” are always revealed to be fraudulent when juxtaposed against reality.

I do not think you understand the problem. I will try to explain is again. (When you leave your friend on a street you say “see you later”, you do not shout after him “but you were wrong in this point”so that he has to return and answer. That is not a polite way to depart.)
I copy a short text I wrote, it explains what the actual problem is:

The problem in Piffer’s results was that he summed a GWAS predictor of educational achievement over each subpopulation and by doing so he got a predictor that gives exactly the same result was what he would get if each individual in each subpopulation had exactly the subpopulation average score in educational achievement. So, he could replace his test population with this kind of population. In this new population the predictor cannot do anything else than to identify the subpopulation to which a person belongs by using the SNPs. The educational achievement score comes directly from the subpopulation average scores and they have no direct connection with the SNPs used.
Indeed, a fairly good Piffer correlation can be made by using SNPs that determine skin color, and skin color genes have no effect on the IQ and the educational achievement score is supposed to reflect.
The case that some SNPs may not be related to the property that is measured is a known problem with GWAS and researchers usually manage to remove this problem. For instance, in a GWAS of lung cancer, some SNPs may reflect a smoking habit and not cause lung cancer, while others are linked to lung cancer. The usual fix is to remove the former ones. So, this is known. It is also known that if the predictor sample includes genetically different populations, then the predictor cannot be used for comparing others samples populations between each others, an error done in Dunkel et al (2019). Neither of these two known problems is the fatal problem in Piffer.
Piffer’s problem is related to these two, but it is different. All SNPs in the PGS used by Piffer are linked to educational achievement, so they cannot be removed from the PGS, unlike skin color genes, which could be removed. The problem is that their combined effect is rather small and they do not explain educational achievement scores. The scores the PGS gives are not derived from the real (small) effect of these SNPs. The scores reflect the measured values of educational achievement. Consider an example. If education is changed in a country, educational achievement scores are often changed. The population is not changed, so genes are not changed. We would expect that the PGS score for this country reflects the genes and is not changed. Thus, the data point of this country moves away from Piffer’s straight line. This is not what happens. The PGS score for this country changes, though the genes do not change. It is easy to see that if this country is in the prediction sample, the PGS score mimics the educational achievement score because that is where from it is calculated: it predicts the score. It is not a true value derived from genes. But this can happen even if the country is not in the prediction sample: if a genetically similar country with a similar education change, is in the prediction sample, this country, being genetically similar to the one used to create the predictor, moves the same way. You see the problem here. The data points stay quite well on a straight line, but they can move along the line because of environmental reasons.
( So it is here, the results e.g. for Finland can move up or down, though the population does not change. The PGS score is not what it looks like, it is not a measure of Finnish genetics. The score is much more a measure of the Finnish school. So Piffer’s correlation is misleading.)

How to fix this?
I suggest that Piffer explains that the country average PGS is only a predictor, not an explanation. It gives correctly the observed trend in educational achievements and as such is a good starting point, but the new contribution is an improvement of this predictor. This part is missing from the paper, but adding it makes a nice result. Piffer selects a set of environmental factors that are known to influence educational achievement, makes an additive correction term to the PGS predictor as a sum of environmental factors, and matches it to a large set of populations. Then he can show that his improved predictor is better than the original PGS. He can estimate how much the educational achievement score can be affected by those environmental factors, and he can even give recommendations. As a conclusion is notices that this amount of educational achievement can be influenced by fairly simple environmental factors, but it is not the total effect of environment, since the trend itself has environmental causes, in addition to genetic ones.
The second result can be investigating the trend: Piffer makes a cultural model where advanced culture spreads from some centers, like Europe/USA and China/Japan, and also from India, but there the cast system limits the effect to upper castes. The further a population is genetically from these centers is likely to correlate with educational achievements. This gives a predictor that only uses environmental factors. Piffer compares a trend of this predictor with the trend of the PGS predictor and concludes some carefully formulated statements of the role of genes.
A third result can be obtained by looking stratification within a country. A prime example is India with its case system, but the class societies of England and France will do, as will the USA with its WASPs and Jews. Piffer looks at the problem that SNPs basically only identify a subpopulation and tries to find cases when this identification of a subpopulation shows differences in educational achievement that are clearly not a result of genes.
That’s three possible result suggestions for Piffer. You probably can easily think of some more.

A good assessment.

If the Unz stuff were real and valid, it would be untouchable such that it could be defended effectively in any forum on earth

Which is why it is defended here by trolls.

Neah, science is not for you two. Too dangerous.

Pssst…Annamaria, there’s no science going on here.

It’s probably hopeless, but I want to make you understand the distinction between pseudo-“science” and normative, actual science. You seem to be under the misapprehension that ridiculous fake science of the sort circulated all over Unz constitutes the cutting edge of real science. You’re not alone, obviously, this idiocy is pervasive throughout Unz. Res is also acutely afflicted with the misconception that fake science is real science, as are many other denizens here, even including featured contributors like Thompson, Sailer, Jayman, Karlin, etc.

To further your understanding, I will tell you a tale of two subreddits. The first subreddit (r/science) is all about real science. You won’t find anyone there trying to push racist agendas under the guise of science. This subreddit has a vast and active community of 21.4 million members.

Then there is the fake science subreddit (r/HBD). This is a virtual ghost town of only 2,600 members. What’s more, at least half the commenters go there to excoriate the racist pseudoscience this subreddit is trying to advance. But guess where Unz articles are cross-posted. You got it, they’re cross-posted on this fake science subreddit. You’ll find Sailer’s stuff there, and Thompson’s stuff and Anatoly Karlin’s stuff. The entire Unz rogues gallery of fake science proliferators are found there.

So it would appear that these Unz contributors know that they are promulgating fake science. After all, that’s why they studiously avoid real science communities even on the Internet. Nevermind the real world at scientific conferences and such, where they would never have the balls to show their faces. But even on the Internet, they’re cowards.

I know that due to a toxic mix of stupidity, ignorance, racism, supremacism and delusions, true believers like you and Res really do believe this stuff to the very core of your beings and in the deepest recesses of your hearts. But it appears the people publishing this junk as major contributors here aren’t willing to stand, fight and defend their works. Hence they will only publish in circle-jerks and echo-chambers.

Well, you may say that the moderators and the communities would never allow these Unz contributors on their sites. First of all, I don’t believe the Unz contributors have the courage to even try, because they know they are pushing fake junk. Secondly, given that Unz pseudoscience as represented by this Piffer “study” is on par with flat earthism and creationism, it is appropriate, indeed compulsory, to censure it and censor it in order to protect and promote scientific integrity. If the Unz stuff were real and valid, it would be untouchable such that it could be defended effectively in any forum on earth, online or offline. And it’s producers and promoters wouldn’t have to hide in the darkest, seediest corners of the Internet.

That’s the definition of fascism.

Balls.

My interest is with my own nation

That’s the definition of fascism.

Here come two anonymous commenters, CanSpeccy and Okechukwu, two PC warriors promoting the special intelligence of African people and showing their solidarity with zionists and Israel-firsters.

Oh my! Annamaria. How can I describe you other than as a flibbertigibbet. You grasp nothing except by the wrong end.

Contrary to your bizarre assumption, I have no particular view about African people and their intelligence. Africans are said to score poorly on so-called IQ tests. I accept that as a fact. Only someone very confused could have assumed that I thought otherwise. As for Zionists and Israel-Firsters, they can all go to Hell so far as I am concerned. My interest is with my own nation, which is neither Zion nor is it located in Africa.

What’s wrong with fascism?

To an IQ-ist? Probably nothing.

If you have the time, you may see my response at comment #312 on the thread “Piffer Rides Again”, and follow the preceding arguments.

The Piffer model appears to have failed on a fundamental level. This is nuanced as it is opposed to a technical level.

Enjoy: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14190/ilhan-omar-gaza-rockets
by Alan M. Dershowitz:

Israel is celebrating its 71st year of independence. No nation has contributed so much to humankind in so short a period of time. No nation faced with threats compared to those faced by Israel has ever had a better record of human rights, compliance with the rule of law…

Comment section: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-10/dershowitz-damns-ilhan-omars-ignorance-and-bigotry-gaza-rockets

The UN calls Gaza “Occupied Palestinian Territory”. The fact that Israel has pulled the prison guards out to the boundary of the prison doesn’t change that it is still a prison!

My apologies: It was j2 who has suddenly revealed that his study used IQ test.

As for you, CanSpeccy, you simply informed the readers that IQ is “basically a scam” and a “tool ideally suited to the implementation of a Fascist state.”

Why such a personal anguish?

You seems as prone to becoming a useful informant with your denunciation of this forum that “not only denigration of African intelligence, but broad-brush anti-Semitism, not just criticism of the state of Israel, or particular Jews such as America’s Israel firsters, but blanket condemnation.”

What’s your agenda here? Ron Unz is a truly courageous man — in addition to his superb intelligence and business acumen — who has been standing against the powerful and highly corruptive influence of the Lobby.

Here come two anonymous commenters, CanSpeccy and Okechukwu, two PC warriors promoting the special intelligence of African people and showing their solidarity with zionists and Israel-firsters. Looks like a manifestation of a deep-seated conformism coming from observations of the Lobby power.

Neah, science is not for you two. Too dangerous.

Moreover, what are you doing on this forum? There are tons of mass media sources of zionist propaganda, but you loiter here, on the intellectualy-charching Unz forum. Relax and rejoin the mass media where you can be speared of “denigration of African intelligence” [inconvenient scientific facts] and where you will certainly be protected from “broad-brush anti-Semitism” [the facts of the Lobby’s pernicious influence].

Merculinus, this explanation does not seem convincing.

Do not forget that statistical models have a margin of error. So the 84 and 88 are in the ballpark.

My argument holds. The Piffer model appears to have failed on a fundamental level.

What’s wrong with fascism?

Since when all scientific endeavors were determined by “usefulness?�

Dear Annamaria, you are a muddle-headed nincompoop. It was James Thompson who raised the issue of the usefulness for predictive purposes of correlations between brain size and IQ test scores. I then asked for what purpose such predictiveness would be useful.

Then you say:

First you have rejected IQ as ridiculous.

Nonsense. IQ is far worse than ridiculous. It is a tool ideally suited to the implementation of a Fascist state.
As for:

Then you informed the reader that your study (where you were not the first author, obviously) did use IQ measurement.

Now, I am sorry to see, you are hallucinating. I spoke of no study of mine of which I was first, second, third or ninety-ninth author.

But I have to say that as one of the multitude of Unz trolls, you are not bad.

You need to abstract from the victimhood card.

Forgive me for labeling, but you cannot help yourself but pursuing a politically correct path.

Since when all scientific endeavors were determined by “usefulness?” Who are you to decide what is useful and what is not, particularly when your education does not appear as being of the highest quality?

First you have rejected IQ as ridiculous. Then you informed the reader that your study (where you were not the first author, obviously) did use IQ measurement.

Now you are inventing a politically correct yet ignorant idea that sciences conform to some hierarchy that “is maintained by indoctrination of the inferior ranks with a belief in, and hence acceptance of, their own inferiority.” Whom are you trying to indoctrinate on this forum?

If you feel that your group does not show superior results, why don’t you try to be an outlier? Nobody pushes you to do science. But if you for some reason entered the field, try to be respectful towards scientific research and its reliance on expertise (accumulated knowledge and the talent for using the knowledge efficiently) and the data.

Thank you for your expert comments.
Here is a relevant paper that you might find interesting: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04268-8
“Diffusion markers of dendritic density and arborization in gray matter predict differences in intelligence,” by Genç et al, 2018

Previous research has demonstrated that individuals with higher intelligence are more likely to have larger gray matter volume in brain areas predominantly located in parieto-frontal regions. These findings were usually interpreted to mean that individuals with more cortical brain volume possess more neurons and thus exhibit more computational capacity during reasoning. In addition, neuroimaging studies have shown that intelligent individuals, despite their larger brains, tend to exhibit lower rates of brain activity during reasoning. However, the microstructural architecture underlying both observations remains unclear. By combining advanced multi-shell diffusion tensor imaging with a culture-fair matrix-reasoning test, we found that higher intelligence in healthy individuals is related to lower values of dendritic density and arborization. These results suggest that the neuronal circuitry associated with higher intelligence is organized in a sparse and efficient manner, fostering more directed information processing and less cortical activity during reasoning.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04268-8/figures/4

Perturbations of synaptic and dendritic growth and pruning have grave consequences with regard to cognitive performance. For example, reduced synaptic pruning results in an excess of synapses, which is associated with pathologies characterized by low intelligence including Down’s syndrome.

the solution to poverty is genetically uplifting stupid people.

Wasn’t necessary in my family.

My Father’s grandmother was the child of Highland Scots, booted from their ancestral home to make way for sheep. They were some of the more fortunate of the victims of the Highland clearances. They were able to resettle in the English Midlands, rather than being sent in former slave ships to the wilds of Canada’s barren East coast. They gained employment as factory operatives. Nevertheless, they were dirt poor, and during the Crimean war subsisted chiefly on bread and tea.

At the age of 12, my father’s grandmother lost her mother and thereafter raised her siblings, while working a day job in a hat factory. Among the children and grandchildren of that brood were a grammar school headmaster, a Booker Prize winning novelist, a fellow who made a living traveling both Britain and America giving recitations of Charles Dickens, a WW2 RAF pilot, and the Managing Director of one of Britain’s largest corporations.

But there’s another question here. Why does Unz promote this stuff? And not only denigration of African intelligence, but broad-brush anti-Semitism, not just criticism of the state of Israel, or particular Jews such as America’s Israel firsters, but blanket condemnation.

You’re right. The vitriol directed Jews is arguably worse than that which is directed at Africans, albeit Jews are credited with a duplicitous Machiavelliane intelligence. Some of the anti-Semitism seem ripped verbatim from the manifestos of the Synagogue shooters.

This environment is not without its consequences. Nowadays synagogues are monitored diligently by police. And during Shabbat service, police presence increases.

Contentious threads at the Unz Review definitely make for strange bedfellows. I have to remember that and not be too quick to judge people by the company they keep.

There is no earthly environment that didn’t call for intelligence. That’s why intelligence is not differentiated between different populations of humans. You could take young children from hunter-gatherer tribes, bring them to a western country and within a few years they will have assimilated all the technology and mastered the language. They could go to Harvard or Oxford, become engineers or scientists. This is because all human brains are the same.

How do you…oh, never mind anymore. Maybe science really is a White thing.

if you are that poor you must be dumb due to bad genes

yes (mostly)

the solution to poverty is genetically uplifting stupid people.

Yet imbeciles like Res are fixated exclusively on black brain size.

Let’s revisit Okechukwu’s comment 215 (the first brain size comment in this thread):

Boskop Man of South Africa was probably a genius on average, with a brain that was 30% larger than ours.

And his comment 225:

Europeans do not have larger brains than Black Africans. Shall I recount my experience at a hat shop in an all-white town where they didn’t have a hat large enough for my head? The same thing happened in Germany.

Who exactly is fixated here? And who exactly is racializing (and personalizing) the brain size issue?

I am not particularly perturbed by the idea that Asians may have bigger brains or higher IQs than whites on average. Why is Okechukwu so defensive about acknowledging the average white/black differences in these areas? Perhaps he is lacking in self (or group) confidence?

And while I am here, let’s revisit my comment 259.

So much for being done. How about you just try addressing even one of my points in comment 244 then? I am particularly interested in how Afrosapiens came up with the idea that Beals had no African skull data. Can you support that?

One way I know I am in a conversation with Okechukwu. I can keep recycling my old comments because he so seldom actually addresses any of my points.

P.S. I do confess to bringing the brain size issue up when the opportunity presents (like after Okechukwu’s Boskop man comment, see my comment 221) because I know it annoys him. But the big difference here is one of us has a belief supported by research.

P.P.S. In case anyone has not realized it yet, I consider Okechukwu’s “Troll”s and ad hominems a validation at this point. “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have madeâ€�

Let’s see, for example, how Res and Dr. Thompson would fare on an IQ test in the Zulu language, administered by Zulu speakers, and steeped in Zulu cultural references.

Attaboy. Go gett em.

But there’s another question here. Why does Unz promote this stuff? And not only denigration of African intelligence, but broad-brush anti-Semitism, not just criticism of the state of Israel, or particular Jews such as America’s Israel firsters, but blanket condemnation.

Very strange — coming from a Jew. I wish Unz would address the issue.

More idiotic strawman.

how sad indeed is the lot of the IQist, beset by idiots and makers of strawmen.

The reason brain size matters is because it indicates heritability of brain power

An assertion that tells something about the brain power of the IQists, if not the size of their heads.

this ridiculous deflection

Yup

Childish and obvious.

Really a good example of how they think.

Indeed. And there’s always an ulterior motive, a hidden agenda behind all the nonsense. Brain size like IQ and like intelligence varies tremendously within all populations. Yet imbeciles like Res are fixated exclusively on black brain size. Untold millions of black people have larger brains than untold millions of whites and Asians? Doesn’t matter to dumb-dumb Res and his fellow travelers. After all, they are not interested in honest scientific inquiry. Rather they are trying to promote a very insidious agenda. An agenda, of course, that doesn’t play well in the wider world where people actually think and reason, no matter how assiduously they try to insinuate their canon into that wider world.

In the real world, the following question would be posed of the traffickers of this junk:

Okay, I understand you have an interest in brain size as it relates to intelligence, but why must you racialize it?

Of course, IQists and race “science” devotees like Res and Dr. Thompson will regurgitate a standard talking point in an attempt to overcome this objection. They’ll say it’s all about averages. But the problem is, this ridiculous deflection only works in their circle-jerks and echo-chambers where the audience is dumb (very dumb), delusional (very delusional) and indoctrinated (very much indoctrinated).

In actuality, the alleged averages are always fraudulent fabrications borne of this unremitting desire these people have to create a global caste system with black people at the very bottom. In reality, no one knows what the averages of anything truly are — be it IQ, brain size, innate intelligence or what have you. Furthermore, to the extent that there are hierarchies in these factors, no one knows which race is actually on top and which one is on the bottom. No one cares because in the real world we recognize that the within race variation and between race overlap in these attributes makes the question moot and pointless.

As a consequence, no one real and credible is going to go around the world measuring heads and doing MRI’s on a truly global scale with a vast sample size. No one real and credible is going to produce a truly culturally and linguistically neutral/inclusive IQ tests and then go around the world testing folks. Let’s see, for example, how Res and Dr. Thompson would fare on an IQ test in the Zulu language, administered by Zulu speakers, and steeped in Zulu cultural references. They probably wouldn’t score up to 20. These are the kinds of experiments we would have to do if we took this topic seriously enough to seriously investigate it. The research and investigation would under the auspices of a world body like the UN. It certainly wouldn’t be left to Pioneer Fund grantees and various other quacks and charlatans. Dr. Thompson and his colleagues would definitely not be invited to participate.

Well, that is the fifth comment from j2 suggesting we stop this discussion or claiming he will (and counting?). In this thread alone. The following post has additional comments like that.

What part of: “Your issue appears to be with the GWAS (not Piffer’s use of it) so take it up with those researchers and maybe ask yourself why GWAS are taken seriously (in fields beyond IQ research) at all” is so hard to understand?

P.S. I will conclude with a point which I think illustrates that despite his protestations I really do understand the issue j2 raises. Consider doing a GWAS of lung cancer. It is important to be careful about accidentally detecting SNPs associated with smoking. Although one can argue those SNPs are still relevant, the distinction is important. So when we look at lung cancer GWAS papers we see things like:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28615365

In a second GWAS, a SNP within the CHRNA3 gene was strongly associated with smoking quantity and nicotine dependence (15). The same SNP was also strongly associated with lung cancer. The results suggest that the variant on chromosome 15q25 confers risk of lung cancer through its effect on tobacco addiction. In contrast, a third study showed weak evidence that the 15q25 locus influences smoking behavior and is mostly directly associated with lung cancer (16). However, it should be emphasized that the later GWAS was conducted in cases and controls matched on smoking status, thus limiting variation between the two groups and the power to detect any smoking association. Further analyses from the same study suggest that SNPs and smoking have independent effects on risk. Together, these three studies unequivocally support the 15q25 locus as harboring susceptibility variants for lung cancer or smoking behavior.

It is obvious, and nobody claimed otherwise. More idiotic strawman. The reason brain size matters is because it indicates heritability of brain power, and that is something that society is organised around, or should be at least if society wasn’t run by virtue-signalling useful-idiots and hostile, lying, anti-white racial-Marxist lunatics.

I have to say that the whole head size thing is a good example of how childish the IQists are.

Childish and obvious.

Really a good example of how they think.

Remember that it was Okechukwu who first brought up brain size in this thread in comment 215.

With a foolish reference to discredited Boskop man.

And then followed it up in comment 225 with a reference to his own head size and difficulty finding a hat.

Normally after seeing a comment like yours I’d ask if you have anything substantive to say, but since I am responding to AaronB that isn’t really necessary since I know nothing like that will be forthcoming.

P.S. Your own comments provide excellent examples of how you think (or not).

It’s pretty obvious that the world isn’t organized around an understanding that people with larger brains are smarter

Good point.

Lol, it took the glories of modern IQ science to bring us to that point.

I have to say that the whole head size thing is a good example of how childish the IQists are.

Childish and obvious.

Really a good example of how they think.

I like to imagine that tiny brained chimps are just as smart as everyone else. It makes me feel happy and special.

“I will wish you well. Hopefully someday we will find ourselves on the same side of an argument. Perhaps then you might see my comments differently.”

I too wish you well and will stop this discussion. A student, who when leaving a session with the supervisor, mumbles “Pythagoras theorem is wrong” will be called back for a short discussion of the proof of this ancient theorem, and so do misunderstood clarifications even to a farewell to be set right by a short comment.

You see your comments as correct, but someday perhaps you will understand my comment and realize that you are a one field supremacist, of which a special case is a hard field supremacist. Almost all expert of any field are. For what is a supremacist but a territorial animal, who protects its territory so that outsiders do not come and steal their women and hunting grounds. It is for the territorial instinct that he requires the knowledge of his narrow field, as it would be at all needed in solving the problem. For that is the source of all his words and his feeling of superiority: the advantage of the home ground is the same as supremacy.

I would rather have you say: you stranger, who have traveled so far and wide, seen the drums of Thule and the charms of Timbuktu, do you have a cure for this young cowboy who is sure bound to die, for our medicine is too weak?

Res of course, says that if you are that poor you must be dumb due to bad genes

Gotta love the strawmen.

Are you still smarting after learning how ill considered your comment 263 was? Maybe next time you will look at the paper as well as the abstract.

It was for that reason that I directed you to a recent paper showing that in fact there is credible evidence of a correlation between brain size and intelligence

You’re never going to have a correlation coefficient equal to zero no matter what variables you plug in. It could be that red hair has a similar relationship with intelligence, if not stronger.

Actually, the relationship is not with intelligence but with IQ. IQ is not intrinsic intelligence. Nevertheless, whatever IQ measures, the correlation with brain size is weak. There are much stronger correlates with IQ independent of brain size. Education, for example.

Schooling in adolescence raises IQ scores

Although some scholars maintain that education has little effect on intelligence quotient (IQ) scores, others claim that IQ scores are indeed malleable, primarily through intervention in early childhood. The causal effect of education on IQ at later ages is often difficult to uncover because analyses based on observational data are plagued by problems of reverse causation and self-selection into further education. We exploit a reform that increased compulsory schooling from 7 to 9 y in Norway in the 1960s to estimate the effect of education on IQ. We find that this schooling reform, which primarily affected education in the middle teenage years, had a substantial effect on IQ scores measured at the age of 19 y.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3258640/

You and I are supposed to be searching for the truth. Do you accept that there is a correlation between brain size and intelligence?

There is a correlation between every conceivable variable and intelligence. Like brain size most will be weak and coincidental. Here you should apply the essential maxim that correlation does not imply causation.

It’s pretty obvious that the world isn’t organized around an understanding that people with larger brains are smarter. Nobody ever considers head size, and by extension brain size, in evaluating the potential for intelligence. If this idea had any merit the world would be awash in calipers, tape measures and MRI’s with a view toward finding the people with the largest brains. Headhunting, as it were. But we don’t see any of that, do we?

Anyway, it is a waste of time until somebody is able to look at specific areas of brain that really matter.

Yes, and almost certainly what matters more than how many brain cells one has or how large those cells are, is how those cells are connected, which in turn will depend on the inputs those cells have received as the result of the environmental stimuli to which the individual has been exposed, including the stimulus known as education.

It is the case, apparently, that malnutrition, especially protein deficiency during the early post-natal period, has a negative effect on brain volume and intelligence, insofar as intelligence is reflected in IQ test scores. Presumably, therefore, poor people raised in the slums of such places as Dhaka, Mumbai, Lagos, and Buenos Aires tend to be undersized, with smaller than normal brains. With a deficit in brain volume combined with a poor education, these impoverished people likely have low IQ tests scores, but that would be no basis for assuming the cause of their cognitive limitations to be solely, or even in any degree, due to race or genetics.

Res of course, says that if you are that poor you must be dumb due to bad genes, but as my ancestors only three generations back were dirt poor and malnourished, yet within two generations had raised themselves to a condition of relative success and prosperity, I don’t buy that.

an example where brain size predicted anything that was useful

If correlation was indeed r=0.4 it means 20% of variance SD^2=15*15 would be explained which gives you a predictive power at 95% confidence level (2-sigma) of ±26.8 IQ points instead of ±30 IQ Points if you did not have brain size information. (2-sigma= 2*sqrt[(1-0.2)*15*15]). So the answer to your question is NO!

But the r=0.4 value is exaggerated. This (2015) paper

http://www.larspenke.eu/pdfs/Pietschnig%20et%20al_in_press_-_Meta-analysis_brain_volume_intelligence.pdf
Meta-analysis of associations between human brain volume and intelligence differences: How strong are they and what do they mean?

show much lower correlations:

First, brain volume was significantly positively associated with all three investigated intelligence domains (full-scale IQ, performance IQ, verbal IQ). In all, 6%, 4%, and 4% of variance respectively. (p.14)

6% is r=0.24

They also did see difference between man and women in terms of correlation unlike some earlier studies.

Furthermore they do not correct for attenuation and restricted range which IQist like to resort to to boost their results:

we did not apply range restriction corrections for sample attenuation in the present meta-analysis which might have led to a slight underestimation of overall effects. We decided not to apply corrections because for a majority of the included samples standard deviations for test performance were not reported. Therefore, correcting for range restriction would have required us to interpolate estimates for these studies based on a comparatively small number of reported parameters, thus introducing further uncertainty rather than allowing us to assess a hypothesized true value.

However they still relied on r values from the studies they used in this meta analysis which may or may not have been corrected for attention or restricted range.

Anyway, it is a waste of time until somebody is able to look at specific areas of brain that really matter.

The problem is that people who do these type of studies are self-recruited from the true believers while the reasonable skeptics are too often revolted by it and thus avoid it. So the field ends up being peopled with shady characters like Kikegaard, Becker and Piffer under auspices of Richard Lynn and James Thompson. They are painting themselves into a corner. Fortunately it seems (I hope) that most people who do GWAS have high integrity thought there are true believers among them as well like Plomin.

I suggest stopping this discussion.

Why? Have you realized you aren’t making persuasive points? Though some are creative–like the idea of distinguishing medical GWAS from EA/IQ because prediction matters more for those, not whether the underlying model is correct. But really, for medical GWAS you do want to understand the mechanisms because that might be useful for treatment or drug design.

Regarding the issues about Piffer’s use of the Dunkel paper, I think the bigger issue there is uncritically using their 110 number for Ashkenazi Jewish average IQ. That actually makes Piffer’s results look worse than if he had used one of the lower figures out there.

If you want to stop the discussion all you have to do is stop responding to me. Assuming you are actually going to do that this time, I will wish you well. Hopefully someday we will find ourselves on the same side of an argument. Perhaps then you might see my comments differently.

I basically tried to find one serious error in Piffer’s paper. That error is the Ashkenazi Jewish data point and it is really incorrect since the PGS of Lee et al (2018) used by Piffer and Dunkel et al was created by a prediction sample that included two populations that differed by genes and by IQ. This causes an error (not: can cause an error, but causes it). With Dunkel et al we have to assume that et al must have been aware of the problem, so they did it intentionally. With Piffer no intention can be shown and I doubt there is any. It is simply an error. This is where my interest to the paper ended.

The second question was raised by you and I offered some thoughts: why is Piffer’s correlation over many populations so good if there is no underlying real reason for it. I said I can think about it if you honestly are interested in it. So, to help you I gave it some thought and some comments about this: you may get good results with a good predictor, but prediction does not always imply an explanation. I really have to do something else and will not continue thinking of this problem any longer.

GWAS is mainly used in medicine for finding people who are prone to some illness. In that usage a predictor is what they need. The predictor does not need to be an explanation of why these people are vulnerable to the illness. Thus, none of my concerns can affect this usage of GWAS. Application of GWAS to the study of an effect of genes and of finding genes that cause some trait is a different application. There one has to be careful, especially when comparing scores between populations. In GWAS for educational achievement there is the intra-population variance, which does not have this problem, but of course, a society is also often stratified. There are for sure ways to use GWAS so that the problem does not appear. I do not think I need to contact Lee et al and I have no need to become famous on pension, nor to publish scientific papers on pension.

The other way, that is, of making a model that explains IQ, is of course possible. Many known factors affect IQ and one can try to make a sum formula. Then it cannot only be a set of SNPs affecting IQ. There are environmental factors. In some societies, like ours, environmental factors decide certain percentage, but this percentage is dependent on the society. That is, it is easy to describe a society where genes practically have no effect on the IQ of an individual. For instance, res sets up a dictatorship and decides for each person what IQ he must have. All IQs are between 60 and 85 as res wants a country where nobody is intelligent enough to rebel. So, how does res do it? He measures the IQ of each newborn child and if it is below 85, he kills the child. Thus, all who live have genetic IQ at least 85. Then res picks up a number between 60 and 85 for the IQ of the child and orders his doctors to cut off enough of the child’s brain so that his IQ equals this number. So, here we have almost 100% of IQ determined by the environment.

This example shows that the society has an effect. The effect of the environment can be smaller or larger. If the society excludes girls from education, then the IQ of girls is lower, and so on. I doubt one can find a simple formula that correctly predicts IQ in a way that it lists the effects of all factors.

I suggest stopping this discussion. So, please, do not make any more questions to me, nor claims that should be corrected or answered. Merculinus is quite happy to discuss this topic, I am not. You should take my announcements that we should stop as a hint that let us stop.

As a stopping reply that does not need to be answered, I give: I wish you all the best and now the final goodbye.

You misquote me.

I referred to:

the effort manifest in comments here by people who are presumably not African to establish that Africans are mentally inferior to other human groups because they have very slightly smaller heads

As for you statement:

If only our policies were informed by this fact.

Which policies are you referring to?

Africans are mentally inferior to other human groups because they have very slightly smaller heads

If only our policies were informed by this fact.

In particular, the primary finding that, “in analyses of brain subregions … that when compared to Caucasians, African Americans exhibited larger left OFC volumes (F 1,68 = 7.50, p = 0.008).�

From within the paper:

After controlling for age, sex, and education level, the African-American population exhibited smaller total cerebral volume than Caucasians (Table 2), although there were no statistically significant differences in total gray matter, total white matter, or ventricular CSF volumes. In models examining specific brain regions, the only statistically significant difference was that African-Americans exhibited larger left OFC volumes than Caucasians. However, when regional ratios were examined (regional volume/total cerebral volume), the African-American cohort exhibited greater ratios for the right amygdala and bilaterally for the OFC (Table 2).

Those knowledgeable in brain anatomy might notice that Total Cerebrum does not appear in that list. That might be because in Table 2 it has the lowest p-value (< 0.0001) and shows a substantial (100 cc) difference (just not in a PC direction). "GM+WM/CSF Ratio" has the next smallest p-value at 0.0004. Given that it is also not mentioned, no prizes for guessing the direction of the difference. Also notice that Total Gray Matter showed a 38 cc difference and just missed statistical significance.

Caucasian (N = 44) African-American (N = 25) F value p value
Total Cerebrum 1178.3 (115.0) 1076.0 (67.9) 17.92 <0.0001
GM+WM/CSF Ratio 667.3 (81.8) 629.8 (54.8) 13.77 0.0004
…
Total Gray Matter 665.2 (81.7) 627.2 (54.5) 3.13 0.0816
…
Orbitofrontal Cortex, L 6.8 (1.9) 7.8 (1.7) 7.50 0.0080

CanSpeccy, you at least should know that when it comes to topics subject to the dictates of political correctness it is critically important to read the paper rather than just looking at the abstract.

The OFC finding is interesting: https://neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/know-your-brain-orbitofrontal-cortex
but the volume difference is only 1 cc and the function of that area seems uncertain.

In contrast, a 100 cc difference in the Cerebrum seems much more important:
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer//genpsycerebrum.html

As far as “primary findings” go, here is a direct quote from the body (I realize the abstract says what you claimed) of the paper:

Our primary finding is that when compared to Caucasians, an African-American cohort exhibited smaller cerebral volumes but larger absolute left OFC volumes.

P.S. Also worth noting the study demographics in Table 1. The Caucasians averaged 11 years older and had a larger percentage of females. Both of those would tend to decrease brain size. Although the paper says those variables were controlled for and the researchers took a separate look eliminating older Caucasians.

That is a very good primer with some terrific visualizations. Thanks! I plan to use it the next time someone asks me about percent variance explained.

FWIW, my background is in modeling and simulation.

One must not confuse prediction with an explanation.

Definitely a worthwhile point (and if Okechukwu happens to read this, that is what taking an opponent’s argument seriously looks like). But given such a good predictor one should seek to understand WHY it is so good. (not, the FUD of “it might be wrong”, but what mechanism–like skin color–allows it to give good predictions despite being wrong)

Occam’s razor is useful.

You raise an issue with population stratification causing non-EA/IQ SNPs to be found by the GWAS. But given that this is a well understood problem which GWAS are specifically designed to deal with through the use of relatively uniform study populations, controlling for principal components of population genetic variation, and post-hoc checks (see Lee et al. use of QQ plots in their Supp Materials which I linked elsewhere); I think it is reasonable to assume the results are correct (with respect to this issue) absent evidence this problem is (not just might be) present.

As I have said multiple times before, that the predictor works well out of sample (i.e. in populations not included in the GWAS) is strong evidence it is capturing the true effect we are looking for.

Again, you are arguing that the GWAS is incorrectly finding non-EA/IQ related SNPs. This is a valid concern. Which you should take up with the authors of Lee et al. (2018) and the authors of all of the other GWAS Piffer has used to demonstrate his idea over the years.

Who knows, you might have found something which destroys the validity of all GWAS everywhere and no one else has ever thought of. That would make you famous. You should go for it.

I think I was getting confused by thinking “explained” or “accounted for” variance meant some kind of causality. There’s a good introduction here:

https://assessingpsyche.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/two-visualizations-for-explaining-variance-explained/

In this context, how does this study of Caucasian versus African brains fit the presumption of African inferiority? In particular, the primary finding that, “in analyses of brain subregions … that when compared to Caucasians, African Americans exhibited larger left OFC volumes (F 1,68 = 7.50, p = 0.008).”

There is a correlation between skin color and educational achievements. Thus, making a predictor from SNPs determining skin color will give a rather good Piffer correlation, which works for ALL populations and is not at all random. From that it does not follow that skin color genes influence IQ.

That is actually an EXCELLENT example. And why controlling for population stratification is so important. But since the GWAS DO control for population stratification that should not be much of a problem.

But assuming for a moment these controls weren’t done, what might we see. Here is a look at:
Association of race and color with mean IQ across nations.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17037466

Abstract
This study investigated the correlation of both race and skin color in the distribution of mean IQ for 129 countries with primarily indigenous populations. Skin color correlated most highly with mean IQ across the Caucasoid countries (r = -.86), somewhat less across the Mongoloid countries (r = -.66), and nonsignificantly across the Negroid countries (r = .06). When the Negroid and Caucasoid countries were combined, both race and skin color yielded high correlations with IQ (r = .87, -.95, respectively). When the Negroid and Mongoloid countries were combined, both race and skin color yielded high correlations with IQ (r = .91, -.91, respectively). When Caucasoid and Mongoloid countries were combined, skin color yielded a high correlation, but race did not correlate significantly with IQ. The greater importance of Negroid race was regarded as congruent with the 1998 generalization of Jensen that the genetic distance between Mongoloids and Caucasoid is less than the genetic distance of these two groups from Negroid.

So if we used a skin color PGS rather as proxy for an IQ PGS we might expect strong correlations across all populations and most subpopulations, but not across Negroid populations. Which is a little like Piffer’s Figure 2 divided into three groups along the x-axis, except there the middle group also has a small correlation. (but see additional comments below)

FWIW, here is a graphic giving an idea of the skin color IQ correlation:

Notice that Piffer’s work shows three Asian populations with highest PGS (Figure 2) which is not what one would expect from skin color (reordered to correspond to IQ).

P.S. One way of checking that the EA/IQ GWAS don’t have that problem is to notice that despite the strong correlations observed above, as far as I know, none of the EA/IQ GWAS have produced SNP hits which correspond to skin color (the genetics of which are fairly well known). Since skin color has a fairly small number of SNPs with large effect they should appear quite strongly in any EA/IQ GWAS subject to the issue j2 raises.

P.P.S. j2, you don’t seem to realize that you are mostly arguing against the GWAS research rather than Piffer at this point. That science is rather well established now. Perhaps you could take your criticism to the dozens of coauthors of Lee et al. (2018) and see how they respond?

This is useful for predictive purposes.

Can you cite an example where brain size predicted anything that was useful, for example in recruiting psychology professors, or selecting people for positions of leadership in the military or political worlds?

Off hand, the only example I can think of is the effort manifest in comments here by people who are presumably not African to establish that Africans are mentally inferior to other human groups because they have very slightly smaller heads. This might be “useful” inasmuch as human society is organized hierarchically and the hierarchy is maintained by indoctrination of the inferior ranks with a belief in, and hence acceptance of, their own inferiority.

Problem is, the only African here seems resistant to the propaganda.

Thanks for clarifying that. Not sure if I have done that anywhere. I know the difference between gene/allele/SNP, but occasionally am sloppy. For example, the “chopstick gene” I keep referring to, because that is how others refer to it colloquially. In reality what would be found is a variety of SNP variants (alleles).

Seriously, I mean it: I cannot discuss with someone who pretends to be an expert and lacks the basic training in my field and who would flunk genetics 101.

Understood. I’m a little surprised that j2 (being a retired academic) does not seem to realize how well the crankiness of your responses maps to that.

IMHO it is a very different thing to be cranky when one knows an area and is right and to be cranky when one does not know the area and is wrong. Things become complicated when knowledge/correctness don’t map like that ; )

P.S. I am using “cranky” in the sense of irritable or hostile. Not eccentric.

P.P.S. For anyone who wants the definitions of genetics related terms, this is a good glossary:
https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Glossary

Do you understand what the “chopstick gene” idea is? See the paper I linked in one of these Piffer threads. It is one way the experts in this field refer to the problem of finding genes (SNPs) which are related to different populations rather than the trait in question. In other words, exactly the problem you have been going on about.

For those who don’t know (and apparently, like j2, don’t want to follow links to find out), the “chopstick gene” refers to the idea that if you do a GWAS for the trait of “chopstick use” across worldwide populations you will get hits for “Asian” (i.e. cultural) rather than anything genetic which truly indicates chopstick use.

I keep using the term because it is a concise way of referring to the population stratification problem j2 keeps raising, but can’t seem to be bothered to understand how researchers address.

As for who is correct, I think we are at the “agree to disagree and wait to see who turns out to be right” phase. Because most of the things we discuss here do have answers which will be known–and with the speed of progress in genetics it might not take that long.

Will Piffer’s bumblebee fly, or will j2’s mathematical manipulations keep it grounded? Tune in later to see.

P.S. Some epic projection in j2’s comments. Do people not realize how informative such comments are about themselves?

P.P.S. The “I am done now” grandstanding is fun to watch. Pro tip: you (and others here) should not engage in that unless you have more willpower than you (or I ; ) do.

Btw you’re also using SNP in the wrong way. You should replace SNP with ” allele”. If a population doesn’t have SNP, it means they’re monomorphic at that genetic site, hence they have only the ancestral or “wild type” allele, and not the derived (“mutant” allele. A SNP is a nucleotide substitution which may or may not be present in all human populations. Since we’re talking about SNPs shared by all the populations, at least within the GWAS sample, it’s wrong to say some populations have the SNP and some don’t. You should say, that some populations have more of the positive or negative effect alleles at some SNPs.
Seriously, I mean it: I cannot discuss with someone who pretends to be an expert and lacks the basic training in my field and who would flunk genetics 101.

There is a correlation between skin color and educational achievements. Thus, making a predictor from SNPs determining skin color will give a rather good Piffer correlation, which works for ALL populations and is not at all random. From that it does not follow that skin color genes influence IQ.

I have this old teacher’s wish to get all to understand the issue correctly.

A PGS is a predictor of educational achievement. It is a good predictor and it predicts well. Summing over subpopulations it predicts subpopulation average educational achievement well. If a predictos is well made, it works for all populations quite well. Thus, you get a plot of PGS versus educational achievement and this plot is very close to a straight line. It is not random correlation for populations that were not used in the prediction stage. This is how a predictor of any property should work.

But a predictor is not an explanation of the property. It is a predictor and gets the values from (unexplained) individual scores for the property. These individual scores can have origin in education, genes, what ever. A predictor only matches these scores to genetic data that allows it to assign a good prediction to an individual. If subpopulations have different average values for the measured property, a correctly made predictor has this information in its weights. Therefore it uses for each individual the data from genes to predict inter-population and intra-population placement of the person with respect to this property. If we sum over intra-population variance, there is left only inter-population variance.

So, the predictor works for ALL populations, but it does not in any sense imply that the gene data used by the predictor has any direct relevance to the measured property. In the case of PGS there is some small relevance: the SNPs do have a small effect on IQ, but when summed over a population what remains is the population differences in IQ. These population differences can have any cause.

Read this many times before commenting anything. Try to understand it finally. There is no contradiction in what I wrote, nor is it in any way complicated. It is a simple thing about predictors. Predictors are used in many places in technical fields, and they have their properties. One must not confuse prediction with an explanation.

“So if I interpret this correctly, what you are saying is that despite the issue you raise the predictor still works across the different populations?”

I still am not sure you understand the problem. You always talk about some chopstick gene. Try to understand this correctly:

Assume you made a predictor, it can be linear or not. It has the property that given data of a person j (genes in this case) it outputs a prediction Pj. You know the individual score the person had for the measured property, Sj. Assume your person belongs to a subpopulation k.

The difference PGS-average score for the subpopulation k is exactly the sum over the subpopulation of the prediction Pj minus the individual score Sj. And this sum is by a mathematical identity exactly the same as the sum of Pj minus the subpopulation average score.

Because of this, you can replace your population you are testing with this PGS with another population where the individual genes are the same but each person j has the individual score as the subpopulation average. This gives exactly the same result.

Next, thing what can your predictor be doing in this situation. If it works, it gives the average score of the subpopulation as about the same as what the actual average score should be. It will do so at least in the case you had a sample of this subpopulation in the prediction stage, as there you checked that your predictor works rather well. So, it does predict this subpopulation well.

In order to give a subpopulation score correctly, in case the subpopulation has a higher score than the other subpopulations, your predictor must classify the test persons to the correct subpopulation. That is, your predictor uses the genes of person j only for assigning the person j to the correct subpopulation k. This happens with any genes. Not with some chopstick genes. It is exactly every single gene that has a different frequency in the subpopulation k than in the other populations. The predictor predicts to which subpopulation a person belongs to by looking at the set of SNPs he has and making a statistical prediction to what subpopulation he belongs. It cannot do anything else, it has no data for anything else.

Now, to your question. What if the subpopulation was not in the prediction sample? What happens them? You can see the answer. The predictor tries to assign a person to a subpopulation that has genes as the person has. It does not need to be a real subpopulation, one of those in the prediction sample. The predictor does not keep any list of subpopulations that were in the prediction sample. It assigns the person to an imagined subpopulation that would have this kind of a score. The prediction sample populations set a direction to where the IQ increases and where it decreases and how much. The imagined subpopulation is on some point in this direction.

Thus, assuming you had Finns or British with a larger number of positive SNPs in the prediction sample and some South European population with a smaller number of these SNPs, and the average country IQ scores are higher for the first two, the direction is that the score decreases if the number of positive SNPs decreases. That is, the predictor works rather well also on populations that were not in the prediction sample. It is not any random correlation. Yet, this is not a correlation that directly reflects the effect on IQ of these SNPs. When summed over a subpopulation, this predictor always uses SNPs only for identifying a subpopulation and the average score for this (imagined population for the predictor) subpopulation derives its value from the average scores of populations that were in the prediction sample.

In order to make a real predictor that does not have the prediction step, we would first measure separately in each population to see what is the real effect of each SNP and then sum this effect for each person. As the total effect of these SNPs to the IQ is only some 4-20% or less, this real and fully justified predictor that was not created by using a prediction stage would predict incorrectly. It would predict that East Asians are only <1 point above Europeans, since the total effect of the SNPs to the intelligence is only less than one point. We could make this kind of a predictor to work, but first one would have to find all genetic sources of IQ and then this predictor could correctly give the genetic IQ differences, which still would not plot a straight line with measured IQ differences, since measured IQ differences depend also on the environment.

I hope you now see the problem in Piffer's approach. If not, then I cannot explain it.

“By my engineering lights, if I have a predictor that works across all populations on Earth then that is indistinguishable in any practical sense from a predictor that is more theoretically satisfying.”

This is indeed a problem with engineers. They do not think of all possible cases. They are satisfied with something that seems to work. In engineering, the best is too good.

It is so that a predictor works as it is intended to work. Just from the way a predictor is built follows that it should work quite well in prediction. But this does not mean it is an explanation of the phenomenon. It is a heuristic matched to the phenomenon. You remember heuristics from your engineering studies. A heuristic formula is an incorrect formula based on an incorrect theory but such that it works quite well in some situations. Physics has many such formulas. Engineers and practical physicists used to make them and use them. They worked quite well.

The underlying theory that is the basis of the predictor is a linear theory of genes affecting IQ. If this theory is correct, then we should get rather correct not only average IQs but also SDs. It is difficult to say much of SDs of many developing countries as mostly SDs are not reported or the reporter standardizes the average and standard deviation for his purposes of making a comparison. This purpose is not to check the linear gene theory, so they do not give data for that. However, there is a claim that in some countries SD is smaller while the average IQ is larger. This situation could appear if some IQ increasing SNPs are nearly fixed. but there is too little data to say anything like this. Another reason for SD differences is the obvious: if parts of the population have different environments, you expect to see larger differences, if schools and everything else is similar, you expect smaller differences.

Concerning Piffer, I say only the following:
1) The data point of Ashkenazi Jews in Piffer’s last paper is incorrect as he makes the same error as Dunkel et al of comparing a sample of a subpopulation that was included in the prediction sample with another subpopulation that is genetically similar to a subpopulation in the prediction sample. This is an error and it means that Piffer fails, that is, the last paper should be corrected.
2) The other part of Piffer’s claim is not rigidly refuted, but it is also not shown. You may find his argument convincing, it is your evaluation. Many people do not find Piffer’s correlation convincing. I do not. There are several problems with it: there are alternative reasons that are not ruled out.

You think like an engineer: if Piffer’s correlation works, then the linear gene theory is correct. A mathematical argument showing that Piffer has an error must be false like the proof that bumblebees cannot fly. Only, there never was any such proof that bumblebees cannot fly. It is an urban legend. Mathematical problems are true problems and if it is simple mathematics, the problem is not imaginary and the argument is usually correct or easily shown incorrect. Piffer’s correlation may quite well work and still not give any strong reason to think that the underlying theory is correct. It is because there are too many unanswered questions of the theory.

“You should not automatically make those assumptions about people in softer fields. ”

Indeed, you do not understand what is written. You have this fixed idea that everybody is malicious and that all comments are criticizing you. It is like a victim complex: all are against you, while you are not doing anything wrong. So, people are not listening what you say, people are making ad hominem attacks against you, though you only want the best. I know this complex.

If you read my text from the post, you notice that I refer to supremacist views. There are White supremacist, Jewish supremacist, hard field supremacist, Russian supremacist and whatever supremacist views. While these views are based on observations that are to some extent true (like that the sub-Saharan African IQ is around 70 at the moment, and that soft field people hardly ever can follow mathematical arguments of hard science, and I naturally do not mean my simple arguments that I try to write as simple as possible, everybody can follow them, if not, it must be intentional), it does not mean that the supremacist view is correct. I do not support any of these supremacist views. I have personally many positive experiences of soft field people. It is true thast they cannot follow some explanations, but then you just should avoid such explanations and explain differently, and if you have no common language, explain in the most simple way even though it may look like you underestimate the other side by explaining in so basic way, it is still the best way. I taught and supervised for ten years soft field people.

In my opinion soft field people are quite intelligent in their ways, which is different from scientists, but in some things superior. But this can be also true of sub-Saharan Africans. You should not expect that they do well in IQ tests and school assignments, but they can be quite intelligent in a different way. Hard-line HBD people do not think so and in my opinion many of them have clearly supremacist views.

“Please, give up. You are uttering nonsense at every sentence, anyone with a minimal knowledge of population genetics can tell you’re not from the field and you’re badly in need of a remedial course in genetics.”

You are a troll. There are disinformation trolls in Unz, who pretend to be experts and try to control discussion. They usually come from one group of people.

I understand your points and it is true that lots of people do not get what heritability actually is. The definition of heritability is ambiguous in the first place. Usually it presupposes that a variance of some trait in a population can be partitioned into a sum of variances of genes and environment. But there can be cases when this is not true and the effects of genes and environments can’t be disentangled into a sum of two functions.

Actually the only correct way of looking at heritability is by finding a functions that predicts the trait. So if in a population with a trait T(G,E) then one can decompose it uniquely into three functions: T(G,E)=f(G)+g(E)+h(G,E). The uniqueness is established as follows:

(1) Find 1-dimensional functions f(G) that minimizes the rms norm ||T(G,E)-f(G)|| for all possible G.
(2) Find 1-dimensional functions g(E) that minimizes the rms norm ||T(G,E)-g(E)|| for all possible E.
(3) Define h(G,E)=h(G,E)- f(G)-g(E) as a residual that can’t be further disentangled.

This implies the following property: If variance Var[T(G,E)]=1 then Var[f(G)]+Var[g(E)]≤1. Furthermore covariances of h(G,E) with f(G) or g(E) can be negative.

In practice we may find only an estimate of f(G) function using polygenic scores. We can’t find g(E) function as the environment E can’t really be mathematized.

In case when variance of h(G,E) is non-zero we can’t define heritability as it is commonly (mis)understood. If we defined heritability as Var[f(G)] then the ‘environmentality’ Var[g(E)] does not necessarily complement it to 100%.

As far as I know nobody has figured out what twin based heritability means if h(G,E) is non-zero because everybody implicitly assumes that h(G,E)=0. Sometimes they look at cases of non-zero covariance Cov(G,E) but this deals only with the stratification issues of the data set and not the inherent inability to disentangle the G and E functional components

The most important objection to the twin studies based heritability via the Falconer’s formula that uses correlations of MZ and DZ twins is that the MZ twins evoke more similar environmental responses than DZ twins which leads to the overestimation of heritability. There are not many MZ twins raised apart to get a better estimate. Ideally if n-clones were created and given to many different (culturally) families only then we could estimate the variance Var[f(G)].

As there is no significant progress in finding polygenic scores that would predicts education attainment or IQ anywhere near what the twin studies postulate I am becoming to side with the critics of the twin studies.
_________

If we agree that heritability is given as Var[f(G)] one can easily imagine genetically identical societies where heritability for the same trait are different. Furthermore the mean and variance of the same trait distributions will be different even if genetic makeup of two societies is the same.

So much for being done. How about you just try addressing even one of my points in comment 244 then? I am particularly interested in how Afrosapiens came up with the idea that Beals had no African skull data. Can you support that?

Regarding this:

You will never find value in any opposing argument.

I refer you to this exchange in my comment 234:

You can’t have it both ways Res. If Rational Wiki is trustworthy with respect to Boskop Man then surely they are trustworthy with respect to your boy Dr. Thompson

That’s a fair point. So I’ll skip the RationalWiki reference and find something better. I was having trouble finding papers until I realized I needed to look further back since the Boskop man as a race idea was debunked so long ago. Here is a paper from 1958: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2795854

Now how about you show me somewhere you found value in an argument of mine. Or were you just projecting?

As for the rest of your comment, that extended session of projection and ad hominems is unworthy of response. Beyond a LOL which I will add as soon as I finish this comment.

It’s confirmation that the correlation is weak.

I do appreciate that this little snippet lacks dogmatism and self-righteous certitude. It’s appropriately laden with caveats and disclaimers.

Please, give up. You are uttering nonsense at every sentence, anyone with a minimal knowledge of population genetics can tell you’re not from the field and you’re badly in need of a remedial course in genetics.
Now you’re turning to the argument that Piffer’s results were a matter of luck, which in this case means post-hoc.
Piffer’s results cannot be post-hoc because they worked 3 times, in 2103, 2015 and 2019. They could have been post-hoc only the first time, but since the 2013 and 2015 paper had clear predictions, these were not post-hoc results.

Keep dreaming.

Your self-delusion is obviously of infinite scale. No reasonable person who reads our exchanges will come away thinking that I am afraid to debate you. I don’t want to squander my time and energy debating someone too dumb, too delusional and too invested (for whatever reason) in the cult of racist pseudoscience.

Res, you have the fanaticism and closed-mindedness of a hardline Islamic extremist. You cannot tolerate any notion or idea beyond the confines of your canon. You will never admit to being wrong. You will never find value in any opposing argument. You will never accept hard facts that are staring you in the face if those hard facts contravene your ideology. You cannot be reasoned with. You are literally a wall of stupidity and an apparent retiree with time on his hands and nothing better to do than troll here.