Response to comments on race and intelligence

What expertise do you have to write about this subject?

I’m an amateur psychologist, sociologist, and economist. In my blog, I often post my original research using publicly available databases such as the General Social Survey. My most interesting original research includes my findings that religious people are less intelligent, that high intelligence is actually associated with lower income when education is held constant, and that more intelligent people have less sex.

Ad hominem attacks

Don’t know what “ad hominem” means? I’ve grabbed the following definition from someone’s website:

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting).

I’ve been deleting most of these comments, because it’s my blog and I don’t have to let people insult me. But if I may psychoanalyze the people who make such attacks, they are doing so because the evidence in favor of a genetic explanation is so powerful that it creates cognitive dissonance, and the only way they have to work off the cognitive dissonance is to attack the messenger.

Race realism

I’m going to be using the term “race realism” in the remainder of this blog post. Race realism is the recognition of the fact that there are genetic differences between the races, especially with regard to their effect on average intelligence and average behavior. In contrast, the false but politically correct egalitarian view is that the races are exactly the same in average intelligence and behavior, and that it is only present and past racial discrimination and cultural bias that prevents all races from performing at the same level.

Existentialist arguments

This is a common argument used by race-realism deniers. “No one really knows what race is. No one really knows what intelligence is. We don’t really know the meaning of any of this.” These types of sentiments eventually lead to jumping out of a high window, because who can really say if there’s any point to living?

Ironically, the same people who make these existentialist arguments in this context have no difficulties pronouncing people they don’t like (such as George W. Bush) to be stupid. And they have no problems finding “racism” everywhere, but if we don’t really know what race is how can you accuse someone of being racist? If race is just a meaningless social concept, why get all upset when a high percentage of black children are unable to read at grade level?

If you were to read the actual literature on the subject, such as The g Factor by Arthur Jensen, you will see that there is a huge amount of empirical evidence demonstrating the reality of intelligence, which cognitive scientists refer to as g. How much evidence? Well the bibliography of the The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray is 58 pages long. And there has been a lot of additional compelling evidence since that book was published.

Your analysis of the DTNBP1 gene doesn’t prove anything

This refers to the blog post that was linked to by the New York Times. It’s correct that, in isolation, the analysis of the DTNBP1 gene doesn’t prove a whole lot. But let me explain again why it’s significant.

There is a huge body of psychological research proving intelligence is a genetically inherited trait, and that the average intelligence of races differs. Once again, I refer people to The g Factor. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no need to discover the actual biological processes that cause differences in intelligence in order to conclude beyond any doubt that such processes do exist. But this evidence has never been enough for the race-realism deniers. “Show us proof of these ‘genes’” they would say, and they would surround the word “genes” by quotes as if to mock the whole idea.

But it has now been acknowledged that intelligence is indeed an hereditary trait. There are many other genetic differences between the races, the most obvious being physical appearance. If intelligence is a genetic trait, and if races have been separated from each other for thousands of years, then it logically follows that different evolutionary pressures in different environments would result in different average cognitive abilities in different races. But against all logic, race-realism deniers insist that whatever genes might control intelligence must be distributed exactly equally in every race’s gene pool.

However, genetic researchers have now discovered several genes that affect cognitive abilities, and one can go to the HapMap database and demonstrate that those genes are not distributed the same in the different races. So the last refuge of race-realism deniers, that whatever genes might control intelligence must be distributed exactly equally in every race’s gene pool, that argument is proven to be false.

I know a really smart black person

So do I. Several. People who think that the existence of some very smart black people disproves race realism don’t understand that intelligence is approximately normally distributed, and that the normal distributions of different population groups overlap. For example, the average man is taller than the average women, but there are some women who are taller than the average man, and there are some men who are shorter than the average women.

To help put this in perspective, there is a two standard deviation difference between male and female height, but only a one standard deviation between white and black intelligence in the United States.

IQ tests were created by white people, therefore they are biased against people of other races

This has been disproven in the book Bias in Mental Testing by Arthur Jensen. A Time Magazine article summarizes the findings of the book:

Among Jensen's conclusions:

> The argument that whites do better than blacks because they have larger vocabularies is wrong. In fact, blacks do slightly better on verbal tests than on nonverbal ones.

> IQ tests, both verbal and nonverbal, are not expressions of "white culture" that penalize blacks. Surprisingly, blacks do better on "culture-loaded" tests than on "culture-fair" tests that are carefully constructed to root out references more familiar to middle-class whites than to blacks.

> The idea that culture-fair tests framed by whites will inevitably favor whites is also wrong. In a Japanese language version of the U.S.-conceived Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Japanese youngsters outscored American whites by an average of six points.

> The major tests used by schools, employers and the armed forces are very accurate in predicting future success or failure for native-born English-speaking Americans.

> When white and black children of equal socioeconomic status are tested, whites score an average of twelve IQ points higher than blacks.

And an additional very important point:

Those who belittle the tests because whites do them better than blacks, Jensen says, are evading the issue that all attempts to make the tests fairer have failed to raise blacks' scores. His conclusion: "None of these attempts to create highly culture-reduced tests has succeeded in eliminating, or even appreciably reducing the mean differences between certain subpopulations—races and social classes—in the United States."

The binary argument

People who make what I call the binary argument say that people who talk about intelligence are saying that a single number, one’s IQ score, says every possible thing worth saying about a person and that one’s entire worth as a human being is tied up in the one number. They then say this proves that intelligence is completely irrelevant to anything.

Obviously there are many other aspects to our humanity besides our ability to reason and learn. But that doesn’t mean that one’s intelligence is not important in some aspects of one’s life. As I mentioned above, I’ve done some original research into this area, so I know as well as anyone that high intelligence isn’t the end all and be all of human existence. However, it should be noted that average differences in intelligence between races seems to be especially important in explaining average differences in economic outcomes between races.

Another type of binary argument people make is that because one’s environment can have an impact on one’s intelligence as measured by test scores, this means that environment is so powerful it trumps any possible influence of genes. Once again, people are unable to understand that both effects can be important, or that environment can be important but perhaps slightly less important than one’s genotype.

David Altshuler makes the binary argument in the NY Times article:

“I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life researching how much genetic variability there is between populations,” said Dr. David Altshuler, director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass. “But living in America, it is so clear that the economic and social and educational differences have so much more influence than genes. People just somehow fixate on genetics, even if the influence is very small.”

He’s saying because there are some influences caused by environment, this must prove that genes account for nothing. I should point out that his title makes him sound like he might be an expert, and although I’m sure he’s an expert on genetics in general, I doubt that he’s read the psychological research about intelligence, such as the Arthur Jensen books mentioned above, so with respect to the relative impact of environment and genes on one’s observed intelligence, he’s making a layman’s argument based on lack of any real knowledge of the science of g.

Correlation doesn’t prove causation

This is an argument that some people have ironically used in comments attempting to discredit my posts. This is ironic because the egalitarian position is that the lower economic status of the average black family in America is what causes blacks to underperform on standardized tests. They are unable to grasp that cause and effect can be reversed, and that it is lower average black intelligence that causes blacks in America to be the most economically disadvantaged group.

Race-realism deniers are also unable to understand that there can be a vicious circle, or a feedback loop, in which genotype and environment interact to suppress black intellectual achievement, relative to whites, more so than if everyone could be raised in identical environments. I think it’s pretty obvious that there are a whole host of advantages to being raised by upper-middle-class parents rather than by underclass parents (or more typically among the underclass, just parent without the plural), but that doesn’t mean that genotype isn’t also very important to one’s ultimate outcome in life.

The end of today’s post

I am sorry but I have other things I need to do today besides write more, and probably I have already written more than most people will bother to read.

I would urge anyone leaving a comment to check this post to make sure your comment hasn’t already been answered.

Comments

[verde]

I also wish there was more explicit statements that this isn't about Black people. If you are White and your child scores 90 on IQ test as a child, this kid is not college material, no matter what you do, he will struggle if forced on the college prep track. How would a White parent deal with this information, are they an IQ realist and give up the college dreams. Or that various white groups are less intelligent than others, e.g. southern Italians vs Dutch. My question, why solely focus on Black IQ difference when the difference occurs between many other ethnic groups.

I wonder why these articles never mention the immigration policy considerations, the black IQ difference is not the biggest issue our country is facing, the Hispanic one is more important considering our problems with immigration.

When I read all these blogs and articles it makes it seem like everyone in the world is above average in IQ and Blacks are the only ones below, when this is just false. I think there will more and more resistance to "race realism", when your Sicilians, Gulf Arabs, Albanians, South Asians etc, realize this is just not about Black people, if there is an IQ hierarchy in the world, Blacks are not the only ones at bottom.

[DML]

Half Sigma's comment on Dr. David Altshuler's observation:

"He’s saying because there are some influences caused by environment, this must prove that genes account for nothing."

The problem is that Dr. Altshuler did NOT say that! He says the influence is small and perhaps overwhelmed by environmental conditions. If Einstein was born in a ghetto to unloving parents, he doesn't become one of the greatest theoretical physicists. One's genes cannot completely reverse the effect of environment.

*However*, Einstein also doesn't become one of the greatest theoretical physicists if he's born to a loving environment and sent to the best schools, while being mentally retarded.

That's an extreme example to illustrate Dr. Altshulter's real point. The reality is that intelligence-wise, most people are average (by definition), but environmental influence varies wildly. Many believe environment is the dominant variable when determining "intelligence".

Half Sigma goes on to speculate:
"I should point out that his title makes him sound like he might be an expert, and although I’m sure he’s an expert on genetics in general, I doubt that he’s read the psychological research about intelligence, such as the Arthur Jensen books mentioned above, so with respect to the relative impact of environment and genes on one’s observed intelligence, he’s making a layman’s argument based on lack of any real knowledge of the science of g."

Let me understand this. You dismiss the opinions of the Director of Medical and Population Genetics as "layman's arguments" while speculating wildly on what he has or has not read? This is why all your arguments break down so easily under the lightest scrutiny. It's not that you don't have interesting points, but you summarily dismiss good arguments against your stance with lots of arm waving like this.

*You* are the layman here, not Dr. Altshuler. Perhaps you need to re-read your own blog post on cognitive dissonance.

[APH]

Altshuler: "But living in America, it is so clear that the economic and social and educational differences have so much more influence than genes. People just somehow fixate on genetics, even if the influence is very small.”

Does Mr. Altshuler ever ask himself the source of these oh-so clear "economic and social and eductional differences"? I too live in America but Mr. Altshuler's statement doesn't resonante. There is hardly any national fixation on genetics when explaining differences between groups. Instead the public discourse is always about "lack of resources", "institutional racism", and other elaborate excuse theory drivel to steer the conversation away from a possible genetic component. Moreover, the cultural differences (is this the same as social?) between groups are also rarely discussed, because nobody wants to paint one group as culturally inferior. It's time for a return to intellectual honesty in this debate ASAP.

[mgl]

Many believe environment is the dominant variable when determining "intelligence".

Evidently. But they do seem to have terrible trouble finding supporting evidence for this belief.

This is why all your arguments break down so easily under the lightest scrutiny.

Oh. That must be why the anti-IQ forces on this blog have been crushing the opposition with unsupported assertions, insults, and proud expressions of ignorance.

By the way, DML, I believe I asked you yesterday to provide examples of IQ proponents who "pin everything on genetics" as you claimed they do. Any luck with that, or are you still looking?

[Dresidi]

I find the term "race realism" rather intellectualy dishonest. No offense, but it takes a profound ignorance of anything beyond genetic factors when looking at human social dynamics, and likewise a complete ignorance of the human social sciences to believe it.

[Loki on the run]

However, it should be noted that average differences in intelligence between races seems to be especially important in explaining average differences in economic outcomes between races.

It should also be noted that average differences in intelligence between classes is important in explaining average differences in economic outcomes between classes.

People of higher intelligence, on average, rise up, while people of lower intelligence, on average, sink down.

[Marc]

Verde,

Do you have any data on the IQs of Sicilians and southern Italians? The average Italian IQ is 102, which makes them seventh in the world, tied with the Dutch. I can't find any breakdown by region.

Argentina is *heavily* southern Italian (about 50%, I think) and the average IQ of Argentina is 96, one point less than Finland, on par with Russia, and higher than Ireland (93). So I don't see any evidence that Sicily and southern Italians are "at the bottom" of the global IQ hierarchy, especially considering that the global average runs at about 90.

[verde]

Well its something that I read at Steve Sailors blog but I did find a website that says southern Italians are different from northern ones. Granted it seems to be a WN website but interesting info. Maybe Sicily was a bad example to an IQ extreme but the point is that it an IQ difference does exist and may explain why they(Italian Americans) tend to have higher crimes rates in America than say Dutch Americans.

The discussion should be made broader, so that it will seem less racist and more about sincerely wanting to understand the implications of IQ in society.

[verde]

I don't if my last post went through but here is another link re: difference between N and S Italians

[Peter]

Argentina is *heavily* southern Italian (about 50%, I think) and the average IQ of Argentina is 96, one point less than Finland, on par with Russia, and higher than Ireland (93). So I don't see any evidence that Sicily and southern Italians are "at the bottom" of the global IQ hierarchy

And Argentina isn't wholly European-origin either, with some traces of Indian mixture.

[Peter]

This is a common argument used by race-realism deniers. “No one really knows what race is. No one really knows what intelligence is. We don’t really know the meaning of any of this.” These types of sentiments eventually lead to jumping out of a high window, because who can really say if there’s any point to living?

As the old saying goes, if you show a random sample of people pictures of 100 Swedes, 100 Nigerians and 100 Chinese, almost every single one of them will correctly classify all 300 pictures.

[Brandon Berg]

"But living in America, it is so clear that the economic and social and educational differences have so much more influence than genes."

"But living in America, it is so clear..." is a red flag. You don't start a sentence like that when you have hard evidence. On the other hand, his comments are being filtered through a journalist, so who knows?

[Hujuty]

Thanks Dresidi for pointing out the dishonesty at work here; though I think it is probably ignorance that comes off as dishonesty.

It's funny that the "politics of common sense" entails the fetishization of social science data and the failure to put it in anything like the proper context. It is unsurprising that unphilosophical people worship "science" and abuse it to meet their own ends. This is a dominant theme in all kinds of contemporary arguments on left and right. The human sciences cry out for serious consideration of the influences of CULTURE and HISTORY in addition to the "scientific" "measurement" of people's capacities.

Read Thomas Sowell's stuff on race and IQ, it acknowledges the relevant research and then goes into various important factors, including the very great importance of what Timothy Leary et al would call "set and setting."

The discussion of Northern and Southern Italian IQ in a vacuum (so to speak) also points to the inadequacy of thought in this blog and among its commenters. The South of Italy was for hundreds of years far more feudal and agricultural in its economy than the North. But gee, let's forget all that, measure those folks today, and tell ourselves we're done with it and we've done a good day's work.

Is it ignorance or dishonesty? I don't know. I am sure that some people are motivated by the need to rationalize washing our hands of the tragic and ongoing history of race oppression in the U.S.

[david]

Obviously every thinking person agrees with what you are saying. People like to hide from the truth.

We know Einstein was smarter than us, right? People still don't know what it was in his brain that made him able to be more creative.

Maybe we are still very far away from knowing how genetics influences the structure of our brain. Maybe not. But we all know the truth that not all groups have the same intelligence.

[randomizer]

>>This is a common argument used by race-realism deniers. “No one really knows what race is..."

To those who would make this argument, ask them if they are willing to abandon affirmative action and diversty programs in college admissions and hiring. After all, who can define race anyway?

It might almost be worth it to make the following trade: give up research into genetics and intelligence in exchange for an end to affirmative action. And certainly no more NY Times articles along the model of "Misfortune X Has Occurred; Minorities Hardest Hit."

[Tara]

I have a lot of trouble believing any of these differences are actually statistically significant. Addtionally, in the past 100+ years in particular, people are fairly mixed, especially in America. How can you tease out the true IQ difference amongst races?

If IQ tests are supposed to judge average intelligence, perhaps they need to be adjusted so that all subgroups test on the average. Then test to see if such differences still occur.

Finally, what becomes of this information if it was ever to be widely accepted? Mandatory racial inter-mingling to mitigate the differences? Further ghettoization of gene pools with lower average IQ scores?

[BigDon]

All domestic dogs are CANIS FAMILIARIS. Dog breeds do not exist as all dogs have 99% of their DNA the same. All dogs are equally violent and equally trainable. The link between dog DNA and dog trainability/performace is unconfirmed. With sufficient training, poodles can consistently kill pit bulls. Your local police prefer poodles for K-9 dogs. Greyhounds train harder in order to outrun dachshunds; dachshunds that attempt to catch greyhounds are accused by their fellow dachshunds of "acting greyhound…". Chihuahuas make good hunting dogs; they are also good for herding sheep. Given a proper environment and nurturing, and given SUFFICIENT MONEY, the DOG ACHIEVEMENT GAP can be eliminated----------------All humans are HOMO SAPIENS: humans are EXEMPT from the fundamental rules of BIOLOGY.

Mandatory racial inter-mingling to mitigate the differences? Further ghettoization of gene pools with lower average IQ scores?

Don't worry Tara, they are already working on it:

http://www.breedingbetweenthelines.com

[Gil]

'Correlation doesn’t prove causation' - to be used when there is evidence for that which you don't like. If it does suit your personal preferences then 'correlation does prove causation'.

[mattoon]

Please explain exactly who believes that for races to have equivalent genetic cognitive potential that genes controlling intelligence must be distributed exactly the same?

If we hypothetically observed two races of equivalent cognitive ability, that does not predict that allele frequencies at genetic loci governing intelligence would be the same in both of them. Intelligence is undoubtedly what is referred to as a quantitative trait. That is to say, it is governed by many loci, most of which probably have a small effect on it. What this means is that many different combinations of alleles can produce exactly the same phenotype. If you scale this up, it means that many different allele frequency distributions across many loci could very easily produce the same distribution of phenotypes in a population. Thus, the two hypothetical races may have equivalent trait values that arise from different underlying genotypes.

Now, I'm not saying that there are no genetic differences in IQ between races, because it's quite possible that there are. Your argument, however, that the existence of a single locus that has an effect on intelligence and whose alleles are unequally distributed among races means those races have significantly different distributions of intelligences is patently wrong.

Lastly, given the focus of this blog on genetic issues, I would like to make a point I think readers of this blog might find interesting. Population genetic theory has established quite clearly that only a very low level of migration between two divergent populations is, in the absence of selection, necessary to completely homogenize those populations. The rule of thumb is that one migrant per generation in either direction is enough. In other words, given the rate of interracial marriage in the United States at least, differences in allele frequencies between populations of blacks, whites and hispanics are more than likely eroding at a very rapid pace. What do you make of that?

[Marc]

I would like to make a point I think readers of this blog might find interesting. Population genetic theory has established quite clearly that only a very low level of migration between two divergent populations is, in the absence of selection, necessary to completely homogenize those populations. The rule of thumb is that one migrant per generation in either direction is enough. In other words, given the rate of interracial marriage in the United States at least, differences in allele frequencies between populations of blacks, whites and hispanics are more than likely eroding at a very rapid pace. What do you make of that?

Who cares? It doesn't have anything to do with what we are talking about, which is the situation at present, not in a homogenized future.

As for your other point, you may want to re-read Half Sigma's words on the subject. He never said what you seem to think he said.

[William]

Intelligence is undoubtedly what is referred to as a quantitative trait. That is to say, it is governed by many loci, most of which probably have a small effect on it. What this means is that many different combinations of alleles can produce exactly the same phenotype.

This is correct -- in theory. But let us not elevate theory over observed fact.

It appears that lungs adapted to respiration at high altitudes have evolved separately in different populations (a population of Eastern Africans, a population of Tibetian Asians, and a population of Andean Amer-Indians, if I recall correctly) In other words different genotypes have conspired by chance, circumstance and duration to produce the same result.

But saying different patterns of genotypes may have produced the same potential for IQ among Swedes, Ibos and Chinese is like saying different patterns of genotypes may have produced the same potential for height among the Dutch, Sudanese and Japanese. That just isn't what we observe in fact. Blacks adopted into upper-middle class white families still show a 15 point gap in average IQs compared to their white siblings.

[mattoon]

The fact that it is easily possible that equivalent phenotypic distributions can be created from non-equivalent distributions of alleles influencing a quantitative trait plainly invalidates the argument that unequal allele frequencies between races proves that their phenotypic distributions are unequal.

As an aside, I am quite sure that there is no empirical justification for saying that we don't observe this phenomenon because it is doubtful that anybody has identified two genetically isolated populations with similar phenotypes for a quantitative trait and then gone in and identified most of the loci involved and quantified allele frequencies at those loci. You would get that paper in a pretty high profile journal if you managed it.

Regarding the 15 point IQ gap, I am very skeptical, but I would love it if somebody could point me to primary literature on this subject (no books please) as I am pretty new to it but have the background to think about these issues...