Race and intelligence

[D.P.]

My dad was schooled in South America and the West Indies, his IQ is 170+, i was schooled here and my IQ apparently is 160 according to tests i took as a teen, maybe genetics play as big a part as social conditions?

Genetics constitutes 50-60% of General ability (intelligence), with certain aspects of GA correlating up to 75% or more with genetics (while other aspects can be as little as 30%). Of course there is a big interaction between environment and genetics which is hard to quantify precisely.

 

[cleanbluesky]

Of course, to be a real quotient, then the averaging should have been done for each race and the questions selected such that every race gets an exact average of 100. Because that is the purpose of the IQ test, the average for any persons of any age is 100. The fact that the averages for most races are not 100 indicates a problem.

But wouldn't that be attempting to fit a method of measurement to support a theory (of equal intellect), rather than using a method of measurement to test a theory.

I think the IQ test measures the abilities that Europeans generally consider to represent intellect. The tests were performed by Westerners, hence the reflected results. I am sure that the Chinese equivalent would have different results between the races but I do not believe it in any way invalidates the results, makes the unrepresentative or that the races should be equal (or that we should strive to change the measurement criteria to serve a social agenda)

 

[D.P.]

IQ tests have and will always be a poor way of measuring IQ. It is not something that can be truely quantified in such a manor as a test that we are capable of performing. Someone who is not so geared to mathematics may have exceptional ability with manipulation of wood for instance. how would you measure that?

Also people who have done tests will do better at them with practice. They are a joke to take seriously.

Manipulating wood most probably doesn't require high levels of Fluid intelligence- I certainly wouldn't expect much correlation.

Your lack of faith in IQ tests probably comes form useless online tests. There is no accurate online IQ test, period. Real IQ tests are incredibly rigorous, extremely reliable, repeatable and highly valid with strong biological links (with genetics, brain size, life outcome).

People like to argue that there are different kinds of intelligence and that just because they don't do well on some IQ doesn't mean that they are not intelligent in another. This is BS. intelligence in multi-faceted, but all aspects are extremly well correlated, which leads to the term General Ability. e.g., there are differences between logical reasoning, visual reasoning and linguistic ability.

 

[D.P.]

But wouldn't that be attempting to fit a method of measurement to support a theory (of equal intellect), rather than using a method of measurement to test a theory.

I think the IQ test measures the abilities that Europeans generally consider to represent intellect. The tests were performed by Westerners, hence the reflected results. I am sure that the Chinese equivalent would have different results between the races but I do not believe it in any way invalidates the results, makes the unrepresentative or that the races should be equal (or that we should strive to change the measurement criteria to serve a social agenda)

Indeed. The results indicate how other races perform on an IQ test balanced for westerners. Not surprisingly there are differences (especially when you consider IQ is strongly genetically correlated). As such the results are sound. But you can't draw many conclusion form these differences.

What would be more interesting would be for an accurate IQ test to be formulated for, say Africans, and once this is highly validated by western scientists it can then be used to test western races. The comparative results would be more interesting.

 

[Efour]

Not really it shows that I am clever and darkies are dumb. Although chinks are clever too.

 

[cleanbluesky]

But you can't draw many conclusion form these differences.

What I think you are trying to say is that you dont want to draw conclusions of inequality from these findings, because of a moral/social/political agenda. I think that you'd feel free to draw conclusions were this to deal with anything other than race.

What would be more interesting would be for an accurate IQ test to be formulated for, say Africans, and once this is highly validated by western scientists it can then be used to test western races. The comparative results would be more interesting.

The way I think of it is that there are all sorts of skills which some animals have and some dont - none of which are neccessarily more valuable across the board but some can be more valuable in different environments.

For example, the balance and agility of a cat involve a cognitive ability far beyond humans.

 

[cleanbluesky]

Not really it shows that I am clever and darkies are dumb. Although chinks are clever too.

Changers are more smart than you, dumbo

 

[V4NT0M]

Are the stats reliable? They seem a bit off to me...

 

[D.P.]

What I think you are trying to say is that you dont want to draw conclusions of inequality from these findings, because of a moral/social/political agenda. I think that you'd feel free to draw conclusions were this to deal with anything other than race.

No, not at all. I fully agree that there are differences in intelligence between races. As I said earlier, intelligence is around 50% genetic. Different races have different genetics. Hence it is highly likely there are differences in intelligence. But trying to prove anything much from the graph is dubious at best. On a test of western intelligence other races perform differently, often worse, but within 1 standard deviation. That is not an exciting result.

The way I think of it is that there are all sorts of skills which some animals have and some dont - none of which are neccessarily more valuable across the board but some can be more valuable in different environments.

For example, the balance and agility of a cat involve a cognitive ability far beyond humans.

Indeed. I am doing a PhD within the "Laboratory of Intelligent Systems". We research bio-inspired robotics- using biological systems to improve the adaptability and performance of robots. Our 'bio-inspiration' comes from caterpillars, ants, bees, cockroaches, house-flies and soon I may go as far as using the rat hippocampus as a model for map building. Few people consider bees to be intelligent. They have 900,000 neurons, yet can control their flight, recognize patterns and shapes, can distinguish between flowers and other bees, measure distances and calculate compass directions from sunlight polarization, and communicate information about food source quality and location to other bees. They are incredibly complex and barely understood. To our research, bees are incredibly intelligent and the a robot bee would be the dream of artificial intelligence . I will retire a happy man if after devoting my life to this kind of research we have replicated hone-bee intelligence embodied in something the same size.

 

[starscream]

So you haven't formed any opinions based on your observations?

On an personal level I could form opinions of those specific people, but as an individual, I could not possibly have enough experience of people of all cultures, races, social and economic backgrounds to base a judgement of intelligence to an entire race on my obvservations alone.

 

[Visage]

For IQ testing, results are generally normalised so that the average is 100.

The datapoints on that graph clearly dont have that characteristic, so im not about to set any store in the authors ability to interpret data....

 

[IceBus]

IQ has nothing to do with actual intelligence. Being good at an IQ test simply proves that you're good at doing IQ tests. IQ tests are ethnocentrically biased towards Europeans/native English speakers so these results are no real surprise.

 

[Nitefly]

No, it's not at all, because genocide won't exert any selection pressure.

Completely wrong, but.... this thread is ridiculous anyway.

EDIT - Well its wrong if you thing Jews only get Jiggy with Jews

 

[cleanbluesky]

On an personal level I could form opinions of those specific people, but as an individual, I could not possibly have enough experience of people of all cultures, races, social and economic backgrounds to base a judgement of intelligence to an entire race on my obvservations alone.

And what of cultural patterns? Class differences? Age differences?

 

[D.P.]

IQ has nothing to do with actual intelligence. Being good at an IQ test simply proves that you're good at doing IQ tests. IQ tests are ethnocentrically biased towards Europeans/native English speakers so these results are no real surprise.

No, IQ is a measure of intelligence and Q tests have been developed and improved upon for over 100 years. Hundreds of millions are spent annually on improving these tests and diversifying their nature.

Theoretically the tests are not ethnocentric, but differences between races do occur as shown in the graph. However, in general they are designed to be normalized against age and race. As for langauge, while that often plays not part in the test, e.g. the famous (and highly valid) Raven's matrix test has no words or any language and simple instructions that can be explained without words.

 

[starscream]

And what of cultural patterns? Class differences? Age differences?

What of them?

Would IQ tests show differences between them? Probably. As I said, it is all about the interpretation of the results. Culture and Class for example are purely environmental factors which would help explain any differences. You could argue that race to a greater or lesser extent is similar.

What I would say, is that I don't believe on the basis of any of that evidence that certain races are genetically more intelligent than others.

 

[cleanbluesky]

What of them?

Would IQ tests show differences between them? Probably. As I said, it is all about the interpretation of the results. Culture and Class for example are purely environmental factors which would help explain any differences. You could argue that race to a greater or lesser extent is similar.

What I would say, is that I don't believe on the basis of any of that evidence that certain races are genetically more intelligent than others.

I didn't make myself clear, I was asking whether you notice patterns between these factors as well...

 

[starscream]

I didn't make myself clear, I was asking whether you notice patterns between these factors as well...

The problem again though, is that there are too many other environmental factors to consider, in addition to the fact that as an individual, my (and anyone elses) obvservations are from far too narrow a set of people to extrapolate any valid conclusions.

For example,

Looking at age; my personal observations of people are going to be primarily from my friends (who are roughly the same age group), family and work. Now if I were to make an observation about levels of intelligence between young and old people at work - Firstly, as much as I try to make my perception of intellegence unbiased, I would still be basing my interpretation on my subjective view.

Secondaly, where would the control of such observations be? If I were to examine the intelligence of all the 40-50 year olds I know at work, how would I account for the differences in their environment and upbringing. Even if you look at 1 person aged 50, test their IQ and compare it to when they were 30, there are still environmental factors that could account for any changes.

So to answer your question, yes I notice differences between people, and quite often you can notice paterns emerging from combinations of environmental factors. However, I wouldn't say that I have noticed a single social/economic factor that causes variences in intelligence, and certainly no genetic ones.

 

[wizard91]

Well that is completely unfair and biased because Europeans have the highest education, Hispanics could be any race, white,black,asian ect, aslong as they live in a Spanish/Portugese speaking country then thats what they get tagged with, so that is unfair. Native Americans are so few in numbers that it would be unfair to perform this survey on them and compare them with other races. I could be wrong, but meh.

 

[DaveF]

Have you heard of the Flynn Effect? Briefly, over the last 100 years, measured IQ has risen by approx 3 points per decade in most countries.

Of particular interest is that the average American child of 1932 would have a measured IQ of about 80 (using today's standardised tests). This is about the mean for the undeveloped countries now.