{"id":603,"date":"2007-11-19T12:59:58","date_gmt":"2007-11-19T18:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=603"},"modified":"2007-11-20T13:10:41","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T19:10:41","slug":"iq-and-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=603","title":{"rendered":"IQ and Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Sully, I find this fascinating article<\/a> on race and IQ. Read both pages, as the second gets into why environment is important.<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking about this subject for some time. Here are some random thoughts.<\/p>\n

  • First, the influence of environment looks very strong. To me, the most telling studies are those of adopted kids, which show the gap closing (although not to zero). I think of Michael Oher in The Blindside<\/i>. Neglected all his life, especially by a dysfunctional school system, he had a measured IQ of 80. Adopted by a rich white family and relentlessly tutored, his IQ was slightly over 100.\n

    No matter how you twist the data, someone with a low IQ doesn’t necessarily have it because of genetics. There are a number of environmental factors that have proven connections to IQ and it seems most of them are negative (and far more prevalent among blacks). Malnutrition, illness, neglect, drugs and poor education can all drive IQ down. These are not factors passed on to children — well, at least not in their genes. The Flynn Effect<\/a>, the sharp rise in western IQs over the last century, is clearly environmental (and larger than the present black-white IQ gap). Evolution doesn’t work that fast.<\/li>\n

  • Black IQs have closed in on white IQs over the last century, but stalled somewhat in the last 30 years. That might seem to argue that the gap between white and black intelligence is real. But is it coincidence that the gap stopped closing almost precisely when blacks were hit with the double-whammy of the welfare state and federalized education? Could liberal government be stalling the rise in black IQs? It’s certainly possible.<\/li>\n
  • IQ measures a certain kind of intelligence — abstract reasoning. This is useful for making money and having financial success. But anyone who has hung out with a bunch of high-IQ people knows they aren’t perfect. They often have social disabilities and lack practical knowledge (hence the embrace of “looks good on paper” ideas like liberalism). So what if blacks trails white in IQ? My experience is that they exceed them in social ability. Moreover, IQ may be biased in that it tests test-taking ability. The aforementioned Michael Oher wasn’t dumb, he had a learning disability. Tested appropriately, his IQ was normal.<\/li>\n
  • IQ is not everything. A lot of science fiction stories have the Earth being doomed and humanity putting together a survival boat of its best and brightest. I’m convinced that such a colony would be doomed. Smart people often have dumb ideas (communism, for example) and can see the world in terms of abstractions and ideas, instead of reality.\n

    Moreover, the drive to reproduce and create a new generation is, in my mind, a far more important characteristic than intelligence. What good is having a high IQ if you can’t pass it on? People complain about the fertility-intelligence anti-correlation. I complain about it all the time when I go to social functions and find I am the only scientist who has spawned. But in a way, this is nature telling us something important — high intelligence (as opposed to slightly above average) isn’t a survival characteristic. If it were, high IQ people would have more kids.<\/p>\n

    Update<\/b>: RPL points out, quite correctly, that the opportunity cost of having children is higher for high-IQ people. Agreed. But that opportunity cost is lower than it has ever been. And the reason for not having kids that I hear most often has nothing to do with career, but lifestyle.<\/p>\n

    It would be interesting to compare the career achievement of high-IQ people with kids to those of high-IQ people without. My personal experience is that my work ethic improved<\/i> after having a kid. Others’ mileage my vary.<\/li>\n

  • Doesn’t the fertility-IQ correlation doom us to a devolution like in Idiocracy<\/em>? I don’t think so. The trend shows that most powerful force in the universe — regression to the mean. People with IQs of 160 aren’t having kids, but people with IQs of 40 aren’t either. Smart people tend to have kids dumber than them; dumb people tend to have kids smarter. We all move back to the average.<\/li>\n

    Update<\/b>: One thing I thought I’d ad: IQ can only get you so far. I work in a high-IQ profession and it’s my experience that smartness helps, but had work and perseverance are the deciding factors. Progress in science, especially, is driven more toil than flashes of inspiration. What was it Edison said about invention?<\/p>\n

    Always remember, Charles Darwin didn’t have a high IQ. And he glimpsed the inner workings of the world — through years and years of hard work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The article argues as much for environment as for genetics. IQ isn’t what people think it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BzKF-9J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}