Subsaharan African Average IQ - a global, undeniable phenomenon

This reminds me of discussions we have had on advanced college degrees versus people who only finished high school. They have a different set of skill sets. I have known PHDs that could barely survive day to day living, Their expertise was limited to their chosen field, but they had no common sense.

I have know a number of people who only finished high school with relatively average scores who were brilliant when it came to non-academic subjects. For example, they might be able to take apart and repair an auto or a watch with no difficulty.
This example fits perfectly.

The Zulu would likely do poorly in a civilized society, but knew how to survive in their environment. Many generations of useful knowledge was passed down.

IQ tests are useful, but they are not the final authority on intelligence any more than the level of education is the final authority on intelligence.

 

Yes, because you have completely missed the key issue that determines the significance of the above information: what proportion of the populations with observed low IQ have suffered early malnutrition compared to the populations with higher IQs? Until you can provide that number, you have no argument.

And you do understand, I trust, that until about 150 years ago, extreme poverty and early malnutrition were common almost everywhere, not just in sub-Saharan Africa? You do understand, I trust, that even today, dysfunctional (by virtue not only of low IQ but drug addiction, physical disability, mental illness, etc.) parents who do not provide adequate nutrition to their children are not unique to sub-Saharan Africa?

 

As tested IQ is a pretty good predictor of various life outcomes we would expect to depend in large measure on intelligence, that is very unlikely to be true.

Only if those scholars had such low IQs that they did not understand how to construct a valid test of intelligence. In fact, psychometricians have been developing intelligence tests that are purely physiological, like measuring the brain wave response to a flashing light. How are you going to pretend that those tests are racist bull$#!+?

 

That only holds true for people who grow up in similar socio-economic and ethnic situations to the people who create the tests. It is extremely difficult for a homogenous group of test writers to create tests that aren't inherently biased against people outside of that group.

See above.

Two questions: 1. Is that the kind of test you're refering to when trying back your bigotry with science? 2. How do you account for testing of people who don't grow up around constantly flashing lights? A person who grows up in Vegas or even New York City will have a vastly different response to such a test compared to someone who grows up on a farm.

 

No. Such claims only prove you have no idea how such tests are constructed. All you have is a faith-based belief in racial genetic equality.

No it's not, as long as they know a lot more about IQ test construction than you do. You seem to think IQ test constructors are a bunch of white heterosexual Protestant males sitting around brainstorming trivia questions.

Back atcha.

Speaking of bigotry, you just proved your bigotry against empirical psychometrics. You have already decided that any empirical result that conflicts with your racial genetic equality dogma must be based on bigotry.

See? You just know nothing whatever of the relevant science. The brain wave response pattern has nothing to do with whether you've previously seen any flashing lights or not.

 

You were provided with the sources to answer your own question regarding the proportion of the populations and duly noted that you failed to acknowledge that you were WRONG about the SIGNIFICANCE that childhood malnutrition ROLE plays when it comes to IQ. Deflecting to what occurred in the past is IRRELEVANT since we are discussing CURRENT levels of IQ.

 

Where? I saw no such data.

Where was the effect of childhood malnutrition on population IQs calculated?

You are the one who invoked the multi-generation argument.

 

Try drought, famine, a redistribution of populations as a result of colonialist rule/occupation, which also resulted in a change from a predominantly agrarian culture to industrial/international market as it's main source of income and such.

Tell you what, let's stop all imports of foods from nations that you deem are intellectually inferior to Caucasians...then lets see how you superior folk handle the aftermath. Would be interesting to see.

 

Smart people can rise to such challenges.

The biggest effect would be the immiseration of those inferior nations.

 

1. No, you gave you personal opinion, supposition and conjecture...NOT valid, documented facts from a valid source, as I did. Big difference.
2. Not quite, as IQ wonks hell bent on proving racial superiority always disregard differences in access to levels of education, differences in family life, social structure of the society, etc. That the initial sources here try to play down or ignore just the medical significance in malnutrition speaks volumes of the sheer incompetence of the "analysis" to prove racial inferiority/superiority via IQ tests.
3. What bias conclusions? See #1 & #2. This genetic superiority blather always falls short when one does true comparisons on equal footing. Someone else on this thread put forth the proposal that if you take the genetically "superior" folk from their environment and plunk them down in the environment of the so called "inferior" folks WITHOUT ANY ASSISTANCE FROM THE LATER...the outcome at best would not be pretty. Carry on.

 

No, you are just repeating the same falsehoods I have already disproved. Your source was not, repeat, NOT valid, because it said nothing that supported your claim, which was therefore a non sequitur. The fact that childhood malnutrition can permanently impair an individual's cognitive development does not establish that childhood malnutrition affected a sufficiently different fraction of the populations in question to account for the IQ difference.

Like who, specifically?

Blatant poisoning the well fallacy. Dismissed as obvious propaganda.

No, that's just a bald falsehood, and proves you have done no reading whatsoever in the field. Psychometrics researchers have for several decades made painstaking efforts to account and correct for such confounding variables, and the field is crowded with scientists who personally wanted those variables to have the effects you claim, and just could not make the data agree.

No, that is just more of your anti-scientific garbage. To have an argument, you would need to provide data showing exactly how much more prevalent childhood malnutrition was in the low-IQ population. Your "source" did not provide that data, and you have made no effort to do so either.

Indeed. Your prior decision to accept no data that challenge your assumptions is self-evident.

That's just baldly false, as adoption studies show.

How on earth could that be relevant?

 

IQ tests are constructed by college-educated people who live in a privileged socio-economic class. I certainy believe that those people attempt to create tests that aren't biased against people outside of that class, but they simply can't.

Yes, yes, intolerance of intolerance is also intolerance. What a quaint idea you've dredged up from the early internet. Anyway, my conclusion has absolutely nothing to do with "racial genetic equality dogma." Rather, it's based on decades of research indicating that IQ tests generally have some inherent bias.

How could it not? Sounds like either you or the originators of that test don't know anything about brain development. Also, how would you correlate such a response to intelligence? Did they give the original subjects an IQ test to go along with it? Garbage in, garbage out.

 

So, scientists, then.

I see. So, when scientists create a test of people's running speed, it's automatically going to show that scientists run faster than other people? When they create a hearing test, it will show that scientists have more acute hearing than other people?

Science is based on the principle that reality is objective, that it is the same for everyone. So when a scientist makes an observation using a measuring instrument like an IQ test, others can can use that instrument or their own instruments, or try to create better ones to replicate those observations or improve on them. That is how our understanding progresses. To claim, as you do, that scientists cannot create an accurate instrument to measure intelligence because of who they are is nothing but absurd and disingenuous anti-scientific garbage.

You are blatantly bigoted against data that contradict your dogma of racial genetic equality.

It is based on nothing else. Certainly it is not based on even a passing acquaintance with the field.

Oh, really? Which research might that be? And how has that bias been detected, other than by reference to a measurement instrument deemed to be more accurate?

By not being what you incorrectly assume it is.

That is an absurd and cretinous claim that only proves you don't know anything about either brain development or the scientific method.

By being willing to know facts of objective reality.

So you are saying there is no way to measure intelligence even in theory? What was the garbage that went into your brain that resulted in that garbage coming out?

 

IQ testing has been around for a century or so. You don't think there has been testing done to establish whether coaching can bring vast increases in IQ? I would be surprised if that study has not been done.

 

They don't want yer plastic trinkets.

 

Didn't the Zulus end up losing?

 

1. Smart people did....despite imperialist occupation and quasi-subjugation....that is why you no longer have a Belgian Congo, or an apartheid South Africa or a "Rhodesia". The smart people are still fighting a "global market" that wants to dictate how and when to spend resources, and with the legacy of generations induced industrialization that now comes in conflict with nature. Funny, the "smart" people of European and North American countries seem to have problems with their garbage, deforestation, disease, hunger, etc. Rise up!

2. Do a spell check, because I don't know what "immiseration" means. But what cracks me up is your pathetic logic....THINK, my man, THINK. If I am the SOURCE of many of your food and mineral wealth, and instead of exporting I distributed that among my population...I eliminate hunger, poverty and am in strong position to TRADE, importing ONLY WHAT I DEEM FIT TO SERVE MY COUNTRY. You, on the other hand, would have to scramble fast to replace the food and material imports that your economy depends on.....relying on your internal resources...and since a whole LOT of stuff in America is and cannot be produced locally, your economy goes through some serious changes....with the working/middle class folk getting the brunt of the short comings.

 

Here's the initial exchange http://www.politicalforum.com/index...ble-phenomenon.575156/page-17#post-1071879679

Now to address this latest smoke screen:

1. Again, your personal opinion, supposition and conjecture can be repeated six ways to Sunday.....doesn't mean it's accurate or true WITHOUT ANY VERIFICATION BY VALID, DOCUMENTED SOURCES. I provided such, you did not. Claiming something is far different then proving such using facts and logic. You make generalized accusations about my source, yet you can't logically or factually disprove any point of it. Essentially you're just parroting and blowing smoke, as it was shown that the IQ study you favor dismisses entire sections of the population in questions malnourishment, bad schools, etc. in comparisons to countries/areas that are not equal in that respect.

2. YOU, the author of the OP, Shockley, the Bell Curve authors, Richard Lynn & Tatu Vanhanen … I could go down memory lane, but hopefully you get the picture.

3. If you are referring to the people listed in #2, yes I agree...all disproved a poisonous propaganda when analyzed properly or peer reviewed.

4. GMAFB, will ya please! the Bell Curve was peer reviewed and trounced, Shockley was humiliated for his sub standard "twins" basis, and the jokers who penned IQ and Global Inequality got nailed for non-inclusive research data. This was done by scientist and researchers of equal (if not higher) station in the field (s). You'd know this if you had taken off your blinders and objectively read the contrary analyses. Bottom line: proving racial superiority has been a sticking point with many white folk since Columbus' day. It's almost a congenital urge with some. Why else would this type of "research" be? But the nano-second that research does NOT prove white superiority, folk like you come to rescue....unfortunately with holes in your nets and hoses.

5. That is not true, as the chronology of the posts shows. I read the information you worship, then I researched the critiques of such, and put them forward. You either did not read them or are misrepresenting their content. Again and again, you keep putting your personal opinion, supposition and conjecture out there as fact. Well, prove it. I dare you to excerpt EXACTLY what my source material says that backs your claim. If you can't, that makes you a liar.

6. Not quite, as we see here; https://pumpkinperson.com/2019/01/30/a-closer-look-at-the-minnesota-transracial-adoption-study/

7. Because it points to what you learn and what you know, not some asinine near-religious belief of innate racial superiority. That you can't deny the example speaks volumes to the schizoid approach needed to support your drivel. Carry on.

 

Another MAGA hat example of "genius"
I guess he couldn't keep that pointed hood in his pocket for long.

 

Didn't the Nazi's end up losing?

 

I believe they did. But it took a coalition of White Supremacist nations to do it.

 

From you: "Limited increases in IQ scores is a generalization and a not a study that controlled for other factors, so it can't be considered a valid conclusion."

Here is a study:
Does Brain Training Really Increase IQ?

 

Right: if you understand what an item means, you have a much better chance of answering it correctly. E.g., if you look at a sudoku puzzle but don't know the rules by which it was constructed, you have no chance of figuring it out. But if you know the rules, you can in theory use them to discover the solution. With practice, and by learning some solving techniques, you can get a lot better at solving sudoku puzzles. Good IQ test items are not like sudoku puzzles: anyone can easily understand what the items mean; there are no special solving techniques to learn; and practice won't help you get better at solving them.

I don't think any knowledgeable person claims it is.

Or it could just mean that intelligence takes time to mature.

No, my point was that statistical measures of the effects of genetics and environment will depend on the variance in the population: more genetic diversity will reduce the role of environment, while more environmental diversity will reduce the role of genetics. I.e., it's not the absolute but the relative effect.

We want to be able to separate their effects; we just have to be careful when using statistical measures to do so.

Nonsense. Science is founded on the assumptions that the universe makes sense, that like causes produce like effects, etc.

That's not an assumption. It's an indisputable fact.

Now that's an assumption. There are lots of other factors in the development of advanced civilization.

Right. All living organisms are at exactly the same step on the evolutionary ladder: so far, so good.

As far as evolution is concerned, the only way to be inferior is to be extinct. The point about IQ is that intelligence almost certainly explains a lot of the difference in people's success in meeting the demands of a complex modern civilization. If you can't understand complex relationships, you are going to struggle in a typical modern workplace, especially to do work that requires such understanding. So the degree to which intelligence is genetically determined and cannot be improved by environmental interventions -- which twin studies suggest is significant -- is an important datum.

Not better. Just more likely to be successful at tasks that require understanding.

Right. Which is why we need more research and better measuring instruments to separate the components of intelligence that are genetic and thus immutable, those that are physiological but not genetic, therefore in some way environmental, and thus susceptible to intervention before the fact if not remediation after the fact, and those that are learned and therefore changeable even after the fact.

No. It has nothing to do with anyone's idea of what is vital and relevant to society. IQ test items like the Raven abstract picture puzzles are utterly irrelevant to society. They have been designed specifically not to resemble any task relevant to ordinary life and society that people might already know and be practiced at.

Yes, and that process is not easy to understand (Google "cargo cult"), so the ability to understand -- i.e., intelligence -- is vital to success in dealing with it.

Yes, well, science does progress.

Right. It's the political and ideological abuse of the science that is troubling. But IMO political and ideological objections to science are just as troubling.