Friday, April 29, 2005
RACE & IQ
This is another from the Jerry Pournelle site. There had been a discussion running since Tuesday on the dangerously politically incorrect subject of the statistically lower IQ shown by some racial groups (Negroes) & the less dangerous but more ignored one of higher IQs shown by others (orientals, Ashkenazi Jews, Polynesians). This is my post slightly expanded for readers here who won't know the background:
"You recently posted an article about Ashkenazi Jews outperforming everybody else. The implication there was that about 1,500 years of the high intensity evolutionary pressure provided by goyim mobs was enough to produce a 12% IQ increase. This would actually fit quite well with the sort of differences we see < American blacks running at 12/15 points lower than whites for the last ceantury>. One problem with assuming that there have been substantial racial IQ differences over evolutionary periods is that one would have expected the smarter race to supplant the other while we were still living in caves. If, however, we assume that high IQ is not an evolutionary advantage to pre-urban societies & did not exist then, it would explain why there has been no long term evolutionary pressure in favour of Chinese & against sub-saharans.
This would suggest that IQ differences would be apparent between racially quite similar groups(Iraqis should outperform Europeans, Greeks & Romans outperform Scandinavians & Ethiopians outperform Congolese) - I have no idea if this is so which makes it a suitable test.
As regards the nature/nurture argument it is worth remembering that European culture has outrun Chinese & Scandinavian, Iraqi over the last few centuries so good luck & not being visited by Jenghiz Khan may beat brains.
I remember reading somewhere that Polynesians score higher than just about anybody - since they have been settled for not much over a millennium this supports the quick evolution theory if we also accept the idea, popular in the US, that people who migrate tend to be smarter than those who stay at home.
On the other hand I understand that the largest cranial cases ever found belong to Cro-Magnon & Neanderthal skulls & it's been downhill since then. This could suggest that it is only farmers who don't need brains while hunters need them at least as much as city dwellers. Or it could just suggest that none of us are as smart as we like to think we are." < Another thing it suggests is that human intellectual evolution &/or devolution is proceeding at a truly spectaclar case bearing in mind that evolution normally takes at least 100s of thousands of years for even unimportant changes>
"You recently posted an article about Ashkenazi Jews outperforming everybody else. The implication there was that about 1,500 years of the high intensity evolutionary pressure provided by goyim mobs was enough to produce a 12% IQ increase. This would actually fit quite well with the sort of differences we see < American blacks running at 12/15 points lower than whites for the last ceantury>. One problem with assuming that there have been substantial racial IQ differences over evolutionary periods is that one would have expected the smarter race to supplant the other while we were still living in caves. If, however, we assume that high IQ is not an evolutionary advantage to pre-urban societies & did not exist then, it would explain why there has been no long term evolutionary pressure in favour of Chinese & against sub-saharans
This would suggest that IQ differences would be apparent between racially quite similar groups
As regards the nature/nurture argument it is worth remembering that European culture has outrun Chinese & Scandinavian, Iraqi over the last few centuries so good luck & not being visited by Jenghiz Khan may beat brains
I remember reading somewhere that Polynesians score higher than just about anybody - since they have been settled for not much over a millennium this supports the quick evolution theory if we also accept the idea, popular in the US, that people who migrate tend to be smarter than those who stay at home
On the other hand I understand that the largest cranial cases ever found belong to Cro-Magnon & Neanderthal skulls
