One scenario the race-IQ obsessives almost never entertain is the mirror image of their preferred story: it could be that “black” people are naturally the most cognitively advantaged group on average, and that environment is what masks that advantage in measured outcomes. I’m not saying I believe that—I’d wager there are no meaningful innate differences across these crude categories—but the point is that nothing about the typical “evidence” uniquely supports the genetic story they want. If you can spin a “genes did it” model from today’s numbers, you can spin an “environment did it” model just as easily, or a “measurement is partial and socially loaded” model, or a combination.
Even granting the premise of group averages for the sake of argument, the logical and moral leap people make is incoherent: a group mean doesn’t magically confer merit on any particular individual. There are plenty of “Asians” or “Ashkenazim” who score low on IQ tests despite higher group averages, and plenty of “blacks” who score high. That’s before we even get to the point that “IQ” does not fully represent the concept of "intelligence."
Which gets to the social function of the whole genre. It’s not really about understanding “intelligence”; it’s about status. It lets people vicariously borrow esteem from a demographic abstraction and treat it like personal achievement—an ego upgrade with no effort. Instead of cultivating knowledge, competence, or character, they embrace a racial story that flatters them (or humiliates others). A fool's gold, racial pride is an easy refuge for Niedermenschen, for the status-anxious and status-greedy, and for the demagogues who profit by selling a cheap substitute for the rightful self-respect of Seelengröße.
Good article. I realise there are vested agendas in the new genetics which claim there are such trivial differences between what we once called races that there are no races, but since all humans are more than 99.9% genetically it is more logical to conclude that culture makes the difference more than DNA.
And I would add with culture we need to take into account something Biologist Rupert Sheldrake explored as a morphogenetic field, an energy field or template which is at work in any group, however the group is defined. This applies to religions, cultures, nationalities, any and all of them. And it can be powerful as can the pressure from a family/social group to conform which operates both consciously and unconsciously.
AI description : Morphogenetic fields (or morphic fields) are hypothesized invisible organizing patterns that guide the development and form of organisms, acting like blueprints or templates that shape biological processes beyond just genetic instructions. Introduced in embryology to explain how cells form structures like limbs even after damage, the concept, developed by figures like Harrison and Spemann, suggests fields coordinate development, while later expanded by Rupert Sheldrake to include non-local memory (morphic resonance) influencing habits and behaviors across species, moving beyond purely genetic explanations.
I have lived in India and four African countries and known people from all of those places who despite spending 30 or 40 years living overseas, the US, Europe, UK etc., will revert to form the moment they go back to family and their birthplace. Now, everyone knows this can be at work when adults, of any age, return home and are immersed in the family physically and culturally - that too is a morphogenetic field at work, so the cultural soup would be even more powerful. Along with familial and tribal alliances to retain power.
So, the issue is complex and cannot be reduced to whites are smarter than blacks. Indeed, one of the greatest cultures responsible for many of the most brilliant developments, inventions, knowledge systems was Arab - brown people, or at least not what would be called white.
The Indians, more brown people, have also achieved much in terms of knowledge over the centuries although their culture is highly racist and the Hindu belief is the darker your skin the more inferior you are. How much of that arose from the fact that northern Indians were the end result of much intermixing with Europeans and Arabs and southern Indians, Dravidians, were not, is the question with no answer as yet.
It is also worth reflecting that considering others to be inferior is a common human trait. Blacks do it to blacks and browns and whites, Whites to it to other colours and cultures, Asians do it to everyone else and so it has gone for centuries. Indeed, most males did it to females for thousands of years.
Why the need to define others as inferior we could ask? Because in the doing we elevate ourselves and feel superior. And the human desire, psychologically driven, to be among the familiar because we feel safer and because we feel better able to 'read the room' which gives a sense of security.
I've always wondered if us humans are even able to adequately (meaningfully) measure our own intelligence. It seems highly unlikely (at least at this point in our specie's evolution). It's always just seemed like yet another way to create even more separation between groups of humans (where one group/classification could feel really "special" or "good" about themselves... particularly the ones designing the tests themselves, lol), and I also wonder if this testing is used more in the U.S. than other countries, and whether they are "thought" to have more usefulness in capitalistic countries than non-capitalistic ones.
You are addressing a different issue there in terms of defining and measuring intelligence and using such for whatever purpose. I'm saying even within the confines of just an IQ test score there is no empirical evidence of a causal effect of racial genetics on those scores.
Yes, I know, and agree with your main point. Just figured I would add my comment about IQ testing in general. Seemed like it at least kind of, tangentially, fit in with the topic.
No, it exactly doesn’t. Your post is another few pages added to the literature that ignores my article, the ideal experiment and the fundamentals of causal inference.
So here’s the gist I get: you isolate a genetic thing associated with iq in all races separately. Then you say this thing is more prominent in say Europeans than say, Africans. Then you say, ahh, there’s the cause! Your article doesn’t establish much there if anything. Brain size is a weak determinant and connectivity has to do with developing oneself. Brains grow and develop. Mendelian randomization? Instrumental variables of genetics are very shaky ground but even accepting them there’s still not a lot there in that article. Principle components is another rather murky method among murky methods. It boils a complex problem into a vector, a linear fit, in essence, that captures variation in the form of a combination of the variables. It’s always used in genes because genes are billions of factors.
Not saying that, currently working on a more fleshed out version of the article that traces certain geographical selection pressures due to migration timelines to specific local ancestry LD patterns and colocalizations that determine granular neurological (eg white matter myelination, fractional anisotropy, metabolic, endocrine, vascular traits, etc), far more than just “brain size”, that impact IQ. Some of these are detailed in my existing article. I’m not saying “x trait that has y effect on IQ is more prominent in Z group therefore it’s causal,” I’m tracing a chain of contingent factors whose genetic architecture in specific ancestry clusters has a non-zero effect on cognitive outcomes. It doesn’t seem like you fully read or understand my article.
One scenario the race-IQ obsessives almost never entertain is the mirror image of their preferred story: it could be that “black” people are naturally the most cognitively advantaged group on average, and that environment is what masks that advantage in measured outcomes. I’m not saying I believe that—I’d wager there are no meaningful innate differences across these crude categories—but the point is that nothing about the typical “evidence” uniquely supports the genetic story they want. If you can spin a “genes did it” model from today’s numbers, you can spin an “environment did it” model just as easily, or a “measurement is partial and socially loaded” model, or a combination.
Even granting the premise of group averages for the sake of argument, the logical and moral leap people make is incoherent: a group mean doesn’t magically confer merit on any particular individual. There are plenty of “Asians” or “Ashkenazim” who score low on IQ tests despite higher group averages, and plenty of “blacks” who score high. That’s before we even get to the point that “IQ” does not fully represent the concept of "intelligence."
Which gets to the social function of the whole genre. It’s not really about understanding “intelligence”; it’s about status. It lets people vicariously borrow esteem from a demographic abstraction and treat it like personal achievement—an ego upgrade with no effort. Instead of cultivating knowledge, competence, or character, they embrace a racial story that flatters them (or humiliates others). A fool's gold, racial pride is an easy refuge for Niedermenschen, for the status-anxious and status-greedy, and for the demagogues who profit by selling a cheap substitute for the rightful self-respect of Seelengröße.
Good article. I realise there are vested agendas in the new genetics which claim there are such trivial differences between what we once called races that there are no races, but since all humans are more than 99.9% genetically it is more logical to conclude that culture makes the difference more than DNA.
And I would add with culture we need to take into account something Biologist Rupert Sheldrake explored as a morphogenetic field, an energy field or template which is at work in any group, however the group is defined. This applies to religions, cultures, nationalities, any and all of them. And it can be powerful as can the pressure from a family/social group to conform which operates both consciously and unconsciously.
AI description : Morphogenetic fields (or morphic fields) are hypothesized invisible organizing patterns that guide the development and form of organisms, acting like blueprints or templates that shape biological processes beyond just genetic instructions. Introduced in embryology to explain how cells form structures like limbs even after damage, the concept, developed by figures like Harrison and Spemann, suggests fields coordinate development, while later expanded by Rupert Sheldrake to include non-local memory (morphic resonance) influencing habits and behaviors across species, moving beyond purely genetic explanations.
I have lived in India and four African countries and known people from all of those places who despite spending 30 or 40 years living overseas, the US, Europe, UK etc., will revert to form the moment they go back to family and their birthplace. Now, everyone knows this can be at work when adults, of any age, return home and are immersed in the family physically and culturally - that too is a morphogenetic field at work, so the cultural soup would be even more powerful. Along with familial and tribal alliances to retain power.
So, the issue is complex and cannot be reduced to whites are smarter than blacks. Indeed, one of the greatest cultures responsible for many of the most brilliant developments, inventions, knowledge systems was Arab - brown people, or at least not what would be called white.
The Indians, more brown people, have also achieved much in terms of knowledge over the centuries although their culture is highly racist and the Hindu belief is the darker your skin the more inferior you are. How much of that arose from the fact that northern Indians were the end result of much intermixing with Europeans and Arabs and southern Indians, Dravidians, were not, is the question with no answer as yet.
It is also worth reflecting that considering others to be inferior is a common human trait. Blacks do it to blacks and browns and whites, Whites to it to other colours and cultures, Asians do it to everyone else and so it has gone for centuries. Indeed, most males did it to females for thousands of years.
Why the need to define others as inferior we could ask? Because in the doing we elevate ourselves and feel superior. And the human desire, psychologically driven, to be among the familiar because we feel safer and because we feel better able to 'read the room' which gives a sense of security.
I've always wondered if us humans are even able to adequately (meaningfully) measure our own intelligence. It seems highly unlikely (at least at this point in our specie's evolution). It's always just seemed like yet another way to create even more separation between groups of humans (where one group/classification could feel really "special" or "good" about themselves... particularly the ones designing the tests themselves, lol), and I also wonder if this testing is used more in the U.S. than other countries, and whether they are "thought" to have more usefulness in capitalistic countries than non-capitalistic ones.
You are addressing a different issue there in terms of defining and measuring intelligence and using such for whatever purpose. I'm saying even within the confines of just an IQ test score there is no empirical evidence of a causal effect of racial genetics on those scores.
Yes, I know, and agree with your main point. Just figured I would add my comment about IQ testing in general. Seemed like it at least kind of, tangentially, fit in with the topic.
It's layers of silliness from the cause and effect to the test itself.
So totally with you on that... silliness (and undeserving arrogance)
My posts establish this causal effect check it out
No, it exactly doesn’t. Your post is another few pages added to the literature that ignores my article, the ideal experiment and the fundamentals of causal inference.
What exactly in which article of mine are you contesting?
So here’s the gist I get: you isolate a genetic thing associated with iq in all races separately. Then you say this thing is more prominent in say Europeans than say, Africans. Then you say, ahh, there’s the cause! Your article doesn’t establish much there if anything. Brain size is a weak determinant and connectivity has to do with developing oneself. Brains grow and develop. Mendelian randomization? Instrumental variables of genetics are very shaky ground but even accepting them there’s still not a lot there in that article. Principle components is another rather murky method among murky methods. It boils a complex problem into a vector, a linear fit, in essence, that captures variation in the form of a combination of the variables. It’s always used in genes because genes are billions of factors.
Not saying that, currently working on a more fleshed out version of the article that traces certain geographical selection pressures due to migration timelines to specific local ancestry LD patterns and colocalizations that determine granular neurological (eg white matter myelination, fractional anisotropy, metabolic, endocrine, vascular traits, etc), far more than just “brain size”, that impact IQ. Some of these are detailed in my existing article. I’m not saying “x trait that has y effect on IQ is more prominent in Z group therefore it’s causal,” I’m tracing a chain of contingent factors whose genetic architecture in specific ancestry clusters has a non-zero effect on cognitive outcomes. It doesn’t seem like you fully read or understand my article.
Ancestry influences…my article exactly addresses this.