RSS
It is sad to hear from Chandra Chisala that our double act will no longer be available for hire, denying us both the prospect of a lecture tour, but if this really is his last word, that is a pity, because debates generally reveal new sources of data, and although personal positions rarely change immediately, they can change as contrary data accumulates. Perhaps Chisala meant “last word” in the rock star sense, and we may yet get on the road for a farewell tour. In that hope, I have given up my earlier plan of just letting him have the last word, and after a delay I make these comments in the hope of tempting him back out of retirement.
https://www.unz.com/article/my-last-word-on-the-scrabble-and-iq-debate-2/
My explanation for the slow pace of change in viewpoints in behavioural research is that the delay is mostly caused by effort justification. Reading papers, finding and assembling data, marshalling arguments and finding rejoinders to points raised by critics all require effort, and few people like to see their work wasted. They tend to defend their positions (If they have given public lectures on a topic, then defensiveness is boosted). Hence my standard question to researchers: “If you are just about to put finishing touches to your sandcastle, do you welcome the wave that destroys it?” The scientific ideal is that a wave of new findings is to be welcomed precisely because it overturns sandcastles built on shaky foundations (although they may have been the best available at the time). Easier said than done.
On the contrary, academic debates should not be determined by the amount of effort put in by the participants, but by the results of studies and the accumulation of observations. However, if this really is Chisala’s last word, then a recap is appropriate.
To summarize the general debate: under what circumstances do real world achievements call into question group tests of intellect? One answer is: when more of the group in question have real-life achievements above what would be expected from their measured average intelligence. In my view there should be no doubt that real world achievements are a better measure of intelligence than predictive assessments.
One straightforward approach is to follow a standard procedure. Take the average intelligence score for the nation; then take the best estimate of the nation’s total population; then calculate how many citizens are above a criterion, say Greenwich Mean Intelligence plus two standard deviations (IQ 130) and then compare that number of bright persons with the number of persons who win intellectual prizes. That last category could include a broad range of achievements: Chess, Go, Scrabble, Maths Olympiads and Field Medals, Nobel prizes in science, science publications in the best journals, patents, science based companies, and so on. For example, being employed in the research departments of companies working on artificial intelligence, on new computer chips, on new materials, on new drugs, and other breakthrough research. Given that companies will usually select the brightest persons, all this can provide us with another source of intellectual achievement rankings.
Naturally, any standard procedure has to overcome some difficulties. Are we studying nations, or racial groups, or both? For example, the South African maths team is composed of people with varying genetic backgrounds. Chisala makes the same point about the Canadian chess team. One could try to deduce these genetic backgrounds by surnames, not an error free procedure, or by looking at photos, which is better, but not always precise. It is for this reason that there is a choice about whether we should be counting the wins for national teams, or the wins for individuals, and then classifying the individuals by race. Individuals are most probably preferable.
For example, in a ranking of South African Maths contestants there is a “J.M. MacFie”. My first boss was John McFie and he was European. His wife was African. Should we look at the photos of each contestant, or better still their 23andMe results? The hereditarian viewpoint suggests that such genetic results are indeed required. Chisala takes me to task about whether to measure country team results or the individuals. Country teams is quicker, but looking at each individual would give better detail. I was hoping to be guided by photos in the individual cases, but I am happy with either countries or individuals, once one can agree a method which identifies genetic background.
An interesting point which arises from this is how detailed we should be about genetic groups. I have followed the practice of discussing Sub-Saharan Africans, because that is what the debate has focussed on, and because their intelligence test results are pretty much the same. North Africa gets somewhat higher scores, and tends to be left out of these discussions, but could certainly be included. More interestingly, how much granularity should one require about Sub-Saharan sub-groups? I would say that if we have data for genetic sub-groups it is essential to use it. For example, are there Yoruba, Igbo or other tribes who are cognitive elites? It would be fascinating to find them, and I have already speculated, in previous posts, about their likely characteristics.
Should our population calculations omit women and youngsters? I am against that. First, it would introduce contentious further calculations to take account of varying age structures in different populations. Worse, it would mean that the moment a woman or a 13-year-old becomes a Chess Grand Master or excels in any intellectual endeavour, we would have to re-do all our national calculations. There is already some doubt about the total populations anyway, particularly in any country where bureaucracy is weak. I suggest we keep things as simple as possible, and thus reduce error terms. However, if anyone wants to do an international men-only, adults-only calculation and update it every 5 years, that is their choice. I prefer to keep it simple, and do the same total calculations for all countries.
How far should the net be cast as regards intellectual achievements? I suggest as far and wide as possible, or it will be assumed that some results are being held back. I favour those achievements which are in a “universal language” like maths, science and chess. There will always be some doubt about whether people in poor countries have access to knowledge and training, though the spread of internet access goes a long way to dealing with this. (In fact, it should level the playing field in terms of access to knowledge). Poker, Bridge, Backgammon, and Mahjong could be added to the list, because there are international competitions and rankings. I am not suggesting anyone should take part in such activities. Live and let live.
In summary, any conclusions about group intelligence can be called into question if a significant number of that group have exceptional real-life achievements.
Now to go through some particulars.
Individual Chess rankings
My apologies regarding Kenny Solomon. FIDE does indeed rate him as a Grandmaster with a rating of 2412, and World Rank (all players) 2716, World Rank (active players) 1948. As far as I can see there are no Africans in the top 100 players at the moment. Once again, I have just glanced at the country names and their own individual names, and not looked at photos or biographies. Doing a genetic background analysis of the top 1000 players and their ratings would be instructive.
As regards Scrabble and other results, I think that although it is time consuming, it would be better to consider individual achievements rather than just country results, since immigrants may be contributing to country achievements.
Access to training. Chisala explains the relatively poor showing of Africans in Chess because of lack of books and training. I agree that this is a possibility, though I also assume that wider access to the internet is bringing more of that knowledge to Africa, and also giving Africans more chance to play games remotely.
Chisala makes a further argument:
Some hereditarians, including Thompson, also keep reminding me that their models already consider environment as part of explanation of variance, but this is an irrelevant distinction since they (should) believe that the only environmental factors that could have a significant effect on IQ work through biological means: eg making the brain smaller through lower nutrition etc, as Lynn et al suggests. They normally reject the large significance of things like training/teaching resources, given twin studies in America.
To be clear, I don’t doubt that access to resources and a chance to compete at international level can have an effect on chess performance. Also on Scrabble, Maths and other scholastic attainments. It will apply to other parts of the world as well, so it will affect contestants from other continents. Making Chess or Scrabble a national priority is also likely to have some effect. Factors like this influence all intellectual pursuits. As Jensen observed, if your opportunity to do something is zero, then your high ability and strong motivation will result in zero. A colour bar is a social impediment, not a biological one, but can certainly affect performance measures. I think that Chisala has made an incorrect assumption about my arguments.
Calculating the “smart fraction” for each nation (proportion above IQ 130) should, I suggest, be the common metric for our debates about whether performance at international competitions is better than expected. We can calculate other levels if required, but again we need to keep it simple so as to detect the general picture.
African Self Selection
Chisala makes an interesting argument about self-selected Africans doing well abroad, and I will try to summarize his main points:
Yes, immigrant self selection can affect the average, but not the top performance.
for extremely high elite performance (*at the top*), the average performance of their source population should continue to impose the limitation on the absolute numbers, particularly IF it has a biological cause. This statistical prediction can only be defied if very artificial environmental conditions of the two source populations were in fact the real cause of the difference in the original population averages.
Not only do my opponents give immigrant selection to explain why black Africans seem to outperform black Americans at the top, they incredibly even give that as the explanation for incidents when a black African student outperforms all white students in the UK. No, that gap (30 IQ points) is too large for any top honors to ever be affected by self-selection: you need some new rationalization to explain such common “miracles.” Self-selection may affect average performance, but not top performance, especially not in the first two generations.
It is good that a Black African student led the UK Honor Roll in 2010, and is now at Cambridge University. A more representative group is all Black Africans taking the test. On GCSE pass rates (for 2014) they are slightly above the White British average and, as already discussed, they are a very bimodal population, with as high a proportion of professionals as the local white population, but with many more unemployed persons. It would be better to look at, say, the top 100 or 500 performers, and over several years to get the general picture.
However, I don’t see why top performance should not sometimes be achieved by a person from a category who are generally of low achievement. A top performer coming from the lower ability group is far less likely, but not impossible, and does not of itself invalidate group test results. One cannot get a good estimate of the effect from single cases in single years. However, if top performers came regularly from the lower ability group that would indeed call into question the measures of ability. Another explanation is that it might identify a cognitive elite within that group, which so far is not proven. Either way, it requires explanation. Of course, it would have been interesting to have tested the star performer’s intelligence at 11. The general rule is that cognitive ability at age 11 predicts scholastic attainments age 16, with a correlation of 0.8
Differences between African American and Africans. I like this argument. African Americans should have more high-performing outliers than Africans, per head of population. When corrected for population size the pool of talent to be drawn from is 41 million African Americans and over 1 billion Sub-Saharan Africans (reportedly between 1,014 million and, from the World Population Review, 1023 million). Chisala has somewhat different figures, 46 million for African Americans and 800 million for Sub-Saharan Africa. He has said these are his last words so we cannot resolve these differences in discussion. If I take my figures for sub-Saharan Africa at 1014 million and African Americans at 41 million, and assume that African Americans at IQ 85 and Africans at IQ 70 and have to compete against each other for IQ 130 occupations, then there will be 167,124 African Americans against 55,345 Africans at that level, so I agree with Chisala that the former should predominate. If Africans do better than African Americans on a broad range of intellectual indicators in the US, this is an important anomaly. We can check this against a common standard school leaving examination in the US.
Chisala concludes:
I have highlighted several failed logical and statistical predictions of the racial genetic hypothesis, and I have seen no explanation from the other side that does not borrow elements contradicting their own theoretical framework. They can’t explain the black African vs white children cognitive performance anomaly; or the black African men versus white women cognitive games performance anomaly; or the black African versus black American academic performance anomaly; or even the black African versus white “mental patients” performance anomaly.
Scientific propositions are not sustained by the fervency of hope and loyalty.
I agree that hope and loyalty should not be involved in the testing of propositions. We should agree a set of tests and common procedures, then see how the results come in on a broad range of indicators.
Are there African cognitive elites who can compete at world standard? There may well be, and finding them would be interesting in itself, and also a potential test of the genetic hypothesis. I certainly hope so. According to the UN by 2050 Africa’s population will increase enormously, and Nigeria will surpass the United States to become the world’s third-largest country by population, with roughly 400 million. We have to hope that either the current best estimate of Nigerian intelligence as IQ 70 is wrong, utterly wrong, or that the UN estimates are wrong, and Nigeria, and Africa as a whole, will quickly decide not increase its population, or not that fast.
A last word about Chisala: he is presenting anomalies to be explained, and that is always important. He sees his case as proved. I think that is premature. I see this line of research (comparing competition results and scholastic attainments at the highest level with group intelligence test results) as promising, and potentially able to challenge the usual explanations about group differences, but requiring more systematic examination.
There is a chance that, before too long, I will get a call from Chisala’s agent.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Not if that predictive assessment is a well designed IQ test (IMO). An IQ test is a real world achievement. It happens in the real world and it measures genuine achievement. Furthermore: it’s specifically designed to measure “raw” intelligence and minimise externalities such as motivation or opportunity, which is exactly how it should be done. The idea should always be to measure raw ability as a starting point and, more importantly, as a semi-hard limit on intellectual achievement. If you put a (self-driving) car on a machine to measure its acceleration, grip, torque, speed you’ll get a very valuable measure of its capabilities and limitations. Later on that car might end up in Alaska, Autobahn or in a dusty garage but that won’t change its core ability.
Second: a 130 IQ Sub-Saharan African is a lonely person in terms of having contact with people of that ability. He’s probably more likely to end up running a very efficient smuggling/poaching gang than winning a chess championship. The society around him will be an average 70 IQ society and he will adapt to that environment. Meanwhile, an European of the same 130 IQ ability will be surrounded by people who are as smart as him and the societal structure will reflect that.
Ultimately, it’s the density that counts. The table below shows (at 15 SD) that a 100 IQ country will have a 130 IQ (and above) persons everywhere (1:44) while in a 70 IQ country they’ll be very rare (1:31560).
http://archive.is/ZV0m8
This might be relevant, a week ago The Economist debunked Chisala’s scrabble claims
https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21731867-best-players-earn-government-salaries-why-nigeria-produces-scrabble-champions
Why Nigeria produces Scrabble champions
Thanks for the link. It explains the motivation at a national level, but the “short words” strategy should be open to everyone, should it not? I don’t know enough about Scrabble to judge whether this approach, though very low level intellectually, is sufficient to win in international competitions.
Where do you get 5,534,500?
My foolish error. Thanks for pointing it out.
Don’t sneer at poker and bridge, Dr T: in undergraduate days I knew some highly intelligent people drawn into spending huge amounts of time on them. Do, please, sneer at Scrabble, one of the dullest games I’ve ever played.
By the way what on earth is the “UK Honor Roll”? I’ve never heard of it.
Isn’t it likely that sub-Saharan Africa is simply a lesser version of India? Instead of assuming a uniform population with some mean and SD, it seems to me more likely that sub-Saharan Africa is racially diverse, with certain subgroups like the Igbo ahead of others on the continent in terms of aptitude.
We resolve the paradox of low average IQ scores in India partly by realizing that there are probably high IQ castes from which high achieving Indians are drawn from. Wouldn’t this also imply a regression to a higher sub-group mean for the children of these upper caste Indians? Could not a lesser version of this apply to sub-Saharan Africa? I feel like that would go a long way towards explaining many of the data points Chanda points out…
or the bermuda data. http://humanvarieties.org/2013/05/03/hvgiq-bermuda/
They normally reject the large significance of things like training/teaching resources, given twin studies in America.
that’s because hereditists are sillier than Raymond Luxury Yacht (pronounced Throat Warbler Mangrove).
how many traits are known to be plastic but are as heritable as IQ? it depends on the study. it always does. but for some study populations the h^2 statistic for blood pressure, adiposity, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol, etc. is in the same range as that of IQ.
Instead of just linking to the article on Bermuda and insulting hereditarians, you could have highlighted what the article on Bermuda (by Jason Malloy) actually concluded. It said that, while the survey of Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) in Bermuda suggested that there was no significant difference in average IQ between whites (W) and blacks (B),
“five out of six samples showed the IQ scores that one would more reasonably expect for an island that is two-thirds black and one-third white. Given this and the large B-W social disparities in Bermuda, I’m inclined to accept these results over the ALL…” An average IQ for Bermudan whites of 100 and an average IQ for Bermudan blacks of 88 seem more plausible.
A quantitative analysis. http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=7022
We should certainly do more intelligence testing in Sub-Saharan African, and make better note of the ethnic background of participants, but at the moment there does not seem to be as much variation as in India. It would be good to be wrong about that!
Thank you so much for this.
Yeah, my personal suspicion is that sub-Saharan Africa is a lesser version of India and that potentially elite subgroups such as the Igbo, while obviously not on the same level as high IQ upper castes in India, probably excel relative to other groups on the African continent. Of course I’m only speculating as a relatively ignorant layman here, but I uh suspect that thinking along these lines would probably help to explain some of the data points Chanda cites. I would be surprised if treating the entire continent as a monolithic entity with average IQ of 70 is the correct way of understanding the situation.
“how many traits are known to be plastic but are as heritable as IQ? it depends on the study. it always does. but for some study populations the h^2 statistic for blood pressure, adiposity, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol, etc. is in the same range as that of IQ.”
This. So if IQ is like those traits then surely it should be able to move up and down like they do too, if it truly is a physiological trait, that is (it isn’t).
i’m way to un-conscientious to summarize for hereditists.
but don’t blame me. i can’t help it. because genes.
if HBD were true then unless the samples are small or unrepresentative there should never be any such finding as the ALL. therefore, HBD is false.
sad!
american blacks have higher blood pressure than american whites. african blacks living in the countryside have lower blood pressure than white americans. yet the difference in h^2 for bp and h^2 for IQ in the minnesota study was not significant.
sad!
but don’t blame me. i can’t help it. because genes.
and way toO too.
truly pathetic!
LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY!
SAD!
UK/EU students Overseas students
UCL tuition fees (2018/19 entry) £5,060– £15,940 £19,580 – £29,260
Living costs* £13,520 – £20,280 £13,520 – £20,280
SAD!
this is why the grandson of a public toilet janitor lives in the countryside!
That is an interesting comparison to explore, but it feels like you are engaging in a bit of “no true physiological trait” here. Perhaps you could list what you consider physiological traits (or not) and why? Do you consider height a physiological trait?
It seems to me a good model for these traits is to consider them as having three components:
– Genetic. Which establishes a baseline and largely defines response to the next two.
– Developmental. Environmental influences happening throughout one’s lifetime. The time aspect is critical. Nutrition during development can impact height greatly. Nutrition during adulthood not so much (modulo osteoporosis late in life).
– Short term variation. Environmental influences happening on short and current timescales. Say as examples alcohol or nitrogen narcosis impacts on intelligence. It is interesting to ponder how reversible short term changes are (e.g. brain damage from oxygen deprivation).
Heritability says a great deal about the importance of genetics relative to traits of people in roughly similar environments, but it does not say that much about what can be accomplished with targeted environmental intervention either during development or in the moment. Developmental research is hard and requires long durations to fully assess, but there are some natural experiments which can cast light (e.g. breastfeeding and IQ). However, short term experiments are fairly easy. Gwern does a lot of that sort of thing with N=1. It would be interesting to see larger population research along those lines.
Where things become extremely interesting is when the optimal targeted interventions are different for different people (back to genetics ; ).
thank God UCL charges so little to its psychology students.
UCL’s psychology students can work in the city (NOT!) and reconcile crazy people to the crazy society they live in, blighty (NOT!).
in an ideal world james thompson would be guillotined.
then his headless body would be raped and eaten by jigaboos.
this comment has been saved and will be posted again…and again…and again…and again…
Video Link
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Jeremy Corbyn.
Can’t believe that you also seem to buy into this Hindu Nationalist BS of high IQ castes in India… LOL
1. What are of these castes?
2. Where they came from? (i.e. racially speaking, they’re Mongoloid? Caucasoid? Negroid? or new-found Indiaroid? )
3. How big are their underlying total populations respectively in India?
4. What are their avg IQ respectively? (e.g. any IQ studies done there, or just again the legendary claim that “the richest and the most successful people in the US, hence avg 120+ IQ” ?)
5. Why they are high? (e.g. are they “cold-selected” populations? They have unusally larger brain sizes than Mongoloid or Caucasoid? What are their corresponding maturation rates, personality traits, reproductive rates, etc.. all kinds of “JP Rushton measures” that fit in with their claimed IQ range? …)
6. How they are high? (e.g. they’re high on verbal? or spatial? or both? compared to which standard?)
…
Panda sees that Hindu nationalists are pretty successful on propagating the “high IQ castes” from India BS (compared to whom? to avg 82?), without even trying to present clear answers to any of above basic questions or the underlying rationale. Before that happens , high my paw! lol
On the legendary claim that
“Indian Americans are the richest (have the highest avg income) people in the US, hence these Indian high castes have avg 120+ IQ” :
Just curious, does the US also keep average income list of, for instance–
Norwegium Americans
Belgium Americans
United Arab Emirates Americans
Sierra Leone Americans
Andorran Americans
…
to compare apple-to-apple with that of Indian Americans, even assuming that most of these people are also on H1B1 Visa hence highly-selected?
How else would you reconcile India’s abysmally low performance on national IQ tests or PISA with the clear and obvious fact of elite Indian talent, particularly in America? Various commenters in the HBD blogosphere have attempted to answer the questions you’ve posed above. That clear answers to these questions may not yet be known hardly negates the hypothesis I’ve offered. I myself don’t claim to be a uh expert on the matter.
I’m merely positing that sub-Saharan Africa is a lesser version of India, so to speak. Certain ethnic groups such as the Igbo seem to excel relative to other Africans, although they’re still clearly not at the same level as say elite Indians. However when stories of relatively intelligent African immigrants disproportionately reveal that such individuals are Igbo from Nigeria or the likes, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that a similar albeit lesser phenomenon like in India may be at work in Africa. It seems to me that this would also resolve many of the empirical data points under discussion here.
Poker is more than shrewdness in calculating mathematic odds, though that is essential. To succeed you also have to be great at reading people and knowing when to bluff and when to call someone else’s bluff. In other words, math isn’t enough. It takes real people skills to be an exceptional poker player. I know this because I played a lot of poker and though I had all the odds memorized, could never get the knack of fooling other players so I was just average at a table of experienced players. In a way, poker is a more complete measure of a person than scrabble or chess or any other game that is played up front. Odysseus, because of his caginess, was a more formidable adversary than Achilles–and the Greeks regarded him as such. Calculated deceit beats raw strength, whether physical or mental.
You seem to misunderstand the nature of social research. It is not uncommon for different studies to arrive at different results. Jason Malloy’s meta-analysis found that the other studies contradicted the findings of the ALL survey. Best not to make a sweeping conclusion based on one survey.
As you say regarding India, it is a plausible explanation that there is a great deal of heterogeneity, and in some cases that is amplified by the degree of cousin marriage.
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/the-heterogeneous-states-of-india
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/more-sex-cousin
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/inbreeding-two-tribes
Quite easy to reconcile: top 0.1% or 1% of the right side of the bell curve of 1.3 billion are a huge number, pretty straightforward really.
Actually if you take the top 0.1% or even 1% (de facto implemented by H1B1-alike visa policy) of any country with a sizable population (e.g. Vietnam, Russia, Nigeria, or even Germany, Poland, let alone India) , regardless her population average IQ, this group of people would be IQ-ready to excel compared to the average of almost any host country, as long as the former country has a reasonable indegenious culture of emphasising on learning & education. That’s just simple maths.
The question now are :
1. will Vietnam, Russia, Nigeria, Germany and Poland all have “high IQ castes” as well a-la-India-standard?
2.And what race/s are they?
3. e.g. How much richer and more eliter, will Russian Americans be, compared to Indian Americans, if the former must also be on H1B1, aka top 1% or so.
The underlying racial rationale is also straightforward:
There’re 3 major races in the world. Pretty sure that almost 100% of “elite Indian talents in America” don’t fall into Negroid or Mongoloid categories.
Unless a new race is discovered (Indiaroid?) , these people are either Caucasoid or some kind of mixed, which by definition have average IQ somewhere below the European standard 100 for sure (assuming JP Rushton is not completely BSing his data in Race, evolution, and behavior) , except, of course, that these Indians are actually East Asian-European mixed whom they don’t look like.
Simple.
Therefore, Panda wonders which standard we’re talking about, given that “castes” of average IQ somewhere below 100 are defined as “high iq castes” here?
Off-topic.
To: Mr. Thompson and/or the Unz Review moderators
The image for this article titled “empty podia” seems to be broken or not display properly.
This is the case for the image on one of Mr. Thompson’s other articles as well:
– https://www.unz.com/announcement/server-crash/#comment-2074360
Thank you.
Doesn’t India have over a billion people now? You’d think that such an enormous population could produce a few hundred thousand or million high-achievers, all of whom would be motivated to leave India. The issue of caste doesn’t seem necessary at all.
Heterogeneity of ethnicities does not necessarily imply the existence of huge IQ gaps per se, does it?
It alone can not be taken as a sufficient proof that avg IQ of self-claimed “high castes” are so much higher than so-called “low-castes”.
Indian’s “high castes” at their “purest” by looks are about likes of the modern Iranians, who have avg IQ of about 86.
If one day, the US changes her foreign policy and lures the top 1% or 5% of Iran’s bell curve go to work in the US via H1B1, wouldn’t these Iranians become the newest “high IQ caste”in America? Or we would be deeply puzzled that how to reconcile these brilliant Iranians talents with Iran’s avg 86 IQ?
Indeed. I happen to agree that there’s probably strong caste stratification by IQ in India, but it isn’t necessitated by the observation that there’s a relatively small number of high-achieving Indians fleeing India.
There is at least 4, it’s not indiaroid it’s australoid.
If one day, the US changes her foreign policy and lures the top 1% or 5% of Iran’s bell curve go to work in the US via H1B1, wouldn’t these Iranians become the newest “high IQ caste”in America? Or we would be deeply puzzled that how to reconcile these brilliant Iranians talents with Iran’s avg 86 IQ?
Actually, there are a lot of refugges from the days of the Shah and many of them are quite successful. The problem is that many are likely indentifying as their religion or ethnicity (Armenian versus Persian) and not country of origin. They probably do not represent such a large group that the US tracks them independently. I would bet that as a group their income is above that of Indians.
The point here is what-Panda-called Rushton’s 3-point-Line:
Negroid and Mongoloid are at the 2 sides, with Caucasoid in between yet somewhere closer to Mongoloid.
(australoid may be somewhere closer to Negroid, yet it doesn’t matter, really.)
It’s a powerfully predictive line, because not only IQ, but also almost all the major physical characteristics and personal traits of these 3 groups fall into this line.
The problem for the claim of “High castes High IQ Indians” is that no matter where they put them within that Line, they’re self-contradicting themselves.
The only chance that they could self-claim as such would be to completely destroy JP Rushton to start with.
Yep, used to hear a lot about them and Beverly Hills… lol
Actually, Panda’s best guess of avg IQ of Indian “high castes” ( literally means the average IQ of these ” high castes” Indians in both America and India) could be somewhere between mid/high 80s to low 90s, about somewhere >= the Iranians to <= the Southern Med Euros.
Australoid is australoid, it isn’t negroid. Indian peoples are (depending on which) combinations of caucasoid, australoid and mongoloid. Mainly the first 2 for most of them. Ostensibly all the other central asian peoples who aren’t caucasoid or mongoloid are also australoid, for instance Turkic peoples. The southern mongoloids in SE asia, who are a bit darker, are also supposedly part australoid.
Negroid is pretty isolated and possibly rather new. Bantu expansion to take over Africa from the pygmies only happened about 1-2 thousand years ago. And the pygmy are not really negroid or any other oid, they are a small number of people not a major group but supposedly genetic testing puts them as totally unrelated to other black africans and quite distinct from the rest of humanity. Pygmoid, essentially. It’s not a “major” group because there are probably only tens to hundreds of thousands of them in total. But pure pygmies are supposedly no closer related to modern Bantu africans than they are to Swedes and Koreans.
Why do you think high caste indians who claim to have high IQs are contradicting themselves?
Well let’s let Chandra address that himself.
http://newsrescue.com/blacks-especially-igbos-prove-more-intelligent-than-whites-including-the-asian-leaders/#axzz50bgTysQW
If we assume average IQ 82, SD 15, population 1,300,000,000, there would only be roughly 910,000 people with IQ 130 or higher. At IQ 140 that drops to about 130,000.
My guess is that most truly accomplished individuals have an IQ of probably at least 3-4 SD. 130-140 IQ seems to me to be more of your normal smart person. Think for instance of people who graduate from a good school and work in tech or finance.
There are over 4 million Indian Americans alone in this country and given the significant numbers of high end talent, it’s hard to reconcile that against a global base population of 910,000 people with 130+ IQ or 130,000+ people with 140+ IQ, given that these thresholds are not particularly high. The numbers don’t add up if you ask me.
I believe the other advantage of positing elite racial subgroups is that it deals with issues such as regression to the mean, where for instance 2nd generation children of such elite individuals perform better than expected given regression to the mean, since they would not be regressing to the overall Indian mean of 82, etc.
Not quite. See my numbers above. The problem with a normal distribution is that it becomes exponentially less likely to observe talent the further out along the tail you go, or something like that.
Using average 82, SD 15, and base population of 1,300,000,000 only yields roughly 910,000+ IQ 130, roughly 130,000+ IQ 140. These are relatively low cognitive thresholds.
There are 4 million Indian Americans alone in this country and there seems to be fair number of high end talent from that population. In my opinions the numbers don’t line up with the assumptions above. Plus, as James linked to in his comment, there’s certainly evidence suggesting racial heterogeneity in India. My argument is that if we assume that a lesser version of that exists in sub-Saharan Africa, we may be able to explain many of the data points Chanda has thrown out.
>still pushing Rushton’s r/K bullshit
Rushton has been destroyed numerous times.
Ancient Indian metaphysicians produced some of the most subtle thinking anywhere, whatever you think of its practical value.
Remember, all of East Asia had to borrow their religion from India. The Chinese would send monks on perilous journeys across deserts and mountains to recover as much of this rich and subtle Indian thought as they could, so impressed were they with it, and this at a time when India’s population was a fraction of what it it is now.
As someone who has studied Indian thought I have zero doubt India has a supremely capable intellectual caste.
I find it hard to believe anyone could seriously doubt this considering the many fine intellects India has produced even in modern times.
truly accomplished individuals
Define that and not in the SAT, IQ test sense of the word. Madonna is no dummy and I believe her IQ is around 130. Not significantly high but very few singers have been as successful as her.
Nobody thinks IQ is everything. There are a lot of other factors that lead to success and many of them have nothing to do with IQ. If your dad was a physician, there is a good chance you can become one even if you and he aren’t all that smart. You don’t have to have an IQ of 160 to occasionally come up with an idea that is a home run in the real world.
Perhaps this basic assumption of yours is overdone. Try lossen it a bit to 120, or even 110. Don’t look down on 110 which, for instance, is almost 1 SD above American mean.
By my own experiences, Panda can train almost any normal 110IQ person into a bit sophisticated junior investment banker within half an year from scratch, regardless his major in uni. Panda sees that a person with IQ in the 130 range could be sufficient enough to be a regular STEM professor, or most social sciences, in a regular university… a regular law, auditing, talk show, editor, stats, or social science-related profession with a decently high social statue, however, requires way lower than 130 IQ range.
Many other issues as well such as net income or social fame is not correlated that high with IQ. Panda sees even many public company CEOs have IQ WAY lower than 130, let alone directors, managers, team leaders, etc ..
All these make your “normal smart person” threshold , 910,000 figure, severely underestimated.
Hence can’t see why the numbers don’t add up.
In the objective reality, either the number must add up more or less, or we are facing a major breakthrough in finding an entirely new major race of humanity, no other explaination, and Panda doubts it’s the latter.
i have a cousin who is chair in class-ism at mushy peas college london.
he’s taught me every thing i know about blighty.
Ancient “Indian”= Modern Indian?
Really? Sorry, but Panda doesn’t remember that.
Then try to answer Panda’s 6 related questions in post 21. Piece of cake, right?
In fact, Panda doesn’t see any miracle or major achievement, economic, intellectual or otherwise (not even indoor-plumbing has been tackled properly yet), coming from a supposely supremely capable intellectual caste that has enjoyed the allround supreme treatments in India’s caste-based society where there has been no Mao/ Soviet/NK – style communism or massive all-out wars in almost a century.
Where could go wrong Panda wonders? This supremely capable intellectual castemust have been hiding under a huge rock meditating a secret form of Yoga meantime, eh?
Oh? in video games?
?
Where you put them in that Line? choose a place there, then see is that place “high IQ” enough to you?
lol
is his name mikey cohen?
Panda, perhaps you are familiar with the most popular Chinese novel of all time, Journey To The West?
It is a fantastical treatment of the Chinese monk Xuanzang’s journey to India to recover Buddhist manuscripts.
Your ancestors had the necessary humility to sit at the feet of India and drink deep of its wisdom, and this does immense credit to their intelligence and sagacity.
They did the world an immense favor by helping preserve these works of timeless wisdom.
You should do them reverence.
As for plumbing, it is one of the glories of Indian civilization that it does not concern itself with such trivialities. Modern efficiency simply isn’t compatible with the life of the spirit.
I will answer your 6 related questions, Panda, with my 4 incontrovertible responses, but tomorrow, as I am a few whiskeys too deep right now.
PandaAtWar,
First I can say that Rushton’s line is not some gospel or established indisputable scientific fact. They do not have to fit into it, if they don’t fit, that means the line is wrong not them.
But the line is not terrible so let’s look in terms of that line with those 3.
Where do upper caste indians fit on the line. Fit compared to whom? When it comes to upper caste indians the first comparison is to other indian castes. Does New York complain that North Carolina is a misnomer because it is south? It is the northern most of the Carolinas. So you compare it to the other castes to determine if it has a higher IQ then the other castes.
But you are asking where it fits in globally with caucasians and asians. OK which mongoloids, the Outer Mongolians, the Uyghurs and the Hmong? All those 3 are mongoloid. Where do upper caste Indians compare to them? I don’t know but they could be smarter. They are definitely more civilizationally accomplished.
Historically, hereditarally, culturally, where do they fall on the line? In India it would be ungodly complicated and really depend. It is a very diverse and multicultural place that has been settled by caucasoids, mongoloids and australoids and all sorts of various mixtures. I guess that is the point, you would expect them to be all over that line because they come from all 3 places historically and genetically.
India is a subcontinent. In all of it’s entire human history it has never been entirely occupied by 1 homogeneous people or ever ruled by 1 culture and government until the British took it over and created the Raj, and British India also included Pakistan and Bangladesh.
From what (media reports of) genetic testing I have seen, Bangladeshis are actually considerably more mongoloid than most. And Alexander the Great conquered and Hellenized parts of Pakistan.
OK this I have to contest. That is shameless apologism. The Romans had indoor plumbing 2000 years ago and all manner of civilizations at least dug holes or went behind a bush. The issue is sanitation. It is not healthy to poop all over the street. India has all kinds of disease problems because of that. European cities had all kinds of disease problems when they use to just dump their chamber pots out the window into the gutter. And Europeans at least went in pots they didn’t squat in the street. Pooping in the street is just dirty. As is pooping in the water supply or upstream of the water supply. You have to have separate rivers for incoming and outgoing.
This actually is part of what creates Caste systems in places like India, you know. The upper castes do not want to touch the lower castes or shake their hand, it is because they wipe their ass with their hands and they carry diseases.
no members of the tribe in my pedigree…
thank God!
(((HBD)))
SAD!
family on both sides back to the 1600s.
i am a direct descendant of william bradford.
instead of ((( and ))) i think it should be…
THATCHERjames thompsonTHATCHER
CHINKS ARE SO F—ING CLUELESS IT’S…
SAD!
BECAUSE GENES.
as a full professor of class-ism of ER II’s Cunt College London…
i strongly suggest…
Video Link
Video Link
[It’s not good policy to provide numerous, content-free comments with pictures of dogs or such. Start providing serious content if you want your remarks published.]
Ok, Panda, I’ve looked at your six questions and you’re right, I can’t really answer them.
But I don’t think I need to in order to make my claim that India has always produced some of the finest minds the world has known and continues to do so.
I meant caste only in the sense of class, not in a racial sense.
I doubt the Indian intellectual caste is racially distinguished – certainly they don’t look any different from ordinary Indians.
Whatever Aryan invasions happened long ago, the race mixing is probably total.
In fact, I actually think ordinary Indians are intelligent and the state of the country is explained by India being the Land Of The Gods – i.e like all religious people, they don’t see this world as worth taking very seriously at all, much less furiously building up.
I’ve been to India like eight times, and I’ve never thought the average person there is stupid. They just want different things than we do.
Lars, I agree these things are problematic but you have to understand what mentality they arise from.
Having been to India, I can’t defend the cleanliness of the country, but the Indian attitude towards the physical world is that of all religious people – we are wayfarers and pilgrims here, this earth is not our true home, and we shouldn’t focus on it.
This is the same attitude as Europe had in the Middle Ages, and obviously it will lead to a physical environment that isn’t very clean or built up.
Now in pre modern times it wasn’t so bad, but overpopulation caused by modern medicine, and the introduction of industrial products has led to severe degradation of the physical environment.
Pre modern attitudes simply don’t mix well with modern methods and products, and many of the “horrors” of the Third World are because of that.
A purely pre modern environment is actually not very bad. And a purely modern one isn’t bad. It’s these mixed types that are the problem.
These people don’t look racially distinguishable?
Do Americans look racially distinguishable?
I can’t see your pictures, but while India clearly has a diversity of types, like all countries, it doesn’t track by class or caste.
I’ve seen brahmins look exactly like any other caste.
They were suppose to be links to pictures, not pictures. I can’t see them either but if you click on them it should work. At any rate both pictures were from the Wikipedia page on India.
Excess of pedigree….
Mugabe’s pet shop…
Aaaaaaaaaaron boy,
i’m expecting your humble answers to my questions…
Sorry, all I’m seeing is a blank white space, it could be my phone. No links or pics are visible to me.
Don’t insult my ethnicity RACIST!!!
PAN-ASIAPHILIA, right now!!!
No in real life, in scientific journals.
Not in real life…
Er yea he was. Read Joseph Graves’ and Judy Anderson’s rebuttals to him.
This was getting out of hand… I am glad the moderators intervened. Thank
you: https://www.unz.com/jthompson/chisalas-last-word/#comment-2109327
I had some comment exchanges with this commenter, to try to better
understand where he is coming from, etc. But I don’t feel he debates (or
jokes) in good faith (or in good humor):
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/alma-mater-2018/#comment-2104452
I found an interesting article/study concerning this:
Black humour is sign of high intelligence, study suggests
An appreciation of ‘sick jokes’ equates with high IQ and low aggression
– https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/29/dark-humour-high-intelligence-study
High aggression levels as displayed by commenter jorge videla (BGI
volunteer) likely also cloud a person’s perception as to how funny their
own jokes/humor actually are/is. Not very funny, just kind of creepy and
obsessive, in his case.
Something like a Dunning-Kruger Effect for (black) humor. jorge
videla (BGI volunteer) is the white Le’Genius Wisdom Williams of
black humour:
https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/the-talk-nonblack-version/#comment-2092312
Source: http://www.skepticblog.org/2013/06/26/the-dunning-kruger-effect/
If commenter jorge videla (BGI volunteer) needs to get this bad taste
black humour out of his system, maybe instead of commenting here at the
Unz Review and creepily stalking Mr. Thompson, this communication
technique comedian Trevor Moore developed could be a better option and of
interest and help to him:
Trevor Moore: High in Church – “Drunk Texts to Myself”
Video Link
You need to link to the actual images (i.e. your link should ONLY show the image). This should do it:
God, Buddha, JEW$$, Satan, Captain Planet, Oprah, everyone!!!!!