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The 70 IQ person in the US is more likely to be at the peak of their genetic potential due to the availability of resources. I think if you take the supposed average 70 IQ person from the Ivory Coast and give them a Western country-level education, their IQ could still rise 10-15 points. There is some evidence to support that for every additional year of education, IQ rises 1-5 points. Maybe not because children benefit much more from education than adults.
Also, I'm not sure if IQ measurements of the Sub-Saharan African countries do follow a true bell curve since IQ level is adjusted for a mostly Western country. I think the IQ distribution would likely skew right in these countries. We may see a drop-off point above 100 IQ because smart Africans typically migrate to better countries to make a better living. Fun fact, did you know Nigerian-Americans are one of the most educated groups of people in the United States?
IQ plays a more significant role in the lower bracket in terms of job success and ability than at the higher levels. Since the studies are based in the US I think it would be fair to assume most people reached their genetic potential. So IQ matters significantly sub 85, but around 100 and higher it no longer becomes as strong of a predictive tool of job success.
In terms of phenotypic vs genotypic IQ we don't know for sure but based on Gottfredson's description of IQ ability I'd say it applies mostly to genotypic IQ. According to Gottfredson
It seems extremely unlikely you take an Ivory Coast child and give them US-level nutrition and education that a majority of them would be unable to pass an elementary school education. Wikipedia indicates that while the Ivory Coast is behind educational availability for its population, the literacy rate rose from 48.7% in 2000 to 89.9% as of 2019. And by 2012 94.2% of children attended secondary school. To me, it doesn't make sense 70 IQ people are able to graduate primary school if Gottfredson indicates people below 75 IQ cannot master elementary school education unless that IQ description only applies to the US population where the study was done, or the IQ measurement in Ivory coast is inaccurate or outdated, or primary school education in the Ivory Coast is incredibly simple relative to that of the US.
Good point, I didn't really consider the cultural aspect properly.
I was going to write just same 10-15 points, but then didn't because didn't see the point in the context. Also, this increase would require better medicine and food etc, not only better education. I didn't read the link beyond abstract, I think they're making typical sociologist's fallacy.
I did. Nigeria certainly has much lower threshold for getting a university degree.
So would IQ decrease from FAS or cerebral palsy (phenotypic) have mostly no effect on whether individual could function well in modern society?
While I more agree with your argument than not, your argument is lacking something important.
Some points to consider: lower IQ than population average is often associated with personality deficits and mental disease, which average member of low IQ population does not have. There might a component to IQ results ("familiarity with IQ testing culture") which has very little effect on mundane tasks.
probably much simplier
This is such an odd point to argue. Consider 2nd generation Nigerian-Americans: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231211001971
Is it so hard to believe a self-selected group that is allowed to immigrate to the United States could just so happen to be more educated than the average US population? They're not going to Nigeria to get their education. They're getting their education in American Universities just like any other 2nd generation American migrant group.
This is the exception. Not everyone in Ivory Coast or other sub-saharan African country has FAS or cerebral palsy or other non-nutrition defective diseases driving the IQ down.
This personality IQ correlation is done in the US and thus it cannot be appropriately extrapolated to Africa. Unless you know any specific studies/research to suggest otherwise, I don't know any.
On the Flynn Effect:
So, there is a wide range of literature to support the idea the increase in IQ is not because Western nations somehow genetically got more intelligent, but instead that improvements in education, nutrition, and health resulted in the increase of IQ. Once these educational and health-related factors allow populations to reach their maximum potential, we see that IQ is no longer rising (Norway and Denmark for example). Most African nations have not yet caught up in terms of education, nutrition, and health.
Okay, now let's look at what Flynn used for his IQ estimates of Sub-Saharan Africa. Look at the dates of when the IQ studies he uses in his meta-analysis. 1998, 1988, 1965, 1960, 1993, 1995, 1981, 1937, 1964, 1975, 1965, 1954, 2004, 1950, 2007, 1961, 1994, 1976... you get my point. Most of these studies are looking at IQ over a period when African countries has yet to see the benefit of improvements in education, nutrition, and health to the degree that Western and Asian countries have.
Flynn rejects several studies of IQ in trying to estimate the IQ of African countries for various reasons. One study he rejected because it was tested on high school-educated Africans, because the average African did not study in high school at the time the study was conducted. If your goal is to find the median IQ of the country that's fine but then you have to be very nuanced about how you interpret that IQ, because you're comparing a country where the average citizen graduated from high school to one where the average citizen doesn't even have the opportunity to go to high school. When it comes to IQ people assume that IQ is static and doesn't change and then racists use IQ to justify their stances. I'm not so naive as to argue that IQ would be equivalent if all races got equal amounts of education and nutrition and are raised in an equivalent culture, but I am arguing that IQ gap would be not as large.
I don't know how you can reject the notion that education has an impact on IQ. I'm just going to quote Scott here
Any argument or data point I bring up that might suggest the IQ of Africans could be higher you seem to challenge. What's your angle here? What's your belief? I'm honestly confused about what your intention is. What are you looking to get out of this conversation? Do you believe if we take the average baby from the Ivory Coast and raise them in the US they're going to fail elementary school?
No it's not.
They get education in USA universities, meaning they enjoy massive (de facto) SAT bonus in enrollment, mainly intended for AADOS. While education is a proxy for IQ, it is a poor proxy in case when comparing between universities/degrees having different standards or affirmative action.
I agree that African countries IQ might went up by 10-15 points if they get higher standards of living.
I am not sure whether education increases IQ scores or hidden things that we want to measure when we do IQ tests.
I'm just discussing what sprung from claim '70 iq not employable'. And what's your angle?
Did I say something which made think you so? If most US Blacks finish elementary school, why wouldn't I think average Ivorian immigrant wouldn't?
Then why do you respond with "Nigeria certainly has much lower threshold for getting a university degree"? I don't see what education in Nigeria has to do with the education of Nigerian Americans in the US.
Yes, because when presented with 3 possible explanations for how children from Ivory Coast are now graduating elementary school with data from 2012 in conjunction with Gottfredson's description of those with 75 IQ you chose "probably much simpler" as the most likely option. Meanwhile, your opinion on IQ for people in Ivory Coast is likely based on Flynn's paper which I point out has some issues to take into consideration.
The reason the 70 IQ person from USA is going to fail at work is because they are actually incapable of mastering elementary school-level concepts, and most jobs in the US today require some level of intelligence. If you acknowledge that a baby from the Ivory Coast growing up in the US would be able to pass elementary school, it goes to reason that how you should interpret that 70 IQ average value from the Ivory Coast is not equivalent to 70 IQ person in the US. Maybe it makes sense in your world where you deny the effect education has on IQ, but I have reasons to believe education does have an impact on IQ, and your casual dismissal of "you're not sure" or you think it is a "sociologist's fallacy" does little to convince me otherwise.
This seems to be where our disagreement largely stems from and if we can't agree on this then our conclusions will just have to be different.
Maybe I am wrong. I heard claim "Nigerian Americans are very educated" claim many times, and I always thought that it referred to 1st gen Nigerian Americans and majority of those got their higher education in Nigeria (I think that about 50% Nigerians obtaining higher education in Nigeria emigrate)
I think I have to repeat myself "While education is a proxy for IQ, it is a poor proxy in case when comparing between universities/degrees having different standards or affirmative action."
No my opinion is not, I think 70 is close to phenotypic average SSA IQ and I consider that African Americans have somewhat similar genotypic IQ to Ivorians because most of their origin is from West Africa (maybe 5 points higher due to White admixture). If you don't like Flynn estimates, get better ones but do not shift into discussion how many degrees Nigerian Americans have (a highly selected group benefiting from race-based affirmative action).
If so (I am not saying it isn't), then you should drop "70 iq people are unemployable" alltogether.
Many people say this, but nearly all twins studies find impact of shared environment on adults low, less than 10%. Research of education>IQ is not stigmatized. Why didn't they come with some impressive results?
Why these are exceptions? They are just conditions with larger effects, there are many lesser conditions. If some condition drives phenotypic ability to perform well on IQ tests, why wouldn't it be drive their phenotypic ability to perform well on a job?
It looks to me, that I completely agreed with your point that "70 iq Ivorians not same as 70 iq Americans" and yet that you're thinking I am disagreeing and you do not like that I wrote something unflattering for SSA.
Can you provide a source? Gottfredson puts the black-American IQ average between 85 and 90. Flynn's work is based off meta IQ analysis of IQ testing data largely from before 2000s. I have provided evidence that between then and now that in the Ivory Coast the amount of education has increased. So again, I have reasons to believe that the average IQ would have risen between when the IQ tests had their data gathered to today.
If you're not pulling from Flynn who's the most prominent source behind the 70 IQ estimate for people of Africa then where are you getting your value from? You're the one that needs to provide a source, not me. I've provided numerous sources throughout this discussion to ground this discussion and you've yet to provide anything. This 70 IQ value for people in the Ivory Coast we've been discussing stems from 2rafa's comment several posts up and they point to Flynn as the source so that's the basis for this discussion. If you're using a completely different source to base your beliefs then we can't have a discussion properly. I've made pretty clear where my ideas come from to give you the opportunity to check and you haven't done the same level of effort for me so I'm not going to just take your word for it.
Perhaps you have a point here and I should be more clear with my words. - People whose genetic potential caps around 70 IQ and are raised in a Western nation are not mostly employable in Western countries where most jobs are service and intellectual-based. The job-IQ research I'm aware of is done in the US so if you limit the area to just the US you can ignore a lot of other factors that have to be taking into consideration if you try to extrapolate elsewhere. I'm not going to drop the idea altogether. I do get in the habit for talking from a US-centric perspective to thank you for helping me remember to be more specific with my words.
And those twins both typically both graduate from high school and still get an adequate amount of nutrition. Just gonna quote Scott yet again:
The difference in an environment where twins grow up in the most extreme examples (upper class America vs lower class America), that gap is smaller compared to the average child in the US and the average child in the Ivory Coast in the 2000s. Both twins still get the benefit of education, which includes learning about abstract thinking. Show me a statistically significant twins study where the twins grow up in two completely different countries with completely different standards of education, or where one gets an education and the other doesnt and yet they end up with similar enough IQ and I might think you have a better point here.
You know what, I think I misunderstood your point earlier and thought you were saying something else. Upon a reread on your previous posts, I think I see your point and have to agree. I believe my revised statement above should account for this properly now.
Well, my impression was you didn't agree because every time I point out the reasons why they aren't equal, you swoop in to challenge the reasoning and then you didn't explicitly say anything about your thoughts on that until your most recent response. Thank you for clarifying. I think your clarification with "genotypic IQ" and "phenotypic IQ" is actually a very good distinction because when people typically discuss IQ they don't make this distinction, and then racists will take the existing research to justify their beliefs framing it as purely "genotypic IQ" and all this does it prevent further research into IQ which is a net negative for the world since now it's controversial to do research into IQ.
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