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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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If HBD were true, there would be no Flynn Effect - there's no way the genes of the Western nations have changed that much so quickly.

I would even say that the changes in which societies are hovels and which are not, such as the shift in the center of civilization from the Muslim world to Europe over the past several centuries, are too fast to explain with HBD.

I'm too lazy to look up the actual numbers, but if I remember correctly, if we accept that the IQ numbers for Africa are the result of a culturally-unbiased assessment of intelligence, then Africa would be a society of actually literally retarded people, which it is not.

HBD people often claim that the flynn effect happened and was very strong, and indeed at least half if not more of the africa / US IQ difference today are environmental - but things like the internet, mass education, libraries, and cheap goods and modern life generally smooths out environmental differences like access to education and supplementation and industrial food and malaria, so the remaining differences in the US are mostly genetic. Like, if there's a lot of environmental and genetic variation, and then we get rally good at dealing with the environmental variation ...

However many of them also claim Africa is a society of actually retarded and functionally disabled people who are 70IQ, and, yeah, it isn't. But HBD people being puerile, bigoted racists doesn't make HBD false, lots of correct things were historically believed by disgusting bigots first.

Certain genetic changes can occur quickly, suppose you have many inbred groups, and due to something (easier transportation, cultural bans on incest) it can change in 1 generation. Some countries are still noticeably inbred.

To add to others said, reduced pathogen load compared to 100 years ago (due to vaccines and hygiene) also probably improved IQs too.

if we accept that the IQ numbers for Africa are the result of a culturally-unbiased assessment of intelligence

The most common estimate held in HBD is that black Africans IQ would improve by 10-15 points if living standards improved to that 1st world has.

a society of actually literally retarded people, which it is not.

In what sense?

They live lives, make social bonds, love, children, you don't need high intelligence for that.

If HBD were true, there would be no Flynn Effect - there's no way the genes of the Western nations have changed that much so quickly.

Do you feel changes in diet couldn't explain much of the difference? To pick just one example, we know iodine deficiency during pregnancy results in adult IQ for the child almost a standard deviation lower than pregnancy without iodine deficiency.

I find it easy to tell a story where elites have always tended to have access to varied and nutritious food, and thus be close to their maximum genetic potential, while peasants would frequently have vitamin deficiencies and have their height and IQ stunted. Then industrialization and the scientific revolution happen, humans figure out most of the food problem and figure out how to address the most important vitamin deficiencies in the population, and you see the Flynn Effect for several generations, which eventually tops out at the point where people's natural genetic potential lies.

If this explanation is true, it would be very easy to try to hypothesize something like: black people tend to not absorb certain vitamins as well as white people, so many of them might have deficiencies that go unnoticed that lead to lower IQ. I tend to recall looking at data for iodine levels in black mothers in the modern US, and they have the lowest levels of any ethnic group - though still above what is considered adequate for the IQ effects. It doesn't require that many epicycles to propose the hypothesis that what is adequate iodine for other groups might not be adequte iodine for black mothers - or that the scientists got the initial number wrong, and more iodine is needed to make up for the deficit.

And even without such speculation, it would be very simple to speculate about vitamin deficiencies in general in the US black population. This would allow for a "cultural" explanation for low black IQ that has a "biological" solution (force black people to eat different food/offer some product that has bioavailable versions of the missing vitamins.)

I find it easy to tell a story where elites have always tended to have access to varied and nutritious food

even if this was true, random drift would sort things. But give 'joe the plumber' person a lot of iodine and he's not gonna become einstein. There certainly were a lot of people in the past who were very smart but, by chance, were peasants. But that doesn't mean the elite weren't very sorted for genetics of various sorts!

The explanation might not be iodine. Black people have high rates of vitamin D deficiency, for example.

there would be no Flynn Effect

This is way bigger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem

if we accept that the IQ numbers for Africa are the result of a culturally-unbiased assessment of intelligence, then Africa would be a society of actually literally retarded people, which it is not.

This is such an annoying and ignorant argument. Clinical retardation is not just the condition of having low IQ.

HBD is not the claim that environment has no effect on IQ. A 50% environment, 50% genetics model to explain IQ variation is a pro HBD position

That's a good point I hadn't thought and I take back the first paragraph I wrote.

No it isn't. HBD as typically sold by its advocates requires genetics to be the dominant factor.

If you read a review article on behavioral genetics, i'd recommend this, iirc one of the things it initially emphasizes is that heritability is entirely a contextual thing. The heritability of a trait just tries to measure the extent that it, in a specific population under the myriad conditions and complex causation within it, a trait is caused by genes, in the sense that individuals with shared genes are, ceteris paribus, all else equal, more likely to share the trait. But this could entirely depend on environment - 'arm count' is much less heritable in an environment where people get their arms cut off at random and .1% of the population has a gene that sometimes causes arm malformation, vs an environment where nobodys arms get cut off and 50% of the population has a gene that reliably causes arms to not develop in utero. Despite the genes involved being the same!

Similarly, the HBD argument is - in the past, environment was dominant, and IQ had a much lower "heritability" if one could measure it - malaria? mauled by tiger? intestinal parasites? bad weather causes crops to fail? All random factors lowering IQ. Sure, a smarter person can avoid those a bit better, but not enough. But now modern society is very good at eliminating all of those - industrial food production, modern medicine, society, hygiene, education, travel, internet - and most of the variation left is genetic. HBD generally claims that within america, genetics is dominant - but not for instance between africa and america, or historical america and america.

In The Bell Curve, which I think can safely be called one of the seminal works in HBD discourse, Charles Murray states that evidence shows intelligence is between 40-80% heritable, and he puts his personal estimation in the middle at 60%. HBD as usually presented does not require that heritability be the dominant factor in determining intelligence, just a major component. If it's 40% heritable, that still has significant explanatory power.

That's the motte the bailey is when the same poster comes back 20 minutes later askings stupid questions like; If HBD is false what were Africa and Latin America were doing while the whites and Asians were duking it out for world supremacy?

You're the one who is engaging in strategic equivocation here, and being a veteran of the old atheism wars myself I see little to be gained by getting drawn into a Gish gallop with you.

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