I was among those who believed until not that long ago that there was something genetic about the Kenyan and Ethiopian racers, but a few years ago I started reading about more and more cases of Kenyan long-distance runners having been caught doping. And then two white American female runners won Olympic gold and silver in 2016 at the 3000m steeplechase (I think it was at the Olympics), a race dominated until then by Kenyan female runners. The second American runner even beat her personal best by 30 seconds or so, anyway, a crazy number, which only proves that she was doped out of her mind. Most probably her colleague who came in first place was also doped.
Which goes to say that no
matter which genetic advantage you might have at birth there’s nothing that the socio-economic factors cannot surpass. In this particular case the socio-economic factors were very much in favor of an American runner being allowed to win an Olympic Games race while being doped, and that happened because the US is a huge market for all the athletics/related producers and almost all of the Olympic Games sponsors.
You example being about women runners weakens the argument. Top women are much slower than top men runners, so there are a lot of relatively obvious anatomical/physiological adjustment that could improve performanec beyond the current known best. This is an ongoing issue regarding the classification of transgendered and intersex athletes.
With male runners, doping would stilll be a factor, but there is less headroom for manipulation. You can't dope someone into arbitrarily high performance, and if you could, other physical characteristics wouldn't matter at all, which is clearly not the the case becasue we don't constantly see short, fat dopers popping up in elite contests.
> You example being about women runners weakens the argument.
Don’t know if it’s anywhere on the Internet but I remember an East German trainer saying something along the lines of: “It’s much easier to make a man out of a woman than it is to make a Superman out of a man”, all this in relation to East-Germany’s official doping policy. So I’d rather trust a professional in this matter (the East-Germans were truly the masters of doping) when saying that it is indeed easier to artificially increase the performances of female athletes compared to male athletes.
Not to end it all on a pessimistic note, there are also “happy” cases of naturally gifted athletes being at the right time and at the right place in terms of external socio-economic factors. The latest such example is the recent Tour de France winner, 22-year old Bernal, who won the Tour on its highest stage which I think reached 2700 meters, while he himself was born and grew up at 2800 meters of altitude. But he also won the Tour because he is a member of the infamous British team Ineos (the former Sky), which also gave the winner of last year’s Tour, Geraint Thomas, a guy born and bread in seaside Cardiff and who until last year’s victory had never had a Top 10 finish in any of the big 3 tours. He’s 32 now, if I’m not mistaken, cyclists much greater than him (like Pantani or Ulrich) were basically lynched by the public opinion for doing less egregious stuff (they at least were talented at climbing).
So, here's a reasonably rational response to a hotbutton claim like that: I think most numerate folks would look at that data and view a "race/IQ correlation" as at least a reasonable hypothesis.
But come on, it's weak. The relationship that chart shows clear as day is wealth. Wealth is super correlated. The top of the chart are exlusively industrialized democracies. The bottom are exclusively impoverished (and mostly unstable) backwaters.
And within those cohorts, sure, you can kinda/sorta say that east asians sit above europeans, maybe. Or maybe not. Four points of IQ are nothing -- it's like three decades of development per the Flynn effect, or maybe one decade of really focused investment in education.
There are counteless other good hypotheses for a weak signal, and this isn't an area amenable to direct experiment, so realistically we're never really going to know.
And the same stuff is true of the linked article. It's poking holes in specific statements by finding rigorous numbers that "disprove" it, but only very weakly. Basically, the point to the article isn't that "IQ is solid science", it's that Taleb's paper was too aggressive in its conclusion. Which is sort of a yawner, and not really a good excuse to bring race into the discussion.
But yeah. It's possible that darkies are dumber or that the gooks are smarter. It's possible. What drives those of us on the left absolutely bonkers isn't the possibility that you might be right, it's the fact that you look at messy data like this and immediately go to the least tolerable conclusion as if that's what you want to be true. And... yeah, yuck.
(Edit: and right on cue three quick responses about "but that doesn't prove race isn't correlated, here's another hypothesis for why race might be correlated!", which sounds to me suspiciously like "I really want race to be correlated with IQ!" The truth is we just don't know, we might never, even if it is it's weak, and I for one would rather live in a world where people don't want this to be true than the one I'm stuck in. )
Good point, but someone could say that IQ is correlated to Wealth (and not the other way around)?
Someone could, and the support would be equally ambiguous and we'll all die never really knowing the answer. So... not to be too much of a hippie here, but maybe we could all try to just stick to actual science here and not start flinging around pontification about one of the most deeply offensive and divisive topics of modern society on the basis of what amounts to tarot reading?
Just a thought. What's that quote from the Big Lebowski again?
I want to agree with you but China is not “super industrialized”. They’ve only caught up in the last two decades and have a vast countryside which is still way underdeveloped, some at the subsistence level. So wealth might have something to do with it, but it’s also only loosely associated.
So one outlier (not even that much of an outlier!) proves a racial correlation? This is what I'm talking about. It seems to a lot of "us" that a lot of "you" are going to cling to these racial opinions no matter what, constantly poking holes at any argument so that your own worldview doesn't have to change.
And that's what horrifies us. Is that really a worldview you want to have?
IQ varies significantly across China: http://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/world/148304d1429210862-china-iq-map-provinces-8-10-qq-20150417024936.jpg http://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/world/148304d1429... (A map someone compiled based on https://m.doc88.com/p-5803924483878.html https://m.doc88.com/p-5803924483878.html , a study on the effect of iodine on children's IQ)
Compare with the distribution of GDP per capita: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative_divisions_by_GDP_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative...
Sure, wealth is correlated as well. But perhaps wealth comes from intelligence? That seems reasonable, does it not? Wealth creation, at its most fundamental, is all about doing things more efficiently than they were done in the past. Who would be best equipped to tackle invention if not people with good problem-solving skills, as measured by IQ?
Honestly, this could be put to rest fairly "easily" (obviously this wouldn't be that easy and is never going to happen) if you took 1000 expectant mother's who have just become pregnant from Equatorial Guinea and transplanted them to various wealthy countries. Then measure the children's IQ as they grow up and compare them to the rest of the local population.
I have a feeling the difference in IQ would be negligible, and that the vast divide can be attributed almost wholly to nutrition/etc in early development, but you can't maintain that this is the case until you've actually tested the hypothesis, which as far as I'm aware has not been done.
I'm not entirely sure how the Flynn effect is relevant, unless the claim is that certain countries (African ones mostly) are not being retested at all, but European countries are. Is that the idea?
The Flynn effect is relevant because it demonstrates an ongoing change in "intelligence" measurements on a timeframe unlikely to be attributable to genetic changes. It points to other factors significantly affecting the measurement - possibly nutrition, changes in how we educate kids, etc.
Exactly. Though to be fair what most people (even right-leaning libertarians who tend to flog the race/IQ thing the most) mean when they think of "race" isn't really well correlated with genetics either.
In the US the people we talk about (and again, suspiciously, tend to be the focus of this IQ stuff) as "african-american" or "hispanic" are members of predominantely creole populations with staggeringly broad genetic backgrounds. Which you'd think would get them thrown out as obvious confounding outliers, but yet...
> Wealth is super correlated. The top of the chart are exlusively industrialized democracies. The bottom are exclusively impoverished (and mostly unstable) backwaters.
Exactly... one may conclude from this one of two things:
* countries become wealthy for unrelated reasons, allowing its populace to get wealthier and achieve a higher IQ.
* people with higher IQ can generate more wealth, hence countries with higher average IQ become wealthier.
I think that the first hypothesis may be true in certain cases, e.g. oil-rich places... but it seems more likely to me that the second hypothesis is correct, after all I would expect a group of more intelligent people to achieve more than a group of less intelligent people, or is that a polemic claim?
It's ignoring history. When a country starts out poor and becomes rich, or suffers a setback, this is better explained by other events in their history. Things like wars.
Absolutely. It's why Finland, Germany, and Britain have always been the center of human cultural development. And why Asia certainly did not spend any time in the "Third World" category and positively never fell victim to European colonialism.
> I would expect a group of more intelligent people to achieve more than a group of less intelligent people, or is that a polemic claim?
Imagine if a bunch of "more intelligent" people invent a nuclear bomb and blow themselves up (might yet happen), or discover the amazing properties of lead and poison their brains across an entire civilization (already happened). then the less intelligent people might achieve more, eh?
Let's dive right into a big racial/IQ claim: Jews have above average IQ. Assuming that, that makes them more successful as a group, perhaps? On the other hand, starting from say 1930, Jews were absolutely horrific at average achievement, thanks to the Nazi Holocaust. If the Jews were less intelligent, perhaps they would have blended into society better (after all, Jews don't look especially different, except for Jews that kept their mating pools limited) and been less noticeable by the Nazis.
There’s isn’t anything controversial with admitting that race is correlated with IQ.
The controversy is from folks trying to take that correlation, reframe it as causation, and then attribute it to genetic factors.
There are tons of non-genetic factors that can affect IQ and are correlated with race: exposure to pollution, economic situation, nutrition, etc.
Then there is the test itself. I’m not sure how localization happens, but it’s a pretty hard problem that lends itself to biases.
I assume that IQ is correlated to poverty, educational attainment, the learning styles used in schools, and the presence or lack thereof of "cram" schools.
The top 5 highest scoring countries, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and China all have a cram school culture that prepares them for the endless rounds of standardized tests they have to take to secure a position in society.
I would expect people trained from infancy to excel at standardized tests, to excel at standardized tests.
Many of the reasons I listed would explain why, in the US, the states of West Virginia (98.7) and New Hampshire (104.2), despite having very similar demographics have such different average IQs. One state is richer than the other.
It would also explain why Hawaii, which demographically is comprised of people (about 1/3rd) who share genetic lineage with people from high IQ nations, has a relatively low average IQ. Hawaii has a pretty bad public school system.
Until someone locks two children in an Edu-Pod from birth to adulthood and feeds them the same stream of information and nutrition and measures their IQ when the pod ejects them at the end of the test, we'll never know for sure, but my gut tells me that all of the people who think "genetics is destiny" are losers.
'but my gut tells me that all of the people who think "genetics is destiny" are losers.'
Try doing a sport competitively at a high level, where the whole team is eating the same, working out the same, and some plateau at a 315 deadlift and start getting injured all the time and others keep going to 450 without any problems.
And that's ignoring obvious things like deformities, asthma, insulin resistance, etc.
> Try doing a [X] competitively at a high level
That covers maybe 1% of the population. Meanwhile the other 99% of us have environment effects (nutrition, education and training, role models, weather, exposure to niche opportunities and advantages) that are greater sources of variation than genetics.
There's continuing scientific inquiry into determining how much of Kenyan and Ethiopian dominance (specifically, dominance by members of the Kalenjin tribe) in long-distance running is due to genetic factors. However, the point still stands that genetics are certainly a factor, by an amount that is unknown (and possibly unknowable given how hard it is to design interventional experiments). There is no scientific debate on this front that I'm aware of. For example, here's an article published in 2012 that summarizes research (and controversies) surrounding the genetic component of distance running: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/why-kenyans-make-such-great-runners-a-story-of-genes-and-cultures/256015/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/wh...
The abstract to which you linked points out that "Kenyan and Ethiopian distance-running success is not based on a unique genetic or physiological characteristic." That seems like a strawman, as I don't think anyone ever claimed that any single characteristic or gene has been making all the difference. The abstract calls out "favorable somatotypical characteristics lending to exceptional biomechanical and metabolic economy/efficiency." Sure, but how much of these characteristics and exceptionally favourable response to training and living at altitude is potentiated by genetics? The answer of "none" would be an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
> You say "would not be expected to be" because, of course, no-one has actually done this experiment and no-one knows what would actually happen. Nor indeed would we be able to verify that any given individual from the Netherlands does in fact lack the putatively relevant genes, since we don't know what they are.
I'm not aware of any interventional study that, say, separates high-altitude-native twins so that one twin grows up at low altitude but with everything else being equal. That sounds completely impractical. However, there exists observational evidence from human migrations to and from high altitude. Some examples:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4201282/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4201282/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17329275 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17329275
Finally, to address your earlier comment that "all we really know is that - not surprisingly - people who grow up at high altitudes tend to use oxygen a bit more efficiently than people who don't," this is a grossly inaccurate summary of scientific understanding of the multiple examples of convergent evolution that have produced genetically altitude-adapted populations in Kenya/Ethiopia, the Andes, and Tibet.
> However, the point still stands that genetics are certainly a factor, by an amount that is unknown
If you remove all constraints on effect size, then everything is a factor in everything. There is no strong reason to think that genes unusually prevalent among Kenyans play a large role in success at distance running. Note that this is not identical to the claim that genes do not play a large role in success at distance running. Certainly, performance in any given sport is significantly influenced by genetic factors (though the details are not well understood). But the following is not a good argument:
Genes significantly influence athletic performance
Keynans are great at distance running
|- Keynans have genes that make them better at distance running.
>The abstract calls out "favorable somatotypical characteristics lending to exceptional biomechanical and metabolic economy/efficiency." Sure, but how much of these characteristics and exceptionally favourable response to training and living at altitude is potentiated by genetics? The answer of "none" would be an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
The article points out that Somalians and Kenyans don't (on average) have particularly similar somatotypical characteristics, and yet both nations have produced exceptional distance runners.
>Finally, to address your earlier comment that "all we really know is that - not surprisingly - people who grow up at high altitudes tend to use oxygen a bit more efficiently than people who don't," this is a grossly inaccurate summary of scientific understanding of the multiple examples of convergent evolution that have produced genetically altitude-adapted populations in Kenya/Ethiopia, the Andes, and Tibet.
This is just bluster. We know little about the genetic details, and even less about any possible effects on elite athletic performance.
> There is no strong reason to think that genes unusually prevalent among Kenyans play a large role in success at distance running.
This contradicts scientific findings.
> Genes significantly influence athletic performance
> Keynans are great at distance running
> |- Keynans have genes that make them better at distance running.
I've been discussing Kenyan and Ethiopian runners for brevity, but as you point out, I should have been more specific: this chain of reasoning should conclude with the much more compelling observation that "from 1980 on, ~40% of the top honours available to men in international athletics at these distances (Olympic medals, World Championships medals, and World Cross Country Championships honours) have been earned by Kalenjin." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalenjin_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalenjin_people
> The article points out that Somalians and Kenyans don't (on average) have particularly similar somatotypical characteristics, and yet both nations have produced exceptional distance runners.
The Kalenjin identity predates modern borders of Kenya and Ethiopia, which torpedoes the "but multiple nations have produced elite runners" argument. They are massively disproportionately successful at distance running, and it's well-established that their specific genotypes are key to their success -- not the only key, but a major part.
None of this is "bluster." We can politely disagree here all we want, but the fact is that we both have near-instant access to reams of supporting evidence for the fact that Kalenjin genes uniquely predispose them to distance-running prowess, similar to how the Bajau of Southeast Asia are genetically predisposed to have 50% bigger spleens as a free-diving adaptation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sama-Bajau#Free-diving_adaptations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sama-Bajau#Free-diving_adaptat...), or how Tibetans are adapted across multiple genes to thrive at high altitude in a different way from Kalenjin or Andeans (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jul/02/mutation-gene-tibetans-altitude https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jul/02/mutation-gen...), or any of the other specific examples of genetic adaptation to ancestral environments whose existence might be uncomfortable to some, but are nevertheless real.
>This contradicts scientific findings.
That's pretty vague. You keep saying that things are "well-established" by science, but don't provide proper citations. The literature on Kenyan athletic performance is mostly pretty speculative and inconclusive. The article that you yourself cite in an earlier comment (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4037248/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4037248/) has a very tentative conclusion:
"A critical analysis of this unique phenomenon has shown that these athletes do not descend from a single isolated genetic profile.4 The data suggest that the genes most studied and associated with performance in aerobic endurance running (ACE and ACTN3) do not seem to fully explain the success of these athletes. It seems unlikely that Africa is producing unique genotypes that cannot be found in other parts of the world. So far, the evidence shows that the subjects’ phenotype (molded over time by several factors) seems to have greater influence than their genotype in their long-distance running success.4 While recognizing that this field of study is at an early stage of understanding, the available results show that the identified candidate genes for human performance neither determine nor exclude the possibility of athletic success. Although, the right choice of parents can help in the search for athletic success, this is not the deciding factor between success and failure in sport.4"
I guess the problem is less with race and more with region. Obviously a genetically diverse population is genetically diverse. You can be white and be genetically diverse, you can be black and be genetically diverse, you can be "mixed-race" and be genetically diverse.
But not every population is genetically diverse, and if intelligence is genetic, this could obviously manifest itself in an entire, non-genetically diverse population. Watson himself seems to be racist based on his later comments (where he did specifically mention black and white), but I think it is worth pointing out that his 2007 comments, for which he first earned the racist badge, made no mention of race. Rather, he said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really".
He was not talking about African-Americans / black people in general there, but rather about Africa and Africans, which as a whole have been more genetically isolated than the rest of the world. Africa has always had a hotter climate (which many have argued is less evolutionarily selective for intelligence than colder climates) and worse nutrition due to less arable farmland. If intelligence is at all genetic, all of those factors could have a serious impact over 1000s of years on what the "baseline intelligence" is. Obviously regional IQ tests are not sufficient on their own to show that this is the case, but the argument itself is not inherently flawed. We just don't have the data to point in one direction or the other.
Claiming that race is a good indicator of such is flawed, as race and genetic diversity are not inextricably linked as the racists want to claim, as you have pointed out. But postulating that Africa as a region is less genetically intelligent due to a variety of evolutionary factors is not flawed in the same way.
Regarding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality:
"Let's look at Germany. Lynn and Vanhanen cited four studies that found that West German IQ scores ranged from 99 to 107, whereas East German IQs were as low as 90 back in 1967, and later studies pegged their scores at 97 to 99 points. Taking the extremes, these data imply a gap as big as 17 IQ points between West and East Germans. How to account for the rise East Germany in less than a generation of 7 to 9 points? After all, East and West Germans are not all that genetically different. Lynn's data now show an average German IQ of 102 points. Similarly Lynn and Vanhanen report that average Greek IQs were 88 in 1961 rising to 95 in 1979. An increase of 7 IQ points in 18 years, as Unz points out, "is an absurdity from the genetic perspective." " (https://reason.com/2012/08/07/nations-smart-rich-wealth-creation/ https://reason.com/2012/08/07/nations-smart-rich-wealth-crea...)
"Another item that ought to prompt the thoughtful reader to question the very large discrepancy in intelligence that the authors assert to exist between various human sub-populations is the extraordinarily low average IQs assigned to many African nations. For example, the authors claim that the mean IQ in Equitorial Guinea is only 59, well shy of the threshold score of 70 below which the testee is classified as mentally retarded. Anyone who has spent significant time with an American or a European whose IQ is that low (as I did for a year while assisting in a special education program) can attest that such an individual is not capable of independently managing his own life, and will require constant caretaking to get on in the world." (https://mises.org/library/does-iq-determine-wealth-nations https://mises.org/library/does-iq-determine-wealth-nations)
Are you intentionally giving a sarcastic example to show how shoddy IQ science is?
> Honestly, this could be put to rest fairly "easily" (obviously this wouldn't be that easy and is never going to happen) if you took 1000 expectant mother's who have just become pregnant from Equatorial Guinea and transplanted them to various wealthy countries.
Even if you got full consent for everyone involved, can you not see the absolutely massive confounding factors around cultural support? To do this experiment, you'd have to cover up all the physical differenes beween the Guineans and the locals (including visual appearance and phemeromones and gut biology), adopt the babies into local families without their knowledge, and never telal anyone what happened, without adding other confounds.