A South African who styles himself as "Rational Thinker" is critical of many claims about IQ

He is not a scientific thinker however. He starts out by describing something as a lie without any prior presention of evidence to support that characterization.

He then describes a claim as "refuted" without giving any information about how, when, where and why this refutation took place.

He goes on to say that the clain of lower average IQ among blacks whern compared with whites is "discredited".  Again: When and by whom?

The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede a big inborn gap in black vs. white average IQ.  See here

By this stage I think it is obvious that the screed below is simply an abusive ramble by an egotist who "just knows" what the truth is without recourse to a proper consideration of the evidence.  So much further consideration of his assertions is unlikely to shed any light on anything.

The thing that seems to be burning him up most is the claim that atheists are smarter than religious people, so I will close with a comment on that.  I have looked at the survey evidence on that on a number of occasions so I will summarize by saying that atheists DO test out as slightly more intelligent on average but that difference is fairly clearly due to sociological factors rather than psychological ones. A university environment in particular tends to undermine religion.  See here and  here and here and here and here.

So it would really help our knowall writer if he were to acquire some Christian humility about the veracity of his beliefs.  His existing beliefs certainly should go back into the hole where they belong


One of the major lies preached by atheists is that "atheists are more smarter" than theists. In support of this nonsense, they cite research from Richard Lynn, John Harvey and Helmuth Nyborg which compares belief in God and average IQs in 137 countries.

The research has been heavily criticized as well as refuted since its publication by most scientists but this unfortunately doesn't stop atheists from still using it.   

Firstly Helmuth Nyborg is not a good researcher. This is a researcher who attempted to say that women were less intelligent than men and that black people were less intelligent than white people. These sexist and racist "theories" having long been discredited in modern science.

His research on atheists being more intelligent was highly flawed in several areas in that it did not take into account the social, economical or financial factors with most of the countries with lower intelligence being less developed African countries.

  Artificial Intelligence researcher Randy Olson concludes in his criticism of the research that both the religious and atheist in the well developed countries were all within the bounds of average intelligence (90-109) and from a practical point, none were well distinguishable from another.

When we examine the research we find that this is the case so all in all the paper failed to prove that atheists were more intelligent and only showed what was a well known fact for ages: that poorer countries have higher numbers of religious as religion serves as a source for comfort for those struggling.

The poor intelligence meanwhile in these countries is down to these countries not having education. So to rephrase this entire paragraph: when the religious in the same countries as the "smarter atheists" were compared, they were of the same intelligence as the atheists.  

When examining the statistics, we find that atheists aren't more intelligent, in fact, according to The Psychology of Atheism, many atheists became atheist for motivational reasons rather than rational reasons during their adolescence suggesting a link between emotional thinking and atheism. (Source The Psychology of Atheism [2013]. Oxford Handbook of Atheism Page 470) This seems to be reinforced by the fact that many atheists use emotional arguments to support atheism (i.e "bad things happen in the world ergo god doesn't exist").

Finally, studies have shown that Christians in East Asia are smarter than non-Christians there. East Asian countries also have an higher IQ on average to western countries (where the majority of atheists in the first study came from). So if we go by the atheist reasoning we can now say that Christians are smarter. Either way the myth of the smarter atheist has been put back into the hole it belongs.

SOURCE  

Pregnant women who take paracetamol could lower their child's IQ and raise their risk of autism, research finds

No drug is free of side-effects but I have long noted that paracetamol (APAP) is much more dangerous than aspirin, principally because of its well-established liver toxicity.  The findings below would seem to add to that message but maybe not.  People who take a lot of painkillers are probably of worse health overall.  So maybe all we are seeing is that the children of unhealthy mother are unhealthy too. 

The journal article is "Prenatal Exposure to Acetaminophen and Risk for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Autistic Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Meta-Regression Analysis of Cohort Studies" and the authors  there are also cautious about the meaning of the findings.  They say: "These findings are concerning; however, results should be interpreted with caution given that the available evidence consists of observational studies and is susceptible to several potential sources of bias.


Women who take paracetamol during pregnancy risk lowering their child's IQ, a study has revealed. Taking the drug is also associated with a higher risk of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and autism.  

Researchers from US universities, including Harvard, reviewed nine studies that looked at 150,000 mothers and babies in total.  Their findings suggest that the balance of hormones in the uterus are altered by taking paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen (APAP).

One study analysed found a three-point drop in IQ for five-year-old children whose mothers had taken paracetamol for pain relief without fever. Other research shows youngsters exposed to the drug in the womb struggled with speech.

It's not the first time scientists have found a link between paracetamol use and delayed speech.

In January, research from New York found that taking the go-to-pain relieving drug during pregnancy delays babies' speech by up to six times.  

Expectant mothers who take acetaminophen more than six times during their early pregnancies are significantly more likely to have daughters with limited vocabularies, the study found.   

Paracetamol is generally available without prescription and is the most commonly used medication in pregnancy.   

Research this year has shown the common painkiller can raise a child's risk of ADHD by up to 30 per cent, and up to a 20 per cent for autism, when taken by their mothers.

The study, led by Dr Ilan Matok, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, analysed 132,738 mother-child pairs over three-to-11 years.

Dr Matok said: 'Our findings suggest an association between prolonged acetaminophen use and an increase in the risk of autism and ADHD.'

SOURCE 

Transgenerational advantage

Summary below of a particularly dumb TED talk from a New School professor. The New School is far Left from wayback so the idea presented is as dumb and impractical as you would expect of that. It's true that economic advantage tends to be passed on from father to son but why and how?  The Newschooler doesn't know.  He just knows that it is.  So he resorts to vague generalities -- which apparently sounded clever to his audience. 

That wealth is transmitted in some automatic way once you have it is absolute bunkum.  How many times have we read of people winning big in a lottery and blowing the lot in short order?  Having money does not even encourage you to keep it, let alone pass it on.

But there is no need for "cleverness" in order to explain the phenomenon that our Newschooler has noticed.  It's perfectly plain why rich men tend to have economically successful children.  It's because you have to be pretty smart to get rich (As Charles Murray showed decades ago) and IQ is highly hereditary.  Both father and son get rich because they are both  smarter than the average. 

Giving a son money will do nothing to alter the main operative factor in wealth acquisition: IQ.  If he is smart he doesn't need it and if he is dumb he will simply blow it.


Economists often point out the simple truth that having wealth makes it easier to get more wealth, which means those who have a lot of money pass on an advantage from one generation to the next.

To adjust for that, economist Darrick Hamilton, a professor at The New School in New York, recently proposed a kind of baby trust fund system. His idea is to give all kids in the US a chunk of cash when they’re born, ranging between $US500 and $US60,000 based on their family’s wealth. That would help give all of thems a fair shot at a prosperous future, he said.

“Wealth is the paramount indicator of economic security and well-being,” Hamilton told a crowd at the TED Conferences headquarters in New York in September. “It is time to get beyond the false narrative that attributes inequalities to individual personal deficits while largely ignoring the advantages of wealth.”

SOURCE

A test to predict Alzheimer's?

This finding is not terribly surprising. Verbal ability is the biggest single component of IQ and mechanical ability is quite highly 'g' loaded too.  And we have long known that high IQ people have better health across the board.  So finding that people who are bad with words are more likely to develop Alzheimer's fits with that.  It's another part of the syndrome in which IQ is an index of general biological fitness

A test given to hundreds of thousands of students, including rock stars Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, nearly 60 years ago could hold the answers to whether a person will develop dementia.

Researchers at the Washington-based American Institutes for Research, which administered the test to some 440,000 high school students across the US in 1960, have been studying the teen's answers and believe they have found a link to student's who scored low on the test and Alzheimer's disease.

According to the Washington Post, researchers compared results for more than 85,000 testers with their 2012/2013 Medicare claims and expenditures and found that warning signs of memory loss may present itself as early as adolescence.

The study found specifically that those who scored low on mechanical reasoning and memory for words had a higher risk of dementia later in life. Researchers found that low-scoring men were 17 per cent more likely to get dementia, while low-scoring women were 16 per cent more likely.

The test, called Project Talent, was administered to high school kids from 1,353 public and parochial schools across the country. It was funded by the US government.

SOURCE 

That "leptokurtic" really is important

Grumble, grumble.  In my attempts yesterday to explain why the distribution of female IQ is narrower than for males, I approached it from the wrong angle.  I followed Ted Hill's approach and tried to explain the male distribution rather than the female distribution.  That was crazy and I want to point out why.

The normal or Gaussian distribution is a mathematical construct which shows most instances of anything as being clustered around the mean (average).  A remarkable thing about it, however, is that most natural phenomena tend to scatter in that pattern.  The normal distribution really is normal!

A normal distribution is however rather "fat".  It covers a fair range.  There is a pic of one below



And male IQ follows that pattern fairly closely.  The female IQ does not quite follow that pattern, however.  It is leptokurtic, meaning narrower.  It is not so spread out. See the example below:



So we don't have to explain the male distribution.  It is normal.  What we have to explain is why the female distribution is narrower. And that seems fairly easy to me.  No algebra is required! As I said yesterday, men are very uniform in what they like in a woman.  A lot of it is physical: Long legs, a slim figure, some bosom, long hair etc. If a lady with those characteristics is kind to a man he will be in love! And high IQ in a woman is not a big priority for men. It may even be a negative for some.

So women have evolved to maximize the fairly narrow range of things that men like, with other characteristics falling by the wayside -- including IQ.  Men have made women less varied.  Won't the feminists like to hear that!

So how does male selectivity explain the low frequency of really dumb women?  That is pretty straightforward.  Men require some minimal level of IQ in order to find a woman attractive.  So women below that level will not mate and not reproduce.  Men have also set the lower bound of female intelligence

So how do we account for the fact that dumb men seem to proliferate without restriction?  Should not the general female preference for high IQ cause such men to die out? I dealt with that yesterday but I think I should repeat my remarks here for the sake of convenience. 

The fact that low IQ women are often FAT comes into it a lot in our society but the handicaps that low IQ women have will of course vary from society to society.

In summary, I think we have to conclude that quite dumb men can still be of some use to some women. How?  In all mate selection, what you will overlook as well as what you get is important. And some women will apparently overlook low IQ.  I suspect that it is a simple case of similarities attracting.  Low IQ women will be attracted to low IQ men even if the IQ levels are not exactly the same.  Low IQ women take what they can get in order to reproduce and low IQ men get some acceptance that way.  The very strong female urge to have babies drowns out other considerations. And that is in fact one thing we do clearly know about low IQ women:  They do have lots of babies.  And it is their babies that pump up the low IQ male population

So we have to look not only at what men and women like but also what they will do without.   I remember a related phenomenon well.  I have done a lot of things in my life and I once ran a large boarding house in a poor area.  It was very instructive in a number of ways, not all of them bad. 

And one thing I remember is the partnerships I observed among my clientele and their friends.  In particular, I observed that even pumpkin-shaped women had partners.  Fat is a huge social handicap so how did they manage that?  By being very tolerant, by overlooking a lot.  Their partner might be a boozy, smoky, scrawny loser but he was a male -- and the pair did seem to be reasonably supportive of one-another most of the time.  Both were aware of their low level of attractiveness and felt glad to have someone, anyone, in their lives of the opposite sex.

UPDATE: 

A reader offers another explanation:  "I believe the simple explanation for the narrower range of females in general is to do with the XX chromosomes they have. There are relatively less genes on the male Y chromosome than the X.  In many cases this means men have nothing to balance any bad genes on the X Chromosome they get from their mother. Basically this means men get to throw one die whereas women get to throw two.  The distribution reflects this"

The leptokurtic distribution of IQ in women is due to sexual selection

OK.  I will translate that into plain English.  The academic article below has become immensely controversial because of foolish feminist attempts to suppress it (They have in fact assured it of widespread attention) -- so I will just try to translate the controversial part.

For a start, I disagree with the article.  I think it assumes what it has to prove.  It starts with what may be a true premise: That women in general are fussy maters.  They are much more fussy than men about who they will partner with long term. That's the "sexual selection" part.

And the "leptokurtic" part refers to the fact that female IQ scores tend to be bunched around the average, with few very dumb women and few very bright women when compared to men.  That's the bit that fires feminists up with rage. That there are fewer women than men at the top of the IQ range is totally against their ideology.  They are, however, barking at the moon in their rage -- because the leptokurtic distribution of IQ among females has been found repeatedly for around 100 years.  It is as firm a finding as any in science.  It is a fact and no objecting to it will make it go away.  So they are wasting their breath in condemning it.

But, given the finding, where do we go from there?  The theory below is heavily mathematical and I cheerfully admit that I am a mathematical dunce.  I get by but only barely. So, maybe I have got the theory below all wrong, but what I get from it is that women will only accept the upper end of male desirability.  Low desirability males will never find a reproductive partner.  The theory then goes on to assume that desirable men come from a more varied distribution and that mating with them will reinforce that varied distribution.

That seems nuts to me.  As far as I can see, the only effect of women discriminating heavily in favour of desirable men should be to raise the average level of desirability.

The authors below set out their basic premise as follows:

"In a species with two sexes A and B, both of which are needed for reproduction, suppose that sex A is relatively selective, i.e., will mate only with a top tier (less than half ) of B candidates. Then from one generation to the next, among subpopulations of B with comparable average attributes, those with greater variability will tend to prevail over those with lesser variability. Conversely, if A is relatively non-selective, accepting all but a bottom fraction (less than half ) of the opposite sex, then subpopulations of B with lesser variability will tend to prevail over those with comparable means and greater variability"

So I think their very starting point is wrong.  Where they say: "those with greater variability will tend to prevail over those with lesser variability", I would say that "variability will gradually decline".  I would be delighted if someone could explain where I am wrong.

So let me set out my own theory. It also has its difficulties, as we will see, but I think it explains more.  It seems to me that although some women are very picky -- to the point of not finding a mate until they are past childbirth -- they are very diverse in what they are picky about -- which is something of a Godsend for us men.  It gives hope to us all.

Although there are some things that are generally popular among women -- tall, well-built men with smooth skin tend to have an easy ride -- there is a variety of views in women about what is important.  Some women, for instance rather despise the "Jock" stereotype and go for more "sensitive" men. And a really big factor in mate selection is getting similar levels of IQ. Few women can tolerate a man who is dumber than them, for instance.  They mostly want one who is as bright or brighter. They may be unaware that they are looking for intelligence but the things they do consciously look for are often correlated with higher intelligence -- higher income, better education, better health  etc.  And lots of "defects" will be tolerated by a high IQ woman if that is the only way she can get a high IQ man.  That is my theory about how I managed to get married four times!

A man, on the other hand, is much more uniform in what he likes in a woman.  A lot of it is physical:  long legs, a slim figure, some bosom, long hair etc. If a lady with those characteristics is kind to him he will be in love.

So, in sum, my simple theory is that men are more diverse than women because women are more diverse than men in what they will accept in a mate. And a lot of women like a higher IQ in a man, whereas high IQ in a woman is not a big priority for men. It may even be a negative for some.

My theory would even account for men being taller.  If you have ever got to know short men to any extent you will be aware of how irate they are that most women look right over their heads.  That makes them determined that their sons will not be so "handicapped".  And the only way they can have tall sons is to get a tall woman as a mate.  So they go all-out for that, regardless of most other criteria.

It ends up that you often see a dapper short man with a rather odd looking lady -- but one with long legs.  If a woman is tall she will always be able to get a mate -- even if he is a bit short.  So there is heavy sexual selection for tallness in men.  Female long-leg genes get attached to whatever genes short men have.  Short men tend not to have short sons

But now we come to the difficulty I alluded to at the outset.  How do we account for the fact that DUMB men also proliferate?  Should not the female preference for high IQ cause such men to die out?

I think we have to conclude that dumb men are of some use to some women. How?  In all mate selection, what you will overlook as well as what you get is important. And some women will apparently overlook low IQ.  I suspect that it is a simple case of similarities attracting.  Low IQ women will be attracted to low IQ men even if the IQ levels are not exactly the same.  Low IQ women take what they can get in order to reproduce and low IQ men get some acceptance that way.  The very strong female urge to have babies drowns out other considerations. And that is in fact one thing we do clearly know about low IQ women:  They do have lots of babies.  And it is their babies that pump up the low IQ male population

So we have to look not only at what men and women like but also what they will do without.   I remember a related phenomenon well.  I have done a lot of things in my life and I once ran a large boarding house in a poor area.  It was very instructive in a number of ways, not all of them bad. 

And one thing I remember is the partnerships I observed among my clientele and their friends.  In particular, I observed that even pumpkin-shaped women had partners.  Fat is a huge social handicap so how did they manage that?  By being very tolerant, by overlooking a lot.  Their partner might be a boozy, smoky, scrawny loser but he was a male -- and the pair did seem to be reasonably supportive of one-another most of the time.  Both were aware of their low level of attractiveness and felt glad to have someone, anyone, in their lives of the opposite sex.

And in case what I have just said sounds too derogatory, I must also note that they were all fairly pleasant people, at least while sober.  They had a relaxed attitude to life that many smarter people could well learn from.

There is however a remaining difficulty in my theory. What I have so far proposed would seem to imply that the male offspring of low IQ women will take after their father while the female offspring of low IQ women will take after the slightly higher IQ of the mother.  But it doesn't work like that.  Children can take after either parent.  So am I back to square 1 in explaining the lesser variance in female IQ?  It looks like it.  My theory accounts for a lot but something more is needed.

Abstract only below.  Full article at the link


An Evolutionary Theory for the Variability Hypothesis

Theodore P. Hill

Abstract

An elementary mathematical theory based on “selectivity” is proposed to address a question raised by Charles Darwin, namely, how one gender of a sexually dimorphic species might tend to evolve with greater variability than the other gender. Briefly, the theory says that if one sex is relatively selective then from one generation to the next, more variable subpopulations of the opposite sex will tend to prevail over those with lesser variability; and conversely, if a sex is relatively non-selective, then less variable subpopulations of the opposite sex will tend to prevail over those with greater variability. This theory makes no assumptions about differences in means between the sexes, nor does it presume that one sex is selective and the other non-selective. Two mathematical models are presented: a discrete-time one-step statistical model using normally distributed fitness values; and a continuous-time deterministic model using exponentially distributed fitness levels.

SOURCE

Only dummies use drugs

Forgive the over-simplified heading above.  I have clearly been reading too much journalism. What the article below shows is that illegal drug use is greatest in people who did poorly at school. Sadly, the authors are better at using complicated statistics than they are at thinking.  The BIG determinant of academic achievement is IQ, and yet they do not even mention IQ, let alone control for it.  They have wasted their efforts by that omission.  Low IQ would have caused both the low academic achievement and drug abuse.  The study tells us NOTHING new and skips over what was actually going on.  Sad and pathetic

Academic Achievement and Drug Abuse Risk Assessed Using Instrumental Variable Analysis and Co-relative Designs

Kenneth S. Kendler et al.

Abstract

Importance:  Low academic achievement (AA) in childhood and adolescence is associated with increased substance use. Empirical evidence, using longitudinal epidemiologic data, may provide support for interventions to improve AA as a means to reduce risk of drug abuse (DA).

Objective:  To clarify the nature of the association between adolescent AA and risk of DA by using instrumental variable and co-relative analysis designs.

Design, Setting, and Participants:  This study, assessing nationwide data from individuals born in Sweden between 1971 and 1982, used instrumental variable and co-relative analyses of the association between AA and DA. The instrument was month of birth. Co-relative analyses were conducted in pairs of cousins (263 222 pairs), full siblings (154 295), and monozygotic twins (1623) discordant for AA, with raw results fitted to a genetic model. The AA-DA association was modeled using Cox regression. Data analysis was conducted from October 2017 to January 2018.

Exposures:  Academic achievement assessed at 16 years of age (for instrumental variable analyses), and estimated discordance in AA in pairs of monozygotic twins (for co-relative analyses).

Main Outcomes and Measures:  Drug abuse registration in national medical, criminal, or pharmacy registries.

Results:  This instrumental variable analysis included 934 462 participants (478 341 males and 456 121 females) with a mean (SD) age of 34.7 (4.3) years at a mean follow-up of 19 years. Earlier month of birth was associated with a linear effect on AA, with the regression coefficient per month equaling −0.0225 SDs (95% CI, −0.0231 to −0.0219). Controlling for AA, month of birth had no association with risk of DA (hazard ratio [HR], 1.000; 95% CI, 0.997-1.004). Lower AA had a significant association with risk of subsequent DA registration (HR per SD, 2.33; 95% CI, 2.30-2.35). Instrumental variable analysis produced a substantial but modestly attenuated association (HR, 2.04; 95% CI, 1.75-2.33). Controlling for modest associations between month of birth and parental educational status and DA risk reduced the association to a HR of 1.92 (95% CI, 1.67-2.22). The genetic model applied to the results of co-relative analyses fitted the observed data well and estimated the AA-DA association in monozygotic twins discordant for AA to equal a HR of 1.79 (95% CI, 1.64-1.92).

Conclusions and Relevance:  Two different methodological approaches with divergent assumptions both produced results consistent with the hypothesis that the significant association observed between AA at 16 years of age and risk of DA into middle adulthood may be causal. These results provide empirical support for efforts to improve AA as a means to reduce risk of DA.

SOURCE  

High-flying career women are refusing to 'marry down' despite struggling to find a Mr Right with similar earning power and intelligence

Ho hum! This story again.  We have heard it from Britain and now we hear it from the USA.  Its basic premise is faulty.  There is no shortage of bright men.  To the contrary, the distribution  of female IQ is leptokurtic so there are many more men in the top range than women.  So the problem is with the women not with the men.  The "stranded" women are just too snooty I expect.  Let them test themselves and their female friends by answering what "leptokurtic" means.  I think they will be deflated by finding that far more men can answer that, despite women generally being good with words 




Career-focused women are struggling to meet men with a similar level of education and financial income - but refuse to ‘marry down’.

A generation of high-flying women cannot find eligible men that they would consider marrying, and this is down to their lack of degrees and high incomes, a US academic study claims.

For women marriage often involves ‘marrying up’ but as personal fortunes have increased, expectations have failed to adjust.

The study said: ‘Unmarried women, on average, are looking for a man who has an income that is about 66% higher and a likelihood of having a college degree that is about 49% higher than what is available.’

The lead author Daniel Lichter, professor of sociology at Cornell University, and co-author Joseph Price of Brigham University, think they’ve created a formula for working out what unmarried women desire in a potential partner.

Analysing data from 10.5million households surveyed for three years from 2010 by the US Census Bureau, they established the traits of married couples aged between 25 and 45-years-old.

In their working paper, Mismatches in the Marriage Market, they assume that unmarried women are searching for men similar to those already married.

Price said the findings were relevant to Britain due to the similar trends, the Times reported.

Lord Willetts, chairmen of the Resolution Foundation think tank, added: ‘This American research is telling us that the days of the conventional male breadwinner are disappearing and this changes relationships between the sexes.’

Fifty-five per cent of women enter higher education by the age of 30 compared to 43 per cent of men and the amount of couples where only one adult works has nearly halved in the past 40 years, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

Susanna Abse, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, said both sexes are to blame and that people should be more satisfied with ‘ordinary’ partners and not hold onto a fantasy idea.

The academics said this could lead to many career-focused women deciding to stay single or if they do marry, it will be poorly matched economically.

Harry Benson, research director at the Marriage Foundation, said: ‘The marriage market may be further skewed against high-flying women because potential male partners are still predisposed to "marrying down".’

But he added that what makes a marriage work isn’t usually anything to do with income or education but instead commitment and interests along with friendship and kindness.

SOURCE

New Scientist "gets" IQ

"New" is an old Leftist code-word for "Leftist" but is rarely used that way these days. But some names originating in the first half of C20 carry on into the present:  "New Statesman","New School", "New Theatre" etc.  And "New Scientist" magazine is part of that.  And it still does have a Leftist slant. They are apostles of global warming, for instance.  So it is a surprise that they seem now to have largely thrown off the Leftist phobia about IQ. Some excerpts below from their current issue which are entirely reasonable

Far from being an indefinable concept, a single measure of intelligence underpins our problem-solving, musicality and even creativity and emotional skills

When researchers talk about intelligence, they are referring to a specific set of skills that includes the abilities to reason, learn, plan and solve problems. The interesting thing is that people who are good at one of them tend to be good at all of them. These skills seem to reflect a broad mental capability, which has been dubbed general intelligence or g.

That’s not to say people don’t specialise in different areas. Some will be particularly good at solving mathematical problems, others will have particularly strong verbal or spatial abilities, and so on. When it comes to intelligence tests, although these specific skills account for about half of the variation between people’s performance, the other half is down to g. “If you took a sample of 1000 people and gave them all IQ tests, the people who do better on the vocabulary test will also do better, on average, on the reaction speed test, and so on,” says Stuart Ritchie, an intelligence researcher at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

This seems to fly in the face of old ideas. In the early 1980s, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner argued for the existence of multiple intelligences, including “bodily-kinaesthetic”, “logical-mathematical” and “musical”. However, most researchers now believe these categories reflect different blends of abilities, skills and personality traits, not all of which are related to cognitive ability.

SOURCE 

Smart women need to marry down to become mothers because there aren't enough smart men to go around, researchers warn

Miz Inhorn again.  A singularly unfortuate surname for a feminist, one would think.  It is however her Ashkenazi father's surname. As the originating paper is unpublished, I cannot check what she actually said this time but if it is like the report below she is under a strange misapprehension. Education is NOT IQ. There is about a 50% of shared variance between them but that is a long way from identity.

So there is NO shortage of high IQ men.  The average male IQ is in fact slightly higher than for females and the distribution is leptokurtic, meaning that at the highest levels of IQ there are a LOT more men than women. So if the women cannot find them they are looking in the wrong place.

So what is it that Miz Inhorn has missed?  She has missed the fact that women have been slower to wake up to the education racket than men have. For a lot of people a degree confers NO economic advantage -- the graduate burger flippers in McDonalds, for instance.  And for others the advantage is only slight -- often too slight to make up for the years of missed employment. The history of an advantage to education is a history of a shrinking quantum.  It is not inconceivable that it will go into reverse as all the overeducated women search desperately for jobs

As ever, it is in business and the trades where the big money lies these days -- and many men go there in various ways rather than wasting time seeking the dubious honor of a degree. So females who aspire to marry a high earner would be wise to get to know some tradesmen and business types.  If she does that she is unlikely to find a less intelligent man -- just a more realistic man.

She may of course find him "uncultured" -- in which case she will get the just reward for her snobbery.  Perhaps some Christian values might be helpful to such a woman.

It is relationships that matter not your hobbies -- intellectual or otherwise.  Concentrate on people before all else and you will do well.  You might even find that "dumb" electrician to be a nice guy who will keep you in style.  And you can have your specialized conversations with your friends.

That's roughly what I do.  As a much published Ph.D. academic and as someone who ran Sydney Mensa for a number of years, I am betting that I have even greater difficulty than the ladies below in finding similarly qualified women to relate to. I never have.  So I don't try to.  I seek and find women with a good heart and have my specialized "cultural" conversations mostly with my son.

What I have just said runs hard against what women are mostly told these days but it is also traditional wisdom. And what has worked for thousands of years may have something to be said for it.


Intelligent women should consider marrying less clever men if they want to start a family, according to researchers.

There are simply not enough brainy men to go round – so women may need to widen their search, warned the author of a report that found a growing number of professional women were freezing their eggs because they couldn’t find ‘Mr Right’.

‘There are fewer educated men in the world for educated women to partner with,’ said Marcia Inhorn, professor of anthropology at Yale University.

‘So if women want to find a partner with whom they can have children, they need a more expansive notion of who is Mr Right.

‘A good partner might not be exactly someone of similar educational background and socio-economic circumstances but there can still be really wonderful relationships with men who are interested in marriage and parenthood.’

According to the World Bank, 70 countries have more women educated to university level than men. In Britain, the proportion of female students rose from 45 per cent in 1985 to 54 per cent in 2000.

Those who graduated in 2000 are now in their mid to late 30s and, according to Prof Inhorn, many are turning to egg freezing because they are unable to find partners of similar intelligence and educational background.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said 1,173 British women had eggs frozen in 2016, a ten per cent rise on the previous year.

Professor Inhorn’s study, presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology’s meeting in Barcelona, involved questioning 150 American and Israeli women with high levels of education who had chosen to freeze their eggs.

She found that 85 per cent of them were single and the majority had opted for egg freezing due to a ‘lack of a stable partner’.

But women may be slow to follow Professor Inhorn’s advice as her own research also shows that hypogamy or ‘marrying down’ is unpopular with women.

‘They didn’t want to marry or partner with someone less educated and of lower socio-economic status,’ she said. ‘They wanted equality in their relationship.’ In fact, another study co-authored by Professor Inhorn found women often desired men from a higher socio-economic level.

‘Traditionally, women in societies around the world have tried to achieve hypergamy, or "marrying up" in an attempt to secure a better future for themselves and their children,’ the study said, although it acknowledged that with more women in education, ‘these trends may be reversing’.

SOURCE

A Japanese teacher exposes the deep dysfunction of American black culture

It's pretty plain below: As an  outsider he can see clearly the absurdities that the Left have produced.



He seems genuinely uncomprehending of why many blacks are like that.  His incomprehension is not surprising given the huge efforts that have been put into covering up the root cause of all the dysfunction.

Like so much else it boils down to IQ.  IQ doesn't explain everything but it explains far more than most people realize.  And the fact is that American blacks have a very low average IQ.  There are of course some very smart blacks but they are rare -- much rarer than very smart whites.  To put a number on it: For roughly a century we have known that on almost any IQ test, blacks on average score about one standard deviation below the white average -- where only four standard deviations make up almost all of the range.

And IQ is a strong predictor of academic and employment success.  You cannot go far either in the education system or in employment with a low IQ.  In school most blacks simply CANNOT do the work set for them beyond a certain low point.  This "gap" in educational achievement is exceedingly well known and is exactly what the IQ tests predict.  Educators have for many years turned themselves inside out trying to erase that gap but nothing works -- as you would expect of something that is genetically hardwired in the person. One could in fact dispense with all talk of IQ and simply talk about "unteachability" with very little loss. 

And the unteachability is so serious that many blacks "graduate" High School barely able to read and write.  I contrast that with a "love note" that a little Chinese girl aged about six wrote to her teacher (A teacher I know) at the end of Grade 1.  It said: "I luv my techa". It's not perfect English but to write at that level and at that age is remarkable.  The Chinese of course have high average IQs -- about half a standard deviation above the white average.  So once again IQ tests are a good predictor.  The Chinese girl had very high teachability.  The student body at Harvard would be almost entirely Chinese if the racist Harvard leadership did not conspire to keep most of them out.

And from black unteachability all else flows.  Poor educational achievement will exclude blacks from almost all good jobs and most positions of homor and respect in society. Some blacks who sing and dance well or run fast will achieve wealth and respect but that accounts for very few.

And blacks can see the differential between themselves and whites perfectly clearly.  It is too obvious to miss. They see it every time they turn on the TV.  And they mostly hate it. It makes them angry.  But it is all too human to blame others for one's own failings and they do exactly that. They need to think that somehow "Whitey" or "racism" is responsible for their place at the bottom of most heaps. So anger is never far beneath their surface and can well up readily towards anybody they are near  -- black or white. So even though most homicides in America are black on black, it is also true that homocides inflicted on whites are mostly inflicted by blacks -- as our Japanese friend documents.

And as our Japanese commenter also pointed out, that is certainly a good reason for whites to be very wary of blacks.

And the poor teachbility has another dire effect:  Black theft of various kinds -- mugging, home invasions etc.  Because they can rarely earn much money by working, they steal it or attempt to do so.  And because many Americans are armed that can and sometimes does lead to violent confrontions in which one or more people die. See my blog GUN WATCH

So, one way or another, black dysfunction traces back to black IQ.  Blacks of course are not all the same and some find a place in white society that they are comfortable with.  It has been estimated, however, that about a third of all black males will spend some time in prison.  So the siutation described here is a mass phenomenon, even if it is not universal.

FOOTNOTE:

Nobita, the author of the video above usually broadcasts as "Find Your Love in Japan". Find Your Love In Japan is a Youtube channel. He makes videos similar to That Japanese Man Yuta where he interviews Japanese men, women and foreigners on the street on current popular subjects. In Nobita's videos, he mainly focuses on topics such as "How to find love in Japan" and Japanese people's opinions on relationships with people inside and outside of their culture. In his private life, he is a language teacher in Tokyo.

The rise and fall of average IQ test scores

I was just cranking up my aged brain to say something about the latest IQ findings when I found that young Oliver Moody of "The Times" has spared me the trouble.  His summary is below.  There are a  few things I would like to add, however.

Perhaps the most interesting fact to emerge is that dumb women having more babies is not a problem.  As long as I have been reading the literature on IQ, people have been worried about that.  Are all these smart ladies who think no man is good enough for them degrading the average intelligence of the human race?  Wonder of wonders, the latest research from Norway was able to rule that out. 

Various people have pointed out that the dumbest females for various reasons tend to have NO babies and a majority of high IQ females do have some babies.  And it was always hoped that those two effects would cancel one another out. And we now have grounds to believe that exactly that has happened.

A lot of interesting IQ research comes out of Norway and Sweden.  The reason is that the Scandinavian countries are very authoritarian, which leads them to keep extensive records about each individual person in their countries.  So if you can get access to government data you can base your research on the whole population, not just a sample, with all its attendant doubts and difficulties.

So what we now know with some confidence is that IQ scores rose during the first three quarters of the 20th century but then flattened out before going into a decline.  And that could clearly not be due to genetic changes.  Evolution doesn't work that fast.

So what WAS going on?  There are two major possible explanations: Computer games and education. Blaming computer games has been going on as long as there have been computer games and it is in my mind just snobbery or some such:  A convenient whipping boy for all sorts of ills.  There is actually a fair bit of evidence that games and internet exposure generally are most likely to be good rather than bad for our brains (e.g. HERE and  HERE  and  HERE)

Additionally, like Piaget, I have tended to find the kids in my care to be instructive.  My son, for instance, could load up and play his favourite computer game when he was two and he plays a lot of games to this day now he is in his 30s and works as an IT professional.  And what I saw was that game playing is normally quite social. There will usually be other kids hanging around and talking even with single-user games and some games are quite educational in themselves.  My son learnt most of his ancient history from "sims" set in that era. He learnt precious little ancient history at school.  So I personally exonerate games from being bad for most people.

So what DID go wrong?  Just one thing can account for both the rise and fall in measured IQs:  Testing.

During my schooldays in the '50s testing was all the rage.  We even did IQ tests at least once a year.  And there were heaps of in-school tests. From about grade 3 on, for instance, we would have weekly spelling tests -- in which a kid got a list of 10 words that he had to learn how to spell. Being a born academic, I always got 10 out of 10 and was regularly praised for it.  Which was a bit unfair because I put zero work into it.  I just had to see a word once to know how to spell it. I still do.

And I think that is one example of a huge difference between then and now.  Education used to be COMPETITIVE and "winners" got all the praise. And nobody apologized for that.

It seems to me that there should be no great  difficulty in arranging prizes for both ability and effort but the Left have simply closed their eyes to ability

By about 1975 or thereabouts, however, the political Left had got a vice-like grip on education worldwide.  Even in chapter  48 of my 1974 book, I noted its encroachment. And Leftists HATE competition because it clashes with their idiotic and counterfactual belief that "All men are equal".  To validate that gospel, therefore, all had to have prizes, not just one kid.  And if you believe that all men are equal, there would be no point in testing.  If the marks come out all the same, what would be the point? But the marks don't come out all the same so to avoid that reality, you just don't do testing if you can avoid it.

The rise in measured IQ scores during the first three quarters of c20 has been the cause of much discussion and the most usual explanation for it is that it was due to the steady expansion of education during that era.  More kids gradually got more education as the century wore on.  And that was highly relevant to performance on IQ tests.  All the testing you did at school made you "test-wise" and that helped you to do well on IQ tests. 

You learnt, for instance that ever useful strategy of: "If you don't know, guess". Some guesses will be right and that will raise your overall score. IQ subtests that were not facilitated by testing -- breadth of vocabulary for instance -- showed very little rise in scores.  You know what an uncommon word means or you don't. So it was environmental rather than genetic factors that explains the rise in average IQ scores -- known generally as the "Flynn" effect.

But the dominance of Leftism wiped all that. Leftists have a horror of competition so avoided testing at all costs.  So an education no longer helped you to do well on IQ tests. And as Leftism gradually tightened its grip, the education effect on IQ scores shrank and shrank.  So IQ scores declined gradually over the years.

It's consoling to note however, that the genetic contribution to IQ test score has not changed.  We are still as bright as we ever were and what we are genetically is increasingly the sole thing reflected in the IQ test scores.


The IQ scores of young people have begun to fall after rising steadily since the Second World War, according to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon.

The decline, which is equivalent to at least seven points per generation, is thought to have started with the cohort born in 1975, who reached adulthood in the early Nineties.

Scientists say that the deterioration could be down to changes in the way maths and languages are taught, or to a shift from reading books to spending time on television and computers.

Yet it is also possible that the nature of intelligence is changing in the digital age and cannot be captured with traditional IQ tests. The turning point marks the end of a well-known but poorly understood trend known as the Flynn effect, in which average IQs have risen by about three points a decade for the past 60 or 70 years.

“This is the most convincing evidence yet of a reversal of the Flynn effect,” Stuart Ritchie, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the research, said. “If you assume their model is correct, the results are impressive, and pretty worrying.”

There had been signs that IQ scores might have fallen since the turn of the millennium. Two British studies suggested that the decline was between 2.5 and 4.3 points per decade. This has not been widely accepted owing to the limited research to date. A study has now shown, however, that Norwegian men’s IQs are measurably lower today than the scores of their fathers at the same age.

Ole Rogeberg and Bernt Bratsberg, of the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Oslo, analysed the scores from a standardised IQ test of more than 730,000 men who reported for national service between 1970 and 2009. The research appears in the journal PNAS.

The vast majority of young Norwegian men are required to perform national service and take a standardised IQ test when they join up.

The results, published in the journal PNAS, show that those born in 1991 scored about five points lower than those born in 1975, and three points lower than those born in 1962.

The reasons behind the Flynn effect and its apparent reversal are disputed. Scientists have put the rise in IQ down to better teaching, nutrition, healthcare and even artificial lighting.

Some academics suggest the recent fall could be down to genetics. Their argument is, crudely, that less intelligent people have more babies, and so over time the gains are cancelled out by the spread of genes linked to low-intelligence.

Yet this theory has been scotched by the Norwegian paper. Because the decline can be observed within the same families, it is unlikely to be the result of a demographic shift.

Dr Rogeberg said it was more plausible that the changes in the way children are educated or brought up – such as less time drilling pupils in reading and mathematics – were at play.

He stressed that the findings did not necessarily mean that today’s young people were any more stupid than their parents. Instead, it may be that definitions of intelligence have yet to catch up with the skillset needed to navigate the digital era.

“Intelligence researchers make a distinction between fluid and crystallised intelligence,” he said. “Crystallised intelligence is stuff you have been taught and trained in, and fluid intelligence is your ability to see new patterns and use logic to solve novel problems.”

Classic IQ tests, with their emphasis on arithmetic and verbal reasoning, tend to favour the kind of crystallised intelligence that is fostered by a more traditional education. “If this is the underlying cause of the decline, this need not be overly worrying,” Dr Rogeberg said.

Robin Morris, professor of neuropsychology at King’s College London, said IQ scores probably had hit a ceiling in the west, but there was not yet any reason to be unduly concerned.

“I think the reverse Flynn effect is real but would urge caution about generalising based on one sample,” he said. “Probably the tailing off is a general effect in high income countries in which the contributor factors generally stabilise.”

SOURCE

Genetic Intelligence Tests Are Next to Worthless (?)

I take the title above from the title of a long and very readable article by Carl Zimmer, a NYT journalist.  You could almost predict the title from the fact that he is a NYT journalist.

But the article is extremely well done.  It is something of a triumph of the journalist's art. He explains the facts and issues of his subject beautifully.  I wish I could write as well.  We both try for lucidity and simplicity but he does by far the better job. That he is a journalist and that I am an academic shows. I never could get teddy bears into my writing.

The article is a long one so I am not even going to excerpt it.  Instead I am going  to offer what I hope is a fuller perspective on the matters he raises.  Put simply, he mistakes the major issue involved.

When we look at his title, we have to ask: "Worthless for What? His answer is that currently available genetic information is useless as a substitute for a normal IQ test.  He is absolutely right about that and his warning is well-taken.  People who claim to assess your IQ from your genetic profile are little better than quacks and their results are of no everyday use.

And the reason for that is that IQ appears to be just one aspect of your body's general good functioning.  The brain is just one organ of the body and if the body overall is functioning well the brain should be working pretty well too. And from the research with IQ tests we find an amazing range of good things that high IQ correlates with -- better health, longer life more harmonious marriages etc.  You name it, more or less. 

So that lies behind the fact that there are a LOT of influences on your IQ. They may be scattered anywhere in your body.  What IQ researchers have said for a long time is that IQ is "polygenetic".  It is the sum of a whole lot of little genetic influences.  Almost anything that influences your overall health could also influences your IQ.

At this stage I have to stress that I am talking about the "in general" case.  As elsewhere in life, there are exceptions to the general rule. There are healthy specimens who are as dumb as a brick (some Hollywood actors?) and there are other unfortunates such as Stephen Hawking and Carl Steinmetz where a brilliant brain inhabits a broken body.  Sometimes you need just one faulty gene to have a big influence on your bodily health.

And it is the general case that interests scientists.  They are not actually much interested in YOU.  They are only interested in what emerges from a study of people in general. So when they find some of the many influences on IQ in people's genes they see themselves as being on the right track in seeing IQ as mainly genetic.  And the advances are already exciting.  As each new study comes out, more and more of the genetic influences on IQ are being found.  Genetics generally is in its infancy and the genetics of IQ are no exception. 

And so far there has not been a single study looking at epigenetic influences on IQ.  Epigenetics are bits of your genetic profile which influence how other genes work.  They can even turn a gene "on" or "off".  So to expect that current studies could give us the whole genetics of IQ is very naive.  The fact that we have at this early stage already been able to detect some of the genetics involved is the interesting and exciting part. 

In other words the issue is not whether or not we can measure your IQ from your genes right now but rather whether we are on the right track towards that.  And from a scientific point of view we are doing amazingly well considering the huge difficulty of such research -- JR.

MIT professor Eric Lander apologizes for praising controversial Nobel winner James Watson

Watson's statements on IQ were well-grounded in psychometrics

Eric Lander, the founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has apologized for toasting 90-year-old Nobel Prize winner James Watson over the weekend.

In a contrite e-mail to colleagues, first reported Monday by Stat, Lander said he was aware of Watson’s racist and misogynist views, and had even been present when the celebrated scientist made anti-Semitic statements, but ultimately agreed to praise Watson for his role in the Human Genome Project.

In his tribute to Watson at a Biology of Genomes meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Saturday, Lander credited Watson for "inspiring all of us to push the frontiers of science to benefit humankind." He neglected to mention that the man who helped discover the double helix also has suggested there’s a link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges, and argued that there is racial disparity in intelligence based in biology.

In his e-mail Monday, Lander said he should not have toasted Watson. Though he did make an oblique reference to Watson’s past statements when he called him "flawed," that wasn’t enough, Lander said.

"I’d like to do that now: I reject his views as despicable," Lander wrote, according to Stat. "They have no place in science, which must welcome everyone. In retrospect, I should have followed my first instinct, which was to decline the invitation. As someone who has been on the receiving end of his abhorrent remarks, I should have been sensitive to the damage caused by recognizing him in any way."

Before the apology, social media reacted angrily to Lander’s remarks.

"By toasting Jim Watson, Eric Lander is saying that sexism, racism, anti-semitism, and all sorts of forms of harassment and vile behavior by someone in power in science is A-OK — disgusting," tweeted University of California-Davis professor Jonathan Eisen, who also posted a video of Lander’s tribute, calling it "a horrific action."

"I hope we can all pause and think deeply about which scientists we choose to honor & why," tweeted Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley. "How it is that someone everyone knows to be racist, sexist & anti-semitic is still among us, let alone toasted. And how many lives and careers have been & are being ruined by our silence?"

SOURCE

Stop Talking About Race and IQ

Does WILLIAM SALETAN deny the humanity of blacks?

My heading above is copied from a recent, very long-winded article by Saletan, who is a sort of token conservative among prominent journalists. Saletan accepts that there are large differences between black and white IQ averages but thinks we should not talk about it.  To help us think about the matter, let us look at some hypothetical statements about dogs:

Long tails in dogs are hereditary
Great Danes have long tails
Therefore long tails in Great Danes are hereditary

That conclusion seems pretty reasonable, does it not?   From my memory of my studies in formal logic of over 50 years ago, I think it is in fact a valid syllogism.

Here is another very similar syllogism that refers to the centrepiece of the   Saletan article.

Low IQs are hereditary
Blacks have low IQs
Therefore low IQs in blacks are hereditary. 

Is that syllogism not as valid as the first?

Saletan wants to say that that conclusion is NOT logical or is at least unproven.  The only way he can do that, however, is to attack one or both of the premises.  He attacks the statement that low IQs are hereditary.  He says that statement is overly broad.  It may be that among blacks IQ is not hereditary or is hereditary in some different way.

But there have now been many studies of brain function (GWAS studies) which show that IQ involves a large number of brain components and the most recent studies have in fact shown that neuron size is heavily involved in IQ. Smart people have bigger neurons.  And note that the brain is almost entirely composed of neurons.

So Saletan is saying that all those GWAS features are different in blacks.  He is denying the humanity of blacks. He is in effect saying that blacks are a different species, almost something extra-terrestrial.  I am betting that he does NOT want to say that but his argument leads to it.  He would not want to say that because he places great stress on kindness to blacks as being a big issue in the debate. Telling blacks that they are on average dumber and can't change that is unkind. 

I don't think it is unkind.  It is lies that are unkind.  As Eysenck often said, the policies you derive from low average black IQs could as well be kind as anything else. By having lower expectations of blacks, you could be relieving stresses on them to keep up in various ways, for instance.

And we do in any case ordinarily make it very clear to all blacks that they are on average dumber.  That is the famous educational "gap". In their school studies, blacks lag behind white pupils by about the degree you would expect from their much lower average IQ.  And the best brains among American educators have for years striven mightily to find ways of closing that gap.  Many things have been tried but nothing works.  The gap remains no matter what is tried.  It remains just as it has to be if it is genetically-based on IQ.

And all that educational failure is vividly brought home to blacks time and time again.  They are repeatedly shown that they are on average dumber than whites and that nothing will fix that.  Many blacks drop out of education as as result.  They just can't do the work but know that whites can.

So we already make plain to blacks exactly the message that Saletan want to avoid.  So the lies about black IQ come to naught anyway.

Saletan also bows down to convention in saying: “Race science, the old idea that race is a biologically causal trait, may live on as an ideology of hate. But as an academic matter, it’s been discredited"

It is Saletan who has been discredited.  In recent years, there have been  a number of factor-analytic and other studies which have shown that the traditional racial categories do emerge in international data. Saletan might want to start here if he wants to catch up with the research concerned.  Does he really believe that there is no biological cause for the many obvious differences between blacks and whites?  Do you get born black or white at random?  Insane.

Note that I am not the lone psychometrician in pointing to genetics as the cause of black/white IQ differences.  In 2013, a survey of 228 intelligence researchers found that the typical scientist in this field agrees:

Secret to intelligence? New link between brain cell size and IQ may help scientists find a way to enhance human intellect

For the first time, scientists have discovered that smart people have bigger brain cells than their peers. 

As well as being bulkier, the cells are better connected to their neighbours, allowing them to process more information at a faster rate.

If results of the study are confirmed, it could help researchers find a way to enhance our intelligence.

A study, led by Natalia Goriounova at the Free University Amsterdam, gave an IQ test to 35 people who were due to undergo brain surgery, according to report in New Scientist.

During surgery, doctors took a small sample of healthy brain tissue from the temporal lobe of the volunteers. This piece of human brain was then kept alive for testing in a lab.

Dr Goriounova compared the size and shape of the brain cells with volunteers' IQ scores. They found that the brain cells are significantly bigger in people with higher IQs.

Brain cells from smarter people also have more dendrites, which are short extensions of the main neuron that connect to other cells. These tiny projections are important in transferring information from one cell to another.

The study is the first to ever show that the  physical size and structure of brain cells is related to a person's intelligence levels. 

Christof Koch at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle told New Scientist:  'We've known there is some link between brain size and intelligence. The team confirm this and take it down to individual neurons.

The concept of intelligence being derived from brain structure could ruffle feathers among some in the academic field.

Dr Koch said: 'Some people will say intelligence is so elusive and complex that the idea it can be tied to individual neurons is implausible.' 

The research team also tested people's ability to transmit electrical signals, mimicking the processing of information.

What they found was that people with a low IQ coped at a low frequency, but rapidly became fatigued. The smarter people did not slow down and continued to transmit even at a high rate of stimulation.   

'What they did here is extraordinary neuroscience,' says Richard Haier at the University of California, Irvine. 'It's the beginning of being able to study intelligence neuron by neuron, and circuit by circuit.

'This research could lead to neuroscience-based ways to enhance human intelligence – perhaps dramatically. 'We might be able to treat intellectual disabilities or prevent them from occurring.'

'Theoretically, we can say that with both pluripotent and embryonic stem cells that we can create larger brain cells which, when combined with this recent research, would indicate that we could increase intelligence,' Michele Giugliano, co-author and professor at the University of Antwerp told MailOnline.

'This was shown in rodents as we grafted these cells into the brain of mice.

'The problem is that we do not know if the size of the cell is from genetic cause or neurophsycical cues.

It does seem that it would be theoretically possible to restore human brain matter in the next 50 years to restore cognitive deficit. Ethically, I am not sure if that would be allowed.'

SOURCE 

Social class in Australia

To advance economically in Australia, you are often told to get lots of education.  And it's true that the higher you go educationally, the better paid you will usually be.  But is it actually education at work?  The great predictor of educational success is IQ -- so those who go furthest through the educational system will be those with the highest IQ. So it is most probably your IQ that gets you that good job.  Education is just an IQ marker that anyone can read.

As a result of that, some thinkers say that the class system is  a series of IQ levels.  What we see as Upper class and what we see as lower class will be effects of IQ, and not much more.  That is why social mobility is so poor.  IQ is highly hereditary so if you are born into a poor family you are unlikely to have the IQ assets to rise above your parent's station.

A curious example of class characteristics in fact being IQ characteristics is from the findings about breast feeding. Affluent mothers make quite a point of breast feeding these days.  To put your baby on the bottle will get you scorned and seen as uncaring, ignorant and very low class. Yet We read, for instance, that "The mother's IQ was more highly predictive of breastfeeding status than were her race, education, age, poverty status, smoking, the home environment, or the child's birth weight or birth order". So it's all IQ.

So your eventual place on the socio-economic scale will be where your level of IQ places you, with education being a marker, not a cause.  And your IQ is essentially unalterable. So rising up socially will only happen if you are one of the unusual people who come from a humble background but are lucky enough to be born with a high IQ.  Your IQ will place you in the right social rank for your level of ability.

Toby Young
sets out in more detail the case for society being invisibly ranked by IQ


Social class in Australia is a topic that often goes undiscussed — but if the response to our series on class is anything to go by, some of you are ready to start talking about it.

Some people got in touch to say they believe the archetype of Australia as the lucky country, where opportunity abounds, rings as true as ever.

But others told us the idea that hard work and application are the only barriers to social mobility is laughable.

What was constant is that everyone had an opinion.

The ABC's recent class quiz prompted a number of curious results.

More than a few people were surprised to find their tastes, according to data compiled as part of the detailed Australian Cultural Fields project, aligned them with middle or upper-class woman aged between 40-59.

Taste — whether you'd rather see a pub band than go to opera, for instance — only explains so much of course, and there are many other factors that help explain where we each sit within Australia's complex and confusing class structure.

Sue, a public servant from Darwin, describes herself as a "late baby boomer". She once lived in Sydney, but moved to the Northern Territory with her husband for his job in construction work. "I'm definitely a middle-class person," she said.

"Class in the NT looks much different to what it would in New South Wales. In terms of access to housing, education, employment, health outcomes — it keeps class very much at the forefront of your mind."

Julie wrote in to tell us about her family full of "shop-stewards, miners, railway workers, shipbuilders and plumbers".

"All politically aware, self-educated and proud of their working-class community solidarity," she said.

"My grandfather would say to explain wealth and class: 'Remember no-one is better than anyone else, it is just some people are better off'."

Education opens doors

A running theme through the conversations was the notion of education as being key to class mobility.

Greg, from Melbourne, comes from a working-class background.

"Education was the 'mobility enabler' for me. A beneficiary of Whitlam's education reforms in the 1970s, access to university was merit-based. It opened the door to me," he said.

Brisbane-based policy officer Chris believes his upbringing and education provided him with a platform that's not necessarily attainable for all Australians.

"I have relatively secure professional work and I'm paid reasonably well, I'm aware of my privileged position in the social hierarchy," he said.

"It was impressed on me that I should go to university, that I should improve myself intellectually, financially."

But education isn't always easily accessible.

Alice comes from a modest background and decided to go to university after achieving a UAI of 97.7.

Throughout her time at university, she has struggled to make ends meet, despite working multiple jobs.

"I'm safe for now. But should I choose to embark upon a Master's component, and my benefits are taken away … who knows where I'll end up. As an intelligent woman in her mid-thirties, I shudder to think that my future may very well lie in the streets as a homeless person, making me yet another uncomfortable statistic for everyone else to gawk at."

SOURCE

It's all in the genes

In their never ending quest to pooh-pooh the genetic influence on IQ (and everything else), a common Leftist suggestion has been that the genetic influence is "moderated" by environmental factors.  Socio-economic status has been nominated as such an environmental influence.  That has just had a big test and the answer found is that genes rule.  Their effect is not moderated by environmental influences.  Article below followed by journal Abstract

It's amusing that the authors don't want to believe their own results.  They seize on things that might rescue their hypothesis. They say, for instance, that "Among twins and siblings pairs who were close in age, standardized math and reading scores increased proportionally along with mothers' years of education beyond high school"

They attribute that to an environmental influence when it could better be explained by saying that smarter mothers undertake more education. And smarter mother have smarter kids of course.

They really are pathetic in their attempt to hang on to political correctness


Genes and environment have equal influence in learning for rich and poor kids, study finds

More than 40 years ago, psychologist Sandra Scarr put forth a provocative idea: that genetic influence on children's cognitive abilities is linked to their family's income. The wealthier the family, the more influence genes have on brain development, the thinking went.

Scarr turned the nature-nurture debate on its head, proposing that how much "nature" matters varies between environments. Scarr's research has since been roundly debated and thoroughly studied by other researchers with mixed results, including reaffirmation by another American psychologist, David Rowe, in 1999.

The line of research has come to be called the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis—that parents' socio-economic status moderates genetic contributions to variation in intelligence. The thinking was that, for people of lower socio-economic status, a person's intelligence is influenced more by his or her environment than by genetics, meaning whether a child reaches full potential depends on economic standing.

I have been studying the relationship of early health conditions to subsequent school performance for 25 years and been fascinated by the role that genetics and environment play in student achievement.

A group of us set out re-examine the question: Are genetic influences on cognitive abilities larger for children raised in more advantaged environment? To get that answer, I collaborated with colleagues at Northwestern University and Stanford University.

Studying twins, siblings gives insight

We analyzed birth and school records of 24,000 twins and nearly 275,000 siblings born in Florida between 1994 and 2002. As did previous researchers who examined genetic and environmental influences of cognitive development, we focused on a very large set of twins and siblings.

Twins and siblings close in age allowed us to disentangle the role of genes and environment in development of cognitive ability. We found no evidence that social class played more of a role in educational performance for poor kids than for rich ones.

While students in the higher income groups performed better than students in the lower income groups, the relative influence of genetic and environmental differences was the same across groups. The results were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A complex gene-environment interaction

What is the significance of our findings? According to David Figlio, dean of the School of Education at Social Policy at Northwestern and lead author of the study, we did not confirm that environmental factors mitigate the effects of genetics on cognitive development. Environmental differences are just as important for students from affluent backgrounds as students from poorer backgrounds.

Recent research has found evidence of a difference in genetic influence on academic performance between rich and poor families in the United States, when compared with families in Australia or Western Europe.

However, our research did not replicate the U.S. findings, in part because our large data set from Florida represented a very socio-economically diverse set of families.

Our findings, however, do not contradict the overall pattern that parental socio-economic status is associated with children's cognitive development. Among twins and siblings pairs who were close in age, standardized math and reading scores increased proportionally along with mothers' years of education beyond high school.

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Socioeconomic status and genetic influences on cognitive development

David N. Figlio, Jeremy Freese, Krzysztof Karbownik and Jeffrey Roth

Abstract

Accurate understanding of environmental moderation of genetic influences is vital to advancing the science of cognitive development as well as for designing interventions. One widely reported idea is increasing genetic influence on cognition for children raised in higher socioeconomic status (SES) families, including recent proposals that the pattern is a particularly US phenomenon. We used matched birth and school records from Florida siblings and twins born in 1994–2002 to provide the largest, most population-diverse consideration of this hypothesis to date. We found no evidence of SES moderation of genetic influence on test scores, suggesting that articulating gene-environment interactions for cognition is more complex and elusive than previously supposed.

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Another confirmation: High IQ goes with better health and longer life

And a further advance in finding the genes behind IQ

Clever people live longer due to so-called 'intelligence genes' that promote old age, new research suggests.

More than 500 genes linked to people having greater IQs have been identified by scientists, which is 10 times higher than previously thought.

It raises the possibility of testing for intelligence using simple saliva DNA tests.

Past research suggests intelligence genes boost the transmission of signals between different regions of the brain, as well as protecting against dementia and premature death.

Study author Dr David Hill from Edinburgh University said: 'Intelligence is a heritable trait with estimates indicating between 50 and 80 per cent of differences in intelligence can be explained by genetic factors.

'People with a higher level of cognitive function have been observed to have better physical and mental health, and to have longer lives.'

Their IQ was investigated by assessing their arithmetic, vocabulary and understanding of information, as well as their ability to arrange images and sort codes.

Results further suggest 538 genes play a role in intelligence, while 187 regions of the human genome are associated with thinking skills.

Dr Hill said: 'Our study identified a large number of genes linked to intelligence.  

'First, we found 187 independent associations for intelligence and highlighted the role of 538 genes being involved - a substantial advance.

'We used our data to predict almost seven per cent of the variation in intelligence in one of three independent samples.

'Previous estimates of prediction have been around five per cent at most.'

The findings were published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

The researchers analysed DNA variations in more than 240,000 people from around the world. Gene samples were taken from the UK Biobank, which assesses the role of genes in health and disease.  The researchers then compared people's DNA against their IQ scores on verbal and numerical tests.

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Book Review of "Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That is a Problem, and What to Do about It" by Richard V. Reeves

What reviewer Robert Whaples reports below is a fairly conventional sociological analysis of social stratification in America.  And there is undoubtedly something in it.  The big problem is said to be that the people who have already got to the top of American society tend to keep it for themselves and their children.  There is little social mobility upwards from lower down in the social hierarchy.  And you will read below about a variety of ways in which that "closed shop" is maintained.

I think that sociological account does however miss a large elephant in the room.  And to see that elephant you need to go to psychology.  A couple of decades ago Charles Murray showed that IQ was a strong predictor of economic success.  So the existing elite will already be high IQ people and it is actually their high IQ that gives them their dominant position, not what schools they went to etc. 

Toby Young offers a very extensive exploration of that possibility.  He thinks we already have a ruling INTELLECTUAL elite.  That being so, nothing will help you to get into that elite unless you have the requisite high IQ.  With that everything is possible; without it very little is possible


The American labor market “does a good job of rewarding the kind of ‘merit’ that adds economic value—skills, knowledge, intelligence” (p. 75). “The idea of moving away from a market economy is foolish as well as far-fetched. Markets increase prosperity, reduce poverty, enhance well-being, and bolster individual choice” (p. 77). These aren’t the words of someone from Cato, the AEI or the Heritage Foundation, but from Richard Reeves, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. But, warns Reeves, this “meritocratic market” is embedded in an unfair society. Meritocracy is great for adults, but not for children. The problem is that upper middle class parents have built a system that gives their own children massive advantages—they hoard the prerequisites for the American dream and block the children of others from flourishing.

Market merit is a great thing, but we need to reform our social institutions so that they “aggressively equalize opportunities to develop market merit” (p. 84). “The problem is not that society is too competitive. It is that it is not competitive enough, partly because of ... anticompetitive opportunity hoarding ... but mostly because the chances to prepare for the competition are so unequal” (p. 124). Reeves seems to realize that it would be exceptionally difficult (and probably quite destructive) to eliminate all the advantages that children of successful parents have over other children. These advantages include having caring parents (two of them, not just one), who are good role models and spend time simply talking to their children—one study he cites examines the “conversation gap” and estimates that children in families on welfare hear about six hundred words per hours, working-class children about twelve hundred words per hour, and children of professionals about twenty-one hundred words per hour. Reeves doesn’t aim to undo these immense advantages. Rather, he takes aim at a higher level—at legal rules and institutional arrangements, constructed by the upper middle class to make life better for themselves and their children without considering the potential harm imposed on others—and suggests that we could use “more downward mobility from the top” (p. 58).

So, how do upper middle class professionals—“journalists, scholars, technocrats, managers, bureaucrats, the people with letters after their names” (p. 4) hoard the dream? Reeves focuses on three tactics—exclusionary zoning, college admissions policies, and the allocation of good internships. The most important of these is the first. The upper middle class have segregated themselves into towns and neighborhoods where the cost of living is high, mainly by using zoning rules that make it impossible for poorer people to be their neighbors and enjoy these communities’ amenities—especially good schools. The rich practice an “inverse ghettoization” (p. 102)—building enclaves where they live healthy, safe lives together and don’t have to deal with the annoyances of non-elites and their children, to the detriment of everyone else, argues Reeves. These zoning practices—such as banning multi-family dwellings and setting high minimum lot sizes—mean that those outside the top groups cannot afford to live in the most economically prosperous places. And the dirty secret is that these zoning requirements are stricter in cities with more left-of-center voters. Enrico Moretti and Chang-Tai Hsieh have estimated that if only San Francisco, San Jose and New York adopted zoning regulations of the median American city, the entire U.S. economy would be 10 percent larger because more people would be able to afford to move to opportunity.

The problem with higher education, as Reeves sees it, is that the game is rigged so that children of the upper middle class have huge advantages in getting into the best colleges and universities—because they live near the best high schools and because, for example, their parents have the wherewithal to spend money on college admissions consultants (who can charge over $10,000 for their top tier of services). “Post-secondary education ... has become an ‘inequality machine” (p. 11), as it “takes the inequality given to it and magnifies it” (p. 55). Elite schools pay lip services to serving all of society, but they are “locked into an equilibrium that militates against serious reform efforts” as it “is simply not in the interests of the most powerful institutions to change things very much” (p. 88-89). Reeves offers a tantalizing sentence or two about supply-side reforms to improve opportunity and access to higher education but doesn’t press the issue. Instead, he focuses on an interesting, but probably not very important, symptom of dream hoarding in higher education—policies that make it easier for “legacy” students, the children of alumni, to be accepted to the top colleges. He makes a strong case that this practice is immoral and downright un-American, citing evidence from a couple cases where abolishing the practice has not reduced alumni giving. He’s a fan of extending affirmative action to encompass social class. He also advocates the abolition of granting special advantages for well-connected students who apply for internships at top firms, non-profits and government positions. The playing field needs to be leveled—so that having parents who know the right people doesn’t give applicants a leg up.

As you can see from my overview of Reeve’s arguments, this is a book that will appeal to people across the political spectrum—in fact, it will probably appeal more to conservatives and libertarians than the “progressives” who run our colleges and have enacted these zoning laws. Reeves’ policy proposals strike me as mostly mild afterthoughts—his primary goal seems to be to open “dream hoarding” up to the disinfectant of sunlight, to encourage us to realize the inconsistencies between our stated creeds and our practices, so that we begin to voluntarily give up our hoarding. In this task he may have failed. I conclude this after having discussed Dream Hoarders with a group of students at an elite college (Wake Forest University). They accepted many of his arguments but ultimately few saw a burning need to give up on legacy admissions (which might benefit their own children) and using special connections to snag good job internships.

I won’t enumerate his proposals, but will object to his take on contraception for teenagers, when he declares that “Causal sex is fine. Casual child bearing is not” (p. 127). One doesn’t have to dig too deep to realize that treating other people so casually, so disposably, as if they are just there for one’s own pleasure, is the root of many of the problems he discusses. Would he advise his own children that “casual sex is fine”? Do parents now say this to their children? The thought of this saddens me deeply.

Finally, Reeves has a fresh take on John Rawls. Rather than considering how we would want things to be arranged if we didn’t know our own original position (shrouded behind the veil of ignorance), Reeves asks us to think about the best arrangement if no one knows his “children’s place in society, their class position or social status; nor does he know their fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, intelligence and strength and the like” (p. 72, emphasis in the original). He senses that if this were the position facing us, we’d be more supportive of redistributive policies and institution, if we were less certain where our own children were going to end up. I’m not so certain.

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The EQ dream

The whole idea of IQ is poison to the "all men are equal" crowd because it demonstrates that they are not. So the game is on to show that IQ differences may exist but those differences are unimportant. And the prime way of doing that has been to promote the idea of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), which can be trained.  In any activity taking part among a group EQ is said to be very important.  It's an attractive dream but it is at variance with reality.  Because it is so attractive it has been much researched and the Wikipedia entry on it summarizes the findings pretty well.

Chief among the problems with EQ, is that there are a variety of things which are called Emotional Intelligence but they correlate poorly with one another  So which is the "true" emotional intelligence?  The concept is fine but going out there among the population and assessing it is very difficult.  One could argue that if it can be measured, nobody so far has achieved that.  Different tests will pick out different groups of people as emotionally intelligent.  Does it exist at all in reality?

The second problem is predictive power.  No matter which version of EQ that you use does it predict success (however defined) any better than IQ?  And it does not in general.  All the enthusiasm for it is misplaced.  It is a unicorn concept.  It sounds attractive but it does not exist out there in the world.

So why on earth is Ezekiel Emanuel pushing that old barrow of rubbish below?  Easy. He is a far Leftist and the chief architect of Obamacare. His brother is Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  His ideology makes him WANT to believe in EQ.  The editors of JAMA were very incautious to let his blatherings into the pages of their journal.  Obviously, they knew nothing about the psychological research into EQ


Does Medicine Overemphasize IQ?

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD; Emily Gudbranson, BA

Everyone wants the best physician. Patients want their physician to know medical information by heart, to possess diagnostic acumen, and to be well-versed in the latest tests and treatments. Finding the best physicians often involves looking for resumes with stellar attributes, such as having graduated at the top of a collegiate class, attended the best medical schools, completed internships and residency training at the nation’s most prestigious hospitals, and been awarded the most competitive fellowships. Many medical schools, likewise, want only the smartest students, as assessed by the highest grade point averages and MCAT scores.

This selection process has persisted for decades. But is it misguided? Do the smartest students, as measured by science grades and standardized test results, truly make the best physicians?

Overemphasizing IQ

By prioritizing academic pedigree, the medical profession has traditionally overemphasized general intelligence and underemphasized—if not totally ignored—emotional intelligence. With “objective” assessments and little grade inflation, performance in hard science courses and on the MCAT have been the primary determinants of medical school admissions.1,2 Although good test scores and grades in calculus, physics, or organic chemistry may signal one kind of intelligence, reliance solely on those metrics results in an incomplete and inaccurate assessment of a student’s potential to be an excellent, caring physician.

Medical schools often conflate high MCAT scores and grades in the hard sciences with actual intelligence. For instance, good test takers can score extremely high on multiple-choice examinations but may lack real analytic ability, problem-solving skills, and common sense. Scoring well on these metrics reveals nothing about other types of intelligences, especially emotional intelligence, that are critical to being an excellent physician. Knowing how to calculate the speed of a ball rolling down an inclined plane or recalling the Bamford-Stevens reaction are totally irrelevant to being an astute diagnostician, much less an oncologist sensitively discussing end-of-life care preferences with a patient who has developed metastatic cancer.

The prioritization of student grades and test scores in the US News & World Report rankings of medical schools fuels a vicious cycle. Medical schools have placed more emphasis on these criteria, ultimately striving to select students with higher scores to maintain their ranking. From 2000 to 2016, the grade point averages of students admitted to US medical schools have actually increased from 3.60 to 3.70,3 and MCAT scores in both biological and physical sciences have also increased by 5% to 10%.4 European universities may emphasize IQ even more in medical student selection, because they rely on standardized tests at the end of high school, such as A-level examinations in England.

Providing high-quality care certainly requires intelligence. A high IQ may help a physician diagnose congestive heart failure and select the right medications and interventions, but it is still no guarantee that the physician can lead a multidisciplinary team or effectively help patients change their behaviors in ways that tangibly improve their health outcomes.

The Ubiquitous Importance of Emotional Intelligence
A certain threshold of intelligence is absolutely necessary to succeed in any field. In medicine, IQ is necessary to master and critically assess the volume and complexity of information integral to contemporary medical education. But past this threshold, success in medicine is ultimately more about emotional intelligence.

Psychologists have identified 9 distinct kinds of intelligence, ranging from mathematical and linguistic to musical and the capacity to observe and understand the natural world.5 Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to manage emotions and interact effectively with others. People with high EQs are sensitive to the moods and temperaments of others, display empathy, and appreciate multiple perspectives when approaching situations.

Is EQ really necessary for success? A major part of what distinguishes human brain functions from those of primates is a larger prefrontal cortex and extensive intrabrain connections, which endow humans with significantly greater ability to navigate social interactions and collaborate. It makes sense, then, that humans should use this unique ability to its greatest extent.

Consider a simple negotiation session. Participants—executives, physicians, and others—are grouped into teams and given the exact same starting scenario and facts. When told to come to the best possible deal, as measured in a hard outcome such as the most money, results vary 4-fold or more. The best deals are reached by teams that exhibit mutual trust, an understanding of the interests of the other side, and the ability to reach a mutually beneficial arrangement. These variations are not the result of differences in brain power but rather differences in EQ. According to Diamond, “[In negotiations] emotions and perceptions are far more important than power and logic in dealing with others. [EQ] produces four times as much value as conventional tools like leverage and ‘win-win’ because (a) you have a better starting point for persuasion, (b) people are more willing to do things for you when you value them, no matter who they are, and (c) the world is mostly about emotions, not the logic of ‘win-win.’”6

EQ in Medicine

Vitally important to the success of 21st-century clinicians are 3 capabilities: to (1) effectively lead teams, (2) coordinate care, and (3) engender behavior change in patients and colleagues. (Both 1 and 3 require negotiating skills.) Thus, effective physicians need both an adequate IQ and a high EQ.

For the 10% of chronically ill patients who consume nearly two-thirds of all health care spending,7 the primary challenge is not solving diagnostic conundrums, unraveling complex genetic mutations, or administering specially designed therapeutic regimens. Rather, physicians caring for chronically ill patients with several comorbidities must lead multidisciplinary teams that emphasize educating patients, ensuring medication adherence, diagnosing and treating concomitant mental health issues, anticipating potential illness exacerbations, and explicitly discussing treatment preferences.

These activities depend on listening, building trust, empathy, and delineating mutual goals. Chronic care management, in addition to sufficient intelligence, therefore primarily requires a high EQ. As Goleman suggested, “Analytics and technical skills do matter, but mainly as ‘threshold capabilities’—that is, they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions… [But] emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership. Without it a person can have the best training in the world; an incisive analytical mind; and an endless supply of smart ideas; but he still won’t make a great leader.”8

Minimizing or ignoring EQ when selecting and training medical students may partially explain why US medical professionals fare so poorly in assembling well-functioning teams to care for chronically and terminally ill patients.

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