Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 2:14 pm
Supposing your research tells you the truth, your conclusions are still unwarranted. At most, they would indicate that IQ
in large populations, not in individuals, is
somewhat related to the rates of violence and antisocial behaviour -- which would be no surprise to anyone. But it would not indicate that a slightly lower
average of IQ, in a particular population, is the
direct cause of violent and antisocial behaviour.
Immanuel, I am determined to educate you on this issue, (at present, you are, I'm afraid, a "lost sheep") and with your permission I will proceed to do so, though I warn you that it may take me a number of posts to explain the facts ? I also warn that this truth is a very harsh one. ...[/quote]
Well, I appreciate the attempt to educate me. But I may not be quite so thick about this as you imagine. I'll see if I can convince you of that.
It depends how you quantity the term "large."
Not at all. I was only speaking of the greater masses in general. I was suggesting that when one makes a statement about
a large group, one is not thereby making a statement about the
individual. And that's just very obvious.
IQ scores produce bell curves. There are few true geniuses, and few complete dullards in any population. The middle is the majority. And IQ scores calculated from the studies to which you refer produce
overlapping bell curves, some slightly higher and others slightly lower, but the majority of people in the demographic falling into the overlapping range.
Non-overlapping bell curves, spaced out between very low IQ and very high IQ would plausibly let us make racially-based comments, perhaps. But that is not what we find.
But more importantly, your analysis
does not show causality. Let me clarify.
Let us suppose that some demographic falls into a bell curve slightly lower on the scale than some other -- say, that the Chinese are higher than the "whites," which these studies suggest is so. That does not tell you that a lower "white" IQ is the
cause of anything. It might well only be a catalyst or contributor, with external factors being the primary causes of a social pathology; or even less, it might simply indicate the lack of a mitigating factor, and no more.
So, for example, perhaps "whites" score below the Chinese on the IQ scale. But when Chinese people or "whites" are subjected to factors like malnutrition, poverty, under education, substance addiction and gangs, both groups behave in antisocial ways -- the Chinese being only slightly less prone to do so, because they have the mitigating influence of a marginally-higher IQ, and the "whites" being slightly more likely to behave pathologically. Likewise, when both groups are privileged, only the low-end of their bell curves produce any anti-social or self-destructive behavior.
In that case, what has your study really shown? Not much. It hasn't contained any calculation that shows that IQ is the cause of the antisocial behaviour. In fact, it's not. It's the external factors that are the real cause, and IQ is, at best, a merely mitigating influence on how those external influences are played out in practice.
The upshot: it's easy to jump to racial explanations every time one sees any kind of disparity between groups on any kind of scale. But this is an example of false-cause fallacy. The scale can be showing you disparities that are not the real root cause of the situation you're examining, especially if your study or scale declined to take such factors into account from the beginning. So, for example, an IQ scale does not show any other factors, such as lack of nutrition, community self-image, addiction, education level, and single motherhood. Thus IT SHOWS NO CORRELATIONS...not because correlating factors don't exist, but because IQ studies are narrowly focused on IQ, or even because the researchers themselves just
assumed IQ would be the answer, and gratuitously dismissed all other factors from their consideration.
That's bad science. Multiple-causality is an ostensible fact of life: and sophisticated analyses have to at least make some place to consider multiple causality. Single-factor IQ studies do not. IQ may have some role in social pathologies -- I suspect that it would be likely to -- but it is not the
determinative role, and has not been shown to be such merely by the existence of IQ studies.
[/quote]
Dear IMMANUEL
I finally have chance to get back to you.
Let start with point you made regarding the area of overlap in the overlapping Bell Curve distribution for White Europen Americans and Black Arican-Americans. So that we're reading from the same "hymn sheet" could you tap the following code into your google search engine: "libertarianrealist:blogspot.com/2012/05/iq-distributions.html" This should bring up an image of the overlapping Black and White Bell Curve distributions for Blacks and Whites in America. As you can see, the majority of individuals do not fall into the zone of overlap.
While we are on the topic of these Bell Curves, could I say that the implications of Black - White IQ differences actually seem most troubling when we turn from the average differences and focus instead on the differences at the extreme - when you contrast the two overlapping Bell Curve distributions and look at the proportions in each group scoring above and below certain levels. For instance, if we suppose that the top professional and managerial jobs in the US require an IQ of at least 115 or thereabouts, then we have to accept that only about 2.5% of Blacks appear to be able to compete for these jobs. The comparable figure for Whites would be about 16% The total Black population with IQs over 115 is 800,000. The comparable figure for Whites is about 30 million.. If Blacks had the same IQ distribution as Whites, the Black total would be over 5 million.
The data are even more depressing on the downside. An IQ in the range of 70 - 75 (NB: Western psychiatrists currently view an IQ score of 70 as being diagnostic of mild mental retardation, or, to be politically correct, of mild Intellectual Deficit Disorder, IDD) implies a life that is guaranteed to be short of opportunities. Very few students in the 70 - 75 IQ range will absorb much of what elementary schools teach, and virtually none will graduate from high school; few will succeed in finding and keeping a good job>none will be admitted into the armed forces (required by law to screen out the lowest 10% of the population). The bad news is that a substantial minority - approximately 1 in 5 of American Blacks have IQ scores below 75. Around 1 in 20 Whites have IQ scores below 75.
Unfortunately social pathology in America: delinquency, crime, incarceration rates, drug abuse, prostitution, illegitimacy, child abuse/neglect, permanent welfare dependency, unemployment - is disproportionately correlated (for both Blacks and Whites) in that segment of the population with IQs below 75. And, as I mentioned at least one quarter of the Black population (compared to one twentieth of the White population) falls below that critical IQ point in the Bell Curve. Because the smaller percentage of White people with IQs below 75 are fairly well scattered throughout the population, many are guided by their abler families, friends and neighbours whose IQs are closer to 100. Relatively few are liable to be concentrated in poor neighbourhoods and housing projects that harbour the "critical mass" of very low IQs which generated an inordinate quantity of social pathology. The "critical mass" effect exists mostly in the inner cities, which have been abandoned by Whites (e.g. Detroit, Birmingham, Gary, Miami Gardens and so on).
You say that the real cause of antisocial behaviour are "external" (i.e. environmental factors - "nurture") and
"IQ is, at best, merely a mitigating influence on how those external influences are played out in practice." My dear fellow (!) you couldn't be more mistaken. Let me explain... There is absolutely no questioning the fact that the average IQ of Black African Americans is 1 Standard Deviation (15 points) below the average for White Anglo-European-descended Americans. This represents a substantial deficit. Thus, we can say that Blacks in the US TEND to have lower general intelligence than Whites. As long ago as 1994 the authors of "The Bell Curve" (Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein) concluded from their research that low IQ was a better predictor of low socioeconomic status and the associated problems of: poverty; teenage pregnancy; welfare dependency; criminality and drug abuse/addiction
THAN ANY COMPETING VARIABLE including parental socioeconomic status." Murray and Herrnstein argue that people with low IQ find it hard to understand why criminal behaviour like robbing someone is wrong, and find it harder to appreciate the values of civil and cooperative social life. According to their analysis someone with an IQ of 130 has a less than 2% chance of living in poverty, whereas someone with an IQ of 70 has a 26% chance. I would say that, without the support of mentally competent family and friends, someone with an IQ of 70 - (which is the threshold in the West for a psychiatric diagnosis of mild mental retardation) - is
highly likely to find themselves living in poverty, and Murray and Herrnstein's figure of 26% is extremely conservative.
IQ (general intelligence/ general cognitive ability) is, quite simply, the
OMNIPOTENT VARIABLE in human life.
Life is an IQ test ! An individual's IQ STRONGLY predicts: their mastery of the curriculum at school; this, in turn, predominantly informs prospects for future education at university; which, in turn, leads to social and economic opportunities such as those related to occupation and income. In the world of work, intelligence matters more than educational attainment because it involves the ability to adapt to novel challenges and tasks that describe the different levels of complexity of occupation. Intelligence also spills over into multiple aspects of daily life, such as the choice of a romantic partner and choices about health care.
General intelligence (or cognitive ability) as measured by IQ is known as the omnipotent variable, it predicts educational outcomes, occupational and financial outcomes, health outcomes
BETTER THAN ANY OTHER TRAIT. It is also the most stable psychological trait with a high 0.54 correlation coefficient from 11 to 90 years of age.
In recent years genetic association studies have confirmed a century of quantitative genetic research showing that inherited DNA differences are responsible for SUBSTANTIAL individual differences in intelligence test scores. Until 2016 Genome-Wide Polygenetic Scores (GWPS) could predict only 1% of the variance in intelligence. Since then progress has been very rapid and at present behavioural geneticists have the ability to predict 10% of the variance in intelligence (that is, more than 20% of the 50% (average) heritability factor derived from identical twin studies and more than 40% of the 25% Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) heritability of intelligence. This is an important milestone for the new genetics of intelligence because effect sizes of this magnitude are large enough to be "perceptible to the naked eye" of a reasonably sensitive observer.
I predict that in the not too distant future, evidence from the new genetics of intelligence will confirm that genetic factors play a far greater role in determining variation in intelligence than environmental factors. This is certainly what the research results to date are suggesting. So hopefully it will not be long now before the "dinosaurs" and "Flat-Earthers" of the intellectual left, will finally be forced to abandon their pernicious
tabula rasa" doctrines of environmental determinism in theories of human intelligence published in the literature. Roll on that day !!
Regards
Dachshund (Der Uberweiner)...........................(Beware the dog)