Ah! I must have the last word (unless you think otherwise):
At 06:28 28/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Great stuff and a good debate, Keith, but I don't think we can come together on this. As good Talmudic scholars or whatever, we should now go our separate ways. As I'm sure you've gathered, my own view is that manifest intelligence depends very much on what people have to do, how many of them there are, and what they have to work with. I keep thinking of the poor Tasmanians Jared Diamond describes in "Guns, Germs and Steel", cut off completely from any cultural diffusion, down to some 4,000 people at the time of European contact and having lost pretty well all of the skills they had when they were cut off from the Australian mainland some 10,000 years ago. I doubt very much that they would have done well on the Stanford Binet. They were easily wiped out by Europeans, mostly convicts from Britain.
You're quite right. The aboriginal Tasmanians wouldn't have done well on a Stanford Binet IQ test. *But* they probably would have done quite well -- perhaps very well -- on a perception-reaction time test. This is known to be highly correlated with IQ scores on standard IQ tests -- that is, in those cultures where the people are able to read, understand basic numbers, etc. I venture to think that the Tasmanians might have done quite well on a culture-free test (using pictures only). In my book, this means that their rear cortices would be quite well stocked and networked as regards perception-based skills based on the environment around them. *But*, because of the primitive level of skills/culture handed down to them there would be little or no cultural 'set', nothing to carry forward, into their post-puberty world as their frontal lobes developed and in which they would establish outward signs of rank order (embellishing themselves in various ways as almost all societies do), make new discoveries, etc, etc.
Keith
Ed
High praise indeed, except that putting anything in the same box as The Bell Curve immediately raises suspicions.
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Keith Hudson
- To: Ed Weick
- Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 2:49 AM
- Subject: Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
- Ed,
- This is becoming as complicated as two Talmudic scholars arguing against each other -- except that, in older days, the exchanges would be months apart. With this new device, we have the chance of solving the world's problems in double-quick time. I'll extract pretty drastically, whatever the colours, in what follows:
- At 16:51 27/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
- Keith, what I'm referring to is the migration of Jews eastward from Western Europe because of persecutions and expulsions (see: http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/christians&jews.htm ). These migrations would have begun in, probably, the 12th Century and would have continued to about the 15th Century. Jews from Europe would have moved as far east as eastern Poland and the Ukraine. The Khazars ceased to exist as a distinct people in about the 11th or 12th Centuries, and one has to wonder what happened to them. They may have been aware of the movement of Jews into eastern Europe, and might have tried, perhaps succeeded, in making contact and merging with them. I have a friend of Jewish ancestry whose father came from Saratov in the Ukraine. While he doesn't think he has Khazar connections, he doesn't dismiss the possiblity. That's where I'll have to leave the matter for the moment.
- What I was saying (without expert knowledge of all this) is that large scale migration didn't occur until the 14th century when the King of Poland, impressed by their mercantile abilities, invited them to Poland in order to raise the economic tone of the place. Of course, the Khazar nation might also have been the result of a mass migration from the Middle East also. Or it could have been a collection point from pockets of Jews all over the Medierranean area.
- But let me just diverge for a point. There seems to be great similarities between Jews and Chinese. Firstly in their respect for scholarship (set within a highly definied Confucian culture) and secondly in their highly family-based society (itself set in a highly self-conscious culture). The result, I suggest, is that both cultures encouraged the migration of individual (or single-family) Chinese and Jews when their homeland fell on hard times. They had this enterprise because they were bright -- and they had the psychological strength of knowing that they were still connected to a highly defined culturfe even though they may be far distant. Small groups of Jews seem to have migrated all over Eurasia from about 500BC and onwards. Chinese migration seems to have occurred a lot later -- from about 1450 when China started descending into hard times due to the edicts against direct trade from China. In both cases in modern times, poc`kets of Chinese and Jews seem to be found in every city and sizeable town in the world -- wherever there's a possibility of a business. I think this is quite remarkable in the case of both of these groups.
- (EW) thinking about numbers and other abstract concepts, others may have to think about getting out to the potato field or cotton patch as fast as they can if they want to live another year. The former would probably do very well on standardized IQ tests while the latter would likely fail.
- Keith: Yes, I sympathise with your point but will the future of manking depends upon our skills in growing potatoes or at other things? If it's other things, then IQ scores are probably the best method yet of selecting people who perform them well.
- I'm afraid I find this a little too close to social Darwinism for comfort.
- For myself, I abjure these sorts of labels. "Social Darwinism" as originally conceived is rightly to be dead and buried. Bringing that label back into modern circumstances -- particularly in the context of a much more detailed knowledge of genetics is not helpful.
- My own family may be illustrative of what I'm trying to say. As Central European peasants they were potato growers generation upon generation all the way down. In Canada, in its first generation, the family produced doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, teachers and, alas, even economists. We have many friends from the Caribbean here in Ottawa, all bright and competent people. Just a few generations ago their ancestors were plantation slaves.
- I didn't remotely suggest that those who have been potato growers through force of circumstances did not retain sufficient ability to flourish in times of more opportunity. However, I would be very doubtful whether your ancestors were nothing but potato growers generation after generation. Two or three centuries of this and there would almost certainly have been selective effects towards physical strength and away from mental ability.
- (EW) I must say too, that Lynn and Vanhanan are, in my opinion, highly suspect researchers. In praising the book, here's what one source says about them:
- IQ and the Wealth of Nations is a brilliantly-conceived, superbly-written, path-breaking book that does for the global study of economic prosperity what The Bell Curve did for the USA. Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen examine IQ scores and economic indicators in 185 countries. They document that national differences in wealth are explained most importantly by the intelligence levels of the populations. They calculate that mean national IQ correlates powerfully—more than 0.7—with per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP). National IQs predict both long-term and short term economic growth rates. Second in importance is whether the countries have market or socialist economies. Only third is the widely-credited factor of natural resources, like oil.
Once again, there's a lot of labelling and prejudice going on here (not yours but mainly the temper of the last 50 years in sociological/philosophical circles. I wouldn't damn Lynn and Vanhanen on the basis of similarity to Murray's Bell Curve.
Adding to these, the praise is extended by one Phillipe Rushton, a Canadian who achieved some noteriety a few years ago by publishing material similar to that of Lynn and Vanhalen. One of his findings, if I recall correctly, was an inverse relationship between IQ and the racially determined length of the penis.
His main finding, however, is that IQ has a very high correlation with brain size when comparing, say, Africans, Chinese and Caucasians. Nobody has been able to refute this. It is palpable even though it's uncomfortable. The degree of antipathy towards people Rushton and Murray is reminiscent of the hunting of witches in the medieval days. Fortunately, they have broad backs (selected from other professionals who haven't had the courage to face the onslaught!) and also they are quietly supported by the professionals in evolutionary science.
Other reviewers are not as kind to Lynn and Vanhalen. Thomas Volken published the following abstract in the European Sociological Review:I simply don't accept the Lynn and Vanhalen thesis. Applying a single standardized test to a large, economically and culturally diverse, variety of peoples does not make much sense to me.
- “Recently Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen have presented evidence that differences in national IQ account for the substantial variation in national per capita income and growth. This article challenges these findings and claims that, on the one hand, they simply reflect inappropriate use and interpretations of statistical instruments. On the other hand, it is argued that the models presented by Lynn/Vanhanen are under-complex and inadequately specified. More precisely the authors confuse IQ with human capital. The paper concludes that once control variables are introduced and the models are adequately specified, neither an impact of IQ on income nor on growth can be substantiated.”
I have reservations about the Lynn and Vanhalen thesis, too. Firstly, I think that most of the figures for most of the smaller countries are based on much too low numbers tested and there's too much interpolation (of those countries for which there are no tests). But for the larger groups in which there's been a great deal of testing (e.g. Caucasians, American-Jews, Chinese, etc) I think the IQ scores can be relied upon as meaning something (that is, a strong correlation with ability in life generally). Secondly (as in my long screed of the other day), I think there's a much greater cultural contribution to IQ development in the individual (in the post-puberty to 25 year age) and, correspondingly, a much large contribution of culture in the development of economies.
I therefore agree with your first sentence below.
Ever so many factors enter into human productivity and development, especially, as the foregoing points out, the development of human capital. At the most basic level, however, if people are treated like dogs and forced to live like dogs, they will behave like dogs. If they are treated like human beings, they will behave fully human.
I agree in spirit with your latter two sentences, but let's not confuse these emotional sympathies with what I feel are very real differences in abilities (physically and mentally) between large population blocs which have lived in entirely different environments for thousands of years.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
