Race and IQ gap

It was in reference to racism, and any forms of superiority; if you don't believe that, then why believe in "racism", especially when you are not willing to be superior enough to have actual solutions.

 

You haven't established any of these things and you are slandering me.

 

not having a solution must be considered a form of inferiority in some situations; the Romans in Germania is one example.

 

Do you have IQ scores from the 'hobbit' with which to compare?

No?

Get back to me when you do.

 

Many of them are not Marxists. I'm also not Marxist. I also don't support forcing people out of their jobs because they give illogical arguments. But that doesn't mean that they are right.

 

I believe the Persons who resort to the most fallacies for their Cause are the most inferior. It could be about equal pay for equal work.

 

IQ is an artifact of IQ tests. Way back, this thread covered the many uncertainties about such tests.

In practice, society relies on results more than tests. If someone succeeds at an intellectually demanding occupation, we infer that he's intelligent. I don't know if Einstein ever took an IQ test, but we feel confident saying he was intelligent because of his accomplishments. If someone fails at an intellectually undemanding occupation, we infer that he's unintelligent.

Yes, many people with outstanding ability to reason fail because of psychological or environmental factors. But the reason for failure makes little difference to those who fail or to society. It's worth understanding the psychological and environmental factors impeding performance so that we might come to mitigate them in future. But today's failures will still suffer.

Of course there's a political reason for the talk about extraneous factors: if members of identifiable groups are more likely to fail, or to succeed, there's political profit in protecting people from embarrassment. If African-Americans underperform, many want to hear that it's not their fault. If Asian-Americans overperform, many non-Asians want to hear that it is their fault, i.e., that Asians are not inherently superior. This is about politically interested people protecting group's self-esteem. This pandering is best set aside so we can focus on helping people to do their best. Telling people they're OK isn't the same as helping them to actually be OK.

 

What do you mean by an "artifact"? Are you trying to imply IQ has no predictive validity by calling it obscure and gratuitous names?

 

I haven't called IQ tests anything but IQ tests, which is neither obscure nor gratuitous.

Here's how "artifact" is defined -

1. An object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest.
"gold and silver artifacts"
"hundreds of unidentified artifacts are stored in numerous rooms beneath the museum"

2. Something observed in a scientific investigation or experiment that is not naturally present but occurs as a result of the preparative or investigative procedure.
"widespread tissue infection may be a technical artifact"

I used "artifact" in the second sense. Sorry if that was unfamiliar.

My point was that there was no IQ before IQ tests. Some people have always been more clever than others, but the idea that intelligence is a unitary trait which can be quantified is modern, and is an "artifact" of IQ testing.

 

I know what an artifact is, I wanted to know what you mean by it. If IQ is an "artifact" - a statistical side effect with no connection to anything in reality - why does it correlate strongly to real world achievement. Why can't you find a low IQ physics professor? Why does it correlate to biological brain variables and reaction speed? In fact IQ isn't an "artifact" at all and this is basically just a gratuitous lie. It's no more an artifact than measured air speed.

You won't go far parroting the charlatan Gould.

 

Self evidentially not ( And I use the term advisedly). IQ tests were invented purely to provide a measure for unitary Intelligence as defined by Binet. You may of course argue with the whole premise.

I alweays find it interesting listening to the marxist arguments by radical scientists such as Rose are still happy to use low IQ as evidence that this or that criminal should not be executed.

Whether you like or don;t like the method high IQ correlates extremely well with what is vernaculary known as "intelligence" and the converse is also true.

 

I guess that since these fallacies are stock in trade for the MSM this is never going to end.

"IQ is an artifact and race doesn't exist!"
"Wrong, here's why."
"Oh."
{New person fresh from watching PBS or same person 6 months later.}
"IQ is an artifact and race doesn't exist!"
*facepalm*

 

Which noted scientists do you think are not phonies?

 

I don;t think Gould is a Phoney. I just think he is was ideologically committed to be an effective scientist in certain areas. In areas where ideology matters less he was rather good.

 

I apologise for the inordinate delay; I tend not to be too active when saddled with double pneumonia. At least I got some reading done...

Background
Rayznack indicated that lead could not play a substantial role in accounting for the black-white IQ and crime gaps, as Shanghai in utero exposure to lead was 10ug/dl in the 90s, with about 1-1.4 murder per 100k per year resulting in the present (almost 23 years later), versus 4ug/dl (less than half the Chinese levels---NHANES-III phase 1; ages 1-5) for US black children in the same period with 14-20 times the murder rate of Chinese. He is comparing two different numbers, though, namely in utero exposure (which I argued and continue to argue is more significant than childhood exposure---which should superficially bolster his case, but see below) of Chinese embryos with infant exposure of US black infants. In-utero exposure also does contribute to infant exposure, as the biological half-life of lead in the brain is about 2 years, versus a month in the blood. Likewise, Rayznack indicated that Hong Kong had even higher (adult) exposure (15ug/dl), yet Hong Kong has a slightly higher IQ than the mainland, and a comparable murder rate.
http://www.precaution.org/lib/low-level_lead_longterm_followup.19921001.pdf

I should point out that I predicted increased crime for Hong Kong earlier, based on their phase-out date. That prediction was based on an erroneous assumption, namely of removing lead cold turkey. In fact, lead was reduced in the 80s, so murder (by locals) would have peaked in the mid-2000s.
http://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/36681

Unfortunately, we do not have the relevant pregnancy blood lead levels for the respective populations (black, white US) for the early 90s (I'd gladly be proven wrong). I intend to show that the pregnant blood lead, third trimester in particular, would have been much higher than what is suggested by the 1 year averages. We do have such a measure for the South-West Nigerian (Yoruba) city of Abeokuta (population 600k, blood levels 2002)---the university student average was 15ug/dl, while the third trimester average was about 54ug/dl.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=13581925

These exceptionally high blood lead levels (3rd trimester) are probably not due to dietary exposure per se, nor due to recent petrol consumption. Rather, during pregnancy, bone calcium (and thus bone lead) is taken from bone for the embryo; thus the embryo is exposed to maternal lead stores---it would be the petrol consumption during the women's childhoods and adolescent years. This bone remodelling can be reduced, but not eliminated, by increasing calcium intake. From this we can infer that the Shanghai Chinese women didn't have much lead in their bones, which should not surprise us, as the previous generation would have used bicycles rather than petrol vehicles for personal transport.
http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/4/1508/pdf
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/156/12/1088.full.pdf

Blood lead due to bone stores (bone lead biological half-life on the order of thirty years) usually goes up during the first and third trimesters. As lead is phased out, the next generation builds up largely lead-free bones after birth and weening, and thus the following generation should be without the lead burden. Rayznack earlier posted data suggesting (if memory serves) that maternal pregnant blood lead in the 2000s was quite low, so we should expect the 2020s to be relatively calm. Bone lead may thus also have been important in white (US and European) IQ loss and violence that would not have been predicted by blood levels taken during the 90s.

Violence
Before addressing the rest of Africa's IQ loss, I'll readdress the question of lead and violence. Again, I remind that the blood lead-IQ graph that I argued for (and do with the following provisos) is more relevant to exposure at two years, although that may also be due to maternal bone lead more than infant exposure. This section will also address mikemikev's question to me (two weeks ago):
http://www.precaution.org/lib/low-level_lead_longterm_followup.19921001.pdf

I previously expressed my discomfort with the notion that outlying blood lead levels should predict future crime as opposed to averages, but I also cited a paper (and noted in citing the paper---Wolpaw-Reyes) that such high outliers do predict murder rates 23 years hence. As the US population has been exposed to high levels of lead for at least four generations, if not longer (e.g. colonial period lead-glaze cutlery), first- and third-trimester pregnancies would largely constitute the outliers of adult blood lead levels, and thus be representative, along with children who were sufficiently calcium deficient in their diets that they resorbed bone for metabolism, thus releasing lead---outliers would be representative of average in-utero blood lead levels, and thus murder 23 years hence.

The IQ loss predicted by the IQ Pb graph (I've still not found the original reference) is:
0.7 times Pb blood (ug/dl) if Pb blood less than 10ug/dl
7 plus 0.4 times Pb blood (ug/dl) otherwise

As blood lead is larely an urban phenomenon, and as I've argued that unemployment would also drive murder, let murder rates be predicted by
MR(per 100k per year)=Constant times youth unemployment (20-24) times urbanization times in-utero blood lead

although urbanization is less significant for China, as many peasant adolescents get urban work, and thus would also be lead exposed by the time they have their children; it can be taken as close to one (e.g. 0.8---80%).

The constant seems to come to about 0.0003 when urbanization and youth unemployment are expressed as percentages, and lead as ug/dl. One can then infer (third trimester) blood lead based on murder rates, and thus lead-induced IQ loss.
China: 10ug/dl; 1.4 per 100k per year; unemployment is about 5% for 20-24
USA white: 2-4 per 100k per year; unemployment was about 10% for 15-24 before the crash, so probably 6-7% for 20-24
USA black: 15-20 per 100k per year; unemployment was about 20% for 15-24 before the crash, so probably 12-14% for 20-24
RSA 1995: Youth unemployment was about 50%, so probably 30-35% for 20-24
Nigeria: 12 per 100k per year; Urban unemployment was 38%, but for 15-24 about 24%---perhaps 14-17%; population is 50% urban
http://www.slideshare.net/iegfeedback/youth-unemployment-in-nigeria-challenges-and-way-forward

Rest of African IQ loss
Iodine probably plays a substantial role in African IQ loss, especially as measured in the early 2000s and before. Iodine shortage generally causes 13 points decline, although the losses caused by lead, iodine deficiency, mercury and malnutrition currently define what constitutes an IQ difference, i.e. these factors seem to dominate the standard deviation of the population distribution. Large parts of Africa, due to poor soils, are iodine deficient, leading to endemic goiter. In the last 15 years, several African countries have started to add iodine to salt, although South Africa has to some extent since the 1950s.
http://www.tjournal.org/tjst_january_2013/07.pdf
http://sajcn.co.za/index.php/SAJCN/article/download/185/201

Hong Kong is currently border-line iodine sufficient, with microscopic goiter occuring during pregnancy. This borderline state is IMAO likely due to more recent reduced fish consumption (seafood is generally iodine rich), due to mercury concerns; thus I don't expect that it would have had its effect on adult IQ yet.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11155095

Mercury in skin whitening creams are definitely a problem in Nigeria, and several other African states. Creams that are 3% mercury by weight would cause in-utero IQ loss of 22 points, if memory serves---I don't have the calculations with me. To what extent mercury causes violence is not clear, and that may muck with the murder rate calculations above.

Any IQ advantages brought by education would be limited for Africa, due to the already-damaged brains of most of the children to be educated. Based on maternal bone lead stores, without massive public health initiatives, it may take two generations to get the lead out, or a bit more with urban geophagia (which has all sorts of health benefits when lead isn't involved...)

- - - Updated - - -

While I'm arguing against their position, I should point out that your argument doesn't work---the individual correlation was given as 0.12 or so---large numbers dictate that the averages will be much more strongly correlated---the variance should drop as root of population (Poisson statistics), so for averages of large populations, it will likely (assuming no major structural factors, e.g. genes) be close to one.

 

Geophagia and lead (defined by the compilers as pica---I'll leave my snide comments to myself...):
http://www.nursingcenter.com/lnc/CE...810000-00023&Journal_ID=54030&Issue_ID=818818

 

I promised mikemikev some South African data, but I've not had the time to find all my sources---the murder sources are missing, and I have only very partial youth unemployment data by year, which I posted earlier.

For malnutrition, I used figure 16 in the latter reference, with linear interpolation; note that urbanization picked up after 1970, so there might have been a spike that is not conveyed

http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/1983/9241560797_(chp4-5).pdf
http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/a0442e/a0442e0v.html

Lead content of petrol by year:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935105001088

Petrol consumption per year: Page 293 (309 in the pdf)
http://www.erc.uct.ac.za/Research/publications/06Marquard PhD Thesis.pdf

Urbanization
http://www.delog.org/cms/upload/pdf...atial_Distortions_and_Strategic_Responses.pdf

I use the product of urbanization, annual petrol use, petrol lead content and malnutrition as a proxy for blood lead.

Other matters relating to this thread:

I wondered previously what they use as their 'zero' reading; apparently it is 0.5ug/dl; the minimum detectable is 1ug/dl:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhanes/nhanes3/cdrom/nchs/manuals/labman.pdf

Fluorescence and other studies of brain, teeth and bone have been performed to detect lead, but these have been individual studies rather than epidemiological studies:
www.icdd.com/resources/axa/vol48/v48_38.pdf‎
http://www.clinchem.org/content/46/8/1171.full.pdf+html
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/32/12/2477.full.pdf

East Asians do tend to have lower calcium intake (just not recent intergenerational lead intake):
http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/y2809e/y2809e0h.htm

 

So if I can simplify your position, you have no data and are making stuff up.

I would agree that iodine deficiency is probably a minor factor in central Africa.

 

I really don't understand why I have to keep posting this FACT.

Perhaps because some people like to ignore FACTS.

If you have 100 child members of each race in a group.

And if each person and their parents are tested in all groups to see if there has been any damage on any level due to a family history of Heavy Metal Poisoning, Disease, Malnutrition...etc....and we get 100 people for each race group that do not have such issues.

Then if all children in all groups are given the same education....the same needed nutrition...the same needed medical care....and the same loving environment growing up....and then when all kids turned 17 and were given I.Q. Tests......these would be the results.

EACH GROUP WOULD HAVE APPROXIMATELY THE SAME RATIOS OF HIGHER TO MIDDLE TO LOWER I.Q. SCORES AS WELL EACH GROUP WOULD HAVE THE SAME RATIOS APPROX. OF CRIMINALS, LEADERS...ETC.

AboveAlpha

 

Thats is absolutely NOT a fact.

 

YES, BECAUSE WRITING IN ALL CAPS MAKES IT TRUE.

 

Then by all means...provide a viable link to DISPROVE IT!

AboveAlpha

- - - Updated - - -

No...doing some reading and studying and....THEN posting it with a cap lock makes it true.

AboveAlpha

 

The best evidence is the consistent world wide pattern of differences, throughout various places and times where conditions and political status have changed. In my opinion this is extremely strong evidence, although not a mathematical proof of course. The proof will come when somebody correlates IQ to apparent and genetic ancestry at the same time, the closest study I know of correlated SES to skin color and genetic ancestry at the same time, and found no correlation to skin color, but a correlation to genetic ancestry. I posted a thread in Science you can read.

BTW you don't make a claim such as "everybody's equal" and demand disproof. This is also a claim which requires evidence.

 

The onus is upon the person that states that someone or something that is of the same nature to not be equal.

Not all people are born equal....as there are people who are gifted in a wide variety of ways....but just because a person holds ones ability to be a Great Stock Broker as having more worth than an Artist....or a person of relatively low analytic intelligence but having Great Social Intellect...well...such a person trying to place more value upon one persons gifts over another is the one that is truly lacking in intelligence.

AboveAlpha

 

Right. Or something like that. I don't have the data for USA, because it wasn't published. I provided the Nigerian data. Rayznack provided the Chinese data. I provided references. But feel free to have your own facts.

If you do decide that you'd like to be serious, you can read my argument as a falsifiable hypothesis, that will be tested over the coming decade or so, and as a rather strong criticism of the publications that were put out by the NHANES crowd.

As to Iodine, well, Europe's iodization programs are collapsing, so we'll see what happens in ten years or so. Africa's programs vary; non-pregnancy deficiency varies by country, and many are (as noted) about 15 years old or so:
http://12.000.scripts.mit.edu/mission2014/sites/default/files/Iodine Deficiency Map.JPG

It will be interesting to see what happens to Russia and Australia's IQ over the next two decades.

As to pregnancy blood lead, the only reference I could find was from a study in Pittsburgh:
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/152/9/829.full
But these women, including the poorer black women, would have been largely self-selected, by virtue of being recruited at that hospital.