Posted on 12/31/2007 2:24:28 AM PST by america4vr
Was 138 supposed to be for Ironfocus?
I am not assuming that. The earlier posters were saying that the exporting of the slaves resulted in the lack of talent and lack of development in Africa.
It would make more sense to me that the weaker, less aggressive people would be enslaved and shipped out. But that would mean a higher density of smart, productive people left in Africa. Ya can’t win!
“I.Q. is a small component of human intelligence.
This is a meaningless statement.”
No, it is very significant. There are lots of people who start out with very high IQs (180+) and end up as complete failures in life, never having accomplished anything worthwhile, dying broke and alone.
It was a bit uncouth of him, wasn't it?
Then again, he's been hit in the head a good many times.
And it’s never leveled out.
Some of them are. Some are not.
Structure an IQ test based on third world knowlege (what bugs are edible; what vines provide drinkable water; what fruits do you avoid a certain times of the year; what is the first step in choosing a site for your hut, et.) and most of us would look like morons.
All of the things you cited are examples of applied knowledge, which are only tangentially associated with IQ. A properly constructed and administered IQ test would not test for that type of knowledge.
An example of an unbiased, culturally neutral intelligence test:
The subject is seated in a chair in front of an angled table. In the center of the table is a pushbutton. Arranged in a semicircle around the central button are several other pushbuttons. Arranged in a slightly larger semicircle are a number of indicator lights, one for each pushbutton in the semicircle. The subject holds down the central pushbutton. When an indicator light illuminates, the subject removes his hand from the central button and smacks the button paired with the lit indicator light as fast as he can. (Think Whack-A-Mole.)
Without the subjects knowledge, two times are measured: The time it takes to release the central button after the light illuminates, and the time it takes to depress the outer button after releasing the central button. These times correspond to "cognitive processing time" and "reaction time." The "cognitive processing time" is strongly correlated (inversely) to intelligence.
Now this test is not sophisticated enough to produce an IQ number by itself, but there are many other such tests, too.
Where is the cultural bias in this test?
If you're arguing that individuals should be judged on their personal strengths or weaknesses, you have a point. However, it is incorrect to assume that we cannot make statistical judgments of groups on the grounds that there is significant variation within those groups. For example, there is great height variation among men, and great height variation among women. But we can still state with absolute certainty that men are on average taller than women. And if you were hiring people for a task that could only be performed by people over six feet tall, you'd end up with an overwhelmingly male workforce.
The same is true of IQ, which is why the overwhelming majority of math and physics experts are male, and why some races easily get into Harvard without affirmative action and others don't.
The kerfluffle about which race has the highest average IQ is ridiculous. How many of you happen to know that East Asians have a higher average IQ than Caucasians? Yet a few thousand Caucasians who travelled thousands of miles in rickety wooden sailing ships dominated hundreds of millions of East Asians for much of recent history. So much for what a slightly higher IQ gets you in the real world, eh?
I'm fully aware that East Asians have a higher average IQ than Caucasians. But we never dominated those countries to the degree that we colonized Africa or the New World. Recall that IQ isn't the only factor in determining a nation's wealth and strength. It's just one factor, and a nation with an average IQ of 105 can be outperformed by a nation with an average IQ of 100 if the latter nation has a superior economic system, individual liberty, and so forth.
For me the proof of the pudding is always in the tasting. In the world today one nation stands head and shoulders above all others in economic and military achievement. And guess what - it’s the nation with the most racial diversity in its population and individual equality codified into its laws. Never argue with success.
Racial diversity has absolutely nothing to do with America's rise to the top. That occurred, you may recall, when racial minorities were largely eliminated from participation in the leadership of our nation. There's nothing wrong with individual equality before the law, of course, but that won't ever result in group equality. That's why there's a demand for affirmative action.
Having worked with people of all races opened up my eyes to the truth that racial features are no measure of a man. Heart, courage, honor, and brotherhood formed by common values and goals are what counts and I’m happy to report that people of all races, ethnic categories, and religious belief can display these virtues in great abundance working side by side.
I can't disagree with you on this, except for one thing. People of different races can only work together if one race vastly outnumbers the others, and the others are expected to conform to the culture of the majority race. Once you have a truly multicultural society, you're headed for big trouble. A nation which is 90% of one race, and 10% of a bunch of other races can do fine. A nation which is made up of ten different racial or ethnic groups, each with about 10% of the population, would end in disaster or dictatorship.
Minorities will only work toward a common goal with the majority if they are vastly outnumbered by that majority, and if that majority is determined to insist on its hegemony. Once you start having larger minority populations, people balkanize and stop working together toward a common goal. This is particularly true if the declining majority race voluntarily abandons any desire to maintain control. Witness Iraq. Witness India. Witness South Africa. Witness Detroit. Witness what is now happening in California.
Witness what is happening in France and England, and imagine what it will be like there when the Third World populations there reach 20% or 30% or 50%.
Well, there's a can of worms for you, right there. First of all, how do we define intelligence? And what exactly is IQ? They're not easy questions to answer, actually. I don't want to get into that here. Nonetheless, they are intimately related, although not synonymous.
I think, judging by the Coolidge quote, what you are really trying to say is that IQ is a small component of human success - a sentiment with which I would wholly agree (although, again, we have the pesky problem of definition).
That's close, but not quite accurate. Sickle-cell anemia is recessive. You must inherit two copies of the gene, one from each parent, to develope the disease. Having sickle-cell disease is not advantageous to anyone, but having one copy of the trait is advantageous, as it offers protection from malaria.
As I understand it, most of the slave trade came from West Africa. It affected East Africa almost not at all. No? So if the slave trade theory is right, Eastern Africa should, on average, be on a par with Latin America or at least considerably ahead of Western Africa. Is there any evidence for that? Or is my premise wrong?
Europe. WWI. United States. Civil War. Europe and Russia. WWII. All caught back up quite quickly.
And now that I'm thinking about it. Europe--black death (1/3 of entire population). China under Mao (approximately 20 million killed). Russia under Stalin (approximately 10 million killed along with millions more in the second world war).
The obvious problem in Africa is that it has not adopted any of the attributes of wealthy societies--private property, enforceable contracts, and the like (South Africa being the exception). Societies are wealthy in proportion to their acceptance of those attributes (with the exception of natural resource states like UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have something that wealth producing states want to buy).
I have a difficult time seeing how the slave trade 300 years ago has much to do with that. Would those folks taken from Africa as slaves have instituted private property or Western style legal systems? Did the slavers disproportionately pick the free-marketeers amongst the Africans? How would one begin to prove that thesis except by rank speculation?
Actually, I see foreign aid and socialism, which were exported from the West since the 1940's as being much more damaging to Africa than slavery 300 years ago. Foreign aid has not helped Africans build institutions that allow wealth creation. Instead, it goes to line the pockets and build the militia of the monster-de-jour and, had Africans been ready to adopt modern institutions that allow wealth creation, probably slowed that process down.
And, socialism is positively poison to the adoption of wealth-creation institutions. But in that regard, Africans chose to adopt the bad ideas from the west (socialism) and to ignore the good ones (private property, etc). Why, I don't know. But I don't think it has much to do with what happened 15 generations ago.
The other unfortunate event in large parts of Africa over the last 50 years has been the southern spread of Islam. Again, with the exception of the natural resource states, Islam brings poverty and dysfunctional states everywhere it goes.
As much as it might be self serving to the ego for someone who has accomplished little on their own to believe they belong to some privileged and gifted group (no need to actually try hard or accomplish anything, superior to begin with I tells ya!), there is just no evidence that the differences in I.Q. scores reflect a genetic difference.
Certainly the low IQ group would benefit from their behavior, and the high IQ group would suffer from theirs, but would it be enough to cancel out the effects of the IQ gap?
If the gap were small (100 vs. 95, for example) I’d bet the lower IQ capitalist Christians would outperform the higher IQ socialist hedonists. But I’m not so sure that a gap of 100 vs. 70 could be overcome.
The problem, of course, is that low IQ groups don’t particularly show any interest in competitive, conservative economics. They may sometimes have socially conservative values on paper, but in reality it doesn't manifest itself. Therefore I would suggest that it would be almost impossible to create a conservative, market-oriented, family values culture among a low IQ population without using force of some kind, which of course would violate the very premises of freedom being espoused.
Are you aware of any area dominated by populations who score low on IQ tests which are fiscally and socially conservative?
It’s not a gene, it’s an average.
Men don’t have a special math gene, but they consistently outperform women in areas requiring spatial reasoning. This doesn’t mean that every man is better at these things than every woman, or that there can’t be women who are prodigies in these fields (such as physicist Lisa Randall).
But it means that, on average, that portion of the brain dealing with spatial conceptualization is more developed in men than in women. Thus, in a population that is roughly 50-50 male-female, the number of expert physicists will likely be 95% male. And it is genetic.
Do you think the human brain is exempt from nature?
Not that there may some exceptions, but sub-saharan Africa,the island continent Australia, and generally in North America - the early inhabitants mostly lacked what? Reading, writing and rithmetic....Not to mention the wheel?
South, Middle Americans not so....North Africa, not so.
Can we say they were disadvantaged by geography in all those cases? Think not--as the author indicates re Africa......
Thats a great article and believe the same as Sowell.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.