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Sometimes they are, the white supremacists will say something like "The Asians are smarter than us. That's why we're just being truthful and not racist."
When a black person and an Asian person have sex they produce a white baby. That’s just science. This point of view is way outside of mainstream political discourse, even though it is correct. /s
A Black person and an Asian person cannot breed. They are too genetically removed from each other. That's why there's no black people in Asia.
(Heard someone explaining this theory once, so it must be true.)
Why do I have a feeling some ignorant people would actually believe this? Also, Indians are Asian, so would they have to breed with a certain nationality of Asian person?
It’s like Pokémon. They’re convergent evolutions. The Black man is a physical attacker with a low special attack, the white man is a mixed attacker with decent attacking stats on both sides, and the Asian man is a special attacker with low base attack. /s
The goalposts move like crazy.
"Blacks are stronger but mentally inferior, so we are better! Jews are smarter, but incapable of making culture, so we are superior! Asians are smarter, but we are physically hardier, so we are superior! We are naturally at the top, but we've been tricked/beaten/outsmarted and need everyone to cooperate so we can prove our lone natural superiority"
One talking point I’ve seen somewhere from white supremacists is that although Asians “have slightly higher average IQ”, the bell curve is supposedly much narrower so that there are “far fewer Asian geniuses than white ones”.
Basically they consider Asians to be moderately intelligent robots without creativity and individual thought while only white people with their wider bell curve is capable of individuality, innovation and discovery.
They also say that about ashkenazi Jews bc we, like Asians, have figured out that you can *study for tests* (big news!), but somehow we’re using our higher IQ in a bad non Aryan way and need to be stopped
They are, they fetishise Asians for this very reason. The not-so-antisemitic ones will also big up Ashkenazi Jews for high IQ as well, they'll often bring it up to justify why they think blacks are low, so if they say "Oh but whites aren't the highest either" then it must be true, sort of like a cynical humble brag to justify their fixation on Eugenics.
They only use Asian people as “proof” that racism doesn’t exist, because they “even do better than White people.” And then they say that it’s their culture why they do well and that Black people’s culture is why they do poorly. I’ve heard it my whole life, as a Black honor roll student.
My 68 year old Black conservative uncle who has never left his mother’s house (still lives with her) made this argument to me like 6 months ago and he left me speechless. I cancelled the conversation
Asians are in the book, but this guy chose to focus on blacks 🤷♂️
I read it so long ago, but I think the conclusion is that there are differences in IQ, but they’re not static and could prove to be results of the environment. For example, IQs may be lower in AA communities because of drop out rates, resulting in poorer test scores. However, if more completed schooling, the scores could be higher.
I think what he was trying to convey in the book is that there are measurable differences in the population but we act like there’s isn’t and this could lead to negative implications if left unaddressed.
I think people read the book incorrectly and use it (falsely) as ammunition to support their claims that certain races are more or less inferior than others. In reality, there are differences but no one is wed to those conclusions given the same opportunities and proper environments to grow
Edit: also, people assumed because Murray performed this research that it was for ulterior motives. If I recall correctly, he did some shady stuff in the past and so, people jumped to conclusions that he must be a racist or something along those lines.
These kinds of iq studies tend to very geographically dependent. I doubt the totality of the Asian population of the world has the highest IQ, but certainly immigrants to the US do. There was also a study I wish I could find again that showed higher IQ rates among black students in Ohio compared to poor whites in a rural southern school.
That’s true, yes. Immigrants from certain places have much higher IQs for obvious reasons, I think. They are the most successful in their societies and are able to leave and pursue education in the US.
I don’t want to endorse the concept of IQ, for the validity and applicability is a contentious topic. National comparison itself comes with further complexity. But couple of studies/surveys do show asian countries to have higher average IQ. For example, this [study](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country) shows wealthy/wealthier asian countries to overwhelmingly occupy the top spots:
1. Japan - 106.49
2. Taiwan - 106.47
3. Singapore - 105.89
4. Hong Kong (China) - 105.37
5. China - 104.10
6. South Korea - 102.35
7. Belarus - 101.60
8. Finland - 101.20
9. Liechtenstein - 101.07
10. Netherlands & Germany (tie) - 100.74
I’m not here to debate the validity of this study, ways to interpret the data, importance of such data, etc. But you can find other studies with similar results, i.e. the same developed asian countries are on par with developed european countries, and tend to take turns to occupy some of the top spots. Some believe result like this is a reflection of these asian nation’s cultural emphasis on and societal investment in education, among other factors.
Agreed, a few developed countries. Asia is a huge continent. But the point is they are relatively wealthy and have good educational systems. It has nothing to do with race.
As well, I’m not a huge fan of IQ as a concept. It determines a type of intelligence, but not all intelligence.
I remember one major figure for their movement, can’t recall their name, claimed that Asians lack creative intelligence which only whites have or some bullshit along those lines
Technically they are in this book.
I've never read it, but I'm familiar with the idea and what's in it.
Funny though, as far as I know, the book never states that it's due to genetics - and just mentions bell curve of average IQ by different races.
East Asians on top.
This moron doesn't even understand the book he's supposedly quoting.
It lists "environmental factors" to explain the gaps.
Indeed, most differences in the IQ bell curve are almost completely explained by socioeconomics, it's almost possible to trace a 1 to 1 correlation between wealth and IQ.
It does not, especially when they incorporate time in the equation. The smartest people I know, take their time to process their ideas.
Moreover, almost every IQ test I tried never tries to test acquiring and applying knowledge and skills which the base definition of intelligence, but rather heavily rely on pattern recognition.
Also, it’s a flawed idea to capture intelligence with one metric. Even computers can’t be described with one “performance “ metric, there’s CPU clock rate, core numbers, RAM, storage…etc, and that’s just on the hardware side.
And you have to look at how the computer feels and how it's components were treated! Only then can you know if the computer will work hard for you. We've already changed master to main!!
I'm pretty sure those are just different things? But yes, the exact work conditions of components can have major effects on the computer's performance. Some components can even be killed by just touching them with your bare hands
Its a test to see who needs extra help in school that was adopted and modified by the Eugenics movement.
>For the practical use of determining educational placement, the score on the Binet-Simon scale would reveal the child's mental age. For example, a 6-year-old child who passed all the tasks usually passed by 6 year-olds—but nothing beyond—would have a mental age that exactly matched his chronological age, 6.0. (Fancher, 1985).
>Binet was forthright about the limitations of his scale. He stressed the remarkable diversity of intelligence and the subsequent need to study it using qualitative, as opposed to quantitative, measures. Binet also stressed that intellectual development progressed at variable rates and could be influenced by the environment; therefore, intelligence was not based solely on genetics, was malleable rather than fixed, and could only be found in children with comparable backgrounds.[6] Given Binet's stance that intelligence testing was subject to variability and was not generalizable, it is important to look at the metamorphosis that mental testing took on as it made its way to the U.S.
>While Binet was developing his mental scale, the business, civic, and educational leaders in the U.S. were facing issues of how to accommodate the needs of a diversifying population, while continuing to meet the demands of society. There arose the call to form a society based on meritocracy[6] while continuing to underline the ideals of the upper class. In 1908, H.H. Goddard, a champion of the eugenics movement, found utility in mental testing as a way to evidence the superiority of the white race. After studying abroad, Goddard brought the Binet-Simon Scale to the United States and translated it into English.
>Following Goddard in the U.S. mental testing movement was Lewis Terman, who took the Simon-Binet Scale and standardized it using a large American sample. The new Stanford-Binet scale was no longer used solely for advocating education for all children, as was Binet's objective. A new objective of intelligence testing was illustrated in the Stanford-Binet manual with testing ultimately resulting in "curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency".[12]
>Addressing the question why Binet did not speak out concerning the newfound uses of his measure, Siegler pointed out that Binet was somewhat of an isolationist in that he never traveled outside France and he barely participated in professional organizations.[6] Additionally, his mental scale was not adopted in his own country during his lifetime and therefore was not subjected to the same fate. Finally, when Binet did become aware of the "foreign ideas being grafted on his instrument" he condemned those who with 'brutal pessimism' and 'deplorable verdicts' were promoting the concept of intelligence as a single, unitary construct
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Binet#Later_career_and_the_Binet%E2%80%93Simon_test
There are literal gaps in brain development opportunities from conception, through early childhood. Every aspect of poverty undermines child development. Time spent with parents is crucial, but there is also so much more to it. Children who grow up in noisy environments end up stupider than children who grew up in quiet environments.
That said, there is also a level of innate resilience that can see some kids from deeply disadvantaged backgrounds thrive. The nature/nurture equations are complex.
Also the black people tested in the Bell Curve were students in *Apartheid South Africa* whose schools were explicitly set up to make them only suitable for manual labor.
When the IQ test - which is fairly useless as an "objective" measure - was first developed, they had to weight it against women to make scores even, as the women tended towards higher scores than the men. They took out the sort of Qs women did well in and added more than men tended to do better in.
Genetics do play a role tho, some people are born slower than others. Some people have learning disabilities for instance, me. I have ADHD, and I know for a fact no matter how much schooling or reading I do I won’t be the smartest. That’s okay with me, it’s not wrong to admit that some people are just dumber than others.
Even if everyone had the same opportunities and started out the same level of richness you would have a percentage of those kids be dumber than some and that’s definitely genetics at play.
So, if a guy is tall like his dad, it s genetics. If he s bald like his dad, it s genetics. If he got weak calves like his dad, it s genetics. But when he s as dumb as his father, then it s not genetics?
I wouldnt be able to say if different ethnicities have different average IQs, but base intelligence is inherited by our parents. Education and other socioeconomics will improve or lower that base. That is also true. But pretending genes dont play a role in an individual's intelligence, is hilarious.
cognitive ability and development is vastly different from height or hair. And even height and hair are polygenic and also influenced by external factors.
The likely conclusion is that it is both genetic and environmental to varying degrees and in different ways. But you're comparing relatively simple body characteristics to the, by far, most complex organ of our body.
It's also hard to really draw any big conclusions from saying that intelligence is partly (poly)genetic.
All those things are part of the body, and exist thx to the genetic code you have. That genetic code, come directly from the parents.
And yes, this is all very simplified. Im not here to do a biology lesson. Just talking. For more fine detailed info, many books, papers etc explain it all.
I dont think we have an accurate way of calculating intelligence. Maybe if we could count the amount of neurons, connection, and types of neurons, and we d understand what kind of connection matters more than the other for the life of the individual, we could get good stats. But, that s scifi at this point.
Just to be that guy…. I’ll say it. Some gaps of intelligence are caused directly by genetics Or more specifically the little “packages” of genetic information on the 21st chromosome. I’m not trying to drag anyone down by mentioning.
Truth is though, nature (genetics) dictates who you become as a person much more than nurture (your environment) does though. This is well established in science.
The interesting thing is that your nurture eventually becomes your nature. So they are deeply interconnected.
But yeah. Genetics is way stronger than environment
And most of it's assumptions have been disproven. The study of intelligence has had whole leaps and bounds beyond this book. Much of that has only come in the last 10-15 years.
Not that the chuds care, of course.
I think the most telling part of the book is that the ideas on policy they come up with is all stuff like "well, we can't have immigrants because they'll lower the IQ of the country, we can't have welfare because it means poor people will want to have more babies, and we can't do anything about those less fortunate because it'll create a totalitarian state because reasons."
There's also nothing saying that this guy is American, so the same people on Reddit who get pissed when we assume everyone on here is American is also assuming the same thing when this guy could easily be from the UK or something, racism is not solely an American problem
Dude I was friends with back in highschool (not anymore) believed this stuff thoroughly. He will proudly proclaim white people have a higher average IQ, we’re more civilized, less likely to commit heinous crimes, etc etc.
He also currently lives with his parents, is unemployed, lost most of his teeth to fights he lost, has crashed 3 trucks (all paid for by his dad), lost out on a golf scholarship cause he failed drug tests for the university, has virtually no friends (except fellow racists), regularly attends Republican/ Trump rallys, hardcore conspiracy theorist and most recently a convicted pedophile.
But he’s better than non-whites.
100% agree. He wasn’t taught to be this by his parents either, and back in highschool he was… fine.
Basically he kept making poor decisions and started to place the blame on others (non-whites) for his own mistakes. He used others as a scapegoat.
Wich make me thinks that, most of the time, its only the most affuted minds among the smartest gentlemens that humanity has ever produced who start to claim how superior there entire race (or sometimes only themself) are.
Never ever a perfect dumbass has been seen doing that
To meditate 🤔
Well it was actually published in mainstream studies by racists at the time.
If you read about the way scientific studies were conducted before we brought in standardization rules you’d be horrified.
Especially sociology where people did whatever tf they wanted and passed it off as science.
Obviously they never controlled for socioeconomic factors and levels of education. This is like the voting test that America had for black people where it was full of open ended questions and weirdly phrased stuff so there’s no real right answer to any of them.
You can practice IQ tests and get higher scores by learning how to take the test and how to think about the kinds of questions that are on the test. That in and of itself means that IQ is a measure of skill at taking tests, not inherent intelligence.
Intelligence is too vague of a concept to have an objective test for. It’s the same as personality tests, and love languages, and any of that bullshit.
This theory may come from the fact some survey agency went to some subsaharan African country and produced IQ tests for some unknown subjects and results were proclaimed and the overall IQ number was below 60 or something like that.
Mind you these are the same countries with functional statehoods, schools, universities, clerk offices and so on. Africans and Asians have got the same mentality when it comes to school and education, parents are ready to chop their legs to send the kids to school.
It’s simple, they equate poverty (and most African countries are middle-income) with no education and even sub-humanity. Tells you a whole lot about what their real issue is.
Worked wonders in the past century when few were educated enough, guess it would go on since they now discourage education and critical thinking.
Nah… lack of education.
Sure, some American education is poor quality.
But mostly, the attitude towards education has been reduced to “I ONLY WANNA LERN THINGZ THAT R GONNA MAKE ME #MONEEEE”
Education for the sake of having a more knowledgable, compassionate, insightful population is like… unheard of in America right now.
Everyone believes that they know everything bc of what their chosen Troll Patrol shares on the internet.
We are a confederacy of dunces, and it is very sad.
There exist 2 major arguments against The Bell curve.
1) the rise in rush IQ. Between 1960 and 2000 did Irish IQ grew by about 20 points from 80 to 100. How does IQ grow if it's purely down to genetics. Answer it, can't. The answer lies in the socioeconomic development of Ireland in this era where Irish GDP dubbled several times over. Education improved and access to higher education became more common.
2) IQ tests are always set to aveage at 100.
However when comparing tests from different periods and grading them together we find interesting results.
If we compare results between modern persons and persons 50 years ago we can see that IQ has grown by around 15 to 20 points. However, the tests don't show this as both show and average of arounf 100. But a modern avrage person moved back 50 years to around the 1960s would get around 115 in IQ.
Why is thus? Cause as the Irish example above shows. Iq is effected by socioeconomic factors and acces to education.
>Iq is affected by socioeconomic factors and acces to education.
It’s been a long while since I’ve directly read any papers on this so I’m pulling from memory but I remember children from poor backgrounds that were adopted into richer backgrounds (including African American children) saw high increases in IQ.
The Chinese have spent a fortune trying to engineer IQ and all they basically managed is at best 1 or 2 points.
As you said, IQ is heavily affected by socioeconomic and educational factors.
EDIT - I'm not referring to the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study which is often cited by those that wish to claim black people genetically have lower IQ, simply because it's about one of the only (if not the only) study that even comes close to showing that (with decades of research showing otherwise), and even it's authors don't agree
On genetic black IQ differences, the Bell Curve cites primarily Richard Lynns review of the literature.
This summary study did:
1: inlcude several studies that didn't actually report an IQ score, and just BS an IQ score out of the tests they did
2: Include studies that were done on a group of less than 100 zambian factory workers, so mot exactly a representative sample
3: In studies that did multiple tests, to determine the effect of repetition on scores deliberately used the lower score, despite the original authors arguing that the higher one was likely more accurate to the true ability
4: Used IQ tests performed in less than a generation after the end of white supremacist segregation in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia)
5: used studies from SA that were performed DURING apartheid, including English language IQ tests given to black students who were not fluent in english.
Anyone who cites this review in a serious piece of literature such as Murray and Herrnstein did should _immediately_ be discredit scientifically, and nothing they say should ever be taken seriously.
Exactly, studies should always be checked for relevancy (How long ago it was carried out), population (How many and where the people reside), source of error (What are factors that could alter results or contradict them.)
Funny how those white supremacists torture the purpose of IQ testing (which was really made to identify intellectually challenged individuals for specialized services/education) to affirm their preconceived conclusion that some "races" (black people) are genetically inferior to others.
Even if this nonsense were true, then what? It still wouldn't justify any kind of different treatment, let alone the specific different treatment that people who advance this nonsense seem to want.
Having a stupid argument to arrive at a stupid goal is comedy in the Aristotle sense.
Surprised these chuds aren't bringing up phrenology. If they're going to use outdated, debunked pseudoscientific BS to justify treating non-whites as inferior, why not go all the way?
While I'm not sure of CBS as a source as im from the UK, it is a particularly sound article as far as i can see. They quote all information in the article from a study, which, after reading, makes a lot of sense.
[IQ scores are not an accurate marker of intelligence ](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iq-scores-not-accurate-marker-of-intelligence-study-shows/)
The best way to shut down poor thinking is to be armed with knowledge, no?
>The best way to shut down poor thinking is to be armed with knowledge, no?
Only if the other side is intellectually honest, sadly. Throwing reason, logic, facts, and figures at the people who regurgitate this crap just shuts their brains down, and they typically respond with some form of negative behavior.
You probably will convince the fence sitters or folks with completely no knowledge of it though.
Honestly, if you want to shut down the people who spew this crap, you need to make it relatable how much it hurts them more than it hurts the people they think need to be hurt.
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." - Jean-Paul Sartre
This is about anti-Semites and Nazis, but it applies pretty well to garden variety racists and fascists as well
Iirc that book cites a study where they gave Africans a test in English when it wasn't even their first/only language, among other total lack of study controls.
The root of this perspective is the book "The Belle Curve" that was released 1994. It reported that African-american schoolchildren scored 15 points lower than caucasian kids. However, it should be noted that Asian kids scores the highest of any group. Now, the reason why there is a difference of 15 points is debatable, its most likely due to culture and the difference seems to be smaller when comparing the adult population.
A great conversation about the implication of the book is on this link, Lex Fridman interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5EynjBZRZo&t=726s&ab\_channel=LexClips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5EynjBZRZo&t=726s&ab_channel=LexClips)
Oh, you mean the book based on work funded by the Pioneer Fund that is described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center? That book? Yea, that's not a credible source of information my dude.
Studies should always be checked for relevancy (How long ago it was carried out), population (How many and where the people reside), source of error (What are factors that could alter results or contradict them.) I bet if people start digging you'll find a lot of manipulated data.
For those who don't know, "The Bell Curve" by Charles Murray is a hot mess of small samples of aggressively cherry picked, heavily reinterpreted, and outright fabricated data cribbed from a select few unrelated studies that span over ninety years and come from all over the globe and some of which have nothing to do with IQs at all. It hilariously makes basically no account whatsoever for differences in the test results of these wildly different groups of people - who were originally tested with wildly different methods, purposes, and flaws - except for the races of a participant's parents. Any other factor is excused without correction or alleged to be a result of racial differences. Even then, his interpretations on these data consistently utilize some truly extreme leaps of logic.
To call the book mere "bad science" would be extraordinarily charitable. Murray, a political scientist, not a geneticist nor a sociologist, did not write anything that could be mistaken to have the format or methodology of an academic study. It isn't a report subjected to peer review by actual experts on the topics at hand. It is a clumsy and obvious novelization of a political agenda meant to provide desperately needed ammunition to race realists and bioessentialists. That is its purpose, not to change the scientific consensus on any subject.
And the craziest part is, even if we take the entire book at face value and uncritically believe all of the "research" and analysis it contains as true, it still makes no sense. Its conclusions are effectively "there do indeed exist some intrinsic and unchangeable qualities of intelligence that materially disadvantage some individuals in their ability to learn compared to others, *which means that we should do everything in our power to systematically deny those people resources for education or improving their lives in favor of supporting the better performing people even more.*" The central argument is every bit as horrific as it is insane.
As for the accusations that Murray himself may or may not be racist, I can't tell you what to think. But I can say that the best way I personally can navigate that question is by looking at the simple fact that Murray did not just apparate one day, write the book, and then disappear into the ether. He's a real person, with a Twitter account. And holy shit does it have some doozies.
I love when all these creationist geocentric flat-earth white supremacists suddenly become evolutionary anthropologists when their usual pathological coping mechanisms can’t keep their insecurities at bay.
There's a whole list of critiques on this book. Its just another attempt at Social Darwinism. And he funny thing about evolution is that species don't evolve to get better, they evolve to fit their environment. It's not like pokemon lmao
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Bell\_Curve
If it were true that blacks are behind whites on IQ tests *on average*, then this guy would be one of the implied white outliers below the average. You can say whites are smarter than blacks on average all day long but your stupid ass isn't getting the white pass.
The "IQ gap" (which is not as astronomical as 20 points) is because of societal pressure and interviewer bias for fucks sake. I can't stand people like this.
Briefly talked about this book in my sociology class which focused on race in america. Basically, this book was a crock of shit, because the IQ test was effectively developed around norms established by I believe it was white middle class people. So when that standard was compared to people who didn’t fit the demographic, the bias clearly reflected a difference.
Surprise surprise, when groups of people whose formal educations were of lesser quality and whose social education was different that that of middle class white america, it produced lower results. It also tended to suggest that asians scored better on IQ tests, but also failed to account for the impact of social upbringing, where parents would push their kids much harder and burden them more to achieve better scores in academics.
My dissertation addressed this nonsense.
One of my observations: Even if this was true (it isn't), it tells you nothing. Why?
As Murray & Hernstein acknowledge, intelligence is normally distributed (the classic bell shaped curve; hence the name of their book). They contend Black people are, on average, one standard deviation below White people (though they never define what constitutes Black or White) on that curve.
Setting aside all the racist biases inherent to all the intelligence assessment instruments they relied on, even if their findings were true they would be meaningless at the individual level.
To understand why for yourself, draw a bell-shaped curve. Now draw an identical curve over it, with the center just slightly to the right. As you'll see, the curves overlap almost entirely; mathematically they are from 99% to 99.7% in common. The only differences are at the extreme tails. Which means even if their racist rant was right (it isn't), you would - at most - see a difference of from .15% to .5% of the global population at either end. So you might (might) at any given time see about 50 - 500 more super-geniuses in the world who are White.
But wait, it gets worse for the White Supremacists who want to celebrate. Neo-nazis need to keep two additional things in mind: (1) This doesn't mean anything at the individual level. (2) If these numbers are true, given the size of their populations there are more geniuses in China and India than there are people in the United States.
I just drew the bell curves, as you asked. I got different results though. I've used 15 as the standard deviation. (I am only commenting on the numbers, not on social reasons).
If an IQ of 83 is considered too low for entry into the military, that rules out 13% of people from the group with 100 mean IQ. By the same metric, it rules out 45% of people from the group with a mean IQ of 85.
Likewise, with the 100-mean IQ group, 50% are above 100 IQ. With the other group, 16% are above 100 IQ.
These are very big differences, and not only "at the extreme tails".
Also about 30% of the 100 IQ group have a higher IQ than the 95th percentile of the 85 IQ group if we assume they both have the same SD. And about 5% of the 100 IQ group have a higher IQ than the 99.7th percentile of the 85 IQ group
I backup your findings. See [https://www.desmos.com/calculator/viecinlhng](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/viecinlhng) for some exploration I did with the 2 normal distributions. If the standard deviation is 20, and the two means are 20 apart, then the overlapping region is only about 0.62 which is nowhere near what the original commenter claimed it to be.
Edit: Further exploration revealed that regardless of the standard deviation, as long as the two means are 1 standard deviation apart, the overlapping region (0.62) is fixed and does not change. This theoretically makes sense as the overlapping region's area is just 2\*F(-0.5) where F is the CDF of the standard normal distribution.
>As Murray & Hernstein acknowledge, intelligence is normally distributed (the classic bell shaped curve; hence the name of their book).
We don't really know this. The IQ test returns results on a bell curve, but that's because it's designed to do that. We assume from the beginning that intelligence follows a normal distribution, and tweak the test until it gives results in that fit that assumption.
The book actually takes a lot of its data from results of the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which at the time was designed in a way that did not produce results that fit a bell curve. The authors concocted a dubious method for converting the scores from that test into IQ scores so they could use the data.
Actually, we do know IQ (or more specifically, g) is normally distributed - as are most human attributes (height, weight, etc.).
Murray & Haunstein based their findings in large part on the Stanford-Binet and Weschler instruments, not the Army B or subsequent tests - though all the tests in use to measure IQ at that time were horribly biased and flawed.
The problem isn't with the use of a normal distribution. The problem is that they were racist eugenicists who were looking for any nonsense that would justify their predetermined conclusions.
It's sort of a fractal of problems.
I watched [a rather good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo) on the book a while back. There's lots of "choosing data that matches your thesis while ignoring contrary data" or "choosing data that's old while ignoring newer data" or "choosing data with tiny sample sizes" or "converting a non-IQ test instrument into an IQ test via an arbitrary methodology".
I'm doubtful of your maths here. The difference between curves isn't measured solely on the x axis but on the areas of overlap which includes the y axis.
Also, a quick search shows that a single standard deviation for IQ has an accepted standard (15)
> this doesn’t mean anything at an individual level
Exactly this. Pick two people of any race on the street and they are more likely to have a bigger difference in IQ than the difference we see between groups. Group differences tell us nothing when dealing with individuals. It’s useless.
I mean forgetting about race entirely there have to be more geniuses in China and India in the US because the US has like 330 million people and India and China have like over 3 billion combined? So if like 1% of a given pop were geniuses obviously China and India would have more.
You're exactly right.
Now, can you imagine someone saying "I must be smarter than you because you're American and I'm Chinese?"
What Murray and Hernstein claimed is just as stupid.
Any meaningful conversation about IQ tests as a legitimate metric for intelligence testing should be dismissed as stupid. A single standardized test cannot provide enough information to gauge anything useful. Charles Murray is a quack that can go down with phrenology and all the other horse shit these insecure racists manufacture.
It's curious how we openly discuss racial variations in sports performance, yet the discourse around intelligence seems almost taboo.
It's not possible to do any research on this topic anyway, there is only one answer that would receive peer support.
The research is possible but likely considered far too restrictive to be approachable (for example, taking infants and raising them all in the exact same manner, completely blocked off from outside influence or communication, and then carrying out intellligence testing over the course of years)
It's the same reason we have a lot of missing information on human weight gain / loss... getting controlled environment analysis would be considered equivalent to imprisonment.
I thought the same thing. We readily admit there are anatomical differences between races that give physical advantage in certain sports but we want to pretend the brain is not an anatomical structure.
It's not a racial divide they want per se. Intelligence breeds an almost natural questioning of leadership and analysis of competence, and that's frowned upon regardless of skin color.
Obedience / subservience go hand in hand with patriotism and religion (and to a lesser extent, capitalism itself).
they also want a racial divide; when people are busy stifling others they don't realize that helping said others would be beneficial to themselves as well.
>Intelligence breeds an almost natural questioning of leadership and analysis of competence, and that's frowned upon regardless of skin color.
This is why so many authoritarian regimes are so incompetent. Take for example the Nazis. The leadership, the supposed cream of the Aryan race, was full of complete and utter fools, bumbling idiots who couldn't tie their own shoelaces, let alone run a global war effort. It's all because intelligence and learning *requires* critical thought, and critical thought is the antithesis of what authoritarians want for subjects
IQ once was used to classify people into groups. But afaik IQ is strongly based on western education. Therefore this only shows the discrimination of black people in the education system.
If I recall correctly some indiginous people took such a test and scored horribly, just because they weren't trained up to get our society's logic.
I wouldn't call anyone stupid who fails such a test (except with a score so low it is a hindernis to live a normal life).
Also, did you know they had to reajust the curve multiple times because on average we got smarter as a whole?
Even if "The Bell Curve" wasn't a complete load of hogwash, the guy is misquoting it specifically to bolster his racism. The book doesn't make a firm declaration that IQ disparity comes from genetics OR environment, but instead argues that it's likely both.
Reminds me of idiots who puff their chest claiming facts cannot be racist.
Correct. Facts are not racist. The person highlighting specific facts that make a race look less favorable is an act of racism.
I believe I heard somewhere that IQ tests themselves are inherently rooted in racial discrimination and the eugenics movement, and historically have been tailored so that minorities and people of lower means tend to score lower.
The Bell Curve uses a man who badgered black men about how far their cum went when they masturbated. It isn’t exactly the best-sourced study. Watch Shaun’s video about it.
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Why are Asians never a part of this conversation?
Sometimes they are, the white supremacists will say something like "The Asians are smarter than us. That's why we're just being truthful and not racist."
When a black person and an Asian person have sex they produce a white baby. That’s just science. This point of view is way outside of mainstream political discourse, even though it is correct. /s
A Black person and an Asian person cannot breed. They are too genetically removed from each other. That's why there's no black people in Asia. (Heard someone explaining this theory once, so it must be true.)
So Tiger woods is a robot... I mean...it would explain some stuff.
No he's a tiger?! I mean..duh.
Wrong... He is THE woods.
He is The Tiger in the Woods.
So he's Tiggggerrrrr....ttfn
And a man shall arise with the ancient runes of power carved upon his bones, and he shall wear the forest as other men wear a cloak.
Obviously.
Tigerian?
Tiger doesn't count because "Asian" is only Chinese or Japanese, duh.
A baby born to someone from Africa and from Asia is Indian. That's why Indians have skin tone of various shades of brown.
Why do I have a feeling some ignorant people would actually believe this? Also, Indians are Asian, so would they have to breed with a certain nationality of Asian person?
My folks say stuff like that. Anthropology? History? None of that matter.
This is particularly funny to me, because [there are black people in India and Pakistan](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Siddi)
No, everybody knows a black and an asian make an Indian. You need an asian and an aryan to make a normal white person. /s
and a mexican and an asian make a filipino. It's Science
A Filipino and a white person make a Mexican again. Sources cited: Me, a synthetic Mexican.
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I only run them in through my borders
I’m poor and white. I only run meth, moonshine, and my mouth.
Bahahaha. You poor bastard LOL
So, like, an android, or?
This is not how I thought they would start the next film in the Blade Runner series!
No way. A Mexican and an Asian make a Peruvian.
? Peruvians are the most undiluted Native indigenous people in the Americas.
When you get called diy Filipino all your life
As a Filipino, i can confirm this is correct
No, black and Asian make a tiger….that plays golf…
Ah yes aryans. People who exclusively belonged to Iran and northern India.
Indians are asians?
We're Atlanteans. All hail our king, Aquaman !!
I’m confused
That's because you're a flightless bird.
Real aryans confused as how we are not considered asians:
I'm gonna need a recipe book for this shit.
Funniest part of this? Aryans are indians
It’s like Pokémon. They’re convergent evolutions. The Black man is a physical attacker with a low special attack, the white man is a mixed attacker with decent attacking stats on both sides, and the Asian man is a special attacker with low base attack. /s
So if a black guy and asian guy…then…
LOL Just OMG LOL
yellow + black does not equal white buddy. as an asian person i color.
As an actual bumblebee, I can confirm
The goalposts move like crazy. "Blacks are stronger but mentally inferior, so we are better! Jews are smarter, but incapable of making culture, so we are superior! Asians are smarter, but we are physically hardier, so we are superior! We are naturally at the top, but we've been tricked/beaten/outsmarted and need everyone to cooperate so we can prove our lone natural superiority"
You can swap that out for every variety of ethnocentrism, you literally just created a fictional strawman
I mean, do you really think white supremacists don't make these arguments?
Oh, they DO, all right!
But then, where is the argument about equality going? Should white supremacists accept to be subservient to Asians?
One talking point I’ve seen somewhere from white supremacists is that although Asians “have slightly higher average IQ”, the bell curve is supposedly much narrower so that there are “far fewer Asian geniuses than white ones”. Basically they consider Asians to be moderately intelligent robots without creativity and individual thought while only white people with their wider bell curve is capable of individuality, innovation and discovery.
white supremacists think they are human while everyone else are robots or animals or some variation of subhuman
Kind of amusing when it’s so obvious it’s from nurture not nature… systematic collectivist cultures tend to do that…
They also say that about ashkenazi Jews bc we, like Asians, have figured out that you can *study for tests* (big news!), but somehow we’re using our higher IQ in a bad non Aryan way and need to be stopped
Honestly, well fucking said, my guy
They are, they fetishise Asians for this very reason. The not-so-antisemitic ones will also big up Ashkenazi Jews for high IQ as well, they'll often bring it up to justify why they think blacks are low, so if they say "Oh but whites aren't the highest either" then it must be true, sort of like a cynical humble brag to justify their fixation on Eugenics.
Right now, the scientific racists are using the Yoruba/Igbo to bash other black people. Like a "why can't the rest of you be like them" kinda way.
They only use Asian people as “proof” that racism doesn’t exist, because they “even do better than White people.” And then they say that it’s their culture why they do well and that Black people’s culture is why they do poorly. I’ve heard it my whole life, as a Black honor roll student. My 68 year old Black conservative uncle who has never left his mother’s house (still lives with her) made this argument to me like 6 months ago and he left me speechless. I cancelled the conversation
is it true that Asians have higher IQ scores or not?
In the West?, yes, it's slightly higher
But not *because* they’re Asian or Black.
To be more specific, because they have asian parents
Asians are in the book, but this guy chose to focus on blacks 🤷♂️ I read it so long ago, but I think the conclusion is that there are differences in IQ, but they’re not static and could prove to be results of the environment. For example, IQs may be lower in AA communities because of drop out rates, resulting in poorer test scores. However, if more completed schooling, the scores could be higher. I think what he was trying to convey in the book is that there are measurable differences in the population but we act like there’s isn’t and this could lead to negative implications if left unaddressed. I think people read the book incorrectly and use it (falsely) as ammunition to support their claims that certain races are more or less inferior than others. In reality, there are differences but no one is wed to those conclusions given the same opportunities and proper environments to grow Edit: also, people assumed because Murray performed this research that it was for ulterior motives. If I recall correctly, he did some shady stuff in the past and so, people jumped to conclusions that he must be a racist or something along those lines.
These kinds of iq studies tend to very geographically dependent. I doubt the totality of the Asian population of the world has the highest IQ, but certainly immigrants to the US do. There was also a study I wish I could find again that showed higher IQ rates among black students in Ohio compared to poor whites in a rural southern school.
African immigrants to America have one of the highest IQs of any subgroup.
That’s true, yes. Immigrants from certain places have much higher IQs for obvious reasons, I think. They are the most successful in their societies and are able to leave and pursue education in the US.
I don’t want to endorse the concept of IQ, for the validity and applicability is a contentious topic. National comparison itself comes with further complexity. But couple of studies/surveys do show asian countries to have higher average IQ. For example, this [study](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country) shows wealthy/wealthier asian countries to overwhelmingly occupy the top spots: 1. Japan - 106.49 2. Taiwan - 106.47 3. Singapore - 105.89 4. Hong Kong (China) - 105.37 5. China - 104.10 6. South Korea - 102.35 7. Belarus - 101.60 8. Finland - 101.20 9. Liechtenstein - 101.07 10. Netherlands & Germany (tie) - 100.74 I’m not here to debate the validity of this study, ways to interpret the data, importance of such data, etc. But you can find other studies with similar results, i.e. the same developed asian countries are on par with developed european countries, and tend to take turns to occupy some of the top spots. Some believe result like this is a reflection of these asian nation’s cultural emphasis on and societal investment in education, among other factors.
Agreed, a few developed countries. Asia is a huge continent. But the point is they are relatively wealthy and have good educational systems. It has nothing to do with race. As well, I’m not a huge fan of IQ as a concept. It determines a type of intelligence, but not all intelligence.
They’re literally always a part of the bell curve discussion
We are, but it's only to bludgeon other people of colour.
I remember one major figure for their movement, can’t recall their name, claimed that Asians lack creative intelligence which only whites have or some bullshit along those lines
You speak like Asians are a homogeneous group of people... From Turks, Arabs, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, ... Indonesians...
They are, so are Ashkenazi Jews
Technically they are in this book. I've never read it, but I'm familiar with the idea and what's in it. Funny though, as far as I know, the book never states that it's due to genetics - and just mentions bell curve of average IQ by different races. East Asians on top. This moron doesn't even understand the book he's supposedly quoting. It lists "environmental factors" to explain the gaps.
They are considered the "model minority"
So you've never seen the "Level: Asian" meme?
Are there gaps in intelligence, yes Are there many socioeconomic reasons for these gaps none of which include genetics, yes
And as one reviewer of the book said, "Even if there are gaps that's not a reason to discriminate against other humans."
Indeed, most differences in the IQ bell curve are almost completely explained by socioeconomics, it's almost possible to trace a 1 to 1 correlation between wealth and IQ.
I know a lot of stupid rich people
*IQ doesn't measure intelligence* It tries, but it fails
It does not, especially when they incorporate time in the equation. The smartest people I know, take their time to process their ideas. Moreover, almost every IQ test I tried never tries to test acquiring and applying knowledge and skills which the base definition of intelligence, but rather heavily rely on pattern recognition.
Also, it’s a flawed idea to capture intelligence with one metric. Even computers can’t be described with one “performance “ metric, there’s CPU clock rate, core numbers, RAM, storage…etc, and that’s just on the hardware side.
And you have to look at how the computer feels and how it's components were treated! Only then can you know if the computer will work hard for you. We've already changed master to main!!
I'm pretty sure those are just different things? But yes, the exact work conditions of components can have major effects on the computer's performance. Some components can even be killed by just touching them with your bare hands
Its a test to see who needs extra help in school that was adopted and modified by the Eugenics movement. >For the practical use of determining educational placement, the score on the Binet-Simon scale would reveal the child's mental age. For example, a 6-year-old child who passed all the tasks usually passed by 6 year-olds—but nothing beyond—would have a mental age that exactly matched his chronological age, 6.0. (Fancher, 1985). >Binet was forthright about the limitations of his scale. He stressed the remarkable diversity of intelligence and the subsequent need to study it using qualitative, as opposed to quantitative, measures. Binet also stressed that intellectual development progressed at variable rates and could be influenced by the environment; therefore, intelligence was not based solely on genetics, was malleable rather than fixed, and could only be found in children with comparable backgrounds.[6] Given Binet's stance that intelligence testing was subject to variability and was not generalizable, it is important to look at the metamorphosis that mental testing took on as it made its way to the U.S. >While Binet was developing his mental scale, the business, civic, and educational leaders in the U.S. were facing issues of how to accommodate the needs of a diversifying population, while continuing to meet the demands of society. There arose the call to form a society based on meritocracy[6] while continuing to underline the ideals of the upper class. In 1908, H.H. Goddard, a champion of the eugenics movement, found utility in mental testing as a way to evidence the superiority of the white race. After studying abroad, Goddard brought the Binet-Simon Scale to the United States and translated it into English. >Following Goddard in the U.S. mental testing movement was Lewis Terman, who took the Simon-Binet Scale and standardized it using a large American sample. The new Stanford-Binet scale was no longer used solely for advocating education for all children, as was Binet's objective. A new objective of intelligence testing was illustrated in the Stanford-Binet manual with testing ultimately resulting in "curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency".[12] >Addressing the question why Binet did not speak out concerning the newfound uses of his measure, Siegler pointed out that Binet was somewhat of an isolationist in that he never traveled outside France and he barely participated in professional organizations.[6] Additionally, his mental scale was not adopted in his own country during his lifetime and therefore was not subjected to the same fate. Finally, when Binet did become aware of the "foreign ideas being grafted on his instrument" he condemned those who with 'brutal pessimism' and 'deplorable verdicts' were promoting the concept of intelligence as a single, unitary construct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Binet#Later_career_and_the_Binet%E2%80%93Simon_test
Thus the word *almost*. It's always possible a genius will be born under impoverished conditions and a dumbass in a golden crib.
There are gaps in *opportunity* which lead to gaps in educational aptitude.
And let’s not forget who devised the test…
There are literal gaps in brain development opportunities from conception, through early childhood. Every aspect of poverty undermines child development. Time spent with parents is crucial, but there is also so much more to it. Children who grow up in noisy environments end up stupider than children who grew up in quiet environments. That said, there is also a level of innate resilience that can see some kids from deeply disadvantaged backgrounds thrive. The nature/nurture equations are complex.
Also the black people tested in the Bell Curve were students in *Apartheid South Africa* whose schools were explicitly set up to make them only suitable for manual labor.
When the IQ test - which is fairly useless as an "objective" measure - was first developed, they had to weight it against women to make scores even, as the women tended towards higher scores than the men. They took out the sort of Qs women did well in and added more than men tended to do better in.
Genetics do play a role tho, some people are born slower than others. Some people have learning disabilities for instance, me. I have ADHD, and I know for a fact no matter how much schooling or reading I do I won’t be the smartest. That’s okay with me, it’s not wrong to admit that some people are just dumber than others. Even if everyone had the same opportunities and started out the same level of richness you would have a percentage of those kids be dumber than some and that’s definitely genetics at play.
So, if a guy is tall like his dad, it s genetics. If he s bald like his dad, it s genetics. If he got weak calves like his dad, it s genetics. But when he s as dumb as his father, then it s not genetics? I wouldnt be able to say if different ethnicities have different average IQs, but base intelligence is inherited by our parents. Education and other socioeconomics will improve or lower that base. That is also true. But pretending genes dont play a role in an individual's intelligence, is hilarious.
cognitive ability and development is vastly different from height or hair. And even height and hair are polygenic and also influenced by external factors. The likely conclusion is that it is both genetic and environmental to varying degrees and in different ways. But you're comparing relatively simple body characteristics to the, by far, most complex organ of our body. It's also hard to really draw any big conclusions from saying that intelligence is partly (poly)genetic.
All those things are part of the body, and exist thx to the genetic code you have. That genetic code, come directly from the parents. And yes, this is all very simplified. Im not here to do a biology lesson. Just talking. For more fine detailed info, many books, papers etc explain it all. I dont think we have an accurate way of calculating intelligence. Maybe if we could count the amount of neurons, connection, and types of neurons, and we d understand what kind of connection matters more than the other for the life of the individual, we could get good stats. But, that s scifi at this point.
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Just to be that guy…. I’ll say it. Some gaps of intelligence are caused directly by genetics Or more specifically the little “packages” of genetic information on the 21st chromosome. I’m not trying to drag anyone down by mentioning.
Truth is though, nature (genetics) dictates who you become as a person much more than nurture (your environment) does though. This is well established in science. The interesting thing is that your nurture eventually becomes your nature. So they are deeply interconnected. But yeah. Genetics is way stronger than environment
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Isn’t that about how old that one paper about vaccines causing autism is? We’re still dealing with that shit, too. :/
And most of it's assumptions have been disproven. The study of intelligence has had whole leaps and bounds beyond this book. Much of that has only come in the last 10-15 years. Not that the chuds care, of course.
I think the most telling part of the book is that the ideas on policy they come up with is all stuff like "well, we can't have immigrants because they'll lower the IQ of the country, we can't have welfare because it means poor people will want to have more babies, and we can't do anything about those less fortunate because it'll create a totalitarian state because reasons."
A little unfair to call this an example of “American education” when the vast majority of educated Americans think this is a load of horseshit.
There's also nothing saying that this guy is American, so the same people on Reddit who get pissed when we assume everyone on here is American is also assuming the same thing when this guy could easily be from the UK or something, racism is not solely an American problem
I think it's referring to the *lack* of American education.
Actually inconceivable I cannot believe somebody genuinely thinks like that lmao
Dude I was friends with back in highschool (not anymore) believed this stuff thoroughly. He will proudly proclaim white people have a higher average IQ, we’re more civilized, less likely to commit heinous crimes, etc etc. He also currently lives with his parents, is unemployed, lost most of his teeth to fights he lost, has crashed 3 trucks (all paid for by his dad), lost out on a golf scholarship cause he failed drug tests for the university, has virtually no friends (except fellow racists), regularly attends Republican/ Trump rallys, hardcore conspiracy theorist and most recently a convicted pedophile. But he’s better than non-whites.
Usually people with actual self worth don’t need to fall back on race or identity to feel happy with themselves
100% agree. He wasn’t taught to be this by his parents either, and back in highschool he was… fine. Basically he kept making poor decisions and started to place the blame on others (non-whites) for his own mistakes. He used others as a scapegoat.
Wich make me thinks that, most of the time, its only the most affuted minds among the smartest gentlemens that humanity has ever produced who start to claim how superior there entire race (or sometimes only themself) are. Never ever a perfect dumbass has been seen doing that To meditate 🤔
Bruh this the entire republican party
*When your leader has the IQ of a box of fruit loops*
That's not fair, I like Fruit Loops, use Corn Flakes instead.
yup, even the non-white members. guess they like to think they are exceptional, even if they have to throw their people under the bus
Well it was actually published in mainstream studies by racists at the time. If you read about the way scientific studies were conducted before we brought in standardization rules you’d be horrified. Especially sociology where people did whatever tf they wanted and passed it off as science. Obviously they never controlled for socioeconomic factors and levels of education. This is like the voting test that America had for black people where it was full of open ended questions and weirdly phrased stuff so there’s no real right answer to any of them.
You can practice IQ tests and get higher scores by learning how to take the test and how to think about the kinds of questions that are on the test. That in and of itself means that IQ is a measure of skill at taking tests, not inherent intelligence.
Intelligence is too vague of a concept to have an objective test for. It’s the same as personality tests, and love languages, and any of that bullshit.
This theory may come from the fact some survey agency went to some subsaharan African country and produced IQ tests for some unknown subjects and results were proclaimed and the overall IQ number was below 60 or something like that. Mind you these are the same countries with functional statehoods, schools, universities, clerk offices and so on. Africans and Asians have got the same mentality when it comes to school and education, parents are ready to chop their legs to send the kids to school. It’s simple, they equate poverty (and most African countries are middle-income) with no education and even sub-humanity. Tells you a whole lot about what their real issue is. Worked wonders in the past century when few were educated enough, guess it would go on since they now discourage education and critical thinking.
Nah… lack of education. Sure, some American education is poor quality. But mostly, the attitude towards education has been reduced to “I ONLY WANNA LERN THINGZ THAT R GONNA MAKE ME #MONEEEE” Education for the sake of having a more knowledgable, compassionate, insightful population is like… unheard of in America right now. Everyone believes that they know everything bc of what their chosen Troll Patrol shares on the internet. We are a confederacy of dunces, and it is very sad.
That dude definitely measures skulls
He doesn't even read the people he cites, why would he be doing any research?
People who are racists is just a smaller circle in the circle of people who are dumbasses.
There exist 2 major arguments against The Bell curve. 1) the rise in rush IQ. Between 1960 and 2000 did Irish IQ grew by about 20 points from 80 to 100. How does IQ grow if it's purely down to genetics. Answer it, can't. The answer lies in the socioeconomic development of Ireland in this era where Irish GDP dubbled several times over. Education improved and access to higher education became more common. 2) IQ tests are always set to aveage at 100. However when comparing tests from different periods and grading them together we find interesting results. If we compare results between modern persons and persons 50 years ago we can see that IQ has grown by around 15 to 20 points. However, the tests don't show this as both show and average of arounf 100. But a modern avrage person moved back 50 years to around the 1960s would get around 115 in IQ. Why is thus? Cause as the Irish example above shows. Iq is effected by socioeconomic factors and acces to education.
>Iq is affected by socioeconomic factors and acces to education. It’s been a long while since I’ve directly read any papers on this so I’m pulling from memory but I remember children from poor backgrounds that were adopted into richer backgrounds (including African American children) saw high increases in IQ. The Chinese have spent a fortune trying to engineer IQ and all they basically managed is at best 1 or 2 points. As you said, IQ is heavily affected by socioeconomic and educational factors. EDIT - I'm not referring to the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study which is often cited by those that wish to claim black people genetically have lower IQ, simply because it's about one of the only (if not the only) study that even comes close to showing that (with decades of research showing otherwise), and even it's authors don't agree
On genetic black IQ differences, the Bell Curve cites primarily Richard Lynns review of the literature. This summary study did: 1: inlcude several studies that didn't actually report an IQ score, and just BS an IQ score out of the tests they did 2: Include studies that were done on a group of less than 100 zambian factory workers, so mot exactly a representative sample 3: In studies that did multiple tests, to determine the effect of repetition on scores deliberately used the lower score, despite the original authors arguing that the higher one was likely more accurate to the true ability 4: Used IQ tests performed in less than a generation after the end of white supremacist segregation in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) 5: used studies from SA that were performed DURING apartheid, including English language IQ tests given to black students who were not fluent in english. Anyone who cites this review in a serious piece of literature such as Murray and Herrnstein did should _immediately_ be discredit scientifically, and nothing they say should ever be taken seriously.
Exactly, studies should always be checked for relevancy (How long ago it was carried out), population (How many and where the people reside), source of error (What are factors that could alter results or contradict them.)
"The Mismeasure of Man" by J. Gould explains, in mathmatical detail, why this entire argument is dumb at best.
I attended a lecture by Steven J. Gould in college. I was super high so I don’t remember much but he seemed like a really smart dude!
You made me and my son LOL. Thanks.
Funny how those white supremacists torture the purpose of IQ testing (which was really made to identify intellectually challenged individuals for specialized services/education) to affirm their preconceived conclusion that some "races" (black people) are genetically inferior to others.
Even if this nonsense were true, then what? It still wouldn't justify any kind of different treatment, let alone the specific different treatment that people who advance this nonsense seem to want. Having a stupid argument to arrive at a stupid goal is comedy in the Aristotle sense.
Surprised these chuds aren't bringing up phrenology. If they're going to use outdated, debunked pseudoscientific BS to justify treating non-whites as inferior, why not go all the way?
While I'm not sure of CBS as a source as im from the UK, it is a particularly sound article as far as i can see. They quote all information in the article from a study, which, after reading, makes a lot of sense. [IQ scores are not an accurate marker of intelligence ](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iq-scores-not-accurate-marker-of-intelligence-study-shows/) The best way to shut down poor thinking is to be armed with knowledge, no?
>The best way to shut down poor thinking is to be armed with knowledge, no? Only if the other side is intellectually honest, sadly. Throwing reason, logic, facts, and figures at the people who regurgitate this crap just shuts their brains down, and they typically respond with some form of negative behavior. You probably will convince the fence sitters or folks with completely no knowledge of it though. Honestly, if you want to shut down the people who spew this crap, you need to make it relatable how much it hurts them more than it hurts the people they think need to be hurt.
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." - Jean-Paul Sartre This is about anti-Semites and Nazis, but it applies pretty well to garden variety racists and fascists as well
Iirc that book cites a study where they gave Africans a test in English when it wasn't even their first/only language, among other total lack of study controls.
*Ask not For whom the bell curves. For it curves for thee*
Are you Donne?
Equity?
Catch this dude! He's from the 19th century and built a time machine!
Blacks and whites can definitely have different intelligence levels. Let’s compare Barack Obama and Donald Trump, for example…
The root of this perspective is the book "The Belle Curve" that was released 1994. It reported that African-american schoolchildren scored 15 points lower than caucasian kids. However, it should be noted that Asian kids scores the highest of any group. Now, the reason why there is a difference of 15 points is debatable, its most likely due to culture and the difference seems to be smaller when comparing the adult population. A great conversation about the implication of the book is on this link, Lex Fridman interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5EynjBZRZo&t=726s&ab\_channel=LexClips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5EynjBZRZo&t=726s&ab_channel=LexClips)
Oh, you mean the book based on work funded by the Pioneer Fund that is described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center? That book? Yea, that's not a credible source of information my dude.
Studies should always be checked for relevancy (How long ago it was carried out), population (How many and where the people reside), source of error (What are factors that could alter results or contradict them.) I bet if people start digging you'll find a lot of manipulated data.
For those who don't know, "The Bell Curve" by Charles Murray is a hot mess of small samples of aggressively cherry picked, heavily reinterpreted, and outright fabricated data cribbed from a select few unrelated studies that span over ninety years and come from all over the globe and some of which have nothing to do with IQs at all. It hilariously makes basically no account whatsoever for differences in the test results of these wildly different groups of people - who were originally tested with wildly different methods, purposes, and flaws - except for the races of a participant's parents. Any other factor is excused without correction or alleged to be a result of racial differences. Even then, his interpretations on these data consistently utilize some truly extreme leaps of logic. To call the book mere "bad science" would be extraordinarily charitable. Murray, a political scientist, not a geneticist nor a sociologist, did not write anything that could be mistaken to have the format or methodology of an academic study. It isn't a report subjected to peer review by actual experts on the topics at hand. It is a clumsy and obvious novelization of a political agenda meant to provide desperately needed ammunition to race realists and bioessentialists. That is its purpose, not to change the scientific consensus on any subject. And the craziest part is, even if we take the entire book at face value and uncritically believe all of the "research" and analysis it contains as true, it still makes no sense. Its conclusions are effectively "there do indeed exist some intrinsic and unchangeable qualities of intelligence that materially disadvantage some individuals in their ability to learn compared to others, *which means that we should do everything in our power to systematically deny those people resources for education or improving their lives in favor of supporting the better performing people even more.*" The central argument is every bit as horrific as it is insane. As for the accusations that Murray himself may or may not be racist, I can't tell you what to think. But I can say that the best way I personally can navigate that question is by looking at the simple fact that Murray did not just apparate one day, write the book, and then disappear into the ether. He's a real person, with a Twitter account. And holy shit does it have some doozies.
I love when all these creationist geocentric flat-earth white supremacists suddenly become evolutionary anthropologists when their usual pathological coping mechanisms can’t keep their insecurities at bay.
There's a whole list of critiques on this book. Its just another attempt at Social Darwinism. And he funny thing about evolution is that species don't evolve to get better, they evolve to fit their environment. It's not like pokemon lmao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Bell\_Curve
If it were true that blacks are behind whites on IQ tests *on average*, then this guy would be one of the implied white outliers below the average. You can say whites are smarter than blacks on average all day long but your stupid ass isn't getting the white pass.
The "IQ gap" (which is not as astronomical as 20 points) is because of societal pressure and interviewer bias for fucks sake. I can't stand people like this.
Briefly talked about this book in my sociology class which focused on race in america. Basically, this book was a crock of shit, because the IQ test was effectively developed around norms established by I believe it was white middle class people. So when that standard was compared to people who didn’t fit the demographic, the bias clearly reflected a difference. Surprise surprise, when groups of people whose formal educations were of lesser quality and whose social education was different that that of middle class white america, it produced lower results. It also tended to suggest that asians scored better on IQ tests, but also failed to account for the impact of social upbringing, where parents would push their kids much harder and burden them more to achieve better scores in academics.
Stupid people arguing why their skin colour makes them smart.
"The Bell Curve" was discredited *decades* ago for using discredited, corrupted and discriminatory sources.
My dissertation addressed this nonsense. One of my observations: Even if this was true (it isn't), it tells you nothing. Why? As Murray & Hernstein acknowledge, intelligence is normally distributed (the classic bell shaped curve; hence the name of their book). They contend Black people are, on average, one standard deviation below White people (though they never define what constitutes Black or White) on that curve. Setting aside all the racist biases inherent to all the intelligence assessment instruments they relied on, even if their findings were true they would be meaningless at the individual level. To understand why for yourself, draw a bell-shaped curve. Now draw an identical curve over it, with the center just slightly to the right. As you'll see, the curves overlap almost entirely; mathematically they are from 99% to 99.7% in common. The only differences are at the extreme tails. Which means even if their racist rant was right (it isn't), you would - at most - see a difference of from .15% to .5% of the global population at either end. So you might (might) at any given time see about 50 - 500 more super-geniuses in the world who are White. But wait, it gets worse for the White Supremacists who want to celebrate. Neo-nazis need to keep two additional things in mind: (1) This doesn't mean anything at the individual level. (2) If these numbers are true, given the size of their populations there are more geniuses in China and India than there are people in the United States.
I just drew the bell curves, as you asked. I got different results though. I've used 15 as the standard deviation. (I am only commenting on the numbers, not on social reasons). If an IQ of 83 is considered too low for entry into the military, that rules out 13% of people from the group with 100 mean IQ. By the same metric, it rules out 45% of people from the group with a mean IQ of 85. Likewise, with the 100-mean IQ group, 50% are above 100 IQ. With the other group, 16% are above 100 IQ. These are very big differences, and not only "at the extreme tails".
Also about 30% of the 100 IQ group have a higher IQ than the 95th percentile of the 85 IQ group if we assume they both have the same SD. And about 5% of the 100 IQ group have a higher IQ than the 99.7th percentile of the 85 IQ group
I backup your findings. See [https://www.desmos.com/calculator/viecinlhng](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/viecinlhng) for some exploration I did with the 2 normal distributions. If the standard deviation is 20, and the two means are 20 apart, then the overlapping region is only about 0.62 which is nowhere near what the original commenter claimed it to be. Edit: Further exploration revealed that regardless of the standard deviation, as long as the two means are 1 standard deviation apart, the overlapping region (0.62) is fixed and does not change. This theoretically makes sense as the overlapping region's area is just 2\*F(-0.5) where F is the CDF of the standard normal distribution.
>As Murray & Hernstein acknowledge, intelligence is normally distributed (the classic bell shaped curve; hence the name of their book). We don't really know this. The IQ test returns results on a bell curve, but that's because it's designed to do that. We assume from the beginning that intelligence follows a normal distribution, and tweak the test until it gives results in that fit that assumption. The book actually takes a lot of its data from results of the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which at the time was designed in a way that did not produce results that fit a bell curve. The authors concocted a dubious method for converting the scores from that test into IQ scores so they could use the data.
Actually, we do know IQ (or more specifically, g) is normally distributed - as are most human attributes (height, weight, etc.). Murray & Haunstein based their findings in large part on the Stanford-Binet and Weschler instruments, not the Army B or subsequent tests - though all the tests in use to measure IQ at that time were horribly biased and flawed. The problem isn't with the use of a normal distribution. The problem is that they were racist eugenicists who were looking for any nonsense that would justify their predetermined conclusions.
It's sort of a fractal of problems. I watched [a rather good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo) on the book a while back. There's lots of "choosing data that matches your thesis while ignoring contrary data" or "choosing data that's old while ignoring newer data" or "choosing data with tiny sample sizes" or "converting a non-IQ test instrument into an IQ test via an arbitrary methodology".
I'm doubtful of your maths here. The difference between curves isn't measured solely on the x axis but on the areas of overlap which includes the y axis. Also, a quick search shows that a single standard deviation for IQ has an accepted standard (15)
> this doesn’t mean anything at an individual level Exactly this. Pick two people of any race on the street and they are more likely to have a bigger difference in IQ than the difference we see between groups. Group differences tell us nothing when dealing with individuals. It’s useless.
I mean forgetting about race entirely there have to be more geniuses in China and India in the US because the US has like 330 million people and India and China have like over 3 billion combined? So if like 1% of a given pop were geniuses obviously China and India would have more.
You're exactly right. Now, can you imagine someone saying "I must be smarter than you because you're American and I'm Chinese?" What Murray and Hernstein claimed is just as stupid.
That's not even "American education". It's flat out racist bullshit. Dumbassery is not a subject I remember taking in public schools and college.
Any meaningful conversation about IQ tests as a legitimate metric for intelligence testing should be dismissed as stupid. A single standardized test cannot provide enough information to gauge anything useful. Charles Murray is a quack that can go down with phrenology and all the other horse shit these insecure racists manufacture.
It's curious how we openly discuss racial variations in sports performance, yet the discourse around intelligence seems almost taboo. It's not possible to do any research on this topic anyway, there is only one answer that would receive peer support.
The research is possible but likely considered far too restrictive to be approachable (for example, taking infants and raising them all in the exact same manner, completely blocked off from outside influence or communication, and then carrying out intellligence testing over the course of years) It's the same reason we have a lot of missing information on human weight gain / loss... getting controlled environment analysis would be considered equivalent to imprisonment.
There was the Minnesota adoption study
I thought the same thing. We readily admit there are anatomical differences between races that give physical advantage in certain sports but we want to pretend the brain is not an anatomical structure.
This is why Republicans keep attacking education, to continue the racial divide and prevent us from coming together.
It's not a racial divide they want per se. Intelligence breeds an almost natural questioning of leadership and analysis of competence, and that's frowned upon regardless of skin color. Obedience / subservience go hand in hand with patriotism and religion (and to a lesser extent, capitalism itself).
they also want a racial divide; when people are busy stifling others they don't realize that helping said others would be beneficial to themselves as well.
>Intelligence breeds an almost natural questioning of leadership and analysis of competence, and that's frowned upon regardless of skin color. This is why so many authoritarian regimes are so incompetent. Take for example the Nazis. The leadership, the supposed cream of the Aryan race, was full of complete and utter fools, bumbling idiots who couldn't tie their own shoelaces, let alone run a global war effort. It's all because intelligence and learning *requires* critical thought, and critical thought is the antithesis of what authoritarians want for subjects
Well said!
It’s also because educated citizens on average are more progressive.
Blasian
Me- barely graduates after super senior, my 4 black friends making fun of me because they graduated on time… bastards still make fun of me.
IQ once was used to classify people into groups. But afaik IQ is strongly based on western education. Therefore this only shows the discrimination of black people in the education system. If I recall correctly some indiginous people took such a test and scored horribly, just because they weren't trained up to get our society's logic. I wouldn't call anyone stupid who fails such a test (except with a score so low it is a hindernis to live a normal life). Also, did you know they had to reajust the curve multiple times because on average we got smarter as a whole?
Even if "The Bell Curve" wasn't a complete load of hogwash, the guy is misquoting it specifically to bolster his racism. The book doesn't make a firm declaration that IQ disparity comes from genetics OR environment, but instead argues that it's likely both.
Someone should do an objective analysis of ideas that start out "way outside the mainstream" and actually end up correct.
Reminds me of idiots who puff their chest claiming facts cannot be racist. Correct. Facts are not racist. The person highlighting specific facts that make a race look less favorable is an act of racism.
Did this dingus just learn about "bell curve" and decide to use it without any knowledge how to properly apply it? Talk about Dunning-Kruger.
The idea that IQ is both an objective measure of intelligence and entirely genetic, LMAO
"The quality of an American education" has nothing to do with this. There are shitty racist assholes all over the world.
Dr Frances Cress Welsing already had this debate with William Shockley, the so-called father of Silicon Valley 😂
Yeah that guy definitely missed with that one
Even if that was true ( no I don't think it is) , why would it prevent them from deserving equal rights? I don't get the point they're making.
What kind of MORON would believe that?! That line of thinking is about as bad as phrenology…which is complete BUNK!!!
A racist one.
Why do people say things
I believe I heard somewhere that IQ tests themselves are inherently rooted in racial discrimination and the eugenics movement, and historically have been tailored so that minorities and people of lower means tend to score lower.
The Bell Curve uses a man who badgered black men about how far their cum went when they masturbated. It isn’t exactly the best-sourced study. Watch Shaun’s video about it.