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Comments (78)
Does that only hold for people of African descent?
Could you describe what you would consider robust evidence?
No, but for most others the result can be disproved by pointing to test results.
I think it's especially true in that case for historical reasons, but you're right, I think it does apply for any race.
Any sort of evidence that demonstrates a genetic difference in intelligence (putting aside difficulties in accurately measuring intelligence—IQ is not intelligence). AFAIK, all evidence to date can be explained by environmental differences.
The strongest evidence I know on the heritability of intelligence is from the comparisons of identical twins to fraternal twins - if intelligence was only a function of the environment (and of randomness), identical twins would be as similar as fraternal twins are.
Identical twins shared the same environment throughout their pre-natal development.
Yes, and ... ?
(So do fraternal twins)
Oops. Reading comprehension fail. Comment retracted.
The chart doesn't say how general intelligence was measured. I think that's important.
That's far less of a problem than the fact that it's unsourced! (some guy on Wikipedia copied it from a textbook, without saying which one)
I'm assuming the "general intelligence" is from some modern IQ test, but I don't think the conclusions drawn hinge on the specific details.
I think they do, because an IQ test is a pretty poor measure of general intelligence.
Why do you believe that?
And what, specifically, do you mean by "general intelligence"? Do you mean the same thing that psychometricians do? (i.e. is this a semantic dispute over how to use the english word "Intelligence"?)
I haven't seriously studied intelligence tests or psychometrics, but from what I understand, the best IQ tests only measure certain limited forms of intelligence such as spatial reasoning, working memory, and vocabulary.
And I'm afraid I can't give a very good definition of general intelligence. I have an intuition as to its definition which is hard to describe.
There's a high correlation between many different intelligence tests. That's the point of Spearman's g factor, and why the US army uses things like the ASVAB.
The fact that you haven't studied the topic seriously makes it even more surprising that you hold a position that goes against expert opinion! People are wrong all the time on topics they have studied for years, that should make us even more wary of holding strong opinions on topics we have studied for mere hours!
If you think that intelligence covers A, B, C and D, but that IQ tests only test A and B, find out why! Maybe C is hard to measure directly, but so strongly correlated with A and B that it can be predicted anyway! Maybe after reflection, C doesn't fit in a meaningful definition of intelligence, and is grouped under another heading (like "emotional intelligence"). Maybe the tests actually cover D, but you don't know it because you're basing yourself off tests from the fifties or lame internet tests. Maybe C varies too strongly with time even within the same individual to be worth measuring.
The point is, if an expert believes X, but you wouldn't believe X out of hand, it's more likely that there's a surprising reason for X rather than the expert is wrong.
Could you describe a specific set of hypothetical evidence that you would consider robust?
You'd have to have some sort of test that correlates highly with general intelligence—that is, people who score highly on the test also score highly on many different intelligence-based tasks. To create a really good test, you'd have to have a really good definition of intelligence, and not everyone agrees on a single definition.
In short, I can't describe a specific set of hypothetical evidence because doing so requires having a sturdy definition of intelligence, which I don't have.
Yep, that's the case for modern IQ tests.
That's what I'm getting at. Your rejection of racial differences seemed to be unfalsifiable, so I kept on asking for you to identify some hypothetical evidence where you would accept that there are differences.
You had previously said
Now you say that you don't have a sturdy definition of intelligence. It seems like a cop out.
If intelligence is too ineffable to be measured, then any comparison between groups is meaningless, whether equal, less than, or greater than, and you should equally reject any of these propositions as meaningless. Are you equally reticent to say that groups have equal intelligence?
I don't have to have a sturdy definition of intelligence to know that IQ is not intelligence, in much the same way that I know that the capacity to identify paperclips is not intelligence.
I don't know enough about psychometrics to adequately define intelligence in a way that can be measured. I do believe that there exists some sturdy definition that can be measured and adequately reflects most people's intuitions of what "intelligence" means, but I do not know what that definition is.
Whether or not IQ is intelligence however you define it, you have to explain why it has such strong correlation with success.
What do you mean by success?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Real-life_accomplishments
That's strong evidence that IQ is correlated with intelligence, yes. Does that mean that IQ is intelligence? Not necessarily.
It seems like you may be privileging the hypothesis that the cause are non-genetic.
And also priveleging the hypothesis that the distribution of the trait we call 'intelligence' happened to develop exactly in proportion among the various spatially isolated populations while most other traits diverged.
I don't necessarily believe that all races are equally intelligent. I just don't think we have enough evidence to say either way.