[The Catalyst]

I've been watching this from Jordan Peterson

It's a long video, but the gists of the things that intrigue me other than basic explanations of IQ and the big 5 are that the things most highly correlated are different forms of intelligence to each other(I believe he said 0.9 of some measure). Then the other thing that's correlated is income inequality and male homicide rates at 0.75. And IQ to life success which is 0.5. Conscientiousness and life success is up there but quite a bit lower than IQ. And everything else about psychology has much lower correlation, which is to say, if those things don't mean anything, then the entire field of psychology is worthless.

I've heard something like that from clips or other people talking about what JP talks about and I would always write it off as academic gibberish or people's opinions to seem important, but the way he describes it in such a logical and scientific way really makes me take it seriously.

The findings, if true, are quite troubling and I don't know what to make of it.

-He says there's not much of a way to raise IQ or fluid intelligence short of giving children better/adequate nutrition. If that's true, that means or implies a lot of your success is really out of your control. Which really isn't what self-improvement type ideology likes to think, or what I like to think either.

-He also says something elsewhere(EDIT: I actually did watch this elsewhere at first- but watching more, it turns out it's in this video also) about how if you're the bottom 15% of IQ in modern society, you're basically fucked because there's no place for you. I wrote this off as ridiculous- but after hearing him explain IQ so thoroughly it really made me stop and think.

-As a libertarian first and conservative second, I really don't care about equality. Equality just seems like such a socialist and SJW mentality. However, if the correlation is that high I really have to pay attention to it. JP explains it as a result of males low on the dominance hierarchy being unable to climb it and lashing out the only way they can. I'm not sure what the right solution is- obviously I want to reduce/eliminate murders, if the correlation between income inequality and homicides is that high when pretty much everything else is a non-factor, then could you really consider it the fault of the murderers? It's like the problem of incels in the West- you could argue it's their fault for not being better, but increasingly you're having more and more normal seeming guys(ie, not losers) struggling to get decent girls, and you see a trend across society where that's increasing, and it's both an individual and societal problem. And if the correlation is that high, it surely means there's not a confounding factor, because otherwise the confounding factor would be the correlation(correct me if I'm wrong- I don't fully understand statistics).

I still really don't believe in redistribution as that seems highly immoral to me- however how moral is it to have high murders. Do unequal societies have to divide their rich from their poor? Is there a way to "seek and destroy" potential murderers before they commit them- without the problem of punishing innocent non-murderers?

Regardless, I'm not sure what to think about all of those things. I just did a little write up to try and clarify what I'm thinking for now. But I realise JP is one person and maybe multiple perspectives would make a clearer picture.

[Tiger Man]

The issue of "equality" vs. actual fairness is a major point of contention between libertarian/anarchist/voluntaryism and any sort of government interventionists. I think a certain amount of redistribution can work on a very local level. This is why religious charities had an analgesic effect on society for so many years. But, we can all see the problem with any large scale efforts to tip the scales towards "equality" - they just don't know when to stop. And, basic redistribution gets polluted with ideology, so it becomes about "equality" for the right people or groups. I don't think humanity has landed on an answer for this yet. Perhaps we never will. In an anarchist society, nature would solve the problem.

As to your observations about IQ, success in life, and incels, specifically. There are two different things going on there. Low IQ men do tend to perform poorly relative to higher IQ men. That stands to reason. But, often, they can work in menial jobs. And (this is a rather cruel point, but it is true) men with low skew IQs often aren't intelligent enough to realize how their lives appear to other people. Often, if they are employed and just generally having a good time, they are happy. The rise in male incels is a different thing entirely, as you correctly alluded to. That is a systemic problem created by various social and technological "advancements" that have occurred in the last 70 years. JBP has numerous videos in which he discusses his thoughts on things like The Pill, women's sexual liberation, women in the workforce, etc. All of these things have combined to create a miasmatic socio-sexual situation, in which neither a majority of men nor a majority of women are able to maximize their sexual and relationship potential (in a way that would most benefit them in the long-term). This resulted, for several decades, in the b/7 relationship, in which a very sexually experienced woman would eventually "settle down" with a sexually inexperienced, but financially and relationally sound partner. The results have been horrific. This was becoming the de facto relationship setup for many men in places like the United States, until about five years ago, when the marriage strike dam really began to break.

All of this - inceldom, men being compelled to marry socially desirable women, women becoming increasingly unhappy with the consequences of their life choices - is systemic. It is societal. If anything, these problems affect higher IQ individuals more than lower IQ individuals, because they are the ones cognizant enough to realize that something is very wrong.

But, again, the question becomes what to do. And the answer, again, might be that it can only be handled on a local level. In truth, a man can find a traditional society where hard work and blue pill provider game will work well, provided he is willing to join an Anabaptist Church. Groups like the Amish are experiencing their highest retention rates in their history (does anyone wonder why that is?).

But, honestly, who is willing to do any of this? We have to post anonymously on an internet forum, because, for many of us, talking about the kind of stuff we discuss on the forum would get us arrested in our home country. JBP has probably rubbed so many the wrong way because he is hitting on a lot of non-starter points for the powers that be.

[Fortis]

Generally, I'm ok with many men going the incel route since it means that only the best will go on in a sane world, but in our increasingly insane world, many incels are intelligent men who see the patterns and become disheartened and exit the gene pool. Damn shame. That's also way I'm against redpill being friendly with mgtow. That shit is toxic.

[RatInTheWoods]

Life sure isn't fair, this isn't news. There are many ways to get a handout from genetics - being tall, good looking, healthy genes, high IQ etc.

There is still a hell of a lot of leeway for your own self determination. You can overcome a lack of these gifts with hard work, stubbornness and graft.

I am sure we all know a high IQ dude who is lazy as fuck, and hits the booze, drugs or video games instead of using his gift.

Then there is the dude with less IQ that has worked his way up the very hard way. (that would be me)

[MMX2010]

This interview is exceptionally short, to-the-point, and highly relevant to the original post.

The first question JBP is asked is highly-condensed, well-worded, and fucking dangerous.

I'll give everyone two or three days to respond, before I comment.

Please watch this video. I cannot recommend it more highly.

[Duke Main]

Yes, this is a huge question for libertarians (including me). I'll be interested in mmx's follow up.

[kamoz]

(04-25-2018 09:26 PM)MMX2010 Wrote:  

This interview is exceptionally short, to-the-point, and highly relevant to the original post.

The first question JBP is asked is highly-condensed, well-worded, and fucking dangerous.

I'll give everyone two or three days to respond, before I comment.

Please watch this video. I cannot recommend it more highly.

I watched it. Hate to say it but I was not as impressed as I was led to believe.

The IQ cutoff of 83 being discovered by the military and the fact that 10% of the population have nothing to do in modern society was the one interesting thing I learned which I didn't know previously. This percentage will obviously grow as automation increases. However his display of being horrified at the concept and acting like the solution would be so complicated I felt was a little exaggerated. The solution is actually really fucking simple and requires no coercion. Offer a cash payout to people to get snipped or get their tubes tied that increases drastically as IQ goes down. People with low IQ tend to not delay gratification and if the number is high enough they will jump at the opportunity. Win-win. Over the years average IQ will increase. Done. Granted implementation is more complicated, especially considering that current policies are accomplishing the OPPOSITE thing (the welfare state), but him throwing his hands up in the air and putting on a little emotion seems like an appeal to the SJWs in an attempt to be diplomatic.

When asked about race he again tries to appeal to SJWs by throwing his hands up in the air and saying it's too vague and too complicated - it's not. My dumb ass can give you a two-word definition for race: it's genetic similarity. Done.

Lastly he does the same thing when asked about the JQ. He begins by pointing out the most apparent thing which is that Jews tend to be in positions of power. Ok, cool. Next he points out the second most obvious thing which is that average IQ among Ashkenazi Jews is really high. Ok, cool. But then he goes off on some random tangent about how that's good and says some smart-sounding intellectual garble that I couldn't even follow. What he left out - probably purposefully - is the obvious next step in that logic which is: what do higher IQ groups or species do to lower IQ groups/species? Stephen Hawking was kind enough to tell us that if an alien civilization finds us, well, they're either gonna wipe us the fuck out or enslave us. You do the math.

Sorry for the very critical response. This is largely due to hearing overwhelmingly positive things about Jordan Peterson on the forum, which subconsciously got my hopes up, and this video which is the first I've seen of him was largely a let down. He's obviously a very smart man, but I see the characteristic pussy-footing around these issues in him that I see so many others do as well. I'm sure he's just protecting himself and his career, which is totally fine. He certainly ventures closer to these issues than most others. But from what I'm seeing he's a bit overrated.

[MMX2010]

@kamoz,

I'll reply to your post one or two days from now. But I will say that I saw what you saw.


------------

@Everyone,

Vox Day shared this article on Genetics in Education about two weeks ago.

It does a really good job of explaining where we're at right now regarding IQ research AND inserting a metaphorical "ticking clock/time bomb" into this discussion.

In one paragraph, "We are dramatically fucking close to instantaneous, highly accurate, very cheap IQ testing. The most obvious application of this technology would be genetic IQ testing of five year olds to determine what kind of education they should receive, (assuming they should receive any education at all, which is an assumption I don't make). What should we do with this technology?"

The New Statesman Wrote:

The IQ trap: how the study of genetics could transform education.

The study of the genes which affect intelligence could revolutionise education. But, haunted by the spectre of eugenics, the science risks being lost in a political battle.


The appointment – followed, eight days later, by the resignation – of Toby Young to the board of the government’s new Office for Students in January was only the latest in a series of controversial interventions in education for the self-styled Toadmeister (Young’s Twitter handle). Having established his media profile on a platform of comments guaranteed to rile the “politically correct” (sexism, homophobia, that sort of thing), he began to reinvent himself as an educationalist through his initiatives on free schools – and he has been raising hackles in that sphere too. Things came to a head late last year when an article that Young wrote for the charity Teach First on intelligence and genetics was withdrawn from the organisation’s website on the grounds that it was “against what we believe is true and against our values and vision”. Young’s article summarised – rather accurately – the current view on how genes affect children’s IQ and academic attainment, and concluded that there is really not much that schools can do at present to alter these seemingly innate differences.

That affair is now coloured by the disclosure that Young had advocated “progressive eugenics” as a way to boost intelligence in a 2015 article in the Australian magazine Quadrant. The flames were fanned by Private Eye’s account of how Young attended what was widely labelled a “secret eugenics conference” at University College London that featured speakers with extremist views.

All this is viewed with dismay by scientists who are researching the role of genes in intelligence and considering the implications for education. They are already labouring under a cloud of suspicion, if not outright contempt, from some educationalists, and interventions by grandstanders such as Young will do nothing to soften the tenor of the debate. Such polarisation and conflict should trouble us all, though. Because, like it or not, genetics is going to enter the educational arena, and we need to have a sober, informed discussion about it.

Researchers are now becoming confident enough to claim that the information available from sequencing a person’s genome – the instructions encoded in our DNA that influence our physical and behavioural traits – can be used to make predictions about their potential to achieve academic success. “The speed of this research has surprised me,” says the psychologist Kathryn Asbury of the University of York, “and I think that it is probable that pretty soon someone – probably a commercial company – will start to try to sell it in some way.” Asbury believes “it is vital that we have regulations in place for the use of genetic information in education and that we prepare legal, social and ethical cases for how it could and should be used.”

If that sounds frightening, however, it might be because of a wide misapprehension about what genes are and what they do.

It’s sometimes said that the whole notion that intelligence has a genetic component is anathema to the liberals and left-wingers who dominate education. Young reliably depicts the extreme version here, saying “liberal educationalists… reject the idea that intelligence has a genetic basis [and] prefer to think of man as a tabula rasa, forged by society rather than nature”. He’s not alone, though. The psychologist Jill Boucher of City, University of London has lambasted what she calls “the unthinkingly self-righteous, hypocritical and ultimately damaging political correctness of those who deny that genetic inheritance contributes to academic achievement and hence social status”. Teach First’s suppression of Young’s article contributed to that impression: it was a clumsy and poorly motivated move. (The organisation has since apologised to Young.)

Despite this rhetoric, however, you’d be hard pushed to find a teacher who would question that children arrive at school with differing intrinsic aptitudes and abilities. Some kids pick things up in a flash, others struggle with the basics. This doesn’t mean it’s all in their genes: no one researching genes and intelligence denies that a child’s environment can play a big role in educational attainment. Of course kids with supportive, stimulating families and motivated peers have an advantage, while in some extreme cases the effects of trauma or malnutrition can compromise brain development. But the idea of the child as tabula rasa seems to be something of a straw man.

That’s backed up by a 2005 study by psychologist Robert Plomin of King’s College London, one of the leading experts on the genetic basis of intelligence, and his colleague Sheila Walker. They surveyed almost 2,000 primary school teachers and parents about their perceptions of genetic influence on a number of traits, including intelligence, and found that on the whole, both teachers and parents rated genetics as being just as important as the environment. This was despite the fact that 80 per cent of the teachers said there was no mention of genetics in their training. Plomin and Walker concluded that educators do seem to accept that genes influence intelligence.

Kathryn Asbury supports that view. When her PhD student Madeline Crosswaite investigated teachers’ beliefs about intelligence, Asbury says she found that “teachers, on average, believe that genetic factors are at least as important as environmental factors” and say they are “open to a role for genetic information in education one day, and that they would like to know more”.

Why, then, has there been this insistence from conservative commentators that liberal educationalists are in denial? It’s just one reflection of how the whole discussion has become highly politicised as left versus right, political correctness versus realism. There’s more of that to come.

It may be that people’s readiness to accept innate difference decreases when it is couched in terms of genes. If so, one reason could be a lingering association of genes with eugenics – the notion of improving traits in a population by selective breeding, and perhaps sterilisation, to promote “good” genes and drive out “bad”.

That bitter stew gets stirred by media-fuelled fantasies about designer babies and a genetic underclass (see the 1997 movie Gattaca). But I have a hunch, too, that many detect a whiff of determinism in the current discourse on genetics: that your genes fix from conception what kind of person you will become.

The intended counter-piece to Young’s on the Teach First website was written by Sonia Blandford, dean of education at Canterbury Christ Church University College and author of Born to Fail?. Blandford was silent about genes but wrote only about the inequities of a disadvantaged or lower-class background. So Young and Blandford would have been talking past each other, while leaving hanging in the air the idea that your genetics could also leave you “born to fail”.

All too often genes are read as destiny. But in truth there’s rather little in your genetic make-up that fixes traits or behaviour with any clarity. There are some genetic diseases that particular gene mutations will give you if you’re unlucky enough to inherit them. But most traits (including diseases) that are influenced by genes manifest only as tendencies. If you’re a woman with a certain variant of the BRCA1 gene, you have an increased risk of developing breast cancer. But there’s nothing to say that you will.

Partly this is because a lot of traits are influenced by many genes, interacting and correlating with one another in complex ways that are hard, perhaps impossible, to anticipate. But it’s also because genes are themselves influenced by environmental factors, which can cause them to be activated or suppressed. When it comes to behavioural traits such as intelligence, prediction from genes is unclear. Brain development is sensitive to genetic influence, but it’s not completely determined by it. The way the brain gets “wired” depends on early experience in the womb, childhood and adolescence, and remains susceptible to environmental influences throughout life.

Quite why genes have acquired this deterministic, and therefore ominous, aura isn’t clear. I strongly suspect that the rhetoric used to advertise the human genome project played a big part, promoting the notion that your genes are “the real you”. DNA sequencing companies such as 23andMe now use this line to sell their wares. Talking of genes “for” this or that trait reinforces the impression – there are no genes “for” intelligence, height, breast cancer and so on, although some genes affect those things. Genetics is now trying to backpedal out of a hole that, without such hype, it need never have got into. The result is that the tone of a discussion of innate versus environmental factors in intelligence is likely to plummet once genes are mentioned. “People worry about the motives that researchers have for asking these sorts of questions [about nature and nurture],” says Asbury. “I think eugenics still casts a long shadow.”

Whatever the reasons, the fact is that almost all research on education and genes is done within departments not of education but of psychology or genetics, a point made by the psychologist Stuart Ritchie of Edinburgh University. As a result, he says, while the science is fairly settled, “the debate in education is lagging behind”.


****


What does the science tell us about genes and intelligence? For geneticists, the challenge with any behavioural trait is to distinguish inherited influences from environmental ones. Are you smart (or not) because of your genes, or your home and school environment? For many years, the only way to separate these factors was through twin studies. This is a somewhat coarse way of controlling for genetic similarity, which entails looking at how the traits of identical and non-identical twins (who are 100 per cent or 50 per cent genetically identical, respectively) differ when they share or don’t share the same background – for example, when they are adopted into different family environments.

But now it’s possible to look directly at people’s genomes: to read the molecular code (sequence) of large proportions of an individual’s DNA. Over the past decade the cost of genome sequencing has fallen sharply, making it possible to look more directly at how genes correlate with intelligence. The data both from twin studies and DNA analysis are unambiguous: intelligence is strongly heritable. Typically around 50 per cent of variations in intelligence between individuals can be ascribed to genes, although these gene-induced differences become markedly more apparent as we age. As Ritchie says: like it or not, the debate about whether genes affect intelligence is over.

If that’s so, we should be able to see which genes are involved. But it has proved extremely difficult to find them. For many years, extensive efforts to zero in on the genes underpinning intelligence produced only a few candidates. Over the past year or so, however, the picture changed dramatically, partly because of better methods of searching but also because the spread of genome sequencing has made much bigger population samples available: that’s the key to spotting very small effects.

None of the genes identified this way are in any meaningful sense “for intelligence”. They tend to have highly specialised functions in embryo development – mostly connected to the brain. The influence of a particular gene might manifest in one or more aspects of intelligence, such as spatial sense, vocabulary or memory. There may well be hundreds, even thousands of such genes that make a contribution to intelligence. And people show so many different cognitive skills, ranging from imagination to an ability to remember historical dates or do calculus, that it could seem ludicrous to collapse them all to the single dimension of, say, IQ (see box, overleaf).

Recently, the introduction of a new way of adding up the influences of many genes, known as a genome-wide polygenic score (GPS), has hugely boosted our ability to identify the specific genetic variants that contribute to the heritable component of intelligence. But if so many genes are involved, can we meaningfully predict anything from someone’s genes about their likely intelligence? Well, even if we don’t know quite how all those genes function or integrate their effects, we can search for patterns – just as, although we can’t know exactly what led some individuals to vote for Brexit, we can make a fair prediction of how they voted from their age and demographic profile.

GPSs can now be used to make such predictions about intelligence. They’re not really reliable at the moment, but will surely become better as the sample sizes for genome-wide studies increase. They will always be about probabilities, though: “Mrs Larkin, there is a 67 per cent chance that your son will be capable of reaching the top 10 per cent of GCSE grades.” Such exam results were indeed the measure Plomin and colleagues used for one recent study of genome-based prediction. They found that there was a stronger correlation between GPS and GCSE results for extreme outcomes – for particularly high or low marks.

We could never forecast anything for sure. In Plomin’s study, the young person with the second-highest GPS for intelligence achieved results only slightly above average. That’s not surprising, though: environmental factors still play an important role. There might be, say, a family problem holding the child back. Or it may be that the GPS is not in this case an accurate indicator of potential at all, and the child gets burdened with unrealistic expectation and disappointment from teachers and parents. So using such measures for individual prediction could be fraught.


Whatever the uncertainties, though, you can be sure some people will want this information, just as they currently get their genomes analysed for medical and genealogical data by private companies. “We predict,” Plomin and behavioural psychologist Sophie von Stumm wrote in a paper published this January, “that IQ GPSs will become routinely available from direct-to-consumer companies.” They say that a GPS analysis – not just for intelligence but for other traits – can be conducted at a cost of less than $100 per person.


The era of genetic forecasting of intelligence and ability is, then, already upon us. We now need to grapple with what that might mean for educational policy. “I believe that GPSs will be a real game-changer for education and provide a realistic and practical way of using genetics in the classroom,” says Emily Smith-Woolley, a researcher with Plomin at King’s College. But how? Nothing here is obvious, for the same reason that no scientific discovery implies moral inevitabilities: as David Hume put it, there is a difference between is and ought. “Genetic research has no necessary policy implications,” says Smith-Woolley. “What policymakers wish to do with the research is a judgement based on values they do or do not class as important.”


That helps presumably to explain why those with left-leaning inclinations, such as Plomin and Asbury, want to see our understanding of genes and intelligence used to level the playing field by applying a knowledge of children’s genetic potential to tailor their educational regimes, rather than persisting with a one-size-fits-all approach.


Toby Young, on the other hand, rejects such notions and favours a sink-or-swim approach that will (he believes) let the most able rise to the top: a philosophy far more suited to the instincts of the right. The correct approach, he argues, is simply to introduce “all children to the best that has been thought and said” and teach them “to value logic and reason”. And, one supposes, to pull their socks up.


I’ll hazard a guess that most people, at least among New Statesman readers, will feel sympathetic to the idea of finding ways to maximise every child’s potential. This would not be about the vague and contested notion of “learning styles”, but a more rigorous analysis of how certain genetic profiles respond better to particular types of problem or environment.

“At the moment we are detecting ‘problems’ only when they are visible, and at that point they can be detrimental for the child and hard to treat,” says Smith-Woolley. “Genetics offers the potential for predicting and preventing. For example, from birth we might be able to tell if a child has many genetic variants associated with having dyslexia. So why not intervene straight away, with proven strategies, before a problem emerges?” Whether such a scheme could work for more subtle aspects of intelligence and learning – whether we could realistically and reliably use genes alone to predict them, and then tailor learning strategies to have an impact – remains far from clear.


Moreover, educationalists already know a great deal about what works in education and what doesn’t, just as good teachers are attuned to the needs of a child. In their 2014 book G is for Genes, Asbury and Plomin make several sensible suggestions on education policy; but all of them – giving struggling children support without belabouring labels, teaching “thinking skills”, personalising and broadening the curriculum – could have been made without recourse to gene-based arguments. Might a fixation on genes be a red herring when there’s much more in education that we could fix now to far greater effect? Do we really need yet another way of testing and classifying children?

Asbury and Plomin say that eventually we will have a device that cheaply and quickly analyses a child’s DNA – what they call a “Learning Chip” – to make a reliable genetic prediction of “heritable differences between children in terms of their cognitive ability and academic achievement”. This idea will send a chill down the spines of many parents, who might fear that children will be branded for success or failure from birth.

Yet, according to Stuart Ritchie, some studies have shown that when IQ tests are used in this way they may identify more bright children among disadvantaged and ethnic minorities than teachers do. Even with the best will in the world, teachers may have cognitive biases that could influence the assessment of such groups. An objective test of academic potential based on a readout of a child’s genes might help to avoid such ingrained prejudices. And discrepancies between prediction and outcome could flag up cases where children are being held back by circumstance, or could help us learn from children who excel despite apparently unexceptional genetic endowment.

Plomin, Asbury, Smith-Woolley and their co-workers – Toby Young is a co-author on the paper too – have recently caused a stir with another demonstration of how genetic analysis may inform educational practice. Using GPSs from nearly 5,000 pupils, the report assesses how exam results from different types of school – non-selective state, selective state grammar, and private – are correlated with gene-based estimates of ability for the different pupil sets. The results might offer pause for thought among parents stumping up eyewatering school fees: the distribution of exam results at age 16 could be almost wholly explained by heritable differences, with less than 1 per cent being due to the type of schooling received. In other words, as far as academic achievement is concerned, selective schools seem to add next to nothing to the inherent abilities of their pupils. Again, politics informs conclusions. For the Conservative peer and science writer Matt Ridley this research affirms the futility of the left’s desire to “wish away” the role of genes in ability. For Asbury it shows that there is nothing to commend grammar schools, which merely cream off the best pupils without enhancing their innate capabilities.

All the same, Asbury avers that genetic assessment will only ever be an accessory to, and not a replacement for, existing methods of teaching and evaluation. “While genetic information can’t tell us everything,” she says, “it can indicate risk and might catch some kids that other indices, focused on more economic measures, miss.”

Those “economic measures” alert us to one of the most controversial issues: whether the well-established correlation between socioeconomic status (SES) and measures of intelligence or achievement have a genetic component. Obviously there’s a strong environmental influence – rich kids go to the best schools, middle-class families have the resources to help with homework and go on cultural visits – but is that the whole story? To put it bluntly, might some children remain socially immobile because of their intelligence-linked genes?

It is an uncomfortable thought, but the evidence seems clear: “SES is partly heritable,” Asbury and Plomin say. Genes can explain 40 per cent of the variability in people’s job-related status, and 30 per cent of income differences. In a 2016 study using GPSs, Plomin and colleague Eva Krapohl found that about half of the correlation between educational achievement and SES of British 16-year-olds could be ascribed to genetic factors.


If we put it in everyday terms this isn’t seem surprising. People with genetic learning disabilities face bigger obstacles than the rest of us to becoming socially and economically secure, while very smart people from poor families have a better chance of climbing the ladder. Still, it’s disturbing to see it spelt out in hard data: social mobility is not all a question of inequality of opportunity. Our social structures may well exacerbate these genetic influences – for example, in terms of how we choose to award status.

“We prioritise academic goals such as university entry to such an extent that good goals that are less ‘intelligence-loaded’ are not encouraged,” says Asbury, “and the children for whom they would be a good fit, leading to life satisfaction, pride, fulfilment, happiness, are under-nurtured.” Psychologist Wendy Johnson, a sceptic about how useful genetics can be in education, concurs with that sentiment: “A big reason intelligence test scores are so associated with all the ‘good things’ in life are because we reward its display.”

With unerring instinct, Toby Young seized on the most inflammatory way to frame this discussion: Bring up the E-word. But he did so not in quite in the way you might think. To read some media reports of his 2015 article on “progressive eugenics”, you might imagine he was advocating eradication of the IQ-deficient poor. On the contrary, he was pointing to the possibility that de facto eugenics might arrive soon in the form of people using genetic screening of embryos in IVF to select for those with the best intelligence profile. When such technology arrives, said Young, it should be made available freely to poorer people to avoid a widening divide in intelligence between the haves and have-nots. Indeed, he said, it should then be welcomed as a means of raising the intelligence of the whole of society – surely a morally valid goal?

Is that scientifically possible, though? With intelligence thinly spread across so many genes, many of which have other functions too, is it realistic to think of selecting for intelligence? That’s not clear. “Any form of eugenics is nonsensical from a scientific view, as well as being abhorrent from a social, ethical and moral point of view,” says Asbury. But Ritchie points out that some intelligence-linked genes also relate to other characteristics we might consider beneficial, such as reduced chance of depression, obesity and schizophrenia. He also says that some rough-and-ready estimates suggest “you could get a pretty good benefit” in intelligence (on average) from selection.

Embryo selection for intelligence is illegal in the UK under current regulations. But it’s unlikely to be made illegal everywhere in the world. Besides, Ritchie adds, in the West we already permit some degree of intelligence selection in reproduction – for example by licensing sperm or egg banks stocked by Ivy League graduates, and conversely by allowing for Down’s syndrome screening. (MMX2010 would also add that simply giving women reproductive freedom, the choice to reproduce with That Guy but not THAT Guy, is also a form of eugenics.)

The irony with the furore over Young’s eugenics musings, says Ritchie, is that moral philosophers and bioethicists have already been discussing these issues for a long time. That’s not to exonerate Young but to say that the debate would be better served by turning to more serious minds than those of incontinently provocative liberal-goaders. It’s a debate we can’t shirk. “I feel a sense of anxiety that we’re not having it already,” Ritchie says.


In this fraught arena, we each need to place our cards on the table. As I watch my daughters’ local state schools work wonders with a pupil intake of hugely mixed ability and background, I can plainly see how significantly a child’s environment, such as the family circumstances and teacher’s skills, can impact on his or her attainment. So I believe that educational outcomes are partly determined by circumstances. At the same time, as a child of an unprivileged lower-middle-class family who found himself with an anomalously high IQ – for which, unearned and unsought, I feel neither pride nor embarrassment – I can see what advantages a lucky roll of the DNA dice can bring.

If research on genes and intelligence helps both to reduce the injustices of environment and release the full potential of every child, I would welcome its consequences. It is by no means certain that it will do either; a possible outcome is that it becomes an unwelcome distraction from addressing immediate, soluble problems in education, and that it might even exacerbate inequality. I do believe, though, that collectively we can and must decide which outcomes we want – and that the first step is to look without prejudice at the facts.

*****

How is intelligence measured?


The notion of an “intelligence quotient” (IQ) was introduced over a century ago as the ratio of mental age (in terms of intelligence) to chronological age. A ten-year-old child with an IQ of 120 has a mental age of 12, say. But there are all sorts of questions about what that means.

After all, IQ testing can be coached, IQ changes over time, and average IQ has been increasing over time. “Intelligence” is here in any case a somewhat emotive, prejudicial and, arguably, narrow term for what IQ is meant to measure, which is general cognitive ability. Yet what the notion of IQ reflects is the well-established fact that people who score well in one type of cognitive test tend to do well in others: there’s something generalised about such abilities.

The flaws of IQ testing have been wellrehearsed, not least the accusation that it is culturally biased. And it hasn’t yet fully expunged the stain of its use to guide ideas about eugenic sterilisation in the UK and the US in the early 20th century. But IQ seems to measure something meaningful. There are, for example, clear correlations between people’s IQ scores and their academic attainment, as well as their success in later life and their general well-being. One response is: big deal. Our culture, you might argue, has simply elected to reward those aspects of intelligence that IQ measures, so it’s a self-fulfilling prophesy.

IQ tests might tap a host of cognitive abilities, but not qualities such as empathy or loyalty that carry less guarantee of reward. Studies of genes and intelligence should not, then, be divorced from a much wider debate about what gets valued and nurtured in school and in life. The University of York psychologist Kathryn Asbury agrees with those criticisms, but she believes nevertheless that IQ is a worthwhile metric. “To my mind it is the jewel in psychology’s currently rather tarnished crown. It is reliable, robust, stable over decades and predictive of most of the things we care about.”

And it’s not just about measuring how good you are at spatial puzzles and mental arithmetic. “IQ correlates with other aspects of a person such as personality or motivation, and these factors are likely to make a difference to education and life outcomes, too.” The problem is not the use of IQ testing but how it is interpreted. IQ, Asbury and Robert Plomin say, is “just one predictor of achievement – albeit a strong one”.

Philip Ball’s most recent book is “Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Physics is Different” (Bodley Head)

[Hypno]

Maybe its because I have a high IQ, but I have to agree with Kamoz that JP is not adding much to the conversation beyond the obvious.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

JP is adding the slow beginning of acceptance of the topic. It's a highly contested topic of heritability and IQ.

But at the same time he tiptoes around certain issues and has strange views on things - he is partly like the leftie Sargon of Akkad who will accept certain issues and their heritability, but for God's sake deny that heritability has anything to do with another thing. Part of what JP is doing is that he diverts the topics into safe waters, so we stay the course dancing on the Titanic. He opposes SJWs and cultural marxism, but on the alternative side that is really easy to oppose, because their stuff is so mindlessly stupid and negative.

[The Catalyst]

The other thing about IQ is if it's actually more or less fixed and it affects so much, then it's depressing in this way.

If someone is sufficiently lower IQ than you, then according to this you'll never be able to explain things to them. I would run into this but I would blame it on a combination of media brainwashing or them not "thinking things through"/analysing enough or them not being open minded enough to care. With those reasons there's hope but if IQ is biological and inevitable it's scary. Worse yet, if someone is sufficiently higher IQ, you'll never understand what they say.

[RatInTheWoods]

You only have to look at the social, economic, political and military success of a nation, and it charts in line with the average IQ of the dominant race of that nation.

This is why immigration is a bad thing, either you are getting smarter people or dumber people in to compete against you, both of which are bad for different reasons.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

I found some good articles with many studies cited:

https://brainsize.wordpress.com/2014/05/...nd-income/

Quote:

Some people may question the wisdom of extrapolating IQ differences between the middle class and the homeless all the way up to the highest levels of income. For example, the Lion of the Blogosphere argues that IQ is a better predictor of poverty than it is of wealth. However the linear extrapolation seems to yield valid results. For example, based on their academic credentials, scholar Jonathan Wai estimates that 45% of billionaires have IQ’s in the top 1% of America (IQ 135) which implies the typical billionaire has an IQ somewhere in the low 130s. Since billionaires have ten figure net worths, it seems reasonable to assume they have roughly nine figure incomes (since earning hundreds of millions a year, should eventually translate into amassing over a billion) and my model estimates that nine figure earners should average IQ 132. U.S. presidents resemble billionaires or nine figure income earners, because although presidents have “only” a six figure income, their lifestyle of living in a colossal mansion with servants, secret service protection, stratospheric power and flying by private jet, resembles the life of a billionaire. Evidence suggests U.S. presidents also average IQ’s in the low 130s.

The only people who may rank higher than U.S. presidents, nine figure earners, and most billionaires, are people who earn ten figures a year. These are people who amass eleven figure net worths (in other words, the self-made decabillionaires). It may seem outrageous to suggest that even the highest economic class has an average IQ as extreme as 140 (above the 99.5%ile of Americans) but this level of self-made financial success is dominated by people like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, the Google co-founders…in other words, math and technology types, often from extremely prestigious universities.

https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/02/11/the...iq-income/

Quote:

THE HOMELESS: Mean IQ 83 (U.S. norms); IQ 80 (U.S. white norms)


Median financial success: 0.09 percentile of U.S. adults (normalized Z = -3.13)

In 2015, roughly 423,750 American adults were homeless on a given night: One in 572 American adults (0.17%). Thus it can be estimated that the median homeless person is financially in the bottom 0.09%

Median cognitive ability: 12.8 percentile of U.S. adults (normalized Z = -1.17)

A 2004 study found that 90 homeless men living in a large shelter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had a mean WASI full-scale IQ of 83.92 (standard deviation = 15.24). The WASI was published in 1999, and this study was published in 2004, so we should subtract 1.5 points for old norms which are thought to expire at a rate of 0.3 points a year (the Flynn effect), so the homeless likely have a mean IQ of 82.5 (U.S. norms) or about 80 (U.S. white norms).

One problem with this study is that 81% of the sample was black (much higher than the 45% among homeless Americans in general) and these tend to score lower on IQ tests, at least in the general population, however a UK sample of homeless obtained virtually identical scores on the WASI, despite being 96% white.

In the UK study, the WASI full-scale IQ distribution of the homeless has a mean of 84.3. In this study, published in 2011, the WASI norms were by now even more outdated, so we should probably subtract 3.6 points for old norms, so this homeless sample have a mean IQ of 80.7 (U.S. norms) or about 78 (U.S. white norms).

Given the IQ of 80.7 (U.S. norms) among the the virtually all-white U.K. homeless sample, the IQ of 82.5 among the mostly blacks American sample is unlikely to be deflated by race, thus 83 is considered the best estimate of the American homeless.

Especially the last article is very good - of course it's only an approximation.

Interesting that the average millionaire in the US only has an average IQ of 110-115 while the average self-made billionaires is found to test around 132. Of course some 50% are 145 or beyond.

Obviously this also means that you don't need to be very smart to become rich, just be smart enough.



The article is actually quite good and the guy cites plenty of studies that back it all up.

Quote:

WELFARE RECIPIENTS: Mean IQ 92 (U.S. norms); IQ 90 (U.S. white norms)

Quote:

MEDIAN AMERICAN: Mean IQ 100 (U.S. norms); IQ 97-98 (U.S. white norms)

Quote:

SELF-MADE MILLIONAIRES: Mean IQ of 118 (U.S. norms); IQ 117 (U.S. white norms)

Quote:

SELF-MADE DECAMILLIONAIRES: Mean IQ of 118 (U.S. norms); IQ 117 (U.S. white norms)

Quote:

SELF-MADE BILLIONAIRES: Mean IQ 133 (U.S. norms); IQ 132 (U.S. white norms)

Quote:

SELF-MADE DECABILLIONAIRES: Mean IQ 151 (U.S. norms); IQ 151 (U.S. white norms)

Now you may think to yourself - you are between a billionaire and a multibillionaire in terms of IQ. What am I doing wrong? The data backs up the fact that the majority of self-made billionaires are that smart. Plenty of other even smarter folk have done nothing with their abilities or something completely different. But it is relevant that homeless men are on one scale and billionaire averages are on another.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(04-26-2018 04:01 PM)The Catalyst Wrote:  

The other thing about IQ is if it's actually more or less fixed and it affects so much, then it's depressing in this way.

If someone is sufficiently lower IQ than you, then according to this you'll never be able to explain things to them. I would run into this but I would blame it on a combination of media brainwashing or them not "thinking things through"/analysing enough or them not being open minded enough to care. With those reasons there's hope but if IQ is biological and inevitable it's scary. Worse yet, if someone is sufficiently higher IQ, you'll never understand what they say.

It's even more scary when you add mental conditioning and indoctrination. When very smart and very rich people start to control all media, entertainment and academia, then the majority of people are going to change their views over time. After decades they can fully control the narrative knowing that most people won't be able to break through anything. It is as AnonymousBosch mentioned - mainly the very intellectually challanged or the very intelligent past 140+ break through heavy conditioning easily.

[Ski pro]

Not to do with the IQ topic but on a recent JP interview done by Russell Brand, JP talked about a phenomena that was that success tends to attract success.

He was talking to Russell brand about how he became more famous and how more and more opportunities started to come his way because he because famous in his particular field. Whilst we all would assume this to be true no doubt, ‘rich get richer etc’ JP mentioned that this was also mirrored in nature, with reference to examples quoted about star systems and other natural phenomena.

He was essentially saying that this is not just something that comes from a capitalistic society, what it was was something more of a universal thing that occurs in nature.

Link below, don’t know how to embed. 57:45 onwards.

https://youtu.be/kL61yQgdWeM

I’d love to hear anyone who knows more about this.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(04-28-2018 02:28 PM)Ski pro Wrote:  

Not to do with the IQ topic but on a recent JP interview done by Russell Brand, JP talked about a phenomena that was that success tends to attract success.

He was talking to Russell brand about how he became more famous and how more and more opportunities started to come his way because he because famous in his particular field. Whilst we all would assume this to be true no doubt, ‘rich get richer etc’ JP mentioned that this was also mirrored in nature, with reference to examples quoted about star systems and other natural phenomena.

He was essentially saying that this is not just something that comes from a capitalistic society, what it was was something more of a universal thing that occurs in nature.

Link below, don’t know how to embed. 57:45 onwards.

https://youtu.be/kL61yQgdWeM

I’d love to hear anyone who knows more about this.

In this case JP speaks about the exponential way success is manifested.

There is a metaphysical aspect of it and one connected with social behavior as well as individual psyche. What JP meant is rather that society starts to treat you as a success as more and more people believe in you offering you more opportunities. Though that can also backfire as we have seen in our #metoo times. Society can also drop you like a hot potato.

An other aspect is also mentioned in an old book written about a man who studied real-life success:

(By the way - side note - 4000BC Babylon was like a white Caucasian society with a blue eyed tribe dominating, but that is another point.)

What the author recommends is to save a certain portion of your monthly income, learn new skills, invest in your savings in something that you have a knowledge of and other means of progress. One of the things that will be observed by folk who do this consequently months after months is that they start to believe in their own money-making power and success. Then suddenly more opportunities are manifested by life as if the life force itself reacts to it.

This belief in oneself has to be backed up by other factors, but this gets mentioned occasionally by motivational speakers. Part of the reason that successful businessmen like Trump or Gates were successful is that they learnt to be absolutely certain of their success by the sheer impetus and certainty that they imbued from their wealthy fathers. "I have seen my old man fart and he isn't that smart, but he made tens of millions. I can certainly do what he can do." That is why so many heirs have success as well - if they have some semblance of self-discipline and are well-suited for the work.

I would also like to note that the avg IQ up there with the success-rate is not an adequate measure of - "I should be making this because I am this". It's more a raw talent measurement necessary in order to make it. I also read a study somewhere that there are scores and scores of Nobel price laureates with IQs in the 130s while others are beyond 160.

In any case - it's essentially a talent benchmark of prerequisite conditions - most don't reach that monetary success due to a variety of reasons - often not even trying. But it is still interesting. (I met once a 160+ IQ librarian who just loved to read and he thought that a job as a librarian would fulfill him totally. That guy is never going to make any real money.)

[nomadbrah]

The entire discussion of IQ and fairness is such a bs discussion as long as we have societies which take away risk and personal responsibility for women. All this nonsense about inevitability and such, what does it matter when natural selection has been put on hold due to the welfare state? What we have is soft eugenics led by primarily white women.

It's Jordan Peterson showing lacking in spiritual and religious insight.

The solution to low IQ in populations is not mass culling, whether overt like Hitler or covert like feminism, but by following a spiritual purpose for society which finds room for everyone. That is probably not possible for societies based on "modernism", which believes in equality and the unlimited freedom for the individual. It would be impossible somewhere like the US, while North Korea would find it easier, even if East Asian hive mind society isn't exactly ideal.

He does have a point, it is inevitable that liberal (original meaning) and the "enlightenment movement" leads to this particular nasty form of modernism.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(04-29-2018 06:53 PM)nomadbrah Wrote:  

The entire discussion of IQ and fairness is such a bs discussion as long as we have societies which take away risk and personal responsibility for women. All this nonsense about inevitability and such, what does it matter when natural selection has been put on hold due to the welfare state? What we have is soft eugenics led by primarily white women.

It's Jordan Peterson showing lacking in spiritual and religious insight.

The solution to low IQ in populations is not mass culling, whether overt like Hitler or covert like feminism, but by following a spiritual purpose for society which finds room for everyone. That is probably not possible for societies based on "modernism", which believes in equality and the unlimited freedom for the individual. It would be impossible somewhere like the US, while North Korea would find it easier, even if East Asian hive mind society isn't exactly ideal.

He does have a point, it is inevitable that liberal (original meaning) and the "enlightenment movement" leads to this particular nasty form of modernism.

I wonder where this idea of culling comes - probably by too much Hitler propaganda.

The West is engaged in negative eugenics and full-on idiocracy.

China is engaged in highly positive eugenics - slightly more than in the past now.

Soft positive eugenics via incentives, paid-for sterilization after 2 kids is really not some kind of terrible thing. If you have a welfare mother and told her that she would get paid 100% more welfare if she gets sterilized after 2 kids, then what would be so bad for accepting this.

Feminism is another matter - it's weaponized to destroy cultures.

[nomadbrah]

(04-30-2018 01:27 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  

The West is engaged in negative eugenics and full-on idiocracy.

It's actually engaged in both at the same time.

The lower tier welfare classes are breeding and the upper tier high intelligence (education proxy) and physical (height proxy) are also breeding.

A very strange phenomenon.

Maybe this was the inspiration for the Time Machine by Orson Welles.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(04-30-2018 08:22 AM)nomadbrah Wrote:  

(04-30-2018 01:27 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  

The West is engaged in negative eugenics and full-on idiocracy.

It's actually engaged in both at the same time.

The lower tier welfare classes are breeding and the upper tier high intelligence (education proxy) and physical (height proxy) are also breeding.

A very strange phenomenon.

Maybe this was the inspiration for the Time Machine by Orson Welles.

Yeah, but the averages are going down despite some Flynn effect created by better pregnancy and early childhood care. I might add that the Flynn effect is over for at least the last 2 decades in the West. I personally blame vaccines for that - this massive onslaught of neuro-toxic ingredients was rather successful. (1980s you had roughly 6 vaccines starting age 1-2 - now it's 60 starting on day 1.)

Of course the globalists don't want or need us to become smarter - quite the contrary.

But compared to the last centuries where the educated or at least highly able middle class had the most children it is far worse. I remember going through the annals of my family - most were among the educated classes in the 19th century - and they had dozens of children each. The lowest strata of society had terrible working conditions in the mines, factories and also farms. They could not even afford 6 kids - and they certainly did not survive.

That went on for generations in Europe - likely centuries. The extremely wealthy seldom were most prolific in terms of progeny - their women seldom wanted to. Queens like Maria Theresia were the exception - not the rule. Also due to the inbreeding of the aristocracy this was actually a good idea.

Now the upper classes have 2-3 children and so do the lower strata highly aided by low-IQ non-European immigration. The educated and middle classes are often below 1.5 - so the the ones who had 10+ for generations now have 1.5. That will not be without consequence.

Though I would like to state - even having 1.5 for generations is not as problematic for our level of civilization. Japan will likely have a rising IQ nonetheless. But that is due to them staying Japanese.

When Europeans have become minorities in their own countries beset by people in the 80-90 IQ range, then it will be over. The cultures and countries would have become low-trust shitholes - not because women got less children, but because they were replaced by more manageable far less competent people.