Guest Post by Fred Reed
Writing about intelligence is splendid fun if you like watching dogfights among towering vanities. (This assumes that vanities can tower, though I’m not sure how dogs come into it.)
On one side you have the politically correct protectors of Appropriate Values. These secretly believe that blacks are less intelligent than whites and live in terror that genetics will shortly prove it. This is why they call genetics “pseudoscience.” Which it isn’t.
On the other side you have the cultists of IQ. These are bright white guys who conflate the results of IQ tests with intelligence, a fit which is imperfect. Their political aim is to show that whites, especially IQists, are brighter than blacks and Hispanics and pretty much everybody else, except East Asians who have higher IQs than white guys. Admitting the superiority of the Asians is the political price of showing the inferiority of everyone else.
Politics is a strange place. Anyway they take IQ with the solemnity appropriate to a mass funeral and overlook multiple nonsenses. For example:
Australian aborigines, according to IQst siege howitzer Richard Lynn, quoted in the Unz Review, have a mean IQ of 64. They are often regarded as the least intelligent of humans. This is not implausible. They have invented nothing, certainly not writing, and their number systems, if so they may be called, run to “one,” “two,” and “many.”
So much for aborigines. In this piece by John Derbyshire, a mathematician by training and longtime enthusiast of all things IQical, I find his assertion that the Nepalese have a mean IQ of 60. (He is quoting other I Qists thought to know of these matters.)
Now, a couple of points: First, I have spent time in Nepal and saw nothing to suggest anything even approaching this level of retardation. Second, an average of 60 means that half the population have an IQ of less than that, the distribution being almost symmetrical, and a substantial number below 45. These people would not be able to dress themselves or find their way home at night. I encountered no naked Nepalis wandering about homelessly.
Third, if the above grass hut in Nepal was built by people with a mean IQ of sixty, then the Australian aborigines, at sixty-four, could build something at least as elaborate and perhaps a bit more so.
Does anyone really believe this stuff?
Three anecdotes. My daughter Macon and I, trekking in the roadless Nepalese Himalayas at 12,000 feet, were approached in a town by these kids, who spoke perfect English. They had, they said, two classes a day in Nepali and the rest in English. Clearly less intelligent than Australian aborigines. Presumably someone else dressed them. I know nothing else about them. The one in the middle is going to have many girlfriends.
Wikipedia: “In 1951 Nepal had 10,000 students in 300 schools and an adult literacy rate of five percent. There were 49,000 schools in 2010, and by 2015 the overall adult literacy rate was 63.9 percent (males 76.4 percent and females 53.1 percent.”
If we assume that Nepali girls are as capable of literacy as boys, which of course they are, then in terms of IQ studies literacy was at the 76 percent mark. This means that at least 26 percent are literate with IQs below 60. Since the explosive growth of literacy obviously is a result of getting schools to remote villages, the proportion of severely retarded literates will grow. This is all very mysterious.
Or consider the Meso-American Indians of southern Mexico and Central America. These, said to have a mean IQ of 83, were a minor but remarkable civilization that, while not in a league with Fifth Century Athens, nonetheless did the following: Invented writing, a base-twenty exponential number system, an abacus allowing calculation of huge numbers, and the wheel. They built five-story buildings using poured-in-place concrete and elaborate flood-control systems.
None of this will involve contradictions if IQists agree, clearly and without evasion or equivocation, that an IQ of 83 is sufficient to do these things. Do they so agree?
Colombians, said to have mean IQ 84, run modern cities with telecommunications, airlines and the concomitant people to maintain avionics and big turbofans. This involves no contradiction if IQists say clearly that 84 is sufficient to do these things. Do they so say? (All together now, “Yes! Eighty-four is enough….”)
But then we have American blacks. These, at a mean IQ of 85, are more intelligent than either of the foregoing groups. We must perforce conclude that they could invent writing and sophisticated number systems, maintain avionics and telecommunications.
Do IQists so conclude? The answer must be either ”yes” or “no.” The latter, note, would amount to saying that blacks are not intelligent enough to do things done by people less intelligent than they are. But saying “yes” will imply that something other than IQ must be holding blacks backs such as maybe withe privilege. Oh God….
Another puzzlement difficult of explanation: The 83 figure for Mesoamericans seems plausible today as they do little of intellectual impressiveness. This being so, their considerable pre-Hispanic achievements are hard to understand unless they lost quite a bit of intelligence between 1521 when Tenochtitlan fell to the Spaniards, and now. Since IQists are enthusiastic Darwinians and attribute everything to genetic evolution, probably including loose doorknobs, they may invoke selective pressures favoring stupidity. The advantage in survival of declining acuity in a rough existence with no welfare state is not entirely obvious.
Another mystery, even deeper than the Nepalis: Say IQists, the blacks of sub-Saharan Africa have mean IQs of about 70. This is not implausible given the very low level of civilization in Africa now and before.
But the people of Equatorial Guinea are at 59. This puts them respectively at 15 and 26 points below American blacks, five points below Australian aborigines, and below even Nepalis. The Guineans, half being below 59, provide another example of people who should not be able to put on their shoes, if they have any. Is this the case? (The Darwinian explanation for the low IQ of Africans is that in a hot climate they didn’t have to remember that it gets cold in winter and thus you have to store food, and consequently had no need of intelligence. I am aware of no study showing that Africans can’t remember that seasons change.)
What the faithful need to do, and won’t, is at least try to determine what percentage of a population need to have what IQ for the society to function (engineers, bank clerks, internet help desks, etc.) and then show that a distribution centered on the alleged mean would produce them.
Enough. The point of all of this is not to support the silly idea that “intelligence is a social construct” and does not really exist. Of course it exists. Clearly it has a large innate, and probably genetic, component. This should be obvious to most plants and some rocks. Does anyone think that Mike Tyson and Stephen Hawking would have been equally intelligent given similar childhoods? If intelligence were cultural then all the children in Isaac Newton’s neighborhood should have been towering mathematical geniuses. It is not recorded that they were.
What we do see here is that IQists are more interested in defending their theory than in examining it, a quality they share with radical feminists, Marxists, Creationists, Evolutionists, Evangelicals, Moslems, Keyhesians, and conspiracy theorists. Perhaps intelligence really doesn’t exist after all.
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I can picture Fred having another drink.
This is not implausible.
yeah, mexico is welcome to take fred and keep him
hasta la vista frederico
Having a high IQ is both a blessing and a curse. It is, however, simply raw potential- like a healthy young person with low body fat in good physical condition who chooses a career path that puts them behind a desk, that potential can provide them with almost no benefit if they fail to capitalize on it.
IQ is like blood type, you are born with it and it doesn’t change over the course of your life. It is genetic, it is immutable and on the individual level it provides potential, not outcome.
A society has an average IQ based on it’s population make-up and a homogeneous, genetically connected people will often have a very tight IQ Bell Curve with a maximum distribution clustered around it’s individual average. All you have to do is look at average IQ by nation and how those countries fare economically, creatively and in terms of general social functions, like law abiding behaviors. Low IQ nations are violent, poor and in a state of perpetual flux. The opposite is true of high IQ nations.
One of the most troubling aspects of a high IQ nation is that the most intelligent and ambitious examples of the population often find themselves at the top of organizations that affect the bulk of the population, like government and media. High IQ is also associated with rationalization and those who may be exceptionally intelligent and able to navigate complex systems may also possess a profound lack of empathy and conscience leading them to sociopathic behaviors like plotting, power consolidation, fixation on wealth, etc. These behaviors are simply a perversion of obtaining resources or status- perfectly normal human behaviors that can be maximized by the smartest exemplars for their benefit at the expense of the majority population. If enough of these type people work together in concert to advance their strategies, it can lead to calamitous outcomes that rarely occur in low IQ nations, like mechanized warfare, bubble style economic policies and industrialized genocides.
The biggest problem occurs when there is a wide mix with a flattened Bell Curve of intelligence, an empire with huge numbers clustered at either end as well as in the mid-range. Those at the lower end are constantly taken advantage of by those at the top- think lending, cheap food and medicine, faddish and trendy consumer goods unrelated to necessity or need, and empty promises of reaching unobtainable outcomes based on well crafted lies sold for top dollar. The ones on the right hand side are plagued by the violence and stupidity of the low IQ population who harbor jealousies and deep hatred for not being able to achieve what they have been told is their birthright, the kinds of people who staff DMV’s or sit indolent at the edges of society waiting for their opportunity to take advantage of whatever target may present itself.
The adaptive strategies of each end of the Bell Curve are very different but both outcomes are the same- the exhaustion and eventual decay of the social fabric of the majority. Once that is lost, that society or culture is doomed.
Here’s where Fred and I part ways.
He uses the IQ of an isolated yet strikingly homogeneous population of Tibet (80) and tries to compare to an extremely damaged and diverse population of African Americans (85) living in what could only be described as an alien culture (The Western World) and tries to square the circle. In the bigger picture we have created so much more than the Tibetans- he mentions avionics- yet we are a fractious, crime ridden, consumer driven nation where our doctors routinely amputate healthy body parts from mentally ill people that no one can criticize for fear of being socially stigmatized. If you had to choose between avionics and a stable society of people like yourself that endures for a thousand years, which would you pick?
Fred leaves out so many contributing factors it is embarrassing, but he offers a corn pone opinion, i.e. one that justifies his choices and lifestyle and so it seems rational for him to compare a displaced people who were subject to slavery for hundreds of years and who possess a mixed blood with the dominant culture yet come in 15 points lower on the IQ scale than their former owners posterity with a genetically stable and extremely long lived people that share a common language, history, soil, faith, mores and traditions and thereby dismisses the source material as meaningless in the larger picture. It is absurd.
“And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow”.
Ecclesiastes 1: 17-18
There it is.
I get Jehovah’s Witnesses up to the farm six or seven times a year. I like them, they’re pleasant, they’re polite and they always like to share some scripture. They seem to appreciate that I’m not going to convert- I think they look at me as more of a pit stop in their efforts because they know I’m always going to welcome them and spend fifteen minutes talking with them- so they stop by to recharge their batteries so to speak.
The last couple of times the oldest guy who seems like the honcho brought up the endgame strategy. Apparently they believe God is going to pick a certain number of them and that they will get to live for eternity here on Earth in their human bodies. He asked me if that was something I wanted and I told him I couldn’t imagine a greater curse than to be human forever. They all looked puzzled so I asked them if they had ever read Ecclesiastes. If we’re human then we’re going to keep learning and in much knowledge there is much suffering. You get to the end of a long life and death isn’t something you fear anymore, it’s a welcome frontier.
They left kinda shook the last time. I got the feeling I’d actually made them think about it in a way they hadn’t before.
That seems a lot nicer than me letting the pit bulls loose. That makes ’em think too.
And run.
I heard you were a good egg, Hardscrambled.
Couldn’t help it…I had to inject some humor on the heels of your profound comments here, which is why I always read what you have to say, even when not in 100% agreement.
Usually I come away enlightened, so, kudos.
Now for a laugh, in a good revisit….
I must admit, I laughed.
You have to give the JWs an e for effort. I read a short comment leading somewhere else but it stuck with me that the early people were amazed and also enraged that Adam dropped dead. His death confirmed their worst fears, that the curse was for real, as they say. What is the lord’s rationale? Their every thought is to do evil.
What’s the use of intelligence when your purposes are evil? We laugh at dumb criminals but admire the smart ones who pull one over the dumb cops. My own IQ is 85 or so but I manage, if only because I recognize that I’m too dumb to be a criminal. I read somewhere, concerning the construction of the Golden Gate bridge, that one man can create work for many.
It has been my argument that it isn’t the group; white, gay or male that is responsible for human progress but the geniuses that pop up in that group. I used to deride my co-workers (they were all a group of whites so diverse that I fit right in) telling them that all the boss needed was Lance and a half dozen monkeys to get the job done.
Had a friend in the early ’80s that would bust down to his tighty whities before opening the door and inviting them in. Needless to say, no takers.
Terrific analysis. You hit most of the same points that came to my mind as I read and, as usual, several that I would not have.
There are two points that I will always come around to, however. First, civilization is primarily not an intellectual achievement, but rather a psychological one. My defense of this idea is dead simple, before our ancestors could begin to apply their intelligence to building civilization, they first had to decide collectively that it was a good thing to do. To figure out, somehow, that building something for the future would somehow be a better way to live than simply seeking the pleasure of the moment. This is not something that a person can possibly learn in a lifetime or a hundred starting from zero. I think it was a process that took thousands of generations of mostly devastating failures to learn the simple (but indescribably vital) lessons we all learn in kindergarten (and which our current society is so seemingly desperate to un-learn).
The second point is obvious, civilization is build by the tiny, tiny minority on the far right tail of the intelligence curve. To build even the most splendid building takes but one genius…plus a hundred engineers and craftsmen and ten-thousand laborers. Such has it ever been.
Now, as far as strict IQ goes…there are obviously errors and limitation involved in the testing of such. They cover primarily just ones ability to abstract and to analyze (almost entirely vertical thinking). The way I view intelligence in along that vertical axis, multiplied by a horizontal axis (creativity and imagination), multiplied by a temporal axis (ones ability to learn from others’ mistakes and to game-out possible futures, see potential pitfalls, etc.). Visualizing it this way creates a multi-dimensional volume of mental acuity. No test I could imagine would even come close to accurately measuring this.
That all said, there is no correlation between intelligence and character. I can even make a very weak argument for an inverse correlation. Two friends I knew in high-school–and went to church with, which is very important–were two of the simply finest people I knew. Neither was particularly bright, but both were earnest, kind, compassionate and had a willingness to help others as their very core. They believed wholly in the vital stories of Christianity while lacking the ability to see some of the glaring intellectual holes. The other half of this weak argument is that while people of very low character exist at every socio-economic level, the people at the top have the ability to wreak the most havoc. Joseph Stalin, for instance, was certainly not lacking in intelligence.
Intellectualism + greed has caused more harm than anything else imo.
Fred: there’s a reason why Mexico / Latin America / Puerto Rico / Africa can’t get their shit together. Similarly, there’s a reason why America’s major cities are crime ridden hell holes, filled with illegals and blacks.
Google: Detroit Literacy. You will find that 50% of adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate. That means they can’t read/write or do simple maff. 25% of them have high school diplomas.
Apparently people with a high IQ don’t like fucking as much as the majority with a lower IQ.
It is entirely possible to both intelligent and not very smart…..
Paradoxically so.
I intelligent often and I’m not even smart.
“Their political aim is to show that whites, especially IQists, are brighter than blacks and Hispanics and pretty much everybody else, except East Asians who have higher IQs than white guys. Admitting the superiority of the Asians is the political price of showing the inferiority of everyone else.”
Though we like to tout the brilliance and creativity of our historic geniuses, our political aim is not to boast that we are smarter than everyone else, as Reed claims, but that we are racially unique. Just like all other sentient lifeforms in manifest creation, we have our own covenant with the Creator, our own destiny to pursue, and a special birthright, bequeathed by our ancestors through struggle and triumph, to our own homeland, to the perpetuation of our culture, and to a secure future for White children.
No WN man I know cares whether the mean IQ for East Asian populations may be 5 points or so higher than the mean for White European-Americans. Nor does anyone care that the mean for American Khazarian jews, for that matter, is said, mostly by jew academia, to be 10 or even 15 points above the White mean.
BTW, Mr Reed, perhaps you yourself are preoccupied a trifle too much with IQ.
I do not think you can use a western IQ test to compare the true “intelligence” of different people groups. In America, we have public schools which are open to all, even illegal aliens, but certain demographic groups tend to rise above others. the opportunity is there, but the willingness to learn is not distributed equally.
Schools in Nepal are different and teach different subjects that will be used by their people. Do you think a group of African Americans with an average IQ of 85 could build the structures in Fred’s piece. Well, they cannot because they were not taught the skills needed to build these structures. These are skills that have been learned and passed along for 100 generations.
I was POSITIVE this was a punny title by T4C.
Eye Q, You Q, we all Q…
When I saw it was Fred? I was surprised he CUES too.
What’s the average IQ of red ropes?
Red ropes are chosen not only for their keen intellect and dynamic personalities, but also for their insight and compassion.
Mostly, they are chosen because they are older than the other trainees, giving a label of “mature” to young women barely in the twenties; I was 22 years old in the photo above, a mere 36 years ago.
They are also chosen because they are taller; Red ropes can see over the heads of the troops all the way back to that road guard at the rear, ready to post himself between harm’s way and his squad commander, stopping traffic and stray dogs or gunfire, if necessary, to protect the troops and further the cause of liberty by making sure the parade goes on.
I became a red rope because I learned early being a student leader in the USAF meant “privileges.” I was chosen that first day as a squad leader because my T.I., a 6’4″ Mean Man in a black hat, said that someone as ugly as me had to be make decent squad leader. Then, he looked at the rich bitch from Easton, Maryland, and said, “And you are just exactly as ugly as her. Get up here Easton.” That was basic training. Then, she and I were red ropes together at Keesler. Sue, the miracle of choice… was already the red rope at Keesler. She trained the two of us.
As Paul Harvey says… the rest of the story.
You know what? I just REALIZED that son of a bitch T.I. KNEW we were calendar twins. We were the two oldest women in the flight. Duh.
I really am a dumbass.
Now I know the truth. Red ropes are just tall and old and look decent in uniform. IQ is apparently optional.
One of the instructors in basic introduced the topic of menses with: for those of you who like ketchup on your eggs…
Up for a good story? Look for it… wait for it…
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t do either, criticize (or make comments on web pages). 😉
And some people can’t do any of the above because they remain anonymous and invisible.
Those who can’t do, teach or criticize, do so anonymously.