re: #99 Dark_Falcon

Check Killgore’s #28?

OH dear G-d. I have met my share of really brilliant people from all walks of life and from all ethnic backgrounds. Scientific racism always comes down to pure bunkum.

There are three reasons for that.

1. There is no such thing as an accurate IQ test, and what exactly an IQ test measures is very unclear. A smart kid can have a bad day - or frankly be too smart for a poorly written question and then choose wrongly. Not to call myself a genius, but I had a personal experience with that. When I was a child, (5) I was given an IQ test and the questioner asked me what a diamond was. Dutifully remembering a conversation I had with my mother, when I had asked about her engagement ring, I told the questioner about carbon getting mashed into a crystal under tremendous pressure. The test giver wanted to hear that it was a shape, like a square rotated through 45 degrees. I was marked off.

There can be many other reasons that the test can be counter indicative. My favorite example is Richard Feynman who only scored a 132. While 132 is very “respectable” assuming the test really meant anything, there are a substantial number of people who have scored much higher. Yet, there was only one Feynman. The idea that the local mensa guy/ jeopardy champ is not just the equal of, but even superior to Feynman is ludicrous.

Of course, this goes the other way too. The IQ test really only tests for certain types of activities, many of which can be improved with practice. A relatively dumb kid could get really good at doing those pattern blocks if he or she practiced them or was exposed to something similar to them in childhood. Someone starting fresh, who had never seen anything like that would be at a disadvantage.

So in short, even if there were statistically meaningful trends between races in IQ, IQ itself is an almost meaningless concept.

2. IQ tests are very language and culture biased. IF your parents speak a certain way, you do better. This is a giant confounding factor that has yet to be removed.

3. Whatever raw intelligence is, it is not something that is even remotely limited to one race. It is clear from history that the Egyptians, who had an entirely black dynasty were far from unadvanced. What one finds in terms of outputs of a culture - and then deems as valuable, are more about the subjectivity of the evaluator than the complexity or intellectualism of the culture under question. So yeah a white guy with a bias towards Europe will go and talk about how much more advanced his culture is than some other. He automatically assumes that Shakespeare is better than say the Rig Veda.

This is subjective obviously and not objective.

More importantly, though is the aspect of nurture and oppurtunity. If you have a socio-economic framework that nurtures genius and allows it an outlet, you get more geniuses as a culture. If you are however forced to worry about subsistence on a daily basis, you simply do not have the time to spend years learning to be a Feynman or a Michaelangelo or a Beethoven. Had any of those men been born to a poor Welsh coal miner in the early 18th century, they would have had deep thoughts in the mines, that were never refined through greater education and practice, and no one would have heard of them. On the other hand, if you have the raw talent AND you have the social structure in place and family in place that encourages the development of that talent you might see something.

It is because of this that you see so many fewer famous third world geniuses. It is not that those folks aren’t smart. It is that they are poor and when you have to work a grueling 18 hour day in the hopes of getting enough to eat, you simply don’t have time for algebra.