Guess she watched too many of those happy interracial couple commercials
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The logic is sound here, but I'm suspicious of the data on the topic and ability to make accurate assessments of these considerations. Mainly, I wonder about the population distribution getting sampled in IQ tests reflecting an entire race sufficiently, and reflecting possible subgroups. I've come across racial IQ literature links in convos like these before, but a lot of it seemed to come from a small sample. Like, compared to a modern clinical trial, the scale is way smaller, and even clinical trials end up missing various parts of the true population distribution in their sample. E.g., the city within a country tested probably has a gigantic influence. I'm inclined to believe this is a real barrier for drawing conclusions, because the numbers and SD given for groups on the bell curve seems to be highly variable from study to study.
On the topic, if we bring genetics into it, we wouldn't really be using race as something to connect to genetics. A scientific classification would probably be something like the mitochondria DNA of different population groups that yields tons of subgroups in race. There will be some overlap with population group associations and race associations, but it's really crude to lump all people of one color or continent together. This together implies there will be intraracial groups that can be exceptions, rather than only outlier individuals. That argues against racial generalization. Except in a case where the racial effect is extremely robust and strong, I suppose.
While I believe IQ measures something real that can be used to make predictions, that may just hold true at an individual level, given the limited data we have. Might be many other issues, given there are probable major confounding factors that co-associate with race. Frankly, I don't know real IQ tests enough to know whether they can compensate. Most of us in these conversations are only familiar with something like an IQ test you can get online and SATs (that are said to correlate well). Anyway, it would be nice if someone can address this point, but as I've heard IQ data does meet the best standards of psychology research, I'll ignore my concerns about the test for now.
"I wonder about the population distribution getting sampled in IQ tests reflecting an entire race sufficiently, and reflecting possible subgroups. "
If you believe the tests have too small samples, check out the statistics that correlate VERY strongly to IQ / intellectual success in general, and that have even the entire population as samples. Things like:
-SAT tests
-PISA tests
-education level
-income
-wealth (correlates better than income)
-crime statistics
Every single one of those tell the exact same story: there are differences between countries and races, and the differences are very similar to those that have been observed in the IQ studies (for example the adoption studies)
"On the topic, if we bring genetics into it, we wouldn't really be using race as something to connect to genetics"
Yes, we would. Even the AI's of computers have catogorized people of the world to races after getting the genomes of people around the world
"Race" is a very real thing. The genetic studies say so, and even about 99% of people themselves know very precisely which "race" they are, or which exact nation they belong to, even before getting a DNA test to find it out.
The genetic studies on intelligence have already found hundreds of genes linked to higher intelligence - and that those genes are found more often in the "races" that have been scoring higher in the IQ tests
So yes, "race" is real, the sample sizes are large enough, and the differences are partly due to real hereditary genetics (and not just due to the environment, poverity etc).
This of course does not mean some people should be given up on from the gate. But it does mean we shouldn't be wasting any resources trying to secure equality of outcomes
The "Kansas City school experiment" showed once and for all, that trying to destroy the IQ gap by throwing money & resources on the "problem" will not solve anything. Hundreds of millions were wasted, and the gap remained:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-03-27-me-51685-story.html
You can't really fill a bucket any more once it's already full.
Read "The Bell Curve". Seriously, read it.
The point is, the black-white IQ gap is huge (1 SD) even at a low resolution, so it shouldn't be ignored. While in reality public policies deny its existence and legally enforce racial quotas (four-fifths rule).
Genetic clusters and self-identified race align perfectly.
Go find a single one. The science deniers have been making up "possible issues" for over 100 years, without providing any evidence.
I've heard of The Bell Curve book when News of it getting censored despite being scientifically rigorous came out. I'm not denying IQ usefulness as an accurate predictor, just questioning how it is applied on large groups.
An example on your point below, some years ago I remember some IQ tests that included places in China. Shanghai, one of the richest (or richest cities) had a high ranking, but rural places in the same country were less, maybe by 10 points IIRC. Since we'd classify them as the same race, it suggests confounding effects related to wealth. Just to follow up, are you really sure all genetic clusters self-identify with race? Africa is a pretty huge place so I'd doubt there would be homogeneity in IQ or other characteristics. I hazily remember hearing around 10 years ago how Nigerians were the "most successful" immigrant group and had above average performance in school. I would guess that perhaps that group does not follow the same IQ trend as various other African populations.
I find it entirely rational that something like an IQ test to be influenced by experience, particularly education. There might be some ways to control for this by real tests, so you can inform if that's true. Otherwise looking to what I know from non-official IQ tests and SATs, I can say education experience should be a huge factor. Continuing with East Asian IQs which were recorded to be higher in the US and places like Japan/Hong Kong/Singapore, I think there are confounders in the US as well. My former Chinese colleagues almost all sent their kids to additional private schooling from when they're in elementary school, and I'm fairly confident they do more studying and teaching with their kids than in most other populations, on average. My guess is this confounder could be large, especially for younger ages, if that education has started.
I don't doubt the importance of a population having 1 SD difference, but I have no idea what this should motivate us to do, policy wise. If this is accurate, it means you have about 33% of normal and above IQs in that broad population. A minority, but still a ton of people. If we did want to do anything based on IQ, it would be best if we could have all individuals take an IQ test and then respond individually, letting the chips fall where they may.
Well, I've already commented in this thread, that you'd want to use a better predictor than racial average when considering regression to the mean in a particular couple. But it's still better than nothing.
Also nobody claims that IQ is 100% determined by the genes. The claim is that it's about 80% (of the variance in a given population) heritable in adults in developed countries. And the remaining 20% cannot be systematically influenced. That is, the effects of parental wealth and private schooling on IQ gradually disappear past puberty.
By definition, intelligence is the ability to solve novel problems. IQ measures that ability very well. If you start training for IQ tests they stop being a good measure. But that doesn't improve your ability to solve novel problems.
108 vs 101 — still higher than some richer countries.
99% for the blacks and whites in the US. You determine the number of clusters and they map very recognizably.
~16%, if by normal you mean average white.
Absolutely. But that is currently illegal.
Doing less harm would be a good start, since some policies are based entirely on denial of race and sex differences. I think Charles Murray has policy suggestions in his books. Here are two YouTube interviews with him: 1, 2.
Good info and reasoning. Given the tendency for these topics to get derailed I've not seen some of these points before. I tend to think you're right, in general, but I do find it important to note exceptions on this topic.
This conversation reminds me of hearing that Norway and some other countries had declining IQ, which is obviously a motivational reason to pay attention to this field - to address my own question from before.
Just a comment on the genetic clustering pic linked, I am unsure the clusters shown are of a sufficient resolution to conclude anything. To clarify my earlier point, I wasn't doubting the conclusions of stronger similarity in racial groups for genetic markers, or something. I think within those groups there are subgroups that can vary within each other, probably a lot. Prior maps I've seen show big differences among European groups, yet here Europeans are almost almost identical. And nearly visually the same as Middle Eastern groups, such as with Palestinians. I did a quick search and the IQ there is 85 (couldn't get the peer reviewed(?) study by Lynn that came up on the search, so I'm assuming Quora and other sources are right atm). Regardless, the link is the type of chart I'd expect from any broad genetics clustering attempt. That is, something that follows continental migrations, commonly known history, and racial groups. But it cannot exclude that there were different subclusters in these subclusters which has substantial variation. Something supporting this here.
To make an extreme example, let's say one of the subgroups from your link had a population isolated in an island that was founded with a high IQ lineage, and happened to continue in that direction (or we could say a dumb group -- may be easier to imagine). Such groups could not be visible in the type of link you showed, they'd be identical to whatever the nearest population is, unless you had a higher resolution examination. So I believe we can't exclude that intragroup variation interferes with racial generalizations, still.