At 13:12 17/09/2003 -0400, you wrote:
Fascinating, Keith. How do you see, in terms of complexity and systems capacity, the effects of broad immigration into the United States?
Cheers, Lawry
Nice of you to say the above, but it may be that you're not going to like my reply. In view of the vitriol I received once before, I resolved never to mention the subject again directly on FW. But now you've asked me, I will. I'm going to talk of IQ. Bear in mind, however, that I am much in agreement with those who criticise IQ tests as being highly selective and artificial. That's as may be, but also bear in mind that they correlate highly with success in the same modern western civilisation which produced those IQ tests. They may be self-referential but they bear upon the sort of civilisation that, seemingly everybody else in the world wishes to aspire to. If anyone wants to criticise IQ tests then they'd better also criticise western society -- and ruthlessly, too -- and they'd better supply an alternative -- and a workable alternative, too.
Secondly, bear in mind that nothing has received quite as much flak as IQ testing. But, by and large, it has stood up to it. It is, without any doubt at all, mostly (70%) to do with the genes that are involved in the development of the individual brain architecture and only 30% with environment. Thirdly, traditional IQ tests correlate well with Wechsler tests which are as culture-free as tests can be. Fourthly, traditional IQ tests correlate well with mental reaction times from the simplest possible procedures which any person -- even from the depths of the Papuan jungle could take with ease.
America had a tremendous amount going for it by the 1870s or so -- a sufficient technology infrastructure mainly acquired from England and Europe, wide open spaces, lots of resources, a temperate climate with decent soils, long coast lines for trading opportunities, etc. It could do nothing else but do well. With hardly any effort it couldn't fail to be a major power in the world. It needed more people and it opened its doors to the poor and oppressed of Europe (so long as they didn't carry TB -- those who had it were sent back immediately on the same ship that brought them). By accident America cropped into the most intelligent people in Europe, the Jews, who had had enough of constant persecution and pogroms for centuries. Almost more than any other people in the world, and probably equalled only by the Chinese, they have respected scholarship. The one thing that any Jewish parents wanted more than anything else was for their daughter to marry the best Torah scholar in their neighbourhood. He might not be any use for the family business but he'd likely produce a bunch of bright grandchildren who might be. Those immigrants produced as hard a working and as intelligent a work force as any that could be imagined for a young nation. It was their children, born in America that did more for the work ethic and success of America, particularly in New York and the big cities, up to about the 1930s as any nation could have received. Furthermore, they were then followed by a smaller but even more intelligent consignment of Jewish scientists, philosophers, financiers and artists -- many of them geniuses -- who were then being perscuted by the Nazi regime in Germany and other to-be occupied countries in Europe. I needn't mention any of these -- they are household names.
So, to the mean IQ of 100 of American whites at around 1880 (that is, much the same as the average European) a crop of a couple of million or so Jews of probably a mean IQ of 106 or slightly more (I'm guessing) followed by a couple of hundred thousand or so of IQ 130+ (I'm guessing) and we have the makings of a Jewish population in America of about 6 million with a reliably tested mean IQ of 110 today (and some tests suggest an IQ higher than this). (This is a shade higher than the Chinese diaspora of 50 million in south-east Asia with mean IQs of about 105.) Now an average IQ of 110 compared the white American average of 100 doesn't sound terribly significant, but it certainly is when you look at the upper tail of the distribution because there you will find twice or three times the number of people at the 130+ level which is where *significant* creativity starts.
So look at what happens at the highest institutions of learning (and here we can throw in some Asian-Americans, too). At Harvard in the late 1990s, 20% of the undergraduates were Asians (which comprise about 2% of the population), and about 30% of the undergraduates were Jewish Americans (which also comprises about 2% of the whole population). The other half of the intake were made up from the remaining 94% of Americans.
Jewish Americans predominate at the highest levels in all American institutions where mental ability counts -- academe, art and entertainment, media, civil service, politicians, businesspeople. There's no need to be a conspiracist or to ascribe bad motives to most of them (they have their bad apples as all ethnic groups do) to say that that's where they almost automatically end up by sheer brilliance and respect for scholarship. (Also, just to mention Asians again, Asian-born and Asian-Americans write 70% of the papers in the top physics and engineering journals. Jews tend to be verbally dominant [left-brain], while Asians tend to be spatially dominant [right-brain].)
I ascribe the success of American business and science in the second half of the 20th century as very importantly due to the immigration of European Jews into America.
The mean IQs of Black Americans and Hispanics are 85 and 92 respectively, and the mean IQ of Americans as whole (all colours) is 98. Almost certainly, however, if the immigration of Hispanics continues apace then the mean IQ will decline from 98 -- according to the rate of immigration. And that's where I must leave it for lack of further information. I don't know what the differential birth rates are between American blacks and Whites, nor the immigration figures or birth rates for Hispanics. (I'm not American and I'm not terribly knowledgeable about IQ to be especially motivated to research further, though I'd obviously be interested to know the data.)
In conclusion, I'll mention one more point which I think are important. I am beginning to think that traditional IQ -- that is the measurement of mental skills and, importantly, rapidity of mental reflexes is not in itself overwhemingly important. As mentioned to Ed, there is some evidence now that frontal lobe development takes place over a much longer period than childhood and the frontal cortex is not so much concerned with specific skills but with the timely application of skills -- patience, persistence, creativity, emotional control . These, I suggest, are even more important than IQ ability alone. This also fits in with what some economists are now saying. They are now ascribing more importance to the contribution of culture upon the economic success of an ethnic group or nation. And this is under more direct political control than "raw-IQ" ever was. If there is a real respect for scholarship within a culture then it is more likely that the frontal lobes will develop more satisfactorily than in one without discipline or application of scholarship. In time, this will, of course feedback positively to the selection of high levels of the basic IQ of the rear cortex -- as was obviously the case of the Jews of central Europe from about 1400 onwards who found partners for their children with great care (as many orthodox Jews do know, of course). Modern Jews are also the first into eugenics by a persistent campaign of steadily eliminating the dreadful Tay-Sachs Disease from their gene pool.
I'm afraid I haven't touched upon systems complexity in America, but you can draw your own conclusions, I think.
Keith
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Keith Hudson
Sent: Wed, September 17, 2003 12:42 PM
To: Ed Weick
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: This sceptred compost heap (was Re: [Futurework] Education
Ed,
Thanks for this. I've read three different summaries of this same OECD report this morning!
I've just come back from a dogwalk and still dwelling on what I wrote after sending you my previous posting. What was occurring to me is that the reason for a number of the arguments we have is that our societies are much more different than we might imagine -- or at least I might imagine anyway. Time and again, I describe things going on here and I get the impression from some of your slightly nonchalant responses sometimes that you might be thinking that I am exaggerating. I also get the impression that you live in a much more laid back -- indeed much happier and less stressed -- society than here. Hitherto, I've regarded the difference as a personality one. However, during the dogwalk -- and I hope you don't think I'm being patronising here -- I think our society is more complex than yours because we have so many layers of history. Please don't think I'm trying to show off -- but consider. We were building quite complex stone buildings at the tip of Scotland and in the south of England before the pyramids were built. By 1,000BC we had probably the most complex bronze technology in the world (apart from China's), using tin from Cornwall and copper from north Wales, with, correspondingly, a very advanced mining technology (scores of tin mines stretching for miles under the sea bed in Cornwall and over 50 miles of recently discovered tunnels in north Wales from that date -- made with bone and stone tools), and with significant manufacturing areas somewhere in between (not yet discovered) to actually make the bronzes (of different blends for different purposes) and then trading the products over thousands of miles from the Baltic through to the Mediterranean. Then we've been invaded by the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Vikings and Danes, and the Normans with their advanced feudal system followed by the landowning classes. We were at the back-end of the Mediterranean Renaissance but one of the first into long-distance trading with Asia and big trading companies, the first into the Western Scientific Enlightenment and then the Industrial Revolution, and the first into the computer revolution. We are the third/fourth largest exporting country in the world -- not of products (we're mined out of almost everything we ever had by way of resources), but of a variety of services. In short, we probably have the most mature job and social structure of anywhere in the world. We live by our wits. We may not have the sheer mass, momentum or technological products that the Americans have got but I think we lead the world in the acquisition of problems, strains and stresses from all this historical/technological development. We're a well-rotted compost heap, showing extremes of anything that can be discussed in terms of job structure and society. In addition, we're also geographically small enough to have started the most comprehensive welfare, educational, social services, health and transport services in the world and now we're the furthest advanced in showing that they're breaking down -- that the welfare society is absolutely cram full of problems and we're showing them all in abundance, so much so that even a Labour government is trying to privatise as much as it can get away with (albeit in more cunning ways that Thatcher did). The only other country which has had such a complex history as ours, running through the whole gamut of every type of economic and technological development is China. I cannot think of any other with such a varied experience and with so many historical residues which are still fermenting away.
I'm very probably over-egging the pudding (once again without wishing to be patronising in any way at all) but, in comparison, Canada's (and America's) social, economic, historical, cultural problems are somewhat simpler than ours. I'm not suggesting in any way that you are personally naive, but I think that your problems can be stated (and solved) in much more simplistic terms than could be done here. However, I believe that many of the trends and problems here in England that I am writing about will come to you, too, in due course -- because we are much further on in what I believe to be the decline of the industrial revolution.
Keith
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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