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Why would you think convicts from Britain would
know anything about the people they destroy? Especially if they couldn't
speak the language. Would you trust an American soldier in the
second world war to describe the culture of the Japanese or even the
Germans? Perhaps you should see the movie about the
interrogation of Wilhelm Furtwangler after the war if you don't understand of
what I speak. The winners are often the ones who are the least
sophisticated. Then some academic comes along years later and uses
them or someone like Anne Coulter who has a political agenda revises history
about people like Senator McCarthy even when his abuses are well documented in
the society. My education gave me a healthy skepticism about such
things as did my family about "tests."
I've heard stupid folks in the midwest say that
Indian people had languages of just a few words and that they didn't speak much
English either. (a single Cherokee verb can have thousands
of variants and the language is verb rich.) But the ignorant
folks thought they were stupid because they were in a lower class and
therefore had fifteen or twenty word total vocabularies. I
would also point out that stupidity amongst the wealthy intellectuals is just as
hard to eradicate as amongst the other classes. Note that it was
Princeton graduates that had the highest rate of prejudice in
business against minorities of any University in America a few years
back and Jack Kennedies academics gave us Vietnam.
Reminds one of the roots of the word "barbarism." It came from
the super "intelligent" Greeks.
But how can we make such a mistake in the 21st
century. That could constitute proof in itself of a lack of
progress in human thought across the millennia. But that is nonsense as
well. Children can learn prejudice in a generation and
ignorance is the beginning of every human individual. If they
write or some academic listens to them and sticks it in his paper then we have
prejudice and ignorance codified as knowledge. I prefer the Aztec
solution to such things. If a person represented themselves as
Tlamatanime (an educated person) and they weren't, it was a capital offense for
education was the future of the nation. They too were brutal,
intelligent and stupid about the emotional life of people with so much blood on
their hands but they were not good at tolerating nonsense that hurt their own
for short term gains. Physical tools are often refined or done away
with when language becomes extremely complex. For example the
Chinese who tied their hands and feet were not very good tool users but they
were erudite and rich and could make others do it for them.
This is the perfect example of Harry's "people doing what they need with the
least effort." But Keith's need for novelty always kicks in and
people develop their minds according to the necessities. I believe that it
is more an issue of complexity.
Nothing is complex if you learn how to do
it. Complexity diminishes in the first generation after newborns
come if they are taught. What happened in Russia under the
Communists and with your ancestors can be explained just as well by the
studies of educational psychologists too numerous to mention, but you could
start with Piaget. That does not mean that I believe that
psycho-metric research is unimportant. My father's doctor's degree
was in psycho-metrics and I found that their tests were both self-limiting
and that they had an investment over time in proving that the low end stayed
low. I would call that prejudice. It effected my Dad but
emotionally he knew better since he finished his degree in his
fifties. Education can diminish experience and the psycho-metric use
of math is particularly pernicious that way. I certainly have
found that Charles Murray, (Herrnstien's dead) has over time self-limited
his thought and that the remaining thought has constituted prejudice rather than
science. That type of prejudice is tolerable when talking about
archeology but when taken into the present it is a source of bigotry which I
reject. That is, to my way of thinking, a political use of
science.
Keith mentioned big brains.
According to that theory the most brilliant people on earth are the Dinke and
the Osage since they are giant peoples. They were also
developed as nomads not in schools or cities. The Dinke are still
herdsmen. The smallest heads have been amongst peoples with poor
diets in cities and ghettos like the Chinese and the Jews. Some
things are just too obvious to answer but they still are written in books and
people believe them. Even intelligent Englishmen. But
that doesn't make it true. I think the answers to people's
potentials are to be found elsewhere. Tests, on the other hand,
can be used to judge how we are doing at educating the young or whether we are
abusing minorities in order to keep them in the service
sector. But as indicators of potential they are miserable.
Their advocates sound more like rich folks justifying their wealth than
scientists exploring an area of human knowledge. The possibility of
abuse, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, is just too great in a sector that
benefits from proving people's intellectual value. I find the same
true of doctors who are "for-profit". They benefit too much
when I am sick to be trusted to keep me healthy. Wall
street bankers claim their expertise qualifies as "human value" as
well. Is there no shame amongst these people or did all of their
mother's drink when they were pregnant?
Ray Evans Harrell
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 6:28
AM
Subject: Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was
Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
Great stuff and a good debate, Keith, but I don't
think we can come together on this. As good Talmudic scholars or
whatever, we should now go our separate ways. As I'm sure you've
gathered, my own view is that manifest intelligence depends very much on what
people have to do, how many of them there are, and what they have to work
with. I keep thinking of the poor Tasmanians Jared Diamond describes in
"Guns, Germs and Steel", cut off completely from any cultural diffusion, down
to some 4,000 people at the time of European contact and having lost pretty
well all of the skills they had when they were cut off from the Australian
mainland some 10,000 years ago. I doubt very much that they would have
done well on the Stanford Binet. They were easily wiped out by
Europeans, mostly convicts from Britain.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 2:49
AM
Subject: Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was
Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
Ed,
This is becoming as complicated as
two Talmudic scholars arguing against each other -- except that, in older
days, the exchanges would be months apart. With this new device, we have the
chance of solving the world's problems in double-quick time. I'll extract
pretty drastically, whatever the colours, in what follows:
At
16:51 27/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Keith, what I'm referring to is the migration of Jews eastward from
Western Europe because of persecutions and expulsions (see: http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/christians&jews.htm
). These migrations would have begun in, probably, the 12th Century
and would have continued to about the 15th Century. Jews from Europe
would have moved as far east as eastern Poland and the Ukraine. The
Khazars ceased to exist as a distinct people in about the 11th or 12th
Centuries, and one has to wonder what happened to them. They may
have been aware of the movement of Jews into eastern Europe, and might
have tried, perhaps succeeded, in making contact and merging with
them. I have a friend of Jewish ancestry whose father came from
Saratov in the Ukraine. While he doesn't think he has Khazar
connections, he doesn't dismiss the possiblity. That's where I'll
have to leave the matter for the moment.
What I was
saying (without expert knowledge of all this) is that large scale migration
didn't occur until the 14th century when the King of Poland, impressed by
their mercantile abilities, invited them to Poland in order to raise the
economic tone of the place. Of course, the Khazar nation might also have
been the result of a mass migration from the Middle East also. Or it could
have been a collection point from pockets of Jews all over the Medierranean
area.
But let me just diverge for a point. There seems to be great
similarities between Jews and Chinese. Firstly in their respect for
scholarship (set within a highly definied Confucian culture) and secondly in
their highly family-based society (itself set in a highly self-conscious
culture). The result, I suggest, is that both cultures encouraged the
migration of individual (or single-family) Chinese and Jews when their
homeland fell on hard times. They had this enterprise because they were
bright -- and they had the psychological strength of knowing that they were
still connected to a highly defined culturfe even though they may be far
distant. Small groups of Jews seem to have migrated all over Eurasia from
about 500BC and onwards. Chinese migration seems to have occurred a lot
later -- from about 1450 when China started descending into hard times due
to the edicts against direct trade from China. In both cases in modern
times, poc`kets of Chinese and Jews seem to be found in every city and
sizeable town in the world -- wherever there's a possibility of a business.
I think this is quite remarkable in the case of both of these
groups.
(EW) thinking
about numbers and other abstract concepts, others may have to think about
getting out to the potato field or cotton patch as fast as they can if they
want to live another year. The former would probably do very well on
standardized IQ tests while the latter would likely fail.
Keith: Yes, I sympathise
with your point but will the future of manking depends upon our skills in
growing potatoes or at other things? If it's other things, then IQ scores
are probably the best method yet of selecting people who perform them
well.
I'm afraid I find this a little too close to social Darwinism for
comfort.
For myself, I abjure these sorts of labels.
"Social Darwinism" as originally conceived is rightly to be dead and buried.
Bringing that label back into modern circumstances -- particularly in the
context of a much more detailed knowledge of genetics is not helpful.
My own family may be illustrative of what I'm trying to
say. As Central European peasants they were potato growers
generation upon generation all the way down. In Canada, in its first
generation, the family produced doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, teachers
and, alas, even economists. We have many friends from the Caribbean
here in Ottawa, all bright and competent people. Just a few
generations ago their ancestors were plantation
slaves.
I didn't remotely suggest that those who have
been potato growers through force of circumstances did not retain sufficient
ability to flourish in times of more opportunity. However, I would be very
doubtful whether your ancestors were nothing but potato growers generation
after generation. Two or three centuries of this and there would almost
certainly have been selective effects towards physical strength and away
from mental ability.
(EW)
I must say too, that Lynn and Vanhanan are, in my opinion, highly suspect
researchers. In praising the book, here's what one source says about
them:
- IQ and the Wealth of Nations is a
brilliantly-conceived, superbly-written, path-breaking book that does
for the global study of economic prosperity what The Bell
Curve did for the USA. Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen examine IQ
scores and economic indicators in 185 countries. They document
that national differences in wealth are explained most importantly by
the intelligence levels of the populations. They calculate that mean
national IQ correlates powerfully—more than 0.7—with per capita Gross
Domestic Product (GDP). National IQs predict both long-term and short
term economic growth rates. Second in importance is whether the
countries have market or socialist economies. Only third is the
widely-credited factor of natural resources, like oil.
High praise indeed, except that putting anything in the same box as
The Bell Curve immediately raises
suspicions.
Once again, there's a lot of labelling
and prejudice going on here (not yours but mainly the temper of the last 50
years in sociological/philosophical circles. I wouldn't damn Lynn and
Vanhanen on the basis of similarity to Murray's Bell Curve.
Adding to these, the
praise is extended by one Phillipe Rushton, a Canadian who achieved some
noteriety a few years ago by publishing material similar to that of Lynn
and Vanhalen. One of his findings, if I recall correctly, was an
inverse relationship between IQ and the racially determined length of the
penis.
His main finding, however, is that IQ has a
very high correlation with brain size when comparing, say, Africans, Chinese
and Caucasians. Nobody has been able to refute this. It is palpable even
though it's uncomfortable. The degree of antipathy towards people Rushton
and Murray is reminiscent of the hunting of witches in the medieval days.
Fortunately, they have broad backs (selected from other professionals who
haven't had the courage to face the onslaught!) and also they are quietly
supported by the professionals in evolutionary science.
Other reviewers are not as kind to Lynn and Vanhalen. Thomas
Volken published the following abstract in the European Sociological
Review:
- “Recently Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen
have presented evidence that differences in national IQ account for the
substantial variation in national per capita income and growth. This
article challenges these findings and claims that, on the one hand, they
simply reflect inappropriate use and interpretations of statistical
instruments. On the other hand, it is argued that the models presented
by Lynn/Vanhanen are under-complex and inadequately specified. More
precisely the authors confuse IQ with human capital. The paper concludes
that once control variables are introduced and the models are adequately
specified, neither an impact of IQ on income nor on growth can be
substantiated.”
I
simply don't accept the Lynn and Vanhalen thesis. Applying a single
standardized test to a large, economically and culturally diverse, variety
of peoples does not make much sense to me.
I have
reservations about the Lynn and Vanhalen thesis, too. Firstly, I think that
most of the figures for most of the smaller countries are based on much too
low numbers tested and there's too much interpolation (of those countries
for which there are no tests). But for the larger groups in which there's
been a great deal of testing (e.g. Caucasians, American-Jews, Chinese, etc)
I think the IQ scores can be relied upon as meaning something (that is, a
strong correlation with ability in life generally). Secondly (as in my long
screed of the other day), I think there's a much greater cultural
contribution to IQ development in the individual (in the post-puberty to 25
year age) and, correspondingly, a much large contribution of culture in the
development of economies.
I therefore agree with your first sentence
below.
Ever so many factors enter into human productivity and
development, especially, as the foregoing points out, the development of
human capital. At the most basic level, however, if people are
treated like dogs and forced to live like dogs, they will behave like
dogs. If they are treated like human beings, they will behave fully
human.
I agree in spirit with your latter two
sentences, but let's not confuse these emotional sympathies with what I feel
are very real differences in abilities (physically and mentally) between
large population blocs which have lived in entirely different environments
for thousands of years.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Bath,
England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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