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Readers of the New York Times have long known that there might be genetically based ethnic differences in IQ, but few people appreciate that nutrition also plays a huge role in IQ. For example, thanks to malnutrition, British whites in the 19th century had real IQ’s around 76 (on modern norms), though this was spuriously pushed down to IQ 66 by lack of schooling (see the Flynn effect). By comparison, in his book Race Differences in Intelligence, scholar Richard Lynn reports the following IQ’s for 10 major populations:
North East Asians: IQ 105
Europeans: IQ 99
Arctic peoples: IQ 91
Southeast Asians: IQ 87
Native Americans: IQ 86
Pacific Islanders: IQ 85
Non-white Caucasoids: IQ 84
Sub-Saharan agriculturalists: IQ 67
Australian aboriginals: IQ 62
Sub-Saharan hunter/gatherers: IQ 54
How much of these scores were affected schooling? Probably not much because virtually all the samples were school children. A major exception being sub-Saharan hunter’gathers, but Lynn estimated their IQ largely by comparing them to equally unschooled neighboring agriculturalist who score IQ 67 with schooling. Since the Bushmen scored about a dozen points lower, it was reasonable to assume that with schooling, Bushmen would score in the mid 50s. Although IQ tests are supposed to measure native ability, few tests are 100% culture fair so it’s necessary to control for schooling when comparing disparate cultures.
So if schooling did not affect these scores, what about nutrition? Although Lynn concedes that malnutrition adversely affects the IQ’s of third-world peoples, no attempt was made to correct the IQ’s for this effect. However on page 184, Lynn provides a table showing the prevalence of malnutrition for various geographic regions. The table lists several measures of malnutrition (i.e. percent underweight, percent wasted, percent stunted, percent anemic) and averaging across the different measures that are provided, implies that as of 1996, malnutrition afflicted 30% of Sub-Saharan Africa, 14% of the Middle East & North Africa, 45% of South Asia, 21% of East Asia & Pacific, and 16% of Latin America & Caribbean. Elsewhere in the book he claims that 25% of Australian aboriginals are malnourished.
I estimated that for each percentage of the population that is nutritionally deficient enough to be proclaimed malnourished, the average IQ of the population is lowered by 0.43 IQ points. This estimate is based on the fact that Lynn notes that African Americans with virtually no white admixture have IQ’s 13 points higher than their genetic counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of whom are malnourished. Thus 40 multiplied by 0.43 lowers a population’s IQ 13 points below its potential. So correcting the IQ’s of all the ethnic groups for the level of malnutrition in the regions that they live, gives the following:
Northeast Asians: IQ 105 (no corrections, they live in first world countries)
Europeans: IQ 99 (no corrections, they live in first world countries)
Southeast Asians: IQ 96 (corrected for 21% malnutrition in East Asia & the Pacific Islands)
Pacific Islanders: IQ 94 (corrected for 21% malnutrition in East Asia & the Pacific Islands)
Arctic people: IQ 91 (no corrections, they live in first world countries)
Non-white Caucasoids: IQ 90 (corrected for 14% malnutrition, since they mostly live in the middle east/North Africa)
Native Americans: IQ 89 (many live in Latin America which has 16% malnutrition, others live in first-world North America, I split the difference & corrected for 8% malnutrition)
Sub-Saharan agriculturalists: IQ 80 (corrected for 30% malnutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa)
Australian aboriginals: IQ 73 (corrected for 25% malnutrition mentioned by Lynn)
Sub-Saharan hunter/gatherers: IQ 67 (corrected for 30% malnutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa)
Pumpkin Person 
Unfortunately it takes a high IQ to deconstruct this bullshit. An IQ higher than anyone’s in the HBD-sphere.
I wasn’t gone that long. How’d the following fare?
It should’ve been obvious destructure did not score > 1560 on the SAT.
I wasn’t gone that long. How’d the following fare?
Readership is down from the stratospheric levels I reached on Friday, but still okay considering I moved over to a blog that has been virtually inactive for months.
Interesting that south asia has higher malnutrition than subsaharan africa.
Yes it is interesting. When I corrected the IQ’s of non-white Caucasoids I was thinking mostly of Arabs and thus used the middle eastern malnutrition rates, but had I done a correction specifically for India, the result would have been striking.
On the other hand, I wonder how accurate the malnutrition stats are. For example, children are considered malnourished if they’re extremely short and skinny (stunted and wasted respectively). It could be that people are just genetically smaller in some regions and are incorrectly counted as malnourished. The assumption is that well-nourished children from all regions are the same size, but that seems unlikely.
I believe the nutrition or malnutrition is more the result of IQ, and less the cause of it. But this still does not change the fact that in equal nutrition conditions, the average IQs will get closer to first world average IQs.
We are assuming that the optimal nutrition is of first world countries, but we could also potentially increase first world IQs, by optimizing further their nutrition.
In this case, we lack the information for the minimum “limit” where the nutrition does not effect the IQ anymore.
My question is, by correcting IQs by malnutrition, do you “really” increase their average scores? Because, after correction we will have a different world mean IQ, and different standard deviation. I just tried to calculate from your correction, without taking into consideration the population, new values, after new world mean and standard deviation. Maybe it is useless without considering the population. I just tried to keep the previous mean and previous standard deviation, applied to your corrected values.
North East Asians: IQ 104,8
Europeans: IQ 96,6
Arctic peoples: IQ 85,6
Southeast Asians: IQ 92,4
Native Americans: IQ 82,8
Pacific Islanders: IQ 89,7
Non-white Caucasoids: IQ 84,2
Sub-Saharan agriculturalists: IQ 70,5
Australian aboriginals: IQ 60,9
Sub-Saharan hunter/gatherers: IQ 52,6
We are assuming that the optimal nutrition is of first world countries, but we could also potentially increase first world IQs, by optimizing further their nutrition.
In this case, we lack the information for the minimum “limit” where the nutrition does not effect the IQ anymore.
Good point. Correcting for nutrition does not tell us what IQ’s would be under optimum conditions, it only tells us what IQ would be under first-world conditions existing contemporaneously. But even the first-world does not have optimum nutrition yet as evidenced by the fact that height and IQ scores keep improving in many of them (see the Flynn effect). The term “malnutrition” is relative, not absolute. People are malnourished relative to first-world conditions at the same time.
My question is, by correcting IQs by malnutrition, do you “really” increase their average scores? Because, after correction we will have a different world mean IQ, and different standard deviation.
But IQ is never calculated relative to the worldwide distribution of test scores, the reference group is always a specific population. In the case of Richard Lynn’s numbers, those IQ’s are calculated relative to the test scores of Northwestern Europeans, thus raising the scores of third-world peoples does not affect the mean or standard deviation.
But you make an excellent conceptual point that I’ve thought about myself in other contexts. For example I’ve often been concerned about the fact that education boosts IQ scores, but if you corrected everyone’s test scores for their education (within say a Northwestern population), you would simply raise the mean IQ and shrink the SD, and after converting the new mean and SD back to 100 and 15 respectively, you’d probably end up with everyone having virtually the same IQ’s as they did before the corrections.
Europeans have very diversified peoples and i think would better create a range between higher iqs and lower iqs among human populations. Europeans for example, American-europeans have 104 average iq. Probably, northern europeans have higher average iqs. Mediterranean europeans, in general, seems like southeastern asians. They tend to be cline, when northern europeans are ”pure” (or more pure) races as well northern asians too. The criteria to analyse and compare iq scores among human races can’t be ambiguous.
Very predominantly europeans (northern Iberia, french native whites, all central-west Europe native populations, northern Europe, less Saaami people and look with caution to finish people, mixed ou old europeans?, all central Europe, northern Italy, less southernized norther italians, ”pure” lombardians et all, eastern european, less ex- Yugoslavia and Balkans in general, Northern Russians, caution too)= 97-107 (???)
Predominantly europeans (Most part of Iberia, less Algarve and Andalucia, Most part of italian peninsula, southern eastern Europe, Western Russia, Balkans) = 90-100 (???)
Predominantly non-white or non-european caucasoids (lebaneses, native northern african populations, ”pure” araboids, turkish, etc) = 85-95 (??)
…
Only suggestions.
Finnish and not finish, sorry.
Santoculto,
According to Richard Lynn, Northwestern Europeans have an average IQ of 100 and Southeastern Europeans have an average IQ of 92. It’s unclear whether the IQ’s of southeastern Europeans should be corrected for malnutrition, but the average IQ of 99 for all Europeans excluded Southeastern Europeans because Lynn felt they were part-Middle Eastern.
Well, in my perception of behaviour, southeaestern europeans look less ”turkish-ish” and more slavic-ish, more introverted, cold, strangely individualistic-collectivistics, with two moral standards. Nordic and native eastern european mix produce this overlaped standard moral behaviour.
I remember Rushton was asked, “How can it be that the mean IQ makes of Bushmen makes them retarded? How can they have any society at all?”
His response wasn’t convincing to me. He said that one might think of the average Bushman as never getting beyond a white teenager.
Whatever.
Agnosticisim really is applicable here.
1. IQ tests normed in the developed world when given to people in the developing world is a category mistake and scientism of the worst sort.
2. When HBDers speak of differences in ability they mean differences observable in the developed world and many of these peoples simply haven’t been assimilated. In the US, a developed country, most blacks still retain a black accent similar to white southerners.
And that suggests an interesting test of the biological reality of the difference in the mean IQs of blacks and whites. Namely, it should be that the farther blacks are from other blacks the higher they score.
There are a few American states with so few blacks, that no “black-ness” can take hold. This includes Maine, where Jayman lives.
Another anecdote:
After being fired for being a slow learner at one job the next job I was given the Wonderlic. I made the highest score the history of the company. Really! But a few years later my score was beaten…by a black guy. He was light skinned at had been a Navy Seal. He liven in the country and had horses. So he was as un-black culturally as I was. He was a very good employee. He now heads government sales.
His response wasn’t convincing to me. He said that one might think of the average Bushman as never getting beyond a white teenager.
It’s actually much more extreme than that. An IQ of 54 (corrected for schooling) would imply the putative fluid ability of a five year old. Of course they would have more life experience than a five year old, and would likely have compensatory special talents evolved for their way of life like the ability to more accurately judge the size of targets from a distance (an ability other humans have lost in the last 100,000 years). Living with good nutrition in their traditional hunter/gatherer life style, they would be IQ 67 (corrected for schooling), which would be like an 8.5 year old.
To put this in perspective, whites in Victorian England probably had IQ’s around 75 (corrected for schooling). In other words, they were mentally a nation of modern Western 10 year olds (though genetically they were like college graduates, IQ 113)
.
1. IQ tests normed in the developed world when given to people in the developing world is a category mistake and scientism of the worst sort.
2. When HBDers speak of differences in ability they mean differences observable in the developed world and many of these peoples simply haven’t been assimilated.
I think it’s very useful to correct for the causal role of schooling when comparing the IQ’s of different cultures (even on putative fluid tests), because school teaches people to sit still, focus, listen to instructions, concentrate, and try their best.
Differences in ethnic IQ is due to assortative mating: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3444291/ http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2014105a.html
The macro-ethnic IQ differences are caused by ancestral climate & ancestral population size and NOTHING ELSE!
It took more IQ to survive in a cold climate than a warm one & large populations (i.e. agriculturalists) had greater odds of generating rare IQ enhancing mutations
Iq is a adaptation of modern world, probably (or not). When cognitive transcendental collective enphasis changes, changes cognitive profile of populations. To seems ethiopians made many poets. Supposedly, poetry is need higher iq-intelligence, or necessarily not, need capacity to ”metaphorized” normal sentences.
Poetry lose its influence and social prestige today because cognitive transcendental collective enphasis changes in western world. Poetry today is ”useless”, but in the past it was way to write scientific, religious and philosophic literacy, look to bible and many other religions.
To seems, many autistic people have lower iq but they tend to be, usually, smarter.
santoculto,
I disagree that autistic people are smarter on average, but I do think they tend to come from smart families.
Why?
They tend to be a super specialist. Well, they aren’t good to leave a functional life in modern world, but one of ”symptoms” of autistics is ”obsessive passion of non-social interests”, this is one of most characteristic traits of higher intelligence, intelectual passion.
santoculto,
Autistics tend to come from nerdy families and nerds tend to have high IQ’s and obsessive relatively unsocial interests, but being the nerd is not the same as being autistic. The difference is autistics have a disability (executive dysfunction; the inability to mentally switch gears and shift perspective). You combine this with the fact that they are from nerdy families and nerds have unsocial personalities and low social IQ (relative to overall IQ), and autistic people struggle greatly to see things from the perspective of their colleagues and peers and are thus quite socially handicapped.
By contrast, in my theory, schizophrenics have the same basic disability (executive dysfunction) but they come from extremely cool primitive families (the opposite of nerdy). These families have high social IQ (relative to overall IQ) but when you combine a high social IQ with executive dysfunction (ability to shift perspective) you have trouble switching between real mental states and imagined mental states, and start hearing voices and imagining conspiracies.
Yes, but they tend to be very smart than neurotypicals. I think. They are most socially dysfunctionals but they have superb cognitive compensations. Autistics generally are extreme nerdish people. Seems obvious nerd people is in the border of autism spectrum.
Autistic dysfunctionality is not always dysfunctional in their roots, is contextual. If you changes world in a giantic sillicon valley, autism will turn only a majority behavioral, psychological phenotypes and lose its dysfuncionallity.
I think you’re conflating autistic with extreme nerdiness. There’s a difference.
Spectrum, you have, typical autism, autism’s, asperger and high functioning, autism broader phenotype- extreme nerdiness… nerd, etc…
Nerd guy have more ”autistic” traits and ”autistic genes” than extroverted people.
Nerds have high IQ’s. if nerds were mildly autistic, then severe autistics would be geniuses. Instead they have low IQ’s. So obviously it’s too simplistic to say nerds are mildly autistic.
Makes more sense to say autistics are low functioning nerds
Sorry, but is not always that ”conspiracy theory” will be wrong. Many schizo spectrum people can have overmentalized facts, but again, not always will like that.
Most of the Native Americans I know seem kind of tall, but on the other hand, fetal alcohol syndrome is said to be a big issue
The native americans I met were probably not very representative. I don’t know what they’re like on reservations
The term negroid is no longer often used, but back when it was used, it was sometimes divided into 2 major sub-races: congoids & capoids (bushmen)
Even australoids were sometimes considered negroid
Pumpkinperson ”Nerds have high IQ’s. if nerds were mildly autistic, then severe autistics would be geniuses. Instead they have low IQ’s. So obviously it’s too simplistic to say nerds are mildly autistic.
Makes more sense to say autistics are low functioning nerds”
Nope, your determinism is wrong here. Is also too simplistic to see the world like many linear spectrum, because inside on all spectrum, you will have complexity and many curves you will find, not only one.
Autism is a extreme phenotype of ”smart personality” or ”non-socially personality”. People or socialize or analyse. ”Autistics” is in the end of spectrum. Geek could be in the other end of ”predominantly non-social personality or smart (scientific-existential) personality” (multiple perspectives, we have multiple probabilities to produce correlations, causations and spectrum). In the middle of ”classic autistics” and ”geeks”, you will find the high functioning nerds. Autistics could be characterized as low functioning nerds, but, still early to conclude it, because depend what attributes you are comparing. Many geniuses will find in high functioning autistics and aspies. All subgroups have their healthy middle, where you have positive balance among characteristics and non-characteristics traits.
So a little autism makes you a genius but too much makes you severely retarded? Curvilinear relationships do exist, but I’m not sure how this one would work.
This would working as complexity and visualizing perspectives. My opinion, most trouble of severe autism or classic autism is the fact that sensorial sensibility extrapolated completely the limit. Sensorial sensibility is related with systematization capacity, not only in autistics, in all of us. Capacity to see details. Autistics generally not have most higher iq compared to neurotypicals, but is important to think in two things
First, ”they” (well, i’m near to be aspie or high functioning autistics) have higher discrepancy among their iq scores. Very good in some cognitive areas and very bad in others. Usually, aspies tend to have higher verbal iq and lower spatial iq, on average, while high functioning tend to have opposite patterns but with same assymmetry in general iq.
Thus, you can have a population A with iq 97, example, and a population with iq 107, but the population A have, individually speaking, greater difference. Onde of the most characteristic traits of so-called ”learning disabilities” is exactly this greater individualized difference among cognitive competences.
Second, the greater sensorial sensibility have adaptation problems and possible advantages, independent of iq level.
IQ works cross sectionally, but longitudinally – over decades and generations – IQ scores have very little to do with g.
It works mainly downward – a person with very high intelligence may score low on IQ tests for all sorts of reasons, including the after effects of childhood nutrition.
But I think people have forgotten that the worst nourished people on the planet until recently were East Asians – they has suck poor diets it stunted their growth tremendously. They lived on little more than rice, and not much rice. This persisted for varying length of time in different countries, but many East Asia adults included in IQ studies will have been severely malnourished during childhood.
But g is very resistant to being suppressed by malnourishment – because the brain is ‘spared’ from malnutrition (until great extremity).
We always need to remember that IQ tests are performance tests, and performance can on the one hand be practiced and improved, and on the other hand be suppressed by numerous factors. Meanwhile, g remains constant (albeit declining with age) whatever the effects on performance of practice or illness,
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What the fuuuuck…. Just saw this post because I noticed you got your IQ values for the The 3 major factors that determine the genetic IQ of a race from here. And they seem right, except that there’s no way that Pacific Islanders have genetic IQ’s of 94 based on possible IQ suppression due to malnutrition. Have you seen Samoans, Tongans, Hawaiians, and Nauruans lately?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Nauru
https://www.google.com/search?q=island+with+the+most+obesity&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=VwJQVdmZHcajsAW78YDwCw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1280&bih=667#imgrc=SQdycTp1Zm9mbM%253A%3BUFjE9daP6eqqyM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fi.dailymail.co.uk%252Fi%252Fpix%252F2015%252F01%252F22%252F24E8A74900000578-2920219-The_Pacific_Islands_and_Kuwait_are_top_of_the_global_obesity_sca-a-20_1421927999684.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%252Fhealth%252Farticle-2920219%252FHow-fat-country-nations-highest-obesity-rates-new-maps-surprise-you.html%3B962%3B833
These people aren’t malnourished. They’re overnourished!
Aw man, I wanted that last link to show up as a picture…oh well.
They’re overfed, but I don’t know if that means they’re overnourished. Calories != nutrition.
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