Commenter and blogger destructure recently wrote on this blog:

…People from different groups who may have an individual IQ of 70 are not the same because different groups have different averages. The further away from the average one gets, the more likely it is to be the result of a defect. For example, a person with an IQ of 85 from a group that averages 100 is still within 1 stdv. There’s probably nothing functionally wrong with them or at least nothing serious. They’re just not very bright. If you go 2 stdv’s to 70 then it’s no longer an issue of being not bright. The deviation from the norm is so great that there is something wrong with them. However, a person with an IQ of 70 from a group that averages 85 is still only 1 stdv frm average. There’s nothing functionally wrong with them either. They’re similarly not very bright for their group. But you’d have to go lower, perhaps 60 or so, before you started to see the same kind of functional problems you would for someone from a group that averages 100.

To make the point, chimpanzees are often quoted as scoring from 35 to 50 on IQ tests. Yet they’re not defective.

destructure is 100% correct.  A Chimpanzee with an IQ of 40 is far more functional than a human with an IQ of 40 because chimpanzees evolved to function (in their narrow environment) with an IQ that low, and thus evolved other abilities that compensate for a lack of overall intelligence, including certain cognitive abilities as this video illustrates:

I also believe that low IQ human races tend to have certain other compensatory cognitive abilities such as relatively high social IQ, relatively high rhythm IQ or size constancy (the ability to estimate the size of an object at a distance).  Richard Lynn claims that Bushmen and pygmies have the lowest IQs of any human population but cites studies showing they have superior size constancy than whites and says “it implies that the ability may have deteriorated in European and East Asian peoples who gave up hunting about 8,000 years ago and adopted agriculture.”

What this suggests is that low IQ populations may actually be smarter when it comes to adapting to certain situations than high IQ populations , but the real test of intelligence is the cognitive ability to adapt in a wide range of environments and situations.  Brain size tripled in 4 million years of evolution to make room for more and more cognitive abilities, and increasingly general cognitive abilities (i.e. abstract reasoning) until humans had a large and flexible enough behavioral repertoire to adapt in almost any environment on Earth, and perhaps some beyond.

Commenter Mugabe writes:

black Africans today and whites in 1900 scored the SAME. AND present day Africa is A LOT shittier IN EVERY WAY than 1900 in the West.

If what Mugabe is asserting here is true, then according to the Phenotype = Geneotype + Environment model, blacks must have a higher genetic IQ than whites, because given an inferior environment, they have an equal phenotypic IQ. But is Mugabe’s assertion true?

According to scientist Richard Lynn, on a scale where the white mean in Britain is set at a 100, “studies of the most satisfactory representative samples on the Standard Progressive Matrices give an IQ of 66” for black Africans. Of course Richard Lynn’s claim is controversial, but that’s a whole other topic. For the sake of argument, let’s take the IQ 66 figure as the best estimate of today’s black Africa’s IQ.

How does this compare to how whites scored in 1900?

In one study (see figure 2) the top 10% of British people born in 1877 (by definition those with IQ’s above 120 for their era) performed the same on the Raven as the bottom 5% of British people born in 1967 (by definition those with IQ’s below 75 for their era). In other words, performance on the Raven had increased by the equivalent of 45 IQ points in less than a century! Of course it wasn’t a level playing field because those born in 1877 took the test when they were a somewhat elderly 65 while those born in 1967 took the test when they were young sharp 25 year olds, however Flynn cites longitudinal studies showing that Raven type reasoning declines by no more than 10 points by age 65. That still leaves us with 35 points to explain.

Another source of inaccuracy was that although the test was not timed for either group, those born in 1877 took the test supervised while those born in 1967 got to take the test home. This could potentially make a large difference; not necessarily because the unsupervised group would cheat, but because they would probably take more breaks since they were in the comfort of their homes. They would probably return to challenging items after they had time to relax and see those items from a fresh perspective, while those who took the test supervised in some strange room were probably more likely to rush through the tasks so they could go home. I would estimate that being allowed to take an test home improves test performance by about 5 IQ points on average, though this is just a guess.

But that still leaves a huge difference of 30 IQ points. In other words, by the standards of modern British whites, whites born in 1877 had IQs of 70 (only 4 points higher than blacks score in sub-Saharan Africa today).

Correcting the IQs of Victorian whites for years of schooling

But it’s important to note that the British born in 1877 probably completed no more than eight grades of schooling on average, while modern whites average more than 12 years of schooling, and not attending high school may reduce IQ scores (though probably not real intelligence) by 8 points. It may seem unlikely that schooling could influence a test that seems as culture fair as the Raven, but some people argue that the Raven is actually culturally biased. Richard Lynn argues that it requires basic math skills like addition and subtraction and believes the rise in education explains part of the adult Flynn Effect. At the very least, people with more schooling might be more likely to take the test from a mathematical perspective or with more motivation, confidence, and persistence. So correcting for their lack of schooling raises the IQs of British Victorians from 70 to 78.

Correcting the IQs of modern black Africa for years of schooling

Black Africans also achieve much less schooling than modern whites, however the Black Africans who are typically tested in Raven IQ studies are school children, so the years of schooling variable is already controlled. Thus their IQ of 66 can not be increased by correcting for years of schooling.

Correcting the IQs of Victorian whites for nutrition

What about the biological environment? Whites born in 1877 were 1.5 standard deviations shorter than whites today. If we make Richard Lynn’s assumption that nutrition (including disease which limits the body’s ability to use nutrients) affects IQ to the same degree it affects height, then correcting for nutrition further raises the IQs of white Victorians from 78 to 101 (an increase of 1.5 SD). So correcting for just the two most obvious environmental variables (years of schooling and nutrition) brings white Victorians up to the level of modern whites.

Correcting the IQs of modern black Africa for nutrition

Black Africans today are also malnourished as evidenced by modern West Africans being 0.8 SD shorter than modern African Americans. Correcting their IQ for this 0.8 SD deficit raises them from 66 to 78. This is somewhat lower than the average IQ of 85 for African Americans, but keep in mind that the average African American has as much as 25% white ancestry and whites average around IQ 100. Based on these stats, Richard Lynn calculates that African Americans with no white ancestry have IQs around 80.

So after correcting for very simple and obvious environmental deficits, blacks reared in the third World have the same IQs as their genetic counterparts reared in the First World for centuries.

Conclusion

This demonstrates that a simple Phenotype = Genotype + Environment model can work well for group differences, with environment defined simply as years of schooling + nutrition. This simple model seems to explain both the Flynn effect, and IQ differences between blacks in the Third World and blacks who have lived in the First World for centuries.

Commenter JS wrote:

Liberals would never respect an East Indian guy, the same with the male members of the East Asian category or a White guy from the right, conservative camp, who are all seen as enemies to the liberal establishment and their legions of black minions. It all really boils down to competition of the higher IQ groups. A lot of these individuals of these groups also dislike blacks, because they are being “propped up” without innate substance.

Liberal whites probably dislike East Asians and also South Asians because their success seemingly confirms the conservative narrative that America is not a racist country and that minorities can succeed if they pull themselves up by their boot straps.

Also, Asians and South Asians are very hard working. Liberals hate hard workers.

Also as JS is perhaps implying, Asians and South Asians compete with white liberals for elite jobs. White liberals prefer their minorities poor and dependent so white liberals can get the ego boost of being their savior. Asians and South Asians don’t need white liberals to save them and white liberals resent it.

Also white liberals probably resent the fact that Asians and South Asians are not liberal enough. Their attitude is probably “us white liberals made it possible for non-whites to even have basic rights. How dare you not vote Democrat with virtual unanimity?”

Making matters worse, as JS implies, a sizable number of Asians and South Asians don’t like blacks. In the case of South Asians, this may be because of the caste system in India which values light skin. But while South Asian racism against blacks is largely cultural, I believe East Asian racism against blacks is genetic. I believe humans evolved to hate people who are genetically distant from themselves because these have fewest of their genes. North East Asians and sub-Saharan Africans are the two most biologically distant peoples on the planet so the two are genetically predisposed to not get along.

But when white liberals see South Asians and East Asians hating on blacks their attitude is “how dare you be racist against blacks! You’re not so white yourself!”

All of these factors create tension between white liberals and East/South Asians.

Here’s a clip of white liberal Michael Moore arguing with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta. You can feel the tension even in how Moore pronounces “Gupta”.

Another example of tension between white liberals and South Asians was when Roseanne Bar was talking to Deepak Choprah on an episode of one of Bill Maher’s talk shows. Roseanne wanted to talk about the economy and Choprah started lecturing about the importance of spirituality. Finally Roseanne barked “everything you just said plus $40 could be buy me a tank of gas!”

It was clear she had no respect for his ancient Indian spiritual wisdom, especially during tough economic times.