An ideal study of IQ and environment might be as follows:
Find 300 Bushmen babies being raised as hunter-gatherers and randomly assign them to three groups of 100 Bushmen each:
Group 1: Gets sent to the United States where they are raised by billionaire Ivy League PhDs and the full-blooded children of these adopted Bushmen are also raised by billionaire Ivy League PhDs.
Group 2: Remains in their hunter-gatherer environment, but gets weekly visits from doctors and nutritionists to make sure they, and their babies have the exact same First World medical care, health and nutrition as Group 1, but these health professionals are not allowed to speak to them in English or explicitly educate them in anyway; their only role to make sure the Bushmen reach their biological potential which means doing regular health checkups and supplementing any nutritional deficiencies, especially in pregnant women. If the health professionals do their job, we’d expect the second generation of group 2 to have the same birth weight, infant head circumference, adult height, and perhaps adult MRI brain size as group 1’s second generation.
Group 3: Remains in their hunter-gather environment with no intervention at all.
Several decades later, the children of all three groups would be administered the Wechsler intelligence scales (in English for group 1, translated into a Khoe language for groups 2 and 3, though for the Vocabulary subtest they would still have to define English words, none of which they would have heard before, but they would define them in their native Khoe)
If this were done, I would expect the subtests of the Wechsler could be divided into the following categories:
Type 1: subtests where the group 1 > group 2 gap far exceeds the group 2 > group 3 gap. These would likely be subtests like Information and Vocabulary which requires exposure to Western culture which groups 2 and 3 lacked.
Type 2: subtests where the group 2 > group 3 gap far exceeds the group 1 > group 2 gap. These would be subtests where exposure to Western culture and education matters much less than the physical development of the brain. These would likely include some of the hard-core Wechsler performance subtests where you have to use your hands to quickly fit objects together in a spatially competent way.
Type 3: subtests where all three groups would score relatively equal. These are subtests where neither the cultural nor biological environment matters much unless it’s pathological. Skeptics would deny type 3 tests are even possible, but perhaps some of the Wechsler auditory short-term memory subtests might be type 3.
We don’t have to give the three subtest types names, but it’s tempting to use adjectives like crystallized, achievement, and culturally loaded to describe type 1 subtests, and fluid, aptitude and culture reduced to describe types 2 and 3. The difference between 2 and 3 being that the former show more phenotypic plasticity, but for biological, not cultural reasons.
The Raven Progressive Matrices is a test which showed enormous phenotypic plasticity over the 20th century (the Flynn effect) even though it was intended to be culture reduced. This can be partly explained by the fact that Flynn effect is partly biological (Richard Lynn noted that improved nutrition has increased brain size since WWI) and by the fact that the Raven is partly cultural, as James Flynn has argued.
If even the Raven is culturally biased, is a truly culture fair psychometric test even possible? If we define culture fair as tests where group 1 and group 2, but not necessarily group 3, score equally, these might be possible, but I think the reason the Raven failed was a) it’s boring nature made it too sensitive to test motivation which is a culturally sensitive variable, and b) as James Flynn implied, it relied too much on hypothetical thinking: people in less modern cultures only apply their intelligence to clearly defined practical looking problems with tangible solutions.
Some of the Wechsler auditory short-term memory subtests or hands-on spatial subtests might come a lot closer to culture fair than the Raven did.
Pumpkin Person 
[redacted by pp, nov 12, 2017]
group 1 would score higher on every subtest by a country mile.
group 2 and 3 would differ very little.
…and the engine just gleams…
problem in the US is there’s no test for drinking, but mj stays in the system so long there is legal discrimination against mj users.
the only other canadian stock i own is WEED. i bought mettrum and it was acquired by WEED.
if WEED has the first mover advantage it should be as big as diageo eventually. that means its stock price can increase by 20x.
mj can’t be branded as well as tobacco or liquor?
i doubt it.
so WEED may be the AMZN or AAPL of the next decade in terms of returns. i’ve made so much already, but i’ll buy more.
WEED = Canopy Growth, btw.
WEED.TO.
canada was america’s supplier for booze during prohibition. also lots of pot from canada for some reason.
group 1 would score higher on every subtest by a country mile.
Do you think it’s impossible to create a psychometric test for which this wouldn’t be the case?
Tha defeats the purpose of an IQ test. If you are testing for cognitive skills the IQ tests do that a bit. If you do well on an IQ test you tend to do well in most things needed i civilised societies or even most agricultural type heritage societies. Trying to test for ‘pure brainpower’ is a waste of time.
Tha defeats the purpose of an IQ test. If you are testing for cognitive skills the IQ tests do that a bit. If you do well on an IQ test you tend to do well in most things needed i civilised societies or even most agricultural type heritage societies.
You don’t think cognition was required before the rise of civilization? Hunter-gatherers don’t have to think, learn, know, invent and understand?
that is…
if you can imagine going into a 7-11 and asking for a branded mj cigarette then WEED is the best investment imaginable.
i imagine such will be the case eventually.
but if a cop stops me for a burnt light and i roll down the window smoking tobacco he’s doesn’t arrest me.
there’s a good reason for that. mj does impair driving. tobacco doesn’t. it may even improve it.
market cap:
WEED = 4b CAD
diageo = 84b USD
BUD = 233b USD
phillip morris = 161b USD
[redacted by pp, nov 12, 2107]
he was from oklahoma and he wasn’t an injun.
died at age 56 from huntington’s.
…i’ve gotta cut price on salvation and sin…
By the late 1940s, Guthrie’s health was declining, and his behavior was becoming extremely erratic. He received various diagnoses (including alcoholism and schizophrenia), but in 1952, it was finally determined that he was suffering from Huntington’s disease,[15] a genetic disorder inherited from his mother. Believing him to be a danger to their children, Marjorie suggested he return to California without her; they eventually divorced.[91]
kerouac was also diagnosed with SCZ.
the biggest cult today is the free market free trade cult.
the PRC’s leaders are wiser.
the majority opinion of westerners is that the PRC isn’t communist, “socialism with chinese characteristics” is just a euphemism for capitalism.
they’re wrong.
of course this doesn’t exactly make the chinese look like geniuses.
it’s just that as chinese they are able to see how westerners’ cults.
so the chinese have been most influenced by marx and Shakyamuni Buddha as much as confucius and lao-tse.
but europeans have been influenced by the bible. a foreign ideology.
…so long it’s been good to know ya…
anyone who bought bitcoin a few years ago is rich now.
[redacted by pp, nov 12, 2017] their riches as the result of their genius.
more like stupidity.
dealwithit’s present i won’t drink. i’ll put it in my crawl space next to the bodies. then sell it 10 years later for 10x as much.
many ‘acts of genius’ are just gambling and therefore are not reproducible.
in jack’s day “schizoid” meant SCZ. it doesn’t mean that today.
Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1942 and in 1943 joined the United States Navy, but served only eight days of active duty before arriving on the sick list. According to his medical report, Kerouac said he “asked for an aspirin for his headaches and they diagnosed me dementia praecox and sent me here.” The medical examiner reported that Kerouac’s military adjustment was poor, quoting Kerouac: “I just can’t stand it; I like to be by myself.” Two days later he was honorably discharged on psychiatric grounds (he was of “indifferent character” with a diagnosis of “schizoid personality”).[29]
Schizoid personality is one of the 3 personality clusters of pre schiz people. The other two are schizotypal and paranoid type. Didn’t know this about Kerouac. Interesting.
Women in their 60s can be trained to do backflips and 80 years olds can do handstands just by training their balance and muscle.
Speed reading if taught by a professional can train the eyes to move in the right ways to absorb the information in a book just as fast as Kim Peek.
I have a low energy problem and I have a social problem (I do not go to school, I do not meet people my intelligence level). The energy problem is a health problem. My Diet, my mood fluctuations. Tiredness. Motivation. Nutrients deficiencies.
At the moment I have moderately high energy. So much so I may be able to real one of my books. Does low energy lower my intelligence? Pumpkin says no. I can only go by how I feel. I cannot read my book and it is not a computer addiction thing either because even on the computer some things are just so difficult for me to do because of energy I do not bother.
One factor is that energy in my brain may not be equally distributed thus I can do some things and not others. (my IQ subtest play a factor also)
But plasticity can only be so much before it hits its limit. Training only goes as far as the person can be plastic. A more plastic person will benefit more from training faster.
My plasticity levels are distributed throughout my brain. This effects coordination and thus the areas I am capable of excelling and those I cannot or would take time to train. I am sure that training in a specific area of the brain would increase overall coordination and thus (g). Neuroscience will in the future learn how to target the specific regions of the brain to increase intelligence perhaps with video game training.
This garbage is an IQ test? Is this really science?
a deer has a cloven hoof? a horse doesn’t. the answer is 1. isn’t it? but it could also be 6. i’m not a hunter, but 1 seems right.
i looked it up. i was right. lucky.
You care if I make a guest post some time in the near future?
That would be great! Go for it!
When will you let me guest post?
Thank you!
Don’t forget genetic confound
Anyone have an opinion on why Jews are marrying Chinese people en-masse lately?
Are they jumping a sinking ship with America because of the rising alt-right and putting their eggs in the China basket?
Is it for genetic reasons?
I’m hovering on looking for a Chinese wife, but their physical genetics are incredibly inferior to my own and I don’t want to make a bad decision and end up with short, low-testosterone sons with tiny penises for a tiny, almost insignificant trade-off in intelligence.
I could probably find a Caucasian with better smarts genes than a Chinese anyway. A cousin (tradition in MENA) or some other clever person.
The only reason I feel uneasy about not picking Chinese is because I don’t know the precise reason the Jewish hive-mind is mass-marrying Chinese.
”The only reason I feel uneasy about not picking Chinese is because I don’t know the precise reason the Jewish hive-mind is mass-marrying Chinese.”
also because they are the least promiscous? (men and women)
I’m going to talk about three things in my comment: i) IQ test construction; ii) IQ test validity; and iii) how Ravens is biased towards hunter-gatherers and therefore the tests don’t test their ‘IQ/intelligence’ as well as people who grew up in an urban setting.
i) IQ test construction: IQ tests are constructed with the assumption that we know what IQ tests test (we don’t) and with the prior ‘knowledge’ of who is or is not intelligent. Test constructors construct the tests to reveal presumed differences between individuals.
It is assumed that 1) IQ scores lie on a normal distribution (they don’t: https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2017/10/29/most-human-performance-traits-do-not-lie-on-a-bell-curve/ ) and 2) few natural bio functions conform to this curve. Another problem with IQ test construction is the assumption that it increases with age and levels off after puberty. Though this, like the other things, has been built into the test by choosing items that an increasing proportion of children pass. You can, of course, reverse this effect by choosing items that older people do well on and younger people don’t.
Further, they keep 50 percent of items that children get right while keeping a smaller proportion of items that children get right, which, in effect, presupposes who is or is not intelligent.
ii) IQ test validity: Another problem with IQ tests are its validity. People attempt to ‘prove’ its validity with correlating job performance success with IQ scores, though there are huge flaws in doing that. ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/ ) IQ tests are not like, say, breathalyzers (which are calibrated against a model of blood alcohol) or white blood cell count (which is a proxy for disease in the body). Those two measures have a solid theoretical basis and underpinning; as blood alcohol rises, the individual had increased alcohol consumption. The same is true for white blood cell count. The same is not true for IQ tests.
One of the biggest measures used in regards to job performance and IQ testing (people attempt to use job performance to attempt to validate IQ tests) is supervisor rating. However, supervisory ratings are hugely subjective and a lot of factors that would have a supervisor be said to be a ‘good worker’ are not variables that entail just that job. I have experience with that. Years back when I worked in a warehouse I saw all the people who, for lack of a better term, sucked, get raises and get reviews while I saw the other workers who did well hardly get anything for their hard work. This is anecdotal, sure, but it’s one example of people said to be ‘good at their jobs’ when there is a lot more going on there than actual job performance.
IQ tests have no validity like breathalyzers and white blood cell count, and the so-called ‘culture-free’ IQ test Raven’s Progressive Matrices is anything but.
iii) I specifically asked Dr. Thompson about Raven’s being culture-fair. I said that I recall Linda Gottfredson saying that people say that Ravens is culture-fair only because Jensen said it:
Yes, Gottfredson made that remark, and I remember her doing it at an ISIR conference.
http://www.unz.com/jthompson/the-worlds-iq-86/#comment-2055640
So that’s one thing about Ravens that crumbles. A quote from Ken Richardson’s book Genes, Brains, and Human Potential: The Science and Ideology of Intelligence:
It is well known that families and subcultures vary in their exposure to, and usage of, the tools of literacy, numeracy, and associated ways of thinking. Children will vary in these because of accidents of background. …that background experience with specific cultural tools like literacy and numeracy is reflected in changes in brain networks. This explains the importance of social class context to cognitive demands, but is says nothing about individual potential.
In other words, items like those in the Raven contain hidden structure which makes them more, not less, culturally steeped than any other kind of intelligence testing items, like the Raven, as somehow not knowledge-based, when all are clearly learning dependent. Ironically, such cultural-dependency testing is sometimes tacitly admitted by test users. For example, when testing children in Kuwait on the Raven in 2006, Ahmed Abdel-Khalek and John Raven transposed the items “to read from left to right following the custom of Arabic writings.” (Richardson, 2017: 99) (Source for quote from Richardson: https://www.scribd.com/document/242023229/Normative-Data-From-the-Standardization-of-Ravens-Standard-Progressive-Matrices-in-Kuwait-in-an-International-Context )
Finally, we have this dissertation which shows that urban peoples score better than hunter-gatherers (relevant to this present article):
Reading was the greatest predictor of performance Raven’s, despite controlling for age and sex. Attendance was also strongly correlated with Raven’s performance. These findings suggest that reading, or pattern recognition, could be fundamentally affecting the way an individual problem solves or learns to learn, and is somehow tapping into ‘g’. Presumably the only way to learn to read is through schooling. It is, therefore, essential that children are exposed to formal education, have the motivation
to go/stay in school, and are exposed to consistent, quality training in order to develop the skills associated with improved performance. (pg. 83)
http://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=anth_etds
“is a truly culture fair psychometric test even possible?”
No. There will always be something involved that makes it culture un-fair.
So although the symbols in a test like the RPM are experience-free, the rules governing their changes across the matrix are certainly not, and they are more likely to be already represented in the minds of children from middle-class homes, less so in others. Performance on the Raven’s test, in other words, is a question not of inducing ‘rules’ from meaningless symbols, in a totally abstract fashion, but of recruiting ones that are already rooted in the activites of some cultures rather than others. Like so many problems in life, including fields as diverse as chess, science and mathematics (e.g. Chi & Glaser, 1985), each item on the Raven’s test is a recognition problem (matching the covariation structure in a stimulus array to ones in background knowledge) before it is a reasoning problem. The latter is rendered easy when the former has been achieved. Similar arguments can be made about other so-called ‘culture-free’ items like analogies and classifications (Richardson & Webster, 1996). (pg 292-292)
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.110.9895&rep=rep1&type=pdf
In sum, i) IQ tests are constructed with the assumption of who is or isn’t intelligent just on the knowledge of how the items are prepared for the test; ii) there is no test validity to IQ, job performance and IQ testing suffers from a whole slew of problems; and iii) Ravens is not culture fair, on the contrary. Ravens, perhaps, is one of the most culturally un-fair IQ tests out there. IQ tests are also constructed by people in a narrow social class.
What physiological process is does IQ mimic in the body (hat-tip Mugabe)? If it is a physiological process, surely you’re aware that physiological processes *are not* static. IQ is said to be stable at adulthood, what a strange physiological process, right guys? Let’s say for arguments’ sake that IQ really does test some intrinsic, biological process. Does it seem weird to you that a supposed real, stable, biological, bodily function of an individual would be different at different times?
One more thing. Two researchers tested 2-17-year-olds at different intervals and found that the average difference between a child’s highest and lowest scores was 28.5 points.
In this sample of teenagers, researchers noted that teenagers varied by minus 18 to plus 21 with 39 percent of the sample showing a statistically significant change.
Click to access 10.1038%40nature10514.pdf
And if you want to explain the FLynn Effect, then just look at the expansion of the middle class.
Great comment!
I’ll respond in more detail later today or tomorrow.
I have Asperger’s and I found Raven’s matrices extremely difficult and I did very poorly. How do you explain that?
You’re one person. I don’t know you. Other factors affect Ravens scores than cognitive power or g or GCA or GMA or whatever else it’s called nowadays.
wow, yes. i do extraordinarily well on ravens because i am a programmer. these kind of ‘logic’ puzzles are what i do for a job. these tests are incredibly knowledge dependent which i have been saying for a while now.
HOWEVER.
iq clearly can measure general intelligence to a degree.
Of course they’re knowledge dependent, which is my point. A culture-free IQ test doesn’t exist because all IQ tests in a way have culture built into them.
“iq clearly can measure general intelligence to a degree.”
Not really.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959354314551163
Reread my comment.
do you believe australian aboriginals are equal in intelligence to caucasians? do you feel the disparity in IQ results represents the intelligence of the two racial groups?
Pumpkin I’d like to do a guest post on why people have to visit obscure blogs run by psychotic peeople to get information on HBD. Is that possible?
So why was RR unbanned? Did he make a contribution to the Pumpkin Person Foundation.
As far as I’m concerned the PP Foundation is a slush fund.
why was he banned?
Pumpkin is a corrupt african dictator. Its so obvious. ‘Legacy of colonialism’. Oprah addiction. Constant references to Bill Gates saving his family. So obvious.
Its so embarrassing what Obama is doing now or has become since the presidency. Theres a palpable sense his presidency was a rank failure I think. I dunno. I just sense people would speak about it with fervour if there was any shard of success there, especially with ‘evil Hitler’ Trump there. Jimmy Dore mentioned obama intervened in the DNC election to get a corporate gimp like Perez ‘we have our values’ elected. Last week he took another bribe to make a ‘speech’ for 500k. Just tawdry.
The whole Democrat party has kind of stumbled into the dead zone of politics – a pretty pure open manifestation of the neoconservativism – unending wars on mena people, social debauchery and economic cronyism. Its kind of hilarious. You would have to be psychotic to vote for that or even profess to being like that.
it was obvious at the last dem convention and when hillary said, “america never stopped being great.”
trump is controlled by his jewish cabinet members apparently.
he runs as a populist and the first two things he tries to do are make healthcare even worse and lower taxes on the rich. something’s not right. or i’ve been misinformed. he should’ve started with immigration and draining the swamp.
it seems likely the dems will gain seats in 2018.
The jews have a very fucked up sense of morality or aesthetic. Although people say Stanley Kubrick was the greatest director I would argue to things:
1. Only jews are allowed to be directors in Hollywood, unless you are very gifted like Christopher Nolan.
2. Because of this fact, many gentiles have to do movies abroad where the budgets aren’t there.
3. Hollywood sources the best scripts for their jew directors.
This is similar to the ‘why are jews the best comedians’.
And will be similar to the ‘why are jews the best harvard graduates’. The harvard issue is very toxic in particular and something the alt right should mention a lot more.
all your points are wrong, james cameron, mel gibson, chris mcquarry (of the last two mission impossible films) are directors who have had very good scripts. Also the rossi brothers who directed the movie captain america civil war. There are a lot more.
russo* brothers?
”If even the Raven is culturally biased, is a truly culture fair psychometric test even possible? ”
What is culture for you*
Cognition often follow personality wich follow culture wich follow biology + environment [place]…
Pattern recognition = if you are *more* verbally capable than spatially capable so you will likely to follow [not necessarily to grasp] verbal patterns than spatial ones…
More your assymetry between verbal and non-verbal capabilities more you will overlap one above other to interpret, and not necessarily to understand/and to interact with, the reality you are.
I’m strongly directed to the verbal approach over non-verbal but it doesn’t mean i’m poor in heuristics.
Jews versus Europeans fight IS a fraticide battle…
Iq tests don’t CORRELATES only with educational outcomes [[[and… and with socio-economic outcomes]]] because it was DERIVED from this….
My race is
COMBOLOID…
alec waugh, evelyn’s brother, said the first duty of a wine is to be red. the second is to be a burgundy.
i say the first duty of scotch is to be single malt. the second is to be an islay. pronounced EYE+LUH.
as can be seen here, initially it was believed AIDS was like the flu, something one caught and recovered from. …the mortality rate could turn out to be as high as 80%…. in reality is was 100%.
it was also believed that the disease developed at most 1 year after infection. in reality symptoms developed after 10 years on average.
there was also a lot of fear that it would spread to the general population. in reality straight whites were never at risk.
it’s an example of hysteria, like global warming. politically motivated hysteria.
it’s an example of hysteria, like global warming. politically motivated hysteria.
You really are Lion’s bitch.
And Chomsky’s bitch. And Gould’s bitch. And Marx’s bitch.
Basically any Jewish man you bend over for.
very funny when pumpkin calls [redacted by pp, Nov 12, 2017] people jew slaves
I don’t like to say stuff like that, but I just find it ironic that a self-proclaimed Nazi seemingly gets almost his entire worldview from Jewish intellectuals, and so viciously attacks alt-right friendly Gentile intellectuals (i.e. HBD scholars).
the truth is the truth.
doesn’t mean i’m not pro-[redacted by pp, Nov 12, 2017]
i’m a nazi peepee.
bantu are capable of some beautiful stuff
it’s just perplexing why one of my university lecturers, who is nigerian with a doctorate and is very academically accomplished, just /seems/ stupid.
it isn’t his accent.
i just can’t sense the same feeling of ‘sharpness’ from him as i’d sense in a white person or an asian.
he also seems to tell a lot of nonsense stories/have a blurred line between the worlds of fantasy and reality, even though he is academically accomplished.
maybe this is what i mean by lack of ‘sharp’ness.
a lot of strange theories, too. subscribes to theories on the basis that they ‘can’t be proven wrong’ rather than on the basic that they can be proven correct.
maybe he is knowledgeable but just low-iq.
i’ve met very clever ethiopians who i respect as equals. who are sharp.
i’ve never seen or met a clever west african, ever. only ‘educated’ ones. not people that are clever/philosophical even with no education/knowledge on a subject. i haven’t even seen an example of a clever west african in the media.
do they exist?
To Feenopy.
See this guy, seems to be a pretty good social commentator.
http://newswirengr.com/2015/05/04/cheta-nwanze-i-find-that-i-am-not-igbo-i-am-not-nigerian-igbo-was-created-in-1947/#
https://ynaija.com/cheta-nwanze-nnamdi-kanu-will-succeed/
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/opinion/156402-will-never-revolution-nigeria-cheta-nwanze.html
At least compared to people you describe, tCheta comes of as someone who actual became a man behind his degree.
I don’t know about you, but in any country where you have nationhood compromised.
Phil78, Fenoopy is no longer commenting here.
continued
….compromised by ethnic feuds and perceptions generations long, it take some real intuition and courage to speak out against them when they are the norm, even so much as applying it on yourself.