I have always doubted the historical consensus that Africans sold their own people into slavery. The whole point of slavery is that you’re forced to work without pay. If whites were powerful enough to force millions of blacks to work without pay, they would have been powerful enough to take those workers from black countries without having to pay for them in the first place.
Also, if they were going to pay for slaves, then why go all the way to Africa to get them? The whole point of going to a less technologically advanced region to get slaves is that you can take the slaves by force.
Lastly, if you believe in HBD (which many people dismiss as racist pseudoscience), the average white American is about 15 IQ points higher than the average black American and that gap would have perhaps been 20 points before white genes entered the U.S. black gene pool in large numbers. A 20 point IQ gap (if it reflects a genuine gap in intelligence) is so large that whites would have been dominant enough to simply help themselves to whatever resources they wanted in sub-Saharan Africa (including human ones) without having to pay anyone anything. In fact if whites really had to pay for slaves, it calls HBD into question because it implies a business deal among equal races, not an advanced race enslaving a more primitive one.
Since writing that, I came across a historical figure namedJohn Hawkins, a white man who did indeed catch his own black slaves.
In 1562, he set sail with three ships (Saloman, Jonas, and Swallow) travelling down the African coast as far as Sierra Leone, he captured people and enslaved them as he went, taking around 300 people in total.[5] From there he sailed to the Caribbean, he did not have permission from either Spain or Portugal to trade with their colonies so he sold his enslaved people in Isabella, Puerto de Plata and Monte Christi – places where the local authorities did not enforce government trade embargos.[5] The enslaved people were traded for pearls, hides and sugar.[7][8]
The trade was so prosperous that, on his return to England, the College of Arms granted Hawkins a coat of arms which displays an enslaved male.
Commenter Mug of Pee recently confessed that by the age of 13, he achieved the same level of philosophical understanding as RR achieved as an adult.
Mug of Pee’s Wechsler IQ is not known but he did take the WISC-R at age 10. On the WISC-R his lowest score was Digit Span (scaled score 10) and his highest score was Vocabulary (which should have been 19+ judging by his adult vocab).
Although the WISC-R norms were over a decade old, I did not correct for Flynn effects because Digit span and Vocabulary are not especially sensitive to them.
Assuming his mean subtest score was equally between these two extremes (a big assumption) it was 14.5 which equates to a full-scale IQ of 132.
Going by college admission tests, some might say his actual IQ is as high as 160 however commenter pill and I have noticed he lacks common sense, so let’s be conservative and go with his estimated WISC-R score.
Now commenter RR says his own IQ is 108 (tested in high school). If we go by his SAT scores, the figure might be as low as IQ 65 however RR has not been very specific about his SAT scores.
Now adult mental age is defined as 16 because that’s the age beyond which we stop getting smarter.
But out of statistical convenience, adults like RR, who have an IQ of 108 were assigned mental ages of 17.28 because that’s 108% as high as the adult average set at 16.
Now if Mug of Pee achieved the same understanding of philosophy at 13 as RR achieved as an adult, Mug of Pee’s IQ is 13/17.28 = 133, thus corroborating my estimate of his childhood WISC-R scores of 132.
Traditionally, there have been two types of twin studies used to estimate heritability. The first is the classical twin study. In this, you take the phenotype correlation of MZ twins raised together and compare it to the correlation of DZ twins together. Since both types of twins shared the same home and same womb, the greater phenotypic similarity of MZ twins must be caused by their greater genetic similarity. And since MZ twins share twice as many segregating genes as DZ twins, we double the difference between the correlations to estimate heritability.
One criticism of this method is that even though both MZs and DZs share the same womb and home, the former are still more environmentally similar because of the unique experience of being an identical twin. If so, heritability will be overestimated.
The second type of study is taking the phenotypic correlation between MZ twins raised apart and using this as a proxy for heritability. The problem with this is even MZ twins raised apart shared the same womb and are often not raised far apart enough to prove much.
It occurred to me though that the perfect study would combine both methods and compare MZ twins raised apart with DZ twins raised apart. Now if the MZ twins are more alike, you can’t say it’s because of the unique experience of being an identical twin, because they don’t know their identical twin. And you can’t say it’s because they shared the same womb or were not raised far enough apart because the same applies to the DZ control group.
It’s absolutely BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!
To brilliant for me to be the first person to have thought of this.
Indeed I vaguely recalled the famous Minnesota study of twins reared apart (MISTRA) also having data on DZ twins raised apart. I recalled that MZ twins raised apart correlated about 0.75 on IQ and thus IQ had a heritability of 0.75. Well, I’ll just subtract the correlation of DZ twins raised apart from 0.75 and double the result (since MZ have twice as many common segregating genes) and I’d have myself a revised heritability estimate that was beyond reproach.
Bouchard and colleagues never published their full-sample DZA IQ correlations, even though they published full-sample DZA correlations for personality, “special mental abilities,” and most other MISTRA-studied psychological characteristics. To this day, they have prohibited independent researchers from inspecting the closely guarded MISTRA raw data. I show in my new article that the likely reason that they did not publish, share, or make available their full-sample DZA control group IQ data was that—based on the near full-sample DZA IQ correlations that were published in 2007 and 2012—the results would have revealed their failure to find a significantly higher MZA group versus DZA group mean correlation for any of the three IQ measures they used. An “important first step” requirement in the process of determining whether genetic factors influence IQ scores is finding that the MZA correlation is higher than the corresponding DZA correlation at a statistically significant level. The researchers bypassed this required step in their 1990 Science study, most likely because the hidden results failed to confirm their pre-existing belief that IQ was (strongly) influenced by genetic factors.9 Their strong genetic biases, it seems, led them to omit, bypass, and suppress their DZA IQ correlations in order to obtain the desired results.10
So it seems this excellent study was actually done, we’re just not allowed to see the results.
There seems to be a belief among some in the comment section that genetic effects are not (primarily) additive. By additive, we mean that by adding the gene, we will add to your phenotype; for example Steve Hsu estimates that replacing 100 negative height variants in your genome with 100 positive ones will add a few inches of height. That’s not to say that everyone with a given genotype will have the same phenotype regardless of environment, but rather it’s to say that good environments combine with good genes in an additive way; like a rising tide that lifts all boats without changing their relative heights.
However some are obsessed with Gene X environment interactions. That is gene A might add 1 inch if you’re in China but it will subtract 1 inch if you’re in Brazil. I don’t deny that such interactions exist. For example the Tarahumara of the Mexican highlands had very little exposure to agriculture and thus never evolved an ability to process refined carbs. So in their native lands, their genetics adds very little fat compared to whites reared in the same environment, but when they live in the United States, it adds hundreds of pounds of fat compared to American whites. So it’s not a case of a rising tide lifting all boats without changing their relative heights. In this case the rising tide (U.S. diet) lifts Tarahumara weight several times more than it lifts white weight. Tarahumara go from equal or maybe even leaner than whites when both races are raised in the wild, to several times fatter when both races are raised in a modern industrial society.
There are also gene X gene interactions (epistasis) where the effect of a given gene depends on other genes it its nexus. An obvious example is eye colour where having an allele for blue eyes only causes blue eyes when combined with another allele for blue eyes, but results in brown eyes when combined with a brown eyed allele.
These examples notwithstanding, many human traits, especially complex polygenic traits, are overwhelmingly additive. An obvious example is black people have darker skin and kinkier hair than white people, regardless of whether the two races are raised in America, Europe, Africa, China, or even Mars! There is no genes X environment interactions that alters that ranking.
People with Y chromosomes (on average) grow up to be much taller, stronger, faster, and hairier than women, regardless of whether they’re raised in India or Britain, so no gene X environment interaction. And regardless of whether they’re South Asian, white, Bantu, Pygmy, Dutch or Downs syndrome, so no gene X gene interaction either.
During the 20th century, the heights of both men and women increased dramatically all over the developed World, but that man > woman height gap remained similar. Again, the Y chromosome is an additive constant independent of what the environment adds. Similarly, ethnic differences in IQ have held constant in the United States over the 20th century, even though the average IQ of all races has increased quite a bit (see the Flynn effect).
People with a third chromosome on the 21st pair tend to be 50 IQ points lower and many inches shorter than their normal peers, regardless of race or continent, so again no interactions. Only additive independent effects.
In fact so independent are the effects of certain genes that they have similar effects on genomes and environments as disparate as humans living in the city and mice running through the grass. The FOXP2 gene is associated with language in humans. Humans with impaired FOXP2 genes struggle with words, syllables and sounds.
So what happens when you put the human version of FOXP2 in mice?
“There seems to be a change in vocalization — they squeak in a different way,” observed Nobel Prize winning geneticist Svante Paabo.
If the same gene can add vocalization skills to creatures separated by 65 million years of evolution, don’t tell me genes don’t have additive effects.
In similar experiments, scientists took the glowing gene from a species of jellyfish living in the ocean.
They found it had the same independent effect on everything from sheeps and rabbits living in fields to monkeys swinging from trees. Can’t wait for the first glowing person!
If genes can add the same effects across wildly different genomes in completely different environments, then surely they can be additive across different kinds of people living in our increasingly homogeneous global village.
So I’ve been watching youtubers interview Steve Hsu. The first interview I saw was done by some Israeli, the second one I watched was by a guy of South Asian descent, and the third was some white guy who seemed to think he was Buddha.
Steve made a lot of important points, some of which I’ve discussed before.
When Steve first entered this field he feared that traits like height and IQ would be too non-additive to decode and too pleiotropic to edit. Pleiotropy is when a genomic variant affects more than one seemingly unrelated phenotype, for example one theory is that high IQ kids wear glasses because the genes for IQ also cause myopia.
Luckily, genetic architecture is overwhelmingly additive and with over 3 billion base-pairs in the genome, pleiotropy is not that bad.
The additive nature of the genome has been long understood by animal breeders and was formally explained in the famous Fisher Theorem in the 1930s. Put simply, phenotypes that are caused by additive genes are favored by natural selection because they’re easier to pass on. That’s because we get a random sample of mom and dad’s genes, so if a particular trait requires an interaction of several genes, it’s unlikely we’ll get all of them so what good are any of them? It’s thus much better to have every gene (genomic variant) having at least a small effect, independent of other genes in its nexus.
At least for white people living in the West, Steve can predict your height from your DNA with a correlation of r = 0.64. That’s actually quite incredible considering he’s limited to only common genetic variants (who knows how much additional variance there is in rare variants and non-additive ones). How high will the correlation get when the whole genome becomes cheap enough to sequence in huge numbers?
Unfortunately the correlation drops when he tries to predict height in South Asia. Let’s say you have a gene that causes you to like milk and milk makes you grow tall. This gene will help predict your height in the West but perhaps not in India where milk is scarce so maybe stuff like that is why the correlation declines.
Of course it could also be that races differ in genetic architecture but Steve assumes they are the same (not sure why this should be the default assumption since we know, for example, whites and East Asians have different genes for white skin)
If they are the same, then Steve needs some international samples to force the machine learning to find truly causal equations that transcend culture and I would like to try these equations on ancient DNA to find out whether the decline in height (and brain size) during the Holocene was genetic or environmental.
Right now Steve can only predict IQ (within countries) with an accuracy of around 0.4 (he says) but that’s only because in the age of wokeism, it’s virtually impossible to sequence large samples of people who have taken quality IQ tests. He can see the accuracy trend-line is still rising as sample size increases, unlike his height predictor which already has such large samples that it has plateaued.
Once IQ predictors become as good as height, we’ll see a massive increase in average IQ and height as rich couples will use surrogate mothers to produced 100 fertilized eggs and only the top 1% from each couples’ eggs will be chosen.
I feel bad for my nieces and nephews (and RR’s baby) because they’re about to become part of a genetic underclass. Already 10% of Denmark babies are born through in vitro insemination. Within the next 30 years, those who are not will find themselves six inches shorter and 30 IQ points dumber than the youngest adults. And on top of that they might also be more ugly and less healthy. It’s even conceivable that life span will increase to 300 years.
Already the pace of technological progress has been rapid over the last hundred years, despite the fact that genetic IQ has been static or declining. Now just imagine how fast technology will progress when cultural evolution is combined with artificial high speed biological evolution.
Just when I had given up on Jimmy Dore, he redeems himself by interviewing the BRILLIANT and BRAVE Whitney Webb.
I’ve been singing this girl’s praises since before it was cool and it’s great to see the rest of the internet finally catching on.
In an age where legacy media only tells half the story, and social media is is teaming with QAnon crap, Webb is one of the most important journalists on the planet. She asks the questions legacy media wont dare ask, but has the intelligence, critical thinking, and research skills to find actual answers.
Interestingly, this is now the second interview where she name checks Bob Rubin (who one of our commenters has claimed is a major power player).
See 31 minute mark.
One thing I like about Webb is she doesn’t just focus on Epstein’s sex crimes, but also looks into financial and foreign policy impact. Apparently he was a financial bounty hunter, helping the super rich hide stolen money and also helping their victims recover it.
My guess is Epstein’s IQ was around 145. Smart enough to entertain Bill Gates (IQ 170), yet still dumb enough to relate to Trump (IQ 120?).
In the below video HBD vlogger Edward Dutton explains the politics of autistic people.
He agrees with the stereotype that they are more likely to be libertarian. He says this is because they like systems (markets?) and lack empathy. I hope he means cognitive empathy, because unlike psychopaths, they don’t lack emotional empathy.
I would propose a third reason which is they fail to predict the degree to which corrupt people will exploit the lack of government regulation.
On the other hand Daniel Seligman was likely a libertarian (based on his criticism of David Wechsler’s grasp of economics) and he was anything but autistic. He was the most lucid written word communicator I’ve ever seen in the HBD-o-sphere and I highly recommend his book to newbies who want a crash course on the whole IQ debate.. On the other hand he was Jewish so may have had ethnic reasons for being libertarian.
Dutton also claims that autistics tend to be alt-right. If by alt-right he means the QAnon nutjobs, I would tend to agree, but the Steve Sailer alt-right is politically savvy.
The largest study ever of American ethnic IQ differences in a representative sample is the Coleman study. Here we saw 5 different ethno-racial groups compared at multiple ages on 5 different mental tests. The study involved 645,000 students from 4000 public schools. All test scores were expressed using a scale where the Americans on the whole average 50 with a standard deviation of 10.
Because American Indians and Oriental Americans come from non-English homes I decided to use the non-verbal test as the most valid measure of general intelligence. And because the environmental inequality between these races compounds every year like compound interest, I decided to compare them in the first grade before environment has had much time to cause differences.
The other reason for using the non-verbal test is it consists of conceptual problems like figure series which are neither verbal nor spatial but purely abstract and thus a pure measure of general intelligence that is not significantly biased towards verbal or spatial thinkers.
I wanted the scores to be expressed as IQs using white norms so the white mean of 54.1 was equated to IQ 100 and the white SD was equated to 15.
I don’t in fact know the white SD on these tests but historically the white SD is about 97% as large as the American SD so I assume it was 9.7.
Using these parameters, we get the following IQs:
Oriental Americans: 104
White Americans: 100 (by definition)
American Indians: 98
Mexican Americans: 94
Puerto Ricans: 87
The American Negro: 83
Estimated score of the American pure Negro: 78*
What these numbers suggest is that when anatomically modern humans evolved in Sub-Saharan Africa about 200,000 years ago, we had an average IQ of about 78, however leaving the tropics to survive the cold ice age caused massive natural selection for IQ. Indeed by the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, commenter Melo discovered that brain size in Europe had reached 1512 cc (60 cc higher than it was before humans left Africa).
Assuming a within-sex, within ethnic brain size standard deviation of 91 cc, and assuming a brain size IQ correlation of 0.4, this 0.65 SD increase in brain size implies a 0.65/0.4 = 1.63 SD increase in IQ (24 points). Not all that different from the 22 point IQ gap between white Americans and the estimated IQ of full-blooded African Americans.
The fact that there’s virtually no IQ gap between white Americans and American Indians suggests human intelligence (like human brain size) peaked at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum.
Then as Native Americans headed South, the warm hospitable climate required less intelligence and we see a rare example of backwards evolution, thus explaining why despite white admixture, the Mexican Americans score lower than their indigenous cousins in the U.S..
Puerto-Ricans, like Africans Americans, are hybridized blacks but with slightly more white admixture, thus explaining why they score a bit higher too.
Meanwhile the incredible scores of Oriental Americans is not at all explained by selective immigration. Indeed in the 1960s, most Orientals were descended from railroad indentured laborers and thus, if anything, were below the average of their home countries. Rather, the high East Asian IQ can be explained by Northern Siberia being the coldest (and thus most cognitively demanding) place modern humans ever lived in large numbers
*estimated by assuming American blacks are 75% whites and thus dividing their deviation from whites by 0.75.
Technically there’s just one race because all humans are part of the African clad which is why you often hear the cliche “we’re all Africans under the skin”. Nonetheless, there are three main morphologies corresponding to major evolutionary grades: Negroids (the first four populations pictured), Caucasoids (the next two, splitting off Negroids) and Mongoloids (the last two, splitting off Caucasoids)
One can seen how Rushton would have looked at trees like this and became convinced evolution is progressive. As the tree goes from left to right, the haplogroups become younger (although we could orient it so goes from right to left) and descended from more splits. At the bottom of the tree we have the bushmen who are believed to have absolutely colossal sexual characteristics (consistent with Rushton’s theory that less advanced populations are more r selected).
[The following is guest post and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pumpkin Person]
It has always puzzled me that many atheistic “rationalists” are hostile towards so-called hereditarianism; it seems that an ounce of consistency and statistical intuition suffice to appreciate that purportedly amoral, purposeless physical forces alone could not beget a secular “human equality.” While one can reasonably object to over-indexing on hereditarianism, mere inquiry into its being a partial explanation for intergroup differences in such a thing as cognitive ability often arouses the hysterical outcry of supposedly dispassionate Darwinists.
To any anti-hereditarian physicalists ordained to the Church of ad hoc Sentimentality, I am curious: If not “divine intervention,” what gave rise to equal distribution of cognitive strengths between, say, men and women – or, moreover, between ethnic groups evolving for tens of thousands of years in reproductive isolation? Was it a lucky break? Are quanta omnibenevolent? Their egalitarian developments with regard to Mankind sacrosanct, questioned only by blasphemers just asking to be flogged?
Pumpkin Person 