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.

Sadly, I could not find the data anywhere.

And then I found this article by Jay Jospeph:

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.

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.

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.

I really love this Y chromosome tree found here.

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).

A better view of the haplogroups is seen here:

[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?

So 2023 began with the death of legendary broadcaster Barbara Walters who passed away quietly in her posh New York apartment at the freakishly old age of 93, on Dec 30, 2022

As the first woman to co-anchor the network news, she is praised as a trailblazer for women in broadcasting as she clawed her way to the absolute top of the New York elite. Like George Soros and Allan Greenspan, she’s part of the generation of American Jews who replaced the WASPs as the ruling class.

Fellow Jew David Wechsler would have been a kid in a candy store testing Walters. Despite a speech impediment perhaps genetic (her greatest secret was a retarded sister), she would have scored high as a kite on Verbal IQ especially Comprehension subtest (she had insight & wisdom) but she would have scored perhaps low on Performance IQ thanks to her sister’s genes.

Jackie’s genes

Before retiring from TV, the ladies of The View, the show she created, honoured her historic career. Even though she was surprised by luminaries as great as Hillary Clinton, it wasn’t Oprah.

For wouldn’t it have been great to have been honoured by the most iconic worshipped, charismatic & most powerful woman on the planet.

wouldn’t it be nice to claim her as part of your legacy.

one can dream.

and then it happened. Out of the corner of the stage, the Queen of the World walked out to surprise Barbara

The crowd went wild & Barbara went into shock

Packing a 150 IQ, Oprah took over the show, shifting seamlessly from prepared speech to improvised dialogue without missing a beat. After generously plugging a network special on Barbara’s career, Oprah introduced a long line of women in media who each thanked Barbara for paving the way.

It was the most amazing tribute I have ever seen and virtually the last time Barbara would be seen. Like so many who live so long, she would be diagnosed with dementia but had enough intelligence to isolate herself in her gorgeous apartment, so that this special day would be the last thing we’d remember of her incredible life.

slowly her incredibly high verbal IQ would slip away as she found herself turning into her retarded sister Jackie,

oh sweet innocent Jackie

her only sibling….

Jackie

her greatest secret…

jackie

Her greatest love and deepest shame

Jackie

If only there were a God so the two sisters could reunite in Heaven

Barbara died peacefully in her sleep surrounded by loved ones..probably other women from New York’s Jewish community

In the end it’s your own people who have your back

There is a distinction between what is naturally selected and what is mind selected. That which survives survives. It is a tautology and therefore true. That which exists exists.

rr redefines what fitness is. Fitness is fitting. The environment has vacumes where organisms can survive in. The best fit survives. If it does not fit it does not survive. Fitness does not mean superior. Cavefish are blind yet they fit into their environment. If it fits it fits otherwise it does not fit and dies before reproduction.

The problem with deductionists like rr is they redefine words so that their arguments are always correct. (like fitness and selection)

balls are square.
a basketballs is round, not square.
therefore a basketball is not a ball.

see what I mean?

Deductionists play word games using logic because that is their psychology. F*** evidence and common sense. In their minds validity is above soundness.

Minds do not select organisms. Organisms either fit or don’t fit. Reproduce or don’t reproduce. That is natural selection as defined by Darwin. Variation either helps hinders or is neutral to fitness. It is why you find cacti in the desert but not in the artic. It is why whales but not sharks live in the arctic surface waters. Warm-blooded animals can fit in more places than cold-blooded animals and that is why you find them there.

Redefining words is helpful for winning arguments but it is not science.

Minds as defined by rr is immaterial. (cannot solve material problems/abstract problems because it cannot touch them physically)

Minds, as defined by science, is a problem-solving mechanism innate in the brain. Both abstract and concrete. You can touch problems physically. (interact with them physically)

Phycology is the same. Take cocaine or weed and tell me that is not a physical reaction you are experiencing. The ADHD meds they gave me along with the antipsychotic and seizure meds physically changed my brain so I no longer have anxiety.

Deductionists will tell you that the physical and mental are separate by redefining words but in all reality, their psychology is very much the result of the orientation of their psychic energy (libido). Energy is physical so in reality their energy flows in the direction which causes them to be deductionists in the first place. Well, the opposite flow causes others to be inductionists.

When you realize that the psychology of mind is simply the direction energy flows in the brain system then you understand why people are different. It is these differences that characterize a person’s psychology because they can be observed and are not the results of unobservable immaterial substances.

If I poke your Amygdala in the right spot you will become angry, in another spot happy. Rats that have been genetically engineered to have human glucose metabolites outperform non-engineered rats in rat intelligence tests.

A human brain is a causal model of reality that simulates a hypothesis of what is possible and then selects the option that is most beneficial to it. This requires nothing immaterial. What it does require are the frontal lobes to inhibit wrong actions and to have a backup plan. And to monitor if both plans (the current plan and backup) meet the criteria for achieving the goal. If something does not work try something else in accordance with how you know reality works.

Mate selection in humans works by humans seeing desirable traits in their mates. Again these are observable, not immaterial. So what is desirable? What helps you survive. A conscious selection is still based on a judgment so by the design of the brain (its pattern) selection will occur based on how well a brain is able to judge survival qualities. For example, a k-selected person will select a k-selected person to mate with and reject an r-selected individual. Their brain is designed to favor this difference. Not designed by “God” but by their genes that shape the structure of their brain.

Looking at what this all means is that different brains direct energy in different ways. This is an attention mechanism. The attention mechanism shapes how we build our causal model of reality. Because attention can be structured differently so to patterns, in reality, can be understood better or worse by the structures that accommodate them. Such is when mental manipulation occurs. The ability to abstract is a structure that coordinates with itself to simplify what a pattern means in relation to other patterns. The symbol is the ultimate abstractor. In language, we use signs to signify the meaning of something else. Together the human brain’s mechanisms of attention abstract patterns in such a way as to find new meaning.

Meaning as such is the attention we place on patterns based on brain structure. Intelligence in humans and creatures beyond the human is more than shallow quantities but is in the abstract nature of meaning lower concrete systems cannot understand and are blind to because they lack the attention mechanism that would generate a causal model of those abstractions.

In conclusion, it is brain structure that directs attention. And Intelligence is based on modeling reality with its brain structure.