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Tag Archives: ethnicity

Correcting ethnic IQ differences for nutrition

01 Wednesday Oct 2014

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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)

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Caste & IQ in India

29 Monday Sep 2014

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Blogger Alcoholicwisdom wrote on this blog:

Are there any studies on IQ differences between indian castes?

I am in strong favor of the idea that there are IQ differences between castes, of course we need some studies. In every society there are castes, classes, based on intrinsic abilities and intelligence. Nobody would accept a priest which cannot even understand basic religious subjects. Religion at that time was like philosophy which requires a high intelligence, and the smartest people were probably brahmins. The smartest jews are also from rabbi families (my belief). The priests were like scientists, philosophers of their times. Nowadays, the picture is different, as the religions lost their smartest kids mostly to hardcore sciences.

I would seriously doubt there have been any published studies on IQ and caste in India, but there’s a fabulous expert named rec1man who posted on Steve Sailer’s old blog. rec1man did the following analysis of India’s potential IQ:

25% Dalit and Tribal = 80 IQ
15% Muslim = 85 IQ
40% Backward Caste = 95 IQ
15% Upper Caste = 110 IQ
The only item missing is the 5% brahmins

…Making a worst case assumption that
Brahmin IQ is no more than Upper caste IQ , would give a brahmin IQ estimate of 110

My private real numbers are a lot higher, but I wont stir up a controversy , until we reach a consensus on average Indian iQ

Average Indian IQ = 0.25*80 + 0.15*85 + 0.40*95 + 0.15*110 + 0.05*110 = 92.75

The upper caste + brahmin segment = 20% of 1.1 billion = 220 million
at near Ashkenazi levels

Note that rec1man is obviously estimating what India’s IQ would be if India had a first-world environment, because India’s actual IQ is 82 not 93. But as I explained in my last post, India, like sub-Saharan Africa, is probably functioning 13 IQ points below its genetic potential because of sub-optimum nutrition, so a genetic IQ in the mid 90s is realistic (just keep in mind that all of rec1man’s numbers are about a dozen points higher than current phenotypes reared in India).

In other words, India’s genetic IQ distribution looks very much like the United States. The U.S. also have an average IQ in the mid-90s (97 to be precise). This may sound confusing to people who are used to reading that America’s IQ is 100 by definition, but rec1man appears to be using the old IQ scale (which has become popular again thanks to scholar Richard Lynn) in-which IQ 100 represents the average of only people’s of Northwestern European ancestry. Since the U.S. is not overwhelmingly Northwestern European, they are 97 on this scale.

The United States also resembles India’s genetic IQ in that the U.S. also has some social groups with IQ’s around 110 and others around 80 in their purest form. For example the New York Times cites research showing Ashkenazi Americans have IQ’s around 110.

The only thing I find strange about rec1man’s numbers is the assertion that Indian Muslims are 8 points lower than the average Indian intelligence. I don’t buy the Islamophobic crap about Islam making people stupid or violent. Not because I’m some liberal, but rather because I believe real intelligence is a biological variable that is virtually insensitive to cultural influences. I could be completely wrong about that, but my belief is based upon research.

If you agree with the New York Times article about some ethnic IQ differences being potentially genetic, you should know that Indians are not exactly one ethnic group. The original Indians were probably proto-Australoids taking the Southern route from sub-Saharan Africa to Australia. Ancient Australoid genes probably drag India’s IQ down because this population branched off the human-evolutionary tree prematurely. According to Richard Lynn Australian aboriginals have an IQ of 62 but in my opinion this is greatly depressed by sub-optimum nutrition.

India’s average IQ got a huge boost when it was invaded by the non-white Caucasoids who genetically mixed with the native proto-Australoids. According to Richard Lynn, non-white Caucasoids have a respectable average IQ of 84 (but even this IQ, high as it is, would be even higher if the Arab world had first-world nutrition which it doesn’t, despite it’s great oil wealth).

India’s IQ might have got yet another boost if there was an Aryan invasion. We don’t know anything about the ethnicity or IQ’s of the ancient Aryans and they probably weren’t exactly white as we define it today, but as stated above, Richard Lynn estimates North-Western Europeans have a mean IQ of 100. If we average all three groups together, we get India’s current IQ of 82.