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I must say, I don't know. I see articles like edubloxtutor.com/iq-tes… for a recent discussion and got no closer. I only know the test I took so many years ago was mostly written with a bit of geometric stuff and a few math things. I can recall being told I was quite high and thus skipped a grade in middle school before there were formal…
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I must say, I don't know. I see articles like https://www.edubloxtutor.com/iq-test-scores/ for a recent discussion and got no closer. I only know the test I took so many years ago was mostly written with a bit of geometric stuff and a few math things. I can recall being told I was quite high and thus skipped a grade in middle school before there were formal middle schools, moving from the 6th grade to the 7th.
If there is a racial component to IQ, I might have missed that data. Genetics might play a part if there were some defect, but the marriage of two slow learners often product "normal" children seemingly more intelligent than their parents.
> If there is a racial component to IQ, I might have missed that data.
well, don't expect mainstream media attention to such things, but in evolutionary biology, it's pretty much settled
https://kirkegaard.substack.com/p/modern-neuroscience-confirms-race
I guess we must agree to disagree. I skimmed the Kirkegaard essay and don't find it compelling. Even the suggestion that brain size predicts intelligence is often disputed. IOW, I'm not convinced you can get that correlation with a more random sample. One factor lies with the considerable admixture of races, particularly in the US. If I accept Darwin, obviously mixed race people ought to have an evolutionary advantage. BTW sampling in the US clearly interrelates to cultural factors, but those variables are ill defined. Seeing the rather radical success differences between blacks arriving from say, Nigeria, compared to US black citizens suggests that culture can affect outcomes.
Rest assured that there is an amazing quantity of science on this, from decades of psychometry, anatomy, etc. etc. etc.
Really, the fact that races differ should be the default assumption. After all, their bodies vary in numerous ways, big & small. One should assume that evolutionary paths are different, not just from the neck down.
Quite agree that races differ as Nicholas Wade asserts in "A troublesome inheritance". But that intertwines culture and geography more so than skin color. We do see that many blacks have more testosterone than whites in modern US. That might contribute to various activity where physical ability has value. But we also have evidence of many blacks with superior mental skills as well. As you note a bell curve exists. With respect to US blacks and average IQ, we might be hampered by the sin of low expectations leading to poor educational outcomes.
I just can't accept that the innate intelligence of humans differs much if at all. So not assured.
"I just can't accept that the innate intelligence of humans differs much if at all."
So, from a scientific point of view, what evidence could possibly make you reconsider?
Not sure there could be a matched cohort to perform such an analysis. I do think that genetics accounts for the rise of technology in Western Europe from the reformation; that and culture as we began to form societies ~ 1500's. We had seen the rise and fall of innovations in other cultures but they didn't persist - China and the Middle East come to mind. Cultural adaptation seemed to decrease advancements in those places.
But innate human intelligence has many forms aside from what we might assert as advancements and technology. Africa has not until recently arrived beyond hunter-gatherer/farmer cultures. Perhaps due to culture and/or genetics. OTOH, modern people set loose in the wilds of Africa lack the skill to survive because they have not developed a particular intelligence. So the apparent appearance of intelligence might very well be situational.
No expert at this but in my career I've worked with nearly every kind of person and never found that race mattered much in getting the job done. Found some lazy types and some stupid types, perhaps less so among Asians except many of that race were skilled at deflection. My work was mostly in scientific and engineering fields, military and civilian in multiple nations.
By the way, another way to know something is up, is when major 'scientific' institutions preemptively censor whole areas of research, block access to whole classes of data, unless your results are certain to uphold a political narrative.
They are terrified.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/dont-even-go-there
Quite understand that some research is suppressed. So when I see that average IQ among citizens (of all kinds) has dropped in recent years, that's of some interest (https://nypost.com/2023/03/09/study-suggests-iq-scores-in-the-us-have-fallen/). So we might ask why would we see such a drop - nutrition, schooling, etc. Not sure about the Flynn Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect). What I do see is that the middle school books and vocabulary today are not as complex at those of 50 years ago and not even comparable to books of the 1800's. But for fun see https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718793115 where we can enjoy a lot of data massaging - siblings are in trouble.
What I do see is a lot of effort to measure something that may not be scored easily. While tests can identify that we have a large number about some average and some above/below that average. We really can't account for the kid who never pays attention but can create a great piece of art. Not even sure if IQ predicts success in life or much else. Every outlier in the data has no easy answer.
"Not even sure if IQ predicts success in life or much else."
It turns out that, yes, IQ does correlate well with positive life outcomes. This isn't even a controversial finding.
"No expert at this but in my career I've worked with nearly every kind of person and never found that race mattered much in getting the job done. "
The problem from inferring from that experience is selection bias. The kinds of people who are good enough to work with you are the cream of their respective crop. You'd never know how many sigmas away from their group's average they are.