Just before Thanksgiving, I said to Alte that I was planning to respond to her post on intelligence and genetic fitness. It’s just before Christmas, and I’ve finally managed to knock it out. No doubt she is squealing with delight right now.
Anyhoo, Alte’s thesis is that intelligence is NOT an absolute good because its conventional measure, IQ, is inversely correlated with fertility. The smarter a country is, the fewer babies its womenfolk squeeze out:
In other words, there is a definite point where the benefits of additional intelligence are outweighed by the associated decline in female fertility. Once a population crosses a certain “IQ limitâ€, it begins to shrink dramatically and sink into massive debt (in an attempt to sustain its living standard despite a declining population). At that point, those of lower IQ will begin to outbreed those of higher IQ, the country will default on its debts, and enter a period of economic decline and austerity. This is simply the natural ebb-and-flow of civilization. Civilizational leadership then passes on to the next “up-and-coming†region (currently Oceania, then the BRICs, then Africa).
Her post allows me to finally flesh out some thoughts I’ve had on this subject for a while.
I’m considered somewhat of a fellow traveler in the HBD blogosphere, and I once described In Mala Fide as an HBD blog, but my views on the subject are a bit different than most. (By the way, as part of my effort to purge idiotic acronyms from my vocabulary, I’m referring to the topic as “hereditarianism” or “human biodiversity” for the rest of the post.) I don’t blog about hereditarianism much both because I’m not as well read on the literature as I would like, and because I find it a repetitive, depressing topic. There’s only so many GSS-based reports on black crime you can read before you throw your arms up and yell, “I GET it already! What’s the goddamn point!” I even tried my hand at that game a while back, but I quickly got bored of it.
My takeaway from human biodiversity is the simple fact that people are different. Unless you’re a middle-class Marxist Critical Race Theory whiner with an axe to grind against whitey, it shouldn’t be controversial to say that peoples who evolved in different environments would have different genetic makeups. Some will be smarter, some will be stronger, some will be more fertile or more cunning or more agile or what have you. This isn’t to discount other factors on physical and mental development, but if you think our genes don’t have at least SOME role in creating racial and ethnic group differences, you’re a fool.
My biggest dissent with the hereditarian crowd comes with how they quantify intelligence. Specifically, I don’t think that IQ scores actually measure intelligence. Rather, I agree with Advocatus Diaboli in that IQ tests measure cleverness, the ability to navigate existing systems and ways of thought:
Many idiots seem to equate “scientifically measured IQ†with intelligence. However I believe that IQ, at best, measures cleverness not intelligence.
Cleverness is often conflated with intelligence, but in reality is a very different beast.
In my view cleverness is the ability to learn a game well, while intelligence is the ability to speculate about the reasons behind the games existence.
Bruce Charlton has also touched upon this view in his paper on “clever sillies,” high IQ people who believe and do stupid things:
My hunch is that it is this kind of IQ-advertisement which has led to the most intelligent people in modern societies having ideas about social phenomena that are not just randomly incorrect (due to inappropriately misapplying abstract analysis) but are systematically wrong. I am talking of the phenomenon known as political correctness (PC) in which foolish and false ideas have become moralistically-enforced among the ruling intellectual elite. And these ideas have invaded academic, political and social discourse. Because while the stereotypical nutty professor in the hard sciences is a brilliant scientist but silly about everything else; the stereotypical nutty professor social scientist or humanities professor is not just silly about ‘everything else’, but also silly in their professional work.
We’ve all heard some version of an apocryphal quote about how there are two types of geniuses, the kind where you think you could do what they did if only you had more time or money, and the other kind where you KNOW you couldn’t ever do what they did no matter what. That’s the difference between cleverness and intelligence – cleverness is common and quantifiable, intelligence is neither.
This is not to slam cleverness. The fact that the social stability and prosperity of countries are directly correlated with IQ is proof that cleverness is an important trait to have. However, if IQ is a measure of intelligence, and intelligence is so damn important to the wealth of nations, why don’t East Asian countries like China and Japan, whose inhabitants have a higher mean IQ than whites, rule the world? Why do flaming idiots control the government and economy while the people who actually know what’s going on languish in poverty and obscurity? If you so smart, why ain’t you rich?
China is the land of innovations that never went anywhere until white people stumbled across them. Sino-supremacists love to brag about how the Chinese invented gunpowder, but they never used it for anything other than lighting rockets at parades. It wasn’t until gunpowder made it to Europe that its military applications were harnessed in full. There was nothing keeping the Chinese from inventing firearms and cannons, so why didn’t they?
By of the time of the discovery of the Americas, Japan was roughly as advanced as the powers of Europe. Yet while Europeans kept progressing, the Japanese intentionally sealed themselves off from the world, stagnating technologically, socially and economically for centuries until an American commodore forced them to open their doors at gunpoint. If IQ equals intelligence, how do you explain high IQ people intentionally choosing to handicap themselves?
Going back to Alte’s post, why is it that high-IQ countries are swirling down the toilet bowl of infertility? Intelligent people would recognize that the future belongs to those who show up, and would strive to create civilizations where folks could contribute to the national birth rate without risking financial and moral ruin. Why are these supposedly smart people content to bequeath the future to a teeming horde of knuckle-dragging lumpenproles?
You can’t answer any of these questions, unless you accept that IQ measures cleverness, not intelligence. You ain’t rich because you ain’t smart.
Most of the people and cultures we think of as smart are merely clever. The Chinese and Japanese are entire races of clever sillies, which is why China will never become a superpower (despite the braying of the self-appointed “experts”) and why Japan has been stuck in a recession ever since the 80′s, when those same “experts” said that THEY would take over the world. Clever sillies, or “clever morons” as AD calls them, are problematic because they justify the life-destroying, culture-wrecking idiocies they push with their “smartness.” Feminism, socialism, neoliberalism, multiculturalism, political correctness – all of them are pushed by clever sillies who are witty enough to implement a policy but too stupid to understand why it’s a bad idea. (Note: I don’t exclude myself from this analysis. I’m willing to admit that I’m not that smart.)
This is a big part of the reason why I am so hard on nerds. Nerdiness is, at its core, a manifestation of clever silliness. Nerds and their fellow travelers conflate cleverness and intelligence and suffer – and make everyone else around them suffer – because of it. Being able to do complex math in your head or invent elaborate theories about the hidden meanings of Star Trek episodes does not make you smart, they just mean you’re good at wasting your brainpower on things that don’t matter. Modern society encourages cleverness and punishes intelligence, which is why Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner direct the American economy while the people who could actually fix the recession are virtual unknowns.
The important thing to know about true intelligence is that we presently have no way to measure it, or know where it comes from. Is it because of genes that the lower-IQ but more genius-friendly whites leapfrogged over the clever morons of East Asia? Was it the environment? Or maybe pure luck? This is why I’m a booster of human biodiversity research. I think the claims of hereditarians should be thrust into the spotlight and under the microscope, instead of being restricted to being pushed by dishonest hacks with unsavory agendas and reflexively denounced as “RAAAAACIST!!!!” by PC priests protecting the apple cart.
But the bottom line is that I think “breeding for intelligence,” as it is popularly conceived, is a dumb idea. We’ve got enough clever sillies as it is. We don’t need to be popping out more.
{ 49 comments… read them below or add one }
In my view cleverness is the ability to learn a game well, while intelligence is the ability to speculate about the reasons behind the games existence.
Your just making the terms more confusing. Your definition of intelligence = intelligence + intellectual honesty + creativity.
What is meant by intelligence in the scientific literature is the ability to process information. If given a difficult problem, but one within known parameters, the more intelligent person will kick your butt every time, no matter how intellectually honest or creative you may be.
As for the reasons why intelligent people have fewer kids, Robin Hanson has the answer:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/12/fertility-looks-bad.html
This is superficial, but the West puts heavy emphasis on character. What you do is less important than how you do it.
The West also put a premium on social and people skills. Sailer quoted a guy that said the English became good looking, the word he used was gracile, because trustworthy looking people were better agents in a capitalist system, which begot more income and more surviving heirs.
This is your best post yet, FB.
I have a feeling that this post might get many replies.. and will result in counter posts by certain bloggers on your blogroll.
Ferdinand: If IQ equals intelligence, how do you explain high IQ people intentionally choosing to handicap themselves?
Two reasons:
1. Strongmen lift weights. Beautiful women magnetize. Clever people have multiple solutions to the same problem. Cleverness is not shown by picking the same answer as the common man, even if it’s the best one. That’s just not…clever!
2. Many forms of cleverness show up in high-tech, yet many extremely efficient ways of killing people are deemed illegal. Morality places a max cap on efficiency; people find it unjust and cheating to just OFF a thousand soldiers like that in one shot.
In war, bets are off, and I think the common man would have fewer qualms about using that thermobaric bomb. As you can see, clever people are gimped in two ways that are perfectly human flaws. Be grateful that they spend cycles debating the ethical dilemma of 1000:1 murder leverage. Imagine what would happen if they didn’t have such qualms.
Oh I’d add high IQ populations don’t select for alpha males. Robin Hanson noted money is made putting ideas into action, not in the creation of the idea itself:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/01/connections-ver.html
To put ideas into action you need alpha male traits.
Let me add some more fuel to the fire.. especially with a title that is this inflammatory. It explains some more of my views on why cleverness is counterproductive.
http://dissention.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/asians-are-either-idiots-or-liars-2/
It has been stated numerous times that there’s great difference between cleverness and wisdom. Clever people have the skills to get out of difficult situations that wise people never get into in the first place.
I think intelligence and a corresponding future orientation also contribute to a lower birth rate. Being able to see down the line and consider what a child will cost you – financially, physically, emotionally – makes a person think twice about having a baby. Additionally, people who were born into the middle or upper class have traditionally had advantages they would like to 1) keep for themselves and 2) pass on to their children. The fact that a middle class lifestyle has become harder and harder to achieve has certainly contributed to lower and lower birthrates in middle and upper class families.
Additionally, clever women have been told they “can do anything” but “anything” has not been truthfully defined as, say, “mid-level civil servant” or “Wal-mart cashier.” If you think great things are in front of you and you can do the interim math that tells you having a baby will put those “dreams” on hold, you’ll renew your birth control pills another month or get an abortion. Probably the best thing really smart women could do for society would be to find a decent guy, have a bunch of smart kids, and raise them well. The absolutely brilliant outliers will be noticed and funneled into their areas of strength, and everyone else will not be any worse off then they would be ringing up on sale items or managing disgruntled government employees. And when those kids are a little older the clever can find some clever job to occupy.
Squealing, clapping my hands, and smiling.
I don’t know how wise I am, but I am very creative, charming, and clever, and it has served me well until now. I suppose I will become wise when I am old and ugly. Isn’t that the natural female path?j
The HBD stuff grates on me because I am not only black, but also Catholic. That’s a double-whammy of idiotic, violent, lechery. But we’re still going to take over the world, so who cares? Demographics show that our idiotic, violent, lechery is now better than the WASP alternative. There is a point where you can have too much of a good thing. Wild, horny, religious people who marry and eschew contraception have the most babies. So… if you want more babies… do I have to connect the dots? There are meek, mild people who accomplish the same, but their “way of life” is nearly impossible for most people to aspire to. It’s a fringe movement only, not something for Average Joe.
English people are good looking? I never got that memo.
Squealing away…
I see this essential problem in many topics. They never ask What is the root of the problem?, they just bicker over the details. They think that if they just recreate 1950s (or 1850s) Americana, that everything will just be like it once was. But
a) that era was never as great as they like to think it was,
b) things have changed and we haven’t invented time-travel yet,
c) doing that does not mean that things will work out any better than it did the last time.
The problems we are facing are core societal and legal (and possibly biological) problems that cannot be solved just by ensuring that every American woman is a white virgin when she marries. Most 1950s wives were white virgins when they married, and their cohort divorced at a higher rate than any generation ever, brought us rabid feminism, and made contraception the rule of the day. There are real, concrete legal and societal problems that need to be addressed before anything will improve. We can’t just “play house” and expect everything to get better on its own. But they don’t want to talk about that, just about black crime, porn, and Catholic lechery.
Okay, so I’m a black Catholic (an HBD double-whammy) who likes a drink and a bit of a party every once in a while. I’m also married with two kids because I come from a culture where people who like to party and have sex get married. Their “traditions” are so ascetic that nobody wants them. No surprise there. You have to offer people a model that they could imagine adhering to, not some cultist separatist movement full of the type of people they usually avoid, or stare at in the grocery store.
But they just don’t get it. They’re doomed.
Double-posted as Anonymous.
This post sort of reminds me of people like Einstein, Mendeleev, Newton, Galileo, and others.
FB, while you are mostly correct, technology is going to turn this on its head. Lower fertility rates will matter less when anti-aging/life extension technology starts appearing in the next 20 years. Fertility rates will go up when artificial wombs are available and in particular men will be able to have kids without having to tie themselves to a woman and problems like divorce and having their kids taken away. (This can already be done to a degree at the Rotunda clinic in India with a surrogate mom acting as the “artificial womb”.) Robotics will continue to develop so low intelligence workers will be needed less and less.
These ideas are mostly “transhumanist” even though I don’t like using that term. The HBD crowd and traditionalists are against this because they treat biology as magic and it will give people another reason to ignore them.
Hear hear. I wrote a similar article on this matter, “What Is True Intelligence?” http://www.xamuel.com/what-is-true-intelligence/ And I’m planning on writing another, possibly today, possibly titled something like “What would a superintelligent transhuman transplanted into 2010 Earth actually do?”
There is one minor little contradiction in your post: “you aren’t rich ‘cuz you aren’t smart” doesn’t jive with “society doesn’t value truly smart people that’s why Bernanke et al are given power”. Maybe it can be explained by noting that Bernanke got where he is more by chance than by his own merits, at least in the sense that many are as qualified or more qualified in terms of either intelligence OR cleverness. “You aren’t rich, so you aren’t smart OR incredibly lucky”
“However, if IQ is a measure of intelligence, and intelligence is so damn important to the wealth of nations, why don’t East Asian countries like China and Japan, whose inhabitants have a higher mean IQ than whites, rule the world?”
Were the Arabs smarter than the English in the 10th century? Are we to assume that when Spain and France had their hegemonic day their people were smarter than other Europeans at that time? Did Americans get smarter than the English after WW1? Were Norwegians the stupidest people in Europe until oil was discovered in the North Sea?
It is obvious that intelligence is not always the deciding variable in determining the wealth of nations. Hereditarians have managed to see the world in a new way (or perhaps in an old way), but their one-itis for IQ (or whatever proxy for intelligence you may wish to use, such as reasoning backward from a nation’s success as you are doing now) has caused them to abandon a rich intellectual life of flirting with many other ideas and instead settling down with the old ball and chain, whose tits are starting to sag.
Paul Graham on intelligence vs. wisdom here.
We’ve all heard some version of an apocryphal quote about how there are two types of geniuses, the kind where you think you could do what they did if only you had more time or money, and the other kind where you KNOW you couldn’t ever do what they did no matter what. That’s the difference between cleverness and intelligence – cleverness is common and quantifiable, intelligence is neither.
If all that is needed is time and money, it ain’t genius.
I think what you are calling intelligence here is what is most people commonly call genius. I went to law school and I remember this one particular girl, who was so incredibly smart that I knew I would never be able to do the things she could, but who didn’t have the creativity I had and would probably just go on to have an incredibly successful, but pretty conventional law career.
It should be said that genius is not necessarily the same thing as wisdom either.
The fact that the social stability and prosperity of countries are directly correlated with IQ is proof that cleverness is an important trait to have.
Asians seem plenty good at the arts of civilization, but what they seem to lack is creativity. See here Miller’s original article and reply are here and here. The Japanese, for example, seem to be really adept imitators. The best cuisine of all types, from Italian to Mexican, is apparently made in Japan.
The Chinese seem decently wise for a people, in addition to being intelligent, but they often seem to lack genius.
Wisdom, intelligence, and genius. Three different things. Some intelligence seems necessary in order to have either wisdom or genius, but it is not sufficient.
Great post, very insightful.
BTW a very good article from Will Wilkinson, someone who is very intelligent, not a genius though always interesting, but frequently not very wise. See here:
“Maybe it’s true that markets hum along smoothly only with relatively active government intervention and it’s also true that relatively active government intervention is eventually inevitably co-opted, exacerbating rather than mitigating capitalism’s injustices. Perhaps the best we can hope ever to achieve is a fleeting state of grace when fundamentally unstable forces are temporarily held in balance by an evanescent combination of complementary cultural currents. This is increasingly my fear: that there is no principled alternative to muddling through; that every ideologue’s op-ed is wrong, except the ones serendipitously right. But muddle we must.”
Summary:
The Austrians are crazy and the Keynsians are corrupt.
A great post!
The tiny minority of people, who’ve made major contributions have been both intelligent and clever.
But with cleverness it’s often possible to fake intelligence.
No doubt eugenicists, Lysenkoists etc were very clever. But they were not truly intelligent.
“We’ve all heard some version of an apocryphal quote about how there are two types of geniuses, the kind where you think you could do what they did if only you had more time or money, and the other kind where you KNOW you couldn’t ever do what they did no matter what.”
Talent vs Genius
FB, this is a very balanced and insightful post. I enjoyed reading it. You’re on quite a roll of late.
@Alte:
Most 1950s wives were white virgins when they married, and their cohort divorced at a higher rate than any generation ever, brought us rabid feminism, and made contraception the rule of the day. There are real, concrete legal and societal problems that need to be addressed before anything will improve. We can’t just “play house†and expect everything to get better on its own. But they don’t want to talk about that, just about black crime, porn, and Catholic lechery.
Hear, hear sister! I mean sister from a Christian standpoint rather than the black standpoint but either one will work. One of my biggest problems with much of what I read online when this issue comes up is that there always seems to be a Supremacist agenda. No solutions, not even a passing acknowledgment of the cultural issues driving the dysfunction. Just “this group is genetically and morally superior to that group.”
That is why I appreciate Ferdinand’s take on this. He attempts to peel back the layers.
Gee thanks FB:
I agree with Advocatus Diaboli in that IQ tests measure cleverness
Here I had just accepted my lack of intelligence due to my IQ scores and now your telling me I am not clever. I am sooooo depressed.
We’re just arguing semantics here. Thursday is right.
Your point on gunpowder use in Asia is plainly incorrect. It was applied for military purposes in China, but mainly as an explosive in rockets, bombs, mines, and the like. The Koreans made an early MLRS-like weapon called the Hwacha. Did you even look at the picture you put up? Its of a soldier launching a rocket horizontally, i.e. at something, not for fireworks.
I think racial mixing (for the most part) does allow better traits to be retained and worse traits to be shed, on average.
There is much talk of black IQ being lower than white IQ. But I am more interested in the IQ of half-black/half-white people, which I suspect is on par with whites (rather than half-way).
Half-white/half-Asian people, based on anecdotal evidence, have the positive traits of both.
Mixed race people are often good-looking as well, based on multiple anecdotes..
There is much talk of black IQ being lower than white IQ. But I am more interested in the IQ of half-black/half-white people, which I suspect is on par with whites (rather than half-way).
Nope, it’s pretty much exactly half-way.
Nope, it’s pretty much exactly half-way.
Do you have supporting research/sources?
PMAFT,
FB, while you are mostly correct, technology is going to turn this on its head. Lower fertility rates will matter less when anti-aging/life extension technology starts appearing in the next 20 years.
I agree. If technology could commoditize male physical strength into economic near-irrelevance, the same can certainly happen to many aspects of female value, such as gestation.
Technology always finds a way to reduce the cost of anything that becomes too expensive (expensive as defined as bottlenecking too many other processes, advancements, and supply chains).
But the bottom line is that I think “breeding for intelligence,†as it is popularly conceived, is a dumb idea.
I agree. And if there is any kind of breeding to be done it shoudl be for female beauty. Because a planet of ugly women is a planet of “what’s the fucking point.”
And best looking women (and men too, incidentally) come of of cross-mating between various European nationalities. There is next to no need for non-Euros in this project, except for a *tiny* admixture of duskier races to suit some outlier tastes, and East Asians for the high likelihood of atractive white/asian-blood women.
I’d also ensure that a fair Scandinavian look is preserved for its own sake, as in some ways that is the apex of human aesthetic evolution.
Smart — oops, sorry! — posting.
The Brits have a nice way dealing with brains and intelligence. They have a tradition of being wary of the oversophisticated, the over-theoretical, and the over-intellectually-fancy, and when they talk about such people they don’t call ‘em “smart” or “brilliant,” they often call ‘em “clever” — just “clever.” “Ooooh, he’s very clever, isn’t he?”
Puts “intelligence” of that untrustworthy, too-often-falls-in-love-with-itself sort in perspective.
I also agree with Thursday. Clever versus Intelligent is semantics. You could just as easily say IQ measures intelligence and that the quality you are terming intelligence is ‘cleverness’, genius or some newly invented term. It really doesn’t change the scope of the argument.
As for the idea that IQ causes low fecundity, this has already been hashed out by the r/K selection theory. The populations that are breeding like rabbits today are largely ‘unstable’ driving greater fecundity. Should a particular African subpopulation reach its’ Malthusian limits, pack a disproportionate amount of its’ population into cities, you’d probably see birth rates similar to much of the rest of the world. In fact island-bound and urban African populations show similar birth rates to Western whites, including urban Africans in Africa.
I’m sure some races are naturally more fecund, but the variance seems marginal when all factors are controlled for. It should be obvious that at some point in the recent past that East Asians and European peoples were quite prodigious in their breeding efforst otherwise there wouldn’t be so many of them. Basically you’d have to believe that the IQ increases from the Flynn effect have caused the decline in birthrates to believe that the line of causation goes from IQ to fecundity in such a direct fashion.
I’m sure there is some ‘Hybrid Vigor’ among humans. That would apply to good immune systems and health, which probably also does translate to body symmetry. The issue with all of the really high IQ populations of the world is that they are ethnically homogenous and in many cases pretty inbred as well. The Ashkenazim are the most obvious example. No one thought they were anything special until after the ‘Demographic Miracle’, which was a result of massive inbreeding.
It seems likely that mass miscenegation would lead to lower cognitive abilities, rather that be intelligence or cleverness, in exchange for that ‘Hybrid Vigor’.
The Clever Sillies hypothesis never states that these people aren’t intelligent. Just that they approach the world in a perpetually cerebral fashion. They are so thoroughly disconnected from their hindbrain that they come at otherwise mundane aspects of life with the full force of their brains. I think that the theory is somewhat overstated even though it might contain an inkling of truth. The biggest problem is that these ‘Clever Sillies’ are not the cognitive elite. They are everyone even slightly above average IQ. I don’t think you can definitevely put someone with 98 IQ in one camp and someone with 103 in another, which is what this hypothesis essentiall put forward. I think some high IQ individuals indeed are incapable of ever thinking ‘in the box’ as a neurotypical human being, but not everyone that is above average IQ. Secondly the idea that people with high IQ believe stupid things is someone a function of their IQ itself is a cleverly silly idea. If I said stupid people believe stupid things no one would balk. Since stupid and smart people do it, what is being observed in most cases is something that is broadly true of humanity regardless of cognitive function.
More importantly, no human culture has ever been devoid of some kind of ‘Political Correctness’ even if they never defined it. Every culture has had social mores of somekind to softly enforce the behaviors of the masses. This is probably a genetically hardwired phenomena among humans to use interpersonal communication as a tool of social control and society building. If only those people who see through this are considered truly ‘intelligent’ then you are basically looking for extremely non-neuortypical and antisocial individuals who might not even consistently match up in pure cognitive ability with a devout priest of the PC cult.
Most of the children who have ever been born have probably been born by accident. Once people can reliably control their fertility, most of them will.
My wife and I have had three children, but the first at least was a Catholic accident. If not for that, my wife would probably still be wondering when to start breeding.
My wife and I found that the Billings Method worked well, but we got careless.
Rationally, having children is generally a losing proposition in non-agricultural communities. These days, you have to have a strong ideological reason to do so, or be really “horny” and careless.
Grerp’s remark is interesting, and is exactly what Terman said about the high-IQ females in his famous IQ study. That intelligent women are best off marrying well and having kids. But such an opinion has become deeply unpopular.
Nobody minds a really smart woman pursuing a career to the exclusion of all else, but most people (men and women) are not that smart. The most important thing most of us will do in our lives is have children.
Incidentally, this is why white nationalism will fail. White women won’t breed. Memo to white nationalist men – giving them shoes was actually a mistake.
I think I have part the answer: Intelligent people are retards.
Part of their brain that should have been used for normal thinking/operating/Solving life’s daily problems is replaced by more raw processing power in one area of thinking. So ya, their really smart about lets say mathematics but at the same time their dumber than your average moron about systems like communism. The part of the brain that would have made them reject communism as silly was replaced with more mathematics/what have you orientated sections. Smart people simply thing they are smarter in all areas when in reality their dumber in most areas and smarter in a few.
It’s same reason why most smart people are non religious. They don’t feel that deep connect that most people have with spiritual/religious things. Their religiously challenged. They have a birth defect that prevents them from experiencing that connect most people naturally have.
Everything in life is trade offs. You have to loose something to gain something. Want a really bright person in one area? You have to loose something to gain it. Issac Newton was a genius in many areas, but he failed in life’s most vital areas: Reproduction/Friendship/Sharing his insights. In the long run his particular set of genes were a loosing combination and thus they died out.
The problem with the modern world is not that we don’t favor smart people enough. It’s that we are currently favoring looser who would have starved in normal times over people who are successful.
I agree with Advocatus Diaboli in that IQ tests measure cleverness, the ability to navigate existing systems and ways of thought:
AD is an idiot, so citing him on the subject of intelligence is self-defeating.
Smart people believe “stupid” things like political correctness because this is the ideology of the ruling elite. Is slavish conformity with the ruling elite stupid? This strategy has brought wealth and power to a lot of people. A strategy that succeeds on some level, for individuals if not for society as a whole, cannot properly be described as stupid.
why don’t East Asian countries like China and Japan, whose inhabitants have a higher mean IQ than whites, rule the world?
Over the long term, that’s the way to bet.
Why do flaming idiots control the government and economy while the people who actually know what’s going on languish in poverty and obscurity?
Maybe they’re not so smart after all. Knowing how to work the system is a valid application of intelligence.
If IQ equals intelligence, how do you explain high IQ people intentionally choosing to handicap themselves?
Japanese isolation from the world was not a “handicap” to the ruling elite of Japan, or even to the common people of Japan, for over 250 years after Japan made the decision to isolate itself. Choosing a “stupid” system that works very well for over 250 years is not that good an example of “stupidity”. Moreover, when the Japanese perceived that isolationism was no longer working, they adapted VERY quickly and effectively imitated the industrial imperialism of the Europeans. We may hope that American democracy can adapt equally quickly after 200 years of “success” brings about a crisis in our system.
Being able to do complex math in your head or invent elaborate theories about the hidden meanings of Star Trek episodes does not make you smart, they just mean you’re good at wasting your brainpower on things that don’t matter.
So I guess they should believe in political correctness, because the ruling elite has decided that the problems of racism, homophobia, global warming, etc., are the problems that “do matter” and are appropriate for the smartest people to use their brainpower to solve?
FFS links didn’t work.
I’m so sick of people always assuming that hybridisation is a good thing.
While inbreeding depression
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding_depression
can occur, so can outbreeding depression.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreeding_depression
Over the long term, that’s the way to bet.
Really? The Japanese are dying out, and the Chinese are growing old before they grow rich. The Chinese and Japanese markets are both debt-fueled bubbles right now, which is why they look better than they actually are. They’re in the same boat with us, and will decline with us.
No, my original hypothesis is the most likely. All demographic trends point to India, Brazil, etc. and eventually Afriac. It doesn’t really matter what they’re IQ is, as intelligence is mobile. Does it matter if everyone is as smart as Bill Gates, as long as Bill Gates can move house?
We already see it with the massive number of German engineers moving to emerging markets. People go where the growth is, where the work is, where they can use their intelligence to better their own existence. Some places like Norway will be able to sustain growth based upon the sale of commodities, but most places need babies to grow. No babies, no growth, no prosperity.
Part of their brain that should have been used for normal thinking/operating/Solving life’s daily problems is replaced by more raw processing power in one area of thinking.
Sorry about that.
Part of their brain that should have been used for normal thinking/operating/Solving life’s daily problems is replaced by more raw processing power in one area of thinking.
Yes, that is very possible. There is something called Einstein Syndrome, which appears to be a side-effect of intellectual inbreeding (specifically among those with mathematical talent), and results in advanced visual-spatial abilities (mathematical genius) combined with severe speech delays and behavioral-developmental delays. My children both have that, although they are slowly catching up now. Atheism (which is a dysgenic trait, as religion promotes fertility) also appears to be a side-effect of assortive mating.
Ugh. That first post is riddled with typos and grammatical errors. Sorry about that.
The Chinese did not invent gunpowder. They discovered it. By accident.
For hundreds of years, Chinese alchemists were randomly mixing together different substances to see what would happen. They considered it a sort of magic, and one day they accidentally stumbled upon gunpowder.
There was no science behind it, they did not understand what they had done, and they were not able to build upon this achievement in any meaningful way.
Consider it the equivalent of a million monkeys pounding on typewriters and accidentally writing a short poem that makes sense.
If the definition of modern intelligence is one whom possesses the Social Intuition to detect the proper time to evacuate before the herd
wtf good is it, really boss.
Your common mistake is easy to fix. Yes, high IQ individuals and groups can make dumb choices or overlook simple solutions. There is no limit to how far a high IQ individual or group can fall. But there is a limit to how high a low IQ individual or group can rise. That is why IQ matters. Not that the brightest won’t grow dull, because many will, but because the most dull will never shine.
This is a reach, but why not. I’m reading “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman and I just read a passage about Asian performance vs intelligence. He says Asian IQ isn’t much higher than white IQ, but Asian outperformance suggests a large IQ difference.
He speculates whites focus on strengths and ignore weaknesses whereas Asian parents expect their kids will study ridiculous hours if necessary to overcome cognitive deficits.
He’s basically saying whites are more well rounded than Asians, as a whole, and individually whites typically focus on what they are good at, not what they are expected to be good at. Over time focusing on “strengths” leads to very dynamic division of labor, which should build a strong economy.
“Asian outperformance suggests a large IQ difference.”
Nah. It suggests they work harder. All the IQ in the world does you no good if you are lazy. White men used to know how to work hard. But now they have a lot less reason to, since no matter how hard they work, preference is given to women and NAMs.
“He speculates whites focus on strengths and ignore weaknesses”
What strengths? Studying fluffy bullshit that gets them easy As?
“He’s basically saying whites are more well rounded than Asians,”
“Well rounded” is a code phrase that means “doesn’t study anything difficult or meaningful”.
The fact of the matter is that whites need to be good at math, science and technology even if they’re not “good at” these subjects or don’t like them. And there is no shortcut to being good at these subjects — you have to bust your ass like the Asians do.
Please do a lot of research on how war influence innovation and inventions, gun powder, racial segregation and wealth of nations (from Ethiopia, Mali to the Chinese, Romans and British). I do not want to turn this in to a bad post due to lack of research but love the topic as it opens eyes.
The masses of common men do not conceive any ideas, sound or unsound. They only choose between the ideologies developed by the intellectual leaders of mankind. The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.–
von Mises
Was, at any rate. The Chinese mean to rule the world on borrowed systems and technology, and, like the Japanese, were never curious about what it is that drove its creation.
By of the time of the discovery of the Americas, Japan was roughly as advanced as the powers of Europe. Yet while Europeans kept progressing, the Japanese intentionally sealed themselves off from the world, stagnating technologically, socially and economically for centuries until an American commodore forced them to open their doors at gunpoint. If IQ equals intelligence, how do you explain high IQ people intentionally choosing to handicap themselves?
“Progress,” “stagnation,” “handicap,” etc. only make sense in context and over a sufficient time horizon. Technology and progress aren’t necessarily important in and of themselves. At a basic level their purpose or end is to sustain one’s life in the present and the future i.e. it is for genetic interests. From that view it’s hard to see how much “progress” resulted from say the Anglo-Americans’ drive for technological advancement and to open up the world, considering that it has resulted in their dispossession as they’ve lost control of the US and their demographic position within it. Also from that view, sealing one’s self from the world doesn’t necessarily have to be handicapping one’s self. It could arguably be the intelligent option vs. the clever option of pursuing tech and expansionism for short-term gain.
Like Einstein said, “imagination is more important than knowledge.”
{ 9 trackbacks }