Ron Unz on Richwine’s Argument — Taking the Bull by the Horn

Richwine’s Argument was:

1. If we want a more intelligent — i.e., higher g-score — future population and if we want smaller “achievement” — i.e., smaller g score — gaps between ethnic/racial populations

2. If traits are intergenerationally transmitted on the family and on the subpopulation levels

3. Then we should tailor immigration policy to assure that immigrants are more intelligent on average and that ethnic/racial differences in intelligence are minimized.

There have been innumerable objections to it but none to my mind have been even slightly dis-persuading. Most involve, as they say, throwing sand in the bull’s eyes.

As for the overall argument, Richwine’s conclusion follows reasonably well from both premises assuming that you grant the permissibility of being selective with regards to migrants. Arguments to the effect that there is something immoral about being so selective in order to reduce achievement gaps seem odd in light of the accepted policy of intranational racial discrimination implemented for the same end. How is it, one might ask, acceptable to via defacto quotas discriminate against Asians and Whites and for Hispanics and Blacks when it comes to individuals residing in the US but not acceptable to via the adverse impact of cognitive tests discriminate for Asians and Whites and against Hispanics and Blacks when it comes to accepting would-be immigrants? Given this situation, to tame this Bull, one needs to get on top of it; to do that, one needs to grab a horn; and only the second is dull enough to handle.

As for the first premise, it has been sharpened to a point by the constant calls to dually “raise achievement” and to “narrow the achievement gap”. There can no denying that “raising achievement” and “narrowing gaps” is a national priority. So, in making a case against this argument, one has but one option — attack the point about inter generational transmission. Which is what Unz does. I will quote the relevant passages:

Richwine (2009): No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against….The totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ, but the extent of its impact is hard to determine … The degree to which IQ differences are due to environment versus genes does not imply anything about how long the differences will continue …The primary concern from immigration policy is that differences persist — for whatever reason.

Unz (2013): With regard to Richwine’s IQ arguments, last year I published a major 7,500 word article on exactly the same topic of Race/IQ, arguing that there was overwhelming evidence that the IQs of various ethnic groups were far more malleable and environmentally influenced than is widely believed by many of those interested in the topic….By the time the debate wound down, I think the accumulated evidence in favor of my position was absolutely decisive….
….
However, it is well known that nearly all previous immigrant groups—southern and eastern Europeans—who came here in poverty similarly scored very low on IQ tests in the decades after their arrival, with results that were sometimes far below those of today’s Mexican immigrants. Yet after a generation or two their tested intelligence had almost invariably converged close to the American mean.
…
On another matter, Richwine must be aware that Arthur Jensen and Hans Eysenck rank as two of the greatest figures in twentieth century psychometrics. Yet decades ago both these scholars reviewed the structural evidence of Mexican-American IQs, and reached conclusions almost identical to my own, namely that the acknowledged gaps to white intelligence scores were largely perhaps almost entirely due to environmental factors and would steadily disappear as the population became more affluent and acculturated.

Here we have Ron’s same old song and dance — unfortunately, it’s the best show in town. Ron again cites Jensen and Eysenck despite my having pointed out Jensen’s error. The psychometric characteristics of the Hispanic-White gap are consistent with a genetic hypothesis insofar as the differential shows a strong Jensen Effect, which it does. The most recent meta-analytic estimate is a correlation of 0.8 between g-loading — a perfect index of genetic loading — and the magnitude of the difference.

Ron also argues that the H/W gap is like the previous immigrant/native gaps. Yet, Richwine showed that in an important respect it isn’t. In doing so, he provided compelling evidence that the IQ gaps will persist for at least another couple of generations. The reasoning is simple: (a) prior to the closing of previous immigrant gaps, the gaps exhibited a narrowing across cohorts and generations; (b) this is consistent with theory, by which gaps, when intergenerationally environmentally transmitted, disappear by the third/fourth generation; (c) such a narrowing is not seen in the case of the Hispanic-White gap; (d) it is, therefore, unlikely that the Hispanic-White gap will vanish anytime soon.

Ron’s reply? None. He simply elides over this point. Now, we have seen these analogical arguments before. Flynn and Sowell, for example, compared the B/W gap, the origins of which is in question, respectively, to the Flynn Effect and to the Protestant Effect, the origins of which seem to be environmental. They argued that the Black-White gap is like the other gaps, and, therefore, the causes are alike. But analogical arguments work to the extent that the compared are similar in the first dimension being compared. In these cases: A is like B in psychometric nature, therefore A is like B in terms of etiology. Flynn and Sowell’s arguments failed because the compared gaps are highly psychometrically dissimilar. In fact, the contrary arguments work better: The B/W gap is very unlike, in psychometric character related to genetic/environmental influence, the seemingly environmental FE and PE, therefore this suggests a non-environmental etiology to the B/W gap. Ron’s analogy fails because the comparison gaps behave dissimilarly when it comes to inter-generational transmission. And here too the contrary argument works better. But what about psychometric characteristics – how do the Hispanic immigrant/Native Whites and White immigrant/Native White gaps compare psychometrically? Unfortunately, no one has thoroughly explored this issue.*

Generally, Ron’s counter argument, if it can be called that, is pretty weak. And yet, it appears to be the best there is.

*A possible analysis: Using Richwine’s NLSY 79 data, we can to a limited extent, examine this issue. Richwine (2009) presented standardized Native White – immigrant differences and g-loadings. He also computed the correlation between subtest g-loadings and standardized differences. Based on the data presented in his tables 2.4 and 2.5 we can compute the point biserial correlations between group membership and group differences; these correlations can be said to represent the factorial loadings on group difference factors (Gordon, 1985). We can then compare the factorial similarity between the averaged group g-factors and the group difference factors using Tucker’s congruence coefficient. A congruence coefficient above 0.95 is indicative of factorial identity. When the congruence coefficient between the averaged group g-factors and the between group difference factors is greater than 0.95, one could interpret the group difference as being a difference in g (Jensen, 1987; Gordon, 1985). This analysis is done below using Native Whites, all immigrants, European immigrants, and Mexican immigrants:

The NLSY 79 Native White-Mexican immigrant difference can be interpreted as a difference in g, while the Native White -European immigrant difference can not, given standard interpretative rules. I note this merely as an example of an analysis that could be done to help clarify the issue.

Libertarian Realist on Bryan Caplan

I imagine that Caplan’s immigration views are quite rational for him. That is, that they work to efficiently realize his good. What is always strange — or not — about these debates is that only one side seems to recognize the rationality of the other side’s position.

Caplan

For people who think that my views on “immigration” are “crazy” would the same “views” remain crazy if I were Haitian?

Libertarian Realist

No, Bryan, if you were a Haitian, it would be quite sane for you to advocate that the U.S. adopt an open borders regime. If you were a Palestinian, you’d quite sensibly want Israel to cease enforcement of its borders. And if you were unemployed, you’d quite rationally want to be hired by the employer of your choice.

But if you were an employer, it would be crazy for you to hire someone solely on the basis of their wanting to be hired. If you were an Israeli Jew, it would be crazy for you to champion a demographically overwhelming migration of Arab Muslims, who are hostile to your values, into your country. If you were a freedom-loving American, it would be crazy for you to advocate unlimited inflows of unskilled, crime-prone, Affirmative Action-eligible, future Democrat bloc-voting Haitians with average IQs of 80 into your country — unless you had some strategic reason that you’re not telling us about for wanting to bring about an acceleration of the demographic and political degradation of the United States.

In What Sense of Irrational is Racial Discrimination Irrational?

Take the following statement:

In defense of Jason Richwine and Charles Murray

Michael Barone

Ordinary people understand that it is irrational to discriminate according to race or religion or ethnic group, and that it is rational to judge individuals on their own merits.

And then attempt to answer the question.

One sense of “rationality’ is that employed in discussions of economic theory. Let us call this: “economic rationality”. By this sense, “rational” means maximizing one’s good, where “maximizing” means “most efficiently pursuing”.

Racial discrimination would be rational in this sense insofar as it maximizes one’s end. If one’s end was, say, a racially homogenous or heterogeneous i.e., “diverse” institution, then discriminating on the basis of race would be rational. Conversely, given the same end, it would be irrational to discriminate on the basis of weak proxies.

Given this, what Barone must mean is that “race or religion or ethnicity” is not a part of the good of “ordinary people” — or he must be using “rational” in some queer non economic sense.

Now, let us conjecture that by the understanding of so called “ordinary people” racial or religious or ethnic homogeneity/heterogeneity is, indeed, not an end. What would this establish? Nothing. Any direct extension beyond this would represent an argumentum ad populum.

I suspect that Barone recognizes this. Thus I suspect that he is using “rational” in some queer sense — that he means that the valuing of racial or religious or ethnic homogeneity/heterogeneity is not something that sane people do.

Now, I find that to be a curious prejudice — especially in light of the previous discussion.

Frost on “racism”

Frost. May 18. 2013. More thoughts. The evolution of a word

The word “racist” is so common today that you may have trouble imagining a time when neither the word nor the concept existed. Yet such a time did exist, and not so long ago.

The first appearances of this word seem to date to the 1920s in French and to the 1930s in English. At that time, “racist” was a translation of the German völkisch and, as such, referred to the “blood and soil” nationalism so prevalent in Germany and in other countries that looked to Germany as a model (Taguieff, 2013, p. 1528). It remained a rather esoteric term during the interwar years, being narrow not only in its range of meaning but also in the political spectrum of those who used it—essentially the left, if not the far left.(1)

All of this changed with the Second World War. At first, the word “racist” was used mainly in postwar Europe—as part of the effort to root out ex-Nazis and their collaborators. Bit by bit, however, it became more widely used elsewhere, particularly in the contexts of race relations in the United States and colonialism in Africa and Asia. It also began to appear in the emerging context of Afro-Asian immigration to Western Europe. “Racists” were no longer Nazis. They could in fact be people who had valiantly fought against Nazi Germany.

I have never understood the rational foundation to the opposition to racism qua racial/ethnic preferentialism. Racism, so defined, can be viewed as a Good. And the protection of the right of individuals to define what is Good is a liberal good. Therefore, it should be a liberal good to defend the right of individuals to be racist.

Obviously, there are powerful forces which seek to prevent this obvious conclusion from being drawn. One pseudo argument frequently made is that “racism is irrational”, where “rational” contra “irrational” is used in the queer Enlightenment sense of “what a person would want if they were not deluded or crazy“.

Around this argument is then build a byzantine theory of racism as madness which is firmly grounded in Frankfurt school thinking concerning oppressive ideologies. The type of madness that racism is said to be is equated with “unnatural” and “externally imposed upon” – with “social construction” loosely and pejoratively defined.

This meta-perspective is then linked to an eschatological ideology which sees its project as the vanquishing of this supposed madness.

But the myth of racism as socially imposed madness is undermined by the behavioral genetic literature, which clearly indicates a substantial “natural” component to racism.

[My thinking here is that maybe 50% of the variance in racial/ethnic preferentialism is genetically conditioned and that maybe 50% of the genetically conditioned variance is domain specific (and not just conditioned via domain general mechanisms a la Cosmides & Tooby). As such, maybe 25% of the variance is genetic domain specific. I based the latter on Bates and Lewis (2010). quote:

This study is the first, to our knowledge, to provide genetic evidence that in-group favoritism, at least at the level of religion, ethnicity, and race, is underpinned by both a CAM and essentialist favoritism systems, each with significant genetic and environmental components. These results are compatible with recent behavioral research and game-theoretic modeling (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Hammond & Axelrod, 2006) and suggest that human in-group favoritism is best understood in terms of a multicomponent architecture supporting both essentialist domains (Gil-White, 2001; Hirschfeld, 1996) and a flexible CAM supporting dynamic group affiliation (Cosmides, Tooby, & Kurzban, 2003). With regard to the relative influences of the CAM system and the essentialist systems on each of the favoritism traits, squaring the factor loadings demonstrates that the CAM accounts for 35%, 69%, and 21% of variation in religious, ethnic, and racial favoritism, respectively. These data indicate that the CAM only partially mediates religious, ethnic, and racial favoritism, and that substantial influences on favoritism also occur at the essentialist-system level.

To the extent that this is recognized, the argument transforms to that that racism is a genetically conditioned “madness” akin to criminality.

This repositioning though requires a new theory of racism as madness. By the modified theory, madness is conceptualized as what is detrimental to society and racism is madness because it is detrimental in the context of multiracial societies. (In a parallel manner, insufficient genetic pacification is madness in context to modern societies.) Paul Rubin, for example, basically makes this argument against Frank Salter. But this modified theory, obviously, begs the question: Why are multiracial societies valuable? – i.e., Why is diversity good?

One reply seems to be to deny the sanity = legitimacy of questioning this value qua social Good. But this question is well grounded in the principle of national self determination.

The more frequent reply seems to be to try to eliminate national consciousness — and so the tendency for people to ask the question.

BBC: EU should ‘undermine national homogeneity’ says UN migration chief

The EU should “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states, the UN’s special representative for migration has said.

Peter Sutherland told peers the future prosperity of many EU states depended on them becoming multicultural.

Guardian: Neo-nationalism threatens Europe

The European project was inspired by the injunction “never again”. Never again would European nations allow virulent and competitive nationalism to tear them apart as they had done in two disastrous wars. Never again would the fate of minorities be left to national parliaments, and racist and populist sentiments. According to Europe’s founding myth, a new commonality, beginning with a European common market, respect for democratic institutions, human rights, and the rule of law, would define the European project.

This is like the existentialist resolution to the question of the meaning of life: Live life such that you don’t ask the question. It works so long as you can convince yourself not to ask the question.

I appreciate this. But this doesn’t challenge my position that there is no rational foundation to the opposition to racism qua racial/ethnic preferentialism.

“Richwine’s Syllogism”

Fashioned after “Herrnstein’s syllogism” (I know, it’s not a proper syllogism):

If we want a more intelligent — i.e., higher g-score — future population and if we want smaller “achievement” — i.e., smaller g score — gaps between ethnic/racial populations

If traits are intergenerationally transmitted on the family and on the subpopulation levels

Then we should tailor immigration policy to assure that immigrants are more intelligent on average and that ethnic/racial differences in intelligence are minimized.

The first volley of replies was directed against the empirical fact of ethnic/racial g score differences. But facts are facts. The second volley of replies has been directed against a genetic model. But as Richwine (2009) noted, the nature/nurture debate is not central to his argument; what matters is that differences are stubbornly intergenerationally transmitted. Which they seem to be:

The third volley of replies is being directed against the proposition that we want a more intelligent future population. Ok. But then why all the hub bub about raising achievement? And, more importantly, about narrowing intelligence gaps?

Conor Friedersdorf’s argument, for example, that it wouldn’t matter if IQ averages and differences were congenital and that we should just look at individuals and not consider group differences when it comes to policy seems mighty queer in light of the obsessive focus on group differences and in light of the hostile attack on individuals who have made a similar focus-on-the-individual, given genetic differences, arguments (e.g., Jensen & Rushton and Murray and Herrnstein).

THIRTY YEARS OF RESEARCH ON RACE DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY: Section 15: Implications for Public Policy

It is a widely accepted fact of behavioral science that there is great variability within each racial group and there is an ethical consensus that we treat people as individuals. Although no specific policies necessarily follow from knowing about the causes of group differences, they may serve as guides to action on some issues. The conclusion reached in Sections 13 and 14 —that about 50% of the variance in mean Black–White group differences in IQ is due to heredity—is compatible with a wide range of recommendations, from programs for the disadvantaged and laissez-faire approaches to selection and opportunity grouping in certain educational and vocational situations. In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray (1994) offered some specific policy recommendations based on their conclusions about genetic variation and IQ, which are generally concordant with political conservatism, such as scaling back affirmative action, reducing the intrusiveness of government, and returning to individualism. Most political conservatives, however, support these recommendations, no matter how the nature–nurture question is “resolved,” an argument with which Murray agreed (Miele, 1995). Arthur Jensen, also writing from the hereditarian perspective, recently opined that giving primacy to individual rights maximizes fairness, which he pragmatically defined as the ability of each individual to reach his or her full potential (Miele, 2002). He therefore argued for a restructuring of the educational system by tailoring methods to fit the individual and letting the group outcomes become what they may, rather than allowing claims of differential performance to justify group rights over individual rights.

In a sane world, one wouldn’t be able to have it all ways.

What We Mean When We Say ‘Mean Congenital Race Differences’

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

What We Mean When We Say ‘Race Is a Social Construct’

Our notion of what constitutes “white” and what constitutes “black” is a product of social context. It is utterly impossible to look at the delineation of a “Southern race” and not see the Civil War, the creation of an “Irish race” and not think of Cromwell’s ethnic cleansing, the creation of a “Jewish race” and not see anti-Semitism. There is no fixed sense of “whiteness” or “blackness,” not even today. It is quite common for whites to point out that Barack Obama isn’t really “black” but “half-white.” One wonders if they would say this if Barack Obama were a notorious drug-lord.

When the liberal says “race is a social construct,” he is not being a soft-headed dolt; he is speaking an historical truth. We do not go around testing the “Irish race” for intelligence or the “Southern race” for “hot-headedness.” These reasons are social. It is no more legitimate to ask “Is the black race dumber than then white race?” than it is to ask “Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?”

Why is it that “Race Is a Social Construct” is taken as a serious argument against the proposition that there are mean genetically conditioned differences between sub-populations called races?

Generally, why is social constructionism thought to be inconsistent with between group hereditarianism? Ta-Nehisi Coates writes: “It is no more legitimate to ask “Is the black race dumber than then white race?” than it is to ask “Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?”

Well, of course it is no less legitimate. This is why Eric Turkheimer, for example, opposes the study of race differences in IQ:

Why Race Science is Objectionable

If I may address my fellow Jews for a moment, consider this. How would you feel about a line of research into the question of whether Jews have a genetic tendency to be more concerned with money than other groups? Nothing anti-semitic, mind you, just a rational investigation of the scientific evidence. It wouldn’t be difficult to measure interest in money and materialism, and it wouldn’t surprise me if as an empirical matter Jews scored a little higher on the resulting test than other groups. As a behavioral geneticist I can assure you without reservation that the trait would be heritable, and, if anyone bothered to take the time to find out, specific genes would have small associations with it. Of course, this research program has already been carried out, at least to the extent the relevant technology was available in 1939. While we are at it we could open a whole scientific institute for the scientific study of racial stereotypes, and finally pull together the evidence on sneaky Japanese, drunken Irish, unintelligent Poles, overemotional women and lazy Italians. [Emphasis added.]

But the possibility of congenital Jewish-Arab differences in thriftiness does not make the possibility of congenital African-European American differences in IQ any more or less likely.

But this doesn’t address the problem with the thesis. It is fundamentally flawed. Social constructionism, per se, in no way implies non hereditarianism. This is #1 on my race fallacy list.

Were you to arbitrarily socially construct groups and then select out groups for which there were appreciable differences in some highly heritable trait, it would be more likely than not that the between group difference in that trait would be partially genetically conditioned. We can try creating such groups. In the case of color: Argentinians versus Colombians, North Hemispherains versus South Hemispherians; Theravada Buddhists versus Mahayana Buddhists, people with curly hair versus people with straight hair in the global context, rich versus poor Mexicans. Of course, in some instances the differences (between the pairs of arbitrarily socially constructed groups) would be completely unrelated to genetics. And whether the majority of the pairs would exhibit genetic differences would depend on the precise heritability estimate of the trait. But clearly, social constructionism, per se, is not inconsistent with between group hereditarianism. So when it comes to “race” what is the argument?

The argument against probable racial differences in some highly heritable trait must be grounded in the claim that race is not an arbitrarily constructed group. (Imagine if people decided their race in the way in which they decided their occupation. Maybe this is what is done! How do we know?) It must be claimed that there is something about the race delineation criteria which makes improbable genetic differences in the specific trait under question.

Generally, almost everyone on the other side has this backwards. The social construction of race tends to increase the number of possible avenues by which genetic differences can arise — and so increase the a priori probability that there are such differences, given within population differences and knowing nothing else. Take “Hispanics”, a very socially constructed group, as an example. “Hispanic” is a US construction. It refers to those individuals of Latin American Ancestry who migrated to the US and who continue to self identify as Hispanics. In terms of Human Capital, this is an unrepresentative group of all Latin Americans. And it is known that for this group there is negatively selected ethnic attrition. One plus one adds up to two if aptitude is non trivially heritable within the Latin American and US Hispanic populations.

So congenital race differences are questionable, to the extent that they are, not because race is an arbitrary social construct but because race is delineated in terms of something specific — in terms of geographic ancestry — and because the idea that the traits in question would congenitally vary by this variable — geographic ancestry — is questionable. Is it? Sure. This is why race differences are not assumed to be like social class differences — and how much more socially constructed can you get then social class — and so not assumed to be partially genetically conditioned. This nonsense that social constructionism implies non hereditarianism has to go.

When the liberal says “race is a social construct,” he is not being a soft-headed dolt; he is speaking an historical truth. We do not go around testing the “Irish race” for intelligence or the “Southern race” for “hot-headedness.” These reasons are social.

Let’s try out the magic reasoning:

Genius and mental retardation is social constructs, so … whala … mean IQ differences are only “social.”
Male and Female is a social construct, so … whala … mean morphological differences are only “social.”
Disease and Health is a social construct, so … whala …mean outcome differences are only “social.”

The Ta-Nehisi Coates who wrote this piece fits the empty Black suit stereotype. He also argues:

In a world where Kevin Garnett, Harold Ford, and Halle Berry all check “black” on the census, even the argument that racial labels refer to natural differences in physical traits doesn’t hold up….If you’re a math guy, perhaps your instinct is to point out the problems in the interpretation of the data. My instinct is to point out that your entire experiment proceeds from a basic flaw — no coherent, fixed definition of race actually exists.

Would he make the same argument against mean congenital differences in color? The real question is: Why is this logic so contextual? One thinks of Levin (2002)

In these terms, generalizations about race have clear meanings: To say the races differ genetically, for instance, is to say that humans whose ancestors were born in different parts of the world tend to have different genotypes. This hypothesis may be true or false and of course must be tested empirically, but it is perfectly well formed. Practical imperatives about race are similarly well formed: When advocates of affirmative action demand set-asides and numerical goals for Blacks, they have in mind individuals whose ancestors were brought to the United States from Africa. It would have been interesting to have seen Yee et al. (1993) criticize affirmative action on the grounds that “racial minority” is ill defined, and that, for the same reason, laws banning racial discrimination are unconstitutionally vague.

When I google scholar “achievement African American Black”, I get > 22K hits. Examples include:

.

Somehow individuals are being delineated by race. And no one seems to have a problem with it, except when discussion turns to mean genetic differences. Environmentalists have little problem operationalizing and researching race when it comes to their hypothesized environmental differences. Why, suddenly when it comes to hypothesized heritable differences? The hidden assumption seems to be that there is something unique about heritable differences. That researching or discussing genetic differences, unlike environmental differences, presupposes uniquely precise concepts. It doesn’t, of course. You can arbitrary socially construct any two groups measure various differences between them and then investigate to what extent the differences have a genetic basis. When it comes it race, it’s not as if no one investigates socially important genetic differences:

So the “problem” only exists when it comes to behavioral traits.

Really, the more interesting question is: Why do so many find these pseudo arguments so compelling?

The Idiocy Spreads: Andrew Sullivan on GMA

A note to myself.

An excerpt from Andrew Sullivan:

Race And IQ. Again.

For my part, I’ve come to doubt the existence of something called “g” or general intelligence, as the research has gathered over the years. I believe IQ is an artificial construct created to predict how well a random person is likely to do in an advanced post-industrial society. And that’s all it is. It certainly shouldn’t be conflated with some Platonic idea of “intelligence.” I don’t think it carries any moral weight at all, either, and I don’t think it should be used in any way in immigration policy. In fact, any public policy that rests on this kind of data is anathema to me. It’s far too close to eugenics, and to the morally repugnant idea that smarter people are somehow better in any meaningful sense. [Emphasis.]

I do not know what Sullivan’s previous mental model was concerning the scientific construct called general intelligence, so I find it difficult to assess this statement of his. For example, had I once believed that g as a psychometric unity, as a common factor extracted from a positive manifold of correlations, had its source (i.e., the reason for the positive psychometric manifold) in a very reductionistic physiological unity, in a singular factor of the brain e.g., dendritic efficiency, I might now “doubt the existence of something called “g” on the physiological level. In the same way, it might be reasonable for Sullivan to doubt g. Basically, I am not certain about Sullivan’s implicit model, so I can not be sure that I am well characterizing his view.

This noted, the impression that I get from the excerpted passage is that Sullivan has regressed towards the mean in terms of his understanding of the issue. He makes the following statements, which might have been defendable two decades ago: The existence of g is dubious; IQ is an artificial construct; IQ predicts performance in advanced industrial societies and only that; IQ should not be conflated with “intelligence”. The latter three statements actually follow somewhat from the first. The adroit statistician David Bartholomew pointed this out in his very readable book, Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies (PDF). With regards to the first statement, we must distinguish between IQ as a manifest variables — something that can be observed or counted directly — and general intelligence as a latent variables — something that must be inferred and measured indirectly. IQ, which describes scores on IQ tests, is an “artificial construct” in the sense that it is dependent on the composition of the IQ battery given. General intelligence is not an “artificial construct” because, jointly, (a) it is understood as a latent variable which is measured by IQ and (b) that this latent variable is a fact of the world — it is not measure dependent.

As for the first part of Sullivan’s second statement, it’s obviously false, unless you define “performance” to mean simply what IQ scores predict. For example, is “health” “performance”? As for the second part, it’s not clear to me which societies constitute “advanced industrial societies”, but, as Malloy (2008) has pointed out, the predictive validity of IQ tests is non-trivial globally:

Nonetheless, you could construe the statement to mean that IQ tests only measure general intelligence well in modern societies. Is this the case? Probably not, but it’s irrelevant anyways since IQ tests are only measures. One would just have to create a version of IQ tests that measures psychometric general intelligence in the non -advanced industrial society of question. This shouldn’t be impossible, since measures of the g-scores of other primates have been created. We are then brought, almost inevitably, to the third statement. Well, surely IQ measures and IQ scores should not be conflated with “a platonic idea” of intelligence. But that’s not what is happening. Rather, intelligence is being defined as general intelligence e.g., Trzaskowski et al. 2013, the factor common to mental abilities, and general intelligence differences are being measured, with some degree of reliability, by IQ tests. Everyone accepts this practice until the issue of race/ethnicity comes up — and then we all forget everything that has been said on this issue. For example:

Nytimes. January 5. 2012. Intelligence Is Not the Same as Value

People who do well on a test of one mental ability — let’s say a test of verbal ability — will tend to do well on tests of others — math ability, spatial ability, and so on. This finding, which has been replicated thousands of times, implies that there is a general factor of human intelligence. Psychologists call this factor “g.” We still don’t know what underlies g. Ian Deary, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, has argued that the speed of perceptual processes is one piece of the puzzle, while Randall Engle, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, has established that intelligence is strongly linked to working memory capacity, which he thinks of as the ability to hold information in the focus of attention. Others suggest that when we try to boil down the human intellect to a single factor, we lose view of its complexity….

What we do know is that measures of general intelligence are practically useful. Frank Schmidt, of the University of Iowa, and the late John Hunter, of Michigan State University, documented that g is the single best predictor of job performance across a wide range of occupations — better than personality, interest, motivation and even job experience. People who do well on tests of intelligence tend to make the best mechanics, managers, clerks, salespeople, pilots, detectives and scientists. They also tend to make the best teachers. It makes perfectly good sense, as Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine argue, to use intelligence as a predictor of teacher performance. We should want smart people to be our teachers.

(But not our compatriots!)

As for a Platonic form, specifically, g as intelligence comes as close as one can. A platonic idea is none other than an atemporal, aspatial entity which makes something what it is. It is a thing’s underlying property or commonality. This is simply a pre-modern conception of a common latent factor. Platonic Idea = Common Latent Factor!

What went wrong with Sullivan? Specifically, he somehow came to the conclusion that the “existence” of psychometric g was still an open question. Possibly he never had a clear understanding of the issue. Generally, it seems that he succumbed to the general idiocy that one find on this topic. He criticizes the strawman arguments of some — i.e., group difference can’t exist because groups are not species — but then passes on his own — i.e., (implicitly) psychometric g is an “artifact”. To paraphrase Sullivan himself: “…But please don’t say truly stupid things like g does not exist or that IQ only predicts performance in advanced industrial societies and only that. Denying empirical reality is not a good thing in any circumstance.”

Biological-Environmental effects, not Jensen effects

This was yet another fascinating SH paper:

Metzen, D. 2010. The Causes of Group Differences in Intelligence Studied Using the Method of Correlated Vectors and Psychometric Meta: Analysis

Apparently, causal biological-environmental effects do not tend to induce g-loaded effects. Quote:

The previous group comparisons concerned ethnic groups, and additionally we explored differences between subgroups within an e ethnic group. The analyses on subgroups that differ with regard to religious belief and the school type the subgroups attend, respectively, did not yield strong positive correlations, as is generally the case in comparisons between ethnic groups. In particular, differences in IQ between religious groups, namely Catholics, Protestants, and atheists, showed a correlation d x g of close to zero. Differences in IQ between school types showed a small correlation d x g. Therefore, subgroup differences do not seem to have a particularly strong relationship with g. These findings can be construed as providing support for the hypothesis that when comparing samples only group differences and generally not subgroup differences are strongly and positively related to g. However, it should be mentioned that te Nijenhuis et al. (2009) reported a rho = +1 for differences between gifted persons and average persons. Clearly, more exploratory meta-analyses are required to see which subgroup differences act like ethnic group differences. In previous studies, genetic variables were found to have a strong positive relationship with g. Therefore, we expected that also the heritability coefficients of reaction time measures would show a strong correlation with g loadings. A bare-bones meta- analysis on two studies revealed a correlation h² x g of .51. T his finding provides modest support for our hypothesis. A range of physical characteristics of the brain was found to have a substantial correlation with g . In the present study, we explored the relationship between brain volume and g. Results indicate a modest correlation d x g. Spitz (1987) hypothesized that biological-environmental variables mimic the pattern of genetic variables. Previous studies on this topic, however, did not indicate a pronounced relationship between the biological – environmental cocaine-, lead-, and smoke- exposure. Nonetheless, it was still possible to find support for Spitz’ hypothesis in studies of other biological – environmental variables. Therefore, we explored the correlation d x g of the variables iodine supplementation/ deficiency, prenatal cocaine exposure, fetal alcohol syndrome, air pollution, traumatic brain injury, and malnutrition. The picture that emerged from all this studies is straightforward: Differences in IQ caused by these biological – environmental variables are virtually unrelated to general intelligence. A further exploration of the psychological phenomena aging and autism revealed that IQ decline in aging has a substantial relationship with general intelligence, but the meta-analytical correlation is clearly not +1. The analyses showed that an analysis of gains on broad abilities is more likely to be helpful for understanding this phenomenon than the g factor. The IQ profile of autistic groups clearly does not correlate with general intelligence. [Emphasis added].

I had thought the same as Spitz and so now stand corrected. Hmmm…

Flynn Effect, ECT

I commented on this last year — so I really don’t have anything to add.

Woodley, M.A.,et al., Were the Victorians cleverer than us? The decline in general intelligence estimated
from a meta-analysis of the slowing of simple Intelligence (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2013.04.00

Simple RT = −1142.9659 + 0.7078 x year

What’s in a name?

I came across a choice quote in David Weigel’s pretty decent Richwine piece, The IQ Test

Borjas’ own work on immigration and inequality has led to a few two-minutes-hate moments in the press. He wasn’t entirely convinced by Richwine, either.

“I have never worked on anything even remotely related to IQ, so don’t really know what to think about the relation between IQ, immigration, etc,” Borjas told me in an email. “In fact, as I know I told Jason early on since I’ve long believed this, I don’t find the IQ academic work all that interesting. Economic outcomes and IQ are only weakly related, and IQ only measures one kind of ability. I’ve been lucky to have met many high-IQ people in academia who are total losers, and many smart, but not super-smart people, who are incredibly successful because of persistence, motivation, etc. So I just think that, on the whole, the focus on IQ is a bit misguided.”

It struck me because I vaguely recalled borrowing IQ data from a Borjas paper on US migration. But then I rechecked the study and noticed that I was wrong. Borjas et al. used a measure skill, the NLSY 79′s AFQT, not anything remotely related to IQ. (Unlike “IQ”, this skill measure showed a strong to moderate positive relationship with outcomes (e.g., education and wage, respectively).)