Guns, Germs, and Steel: great read, really informative, INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST

And bmi, I apologize for letting myself get sidetracked. For purposes of this question, it truly doesn't matter WHY the NGans and Europeans have different average IQs--you can even think it's entirely a product of nurture--the main thing is that they DO, and Diamond was dishonest about it.

No, the 'why,' the explanation, is entirely what matters. If it is entirely a product of nurture, then the test is likely culturally biased, and does not speak to being 'smart,' under any standard definition of the term. E.g. I could make a test which is entirely based on hockey, and sure thing, Canadians would be 'smarter' than Americans, but not in any relevant way. So I don't think Diamond was being dishonest; he was just (rightly) dismissing IQ data as irrelevant.

Hey, no problem for getting sidetracked. I appreciate your considered response and it made me think. We might have to agree to disagree on this one. Or maybe you'll post again and persuade me that I'm wrong.

It reminds me of how, when I was younger, people thought that being 6+ feet tall was a prerequisite for fast running at 5k and longer. Why? The 'flying' Finns were really fast and they were tall. The moral here is that post-hoc explanations, reached without rigor, are often wrong.

bmi overweight wrote:

No, the 'why,' the explanation, is entirely what matters. If it is entirely a product of nurture, then the test is likely culturally biased, and does not speak to being 'smart,' under any standard definition of the term. E.g. I could make a test which is entirely based on hockey, and sure thing, Canadians would be 'smarter' than Americans, but not in any relevant way. So I don't think Diamond was being dishonest; he was just (rightly) dismissing IQ data as irrelevant.

So the dozens of scientists who signed the Wall Street Journal piece are, in essence, dupes? You *really* think that they wouldn't have taken concerns like cultural bias into account? Really? You think that's an idea that just wouldn't have occurred to them?

As that piece points out, "Intelligence [as earlier defined] can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments." These are thoughtful people who make careers out of the study of intelligence--and you think the equivalent of hockey-based test would just slide by them?

I have heard people opine that there's more or less an unofficial conspiracy to hold black people down (and conversely white people up) with things like IQ tests. If white supremacy is the goal, why do East Asian groups keep doing better (on average) on such tests? Ah, the (mostly) white people who create such tests must be cleverly covering their a$$es--they're willing to look inferior to East Asians, as long as they can look better than blacks! Really? Does anyone *seriously* believe that--anyone who has any acquaintance with the academic/scientific process, where one of the fastest ways to make your mark is to prove someone else wrong?

No, sorry. Though it may be unpalatable to some (like me, for personal reasons), the fact is that there are differences in average intelligence between population groups. The *causes* of these differences can be usefully discussed; the *fact* of these differences is genuinely not open to question.

And one of these differences in average intelligence is that between New Guineans, and the Europeans that Yali asked about. It's a difference that Diamond knew about, or should have, and that he dishonestly dismissed.

There are very few IQ tests that take account of cultural diversity at all. IQ tests may be consistent in results for individuals and groups without therefore being a valid measure of intelligence. They may be measuring something real, but we all know the types of questions they tend to ask. There are many forms of intelligence beyond what they ask. Those with limited formal education will not do very well on those kinds of tests, because they are not trained in those areas. But those with excellent formal educations will also lack many measurable skills possessed by, say, residents of New Guinea who know a myriad of survival skills and may possess a far greater grasp of many oral languages or may have a far more complex language. (e.g. English has a very simple grammar, whereas Greek has a much more complex system and there are African languages with a system (noun classes) many times more complex than Greek.) Furthermore, there is evolutionary evidence that Western civilization has led to smaller brain size, because of the in many ways simpler environment with which we are presented. In addition, none of us is responsible for the greater 'cargo' of Western civilization. So, we cannot really take credit for what has been an enterprise of thousands of years. Also, don't forget that past civilizations in other parts of the world outdid Europe at many points in history.

jjjjjjjj wrote:

a) There are very few IQ tests that take account of cultural diversity at all. . . .

b) There are many forms of intelligence beyond what they ask. . . .

c) Furthermore, there is evolutionary evidence that Western civilization has led to smaller brain size, because of the in many ways simpler environment with which we are presented. . . .

d) Also, don't forget that past civilizations in other parts of the world outdid Europe at many points in history.

a) Simply not true. Spend ten minutes on Google and you can find them. Again, professionals in this area *really* have thought of things like this.

b) This point is addressed in the Wall Street Journal piece, which doesn't take that long to read.

c) Just a tip: Think very carefully about whether you want to equate "size of brain" with "amount of intelligence."

(In fact there *is* a solid correlation between the two, but I doubt that you'd like learning about which groups have, on average, got the larger/smaller brains.)

d) I haven't forgotten this, but am glad to be reminded. Jared Diamond may not have taken it into account, however...

el jefe, I believe you are trying to argue two points at once. To clarify, are you making the claim that IQ tests are evidence that whites and Asians tend to be more innately intelligent than Africans? That is, with some genetic predisposition? Or are you merely making the claim that as result of education, increased nutrition, increased international stability, or any other set of reasons whites and Asians tend to have higher functional intelligence?

i don't think any of this is at all relevant. Diamond's thesis (if you read past the 'cargo' prologue), concerns the development of disparities, not their presence or absence. Assuming a common origin for man, we can rewind to a time when mankind did not have these racial divergences.

The question then, is that as mankind's civilizations spread, what made some develop technologically, and others not? If one makes the claim that africans are naturally dumb, what is it in the anthropology that caused such 'dumbness?' Where, or more accurately why, did this divergence occur? That is the question.

Just to make sure, I am not saying africans are any bit less intelligent than anyone else. I think that's ridiculous, just pointing out that the only intellectual dishonesty appears to be that the op didn't even read the book he started a thread about.

mensane wrote:

i don't think any of this is at all relevant. Diamond's thesis (if you read past the 'cargo' prologue), concerns the development of disparities, not their presence or absence. Assuming a common origin for man, we can rewind to a time when mankind did not have these racial divergences.

The question then, is that as mankind's civilizations spread, what made some develop technologically, and others not? If one makes the claim that africans are naturally dumb, what is it in the anthropology that caused such 'dumbness?' Where, or more accurately why, did this divergence occur? That is the question.

If one reads Diamond's book carefully then I believe you are misrepresenting him here. He stakes a lot of his thesis on the inherent equality of various populations. For instance, he claims that all people are capable of exploiting technology (and food and animals for that matter) once they have been introduced.

It is really pointless to debate with the OP because he missed Diamond's thesis entirely. I really don't think he read the book. He is not understanding the points people are trying to make which is that we CAN'T really know who is more or less intelligent. We only have an IQ test which approximates our definition of intelligence. Diamond is tackling a much bigger questions, one that investigates why our definition of intelligence is more important than intelligence for the people of New Guinea. Does that make sense? Civilizations progressed faster in certain geographical areas because of the environmental advantages(domesticated animals, ease of diffusion of knowledge, conditions condusive to agriculture), not because they are cognitively superior. Look at it this way, how would the OP do on an intelligence test if he spent all his time focusing on finding food?

Boy, you now need to read it again. You just made one of his points. Why would New Guinean's, with completely different backgrounds and groundings in 'fundamentals' of math and reading, score the same on the SB IQ test as those raised in that SB-IQ-test reference group?

You also seem to mis-understand fundamental words that are probably common across cultures such as 'lied'. Did you go read any of the many, many reviews of the book. If lying about the IQs was the deal here, people a lot smarter, much better read in the area, with much greater time to reflect and with reputation on the line would have picked up and run with that.

But they did not (and for some of them, finding such a supposed 'key flaw' would have been a very valuable feather in their cap. Instead, we get your notion that Googling something is intellectual knowledge and sophisticated technique.

One of the well-known quotes about IQ tests is that "IQ tests measure what IQ tests measure", and the implication is that they do not test intelligence, but some culturally sometimes useful comparisons from populations of similar backgrounds as the tests were developed in.

To give you a slight example of the nature of biases, when I was going into the Army many, many years ago we took an Army Intelligence Test (and am not even sure that it had that name). On the test you were asked questions about some mechanical implements and what they were used for. These included (were primarily?) tools that I had almost never seen that were used on farms 20-40+ years before when the tests were developed. At that time a lot of kids taking the tests were from farm backgrounds and did not have the reading/writing background as 'city kids' and they developed a test that covered things that they could infer from their backgrounds. Now these tests were 'stale' but did capture aspects that got around part of the bias of the narrower cultural background of the city kids (which was probably the basis for tests that proved to provided consistently flawed results).

Finally, what should be obvious is that to test intelligence you want not to test 'learning' or drawing conclusions or making inferences based substantially on a particular set of learned, culturally relevant factors.

I was going to make a post stating that I was probably heavy-handed in my comments. Then I saw your repeated inability to comprehend comments made by others and unwilling to give up on your flawed notion of what intelligence is as the term is generally thought of by people who study that sort of thing, including the people that make up the IQ tests.

Think about this, what if you wrote something like this on your college admission essay; do you think it would be a winner or loser (and I will not give you the easy-out of saying if it is a loser it is because it is not PC, people who read these things are interested in interesting and coherent commentary that show solid reasoning and intelligent appreciation of a topic).

If New Guineans were to make an IQ test, how well do you think Westerners would do?

Not well. The reverse is true, too. We emphasize and develop very different types of intelligence, and trying to test based on our own idea of intelligence is pointless.

Measure vs. the construct being measured.

No one would mistake a thermometer for heat, nor try to glean its properties from the device’s superficial appearance. Nor should one do so with IQ tests. But people often confuse the yardstick (IQ scores) with the construct (g) actually measured. The manifest content of ability tests items provides no guide to the ability constructs they actually succeed in measuring. The active ingredient in tests of intelligence is the complexity of their items, and it is also the ingredient—“processing complexity”—in functional literacy tasks that makes some more difficult than others (more abstract, more distracting information, require inferences, etc.). To oversimplify only a bit, as long as two tests have similar g loadings, both will predict the same achievement equally well (or poorly), no matter how different their content might seem (Gottfredson, 2002).

Flynn’s peering into the tea leaves of subtest items is a species of the old specificity hypothesis in personnel selection psychology, which held that each ability test measures a different ability and that different jobs and school subjects call upon quite different abilities. For example, it was once received wisdom (but mistaken) that tests of verbal ability would predict reading but not math achievement, whereas tests of arithmetic reasoning would do the reverse. Specificity theory was falsified decades ago, as can be seen in the large literature on “validity generalization” in employment testing. Professor Flynn may believe that the Similarities subtest measures the ability “to classify” and that Vocabulary assays a different cognitive “skill,” but he needs to provide evidence and not mere belief. Belief did not smash the atom. Belief cannot explain the Flynn Effect.

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/11/08/linda-s-gottfredson/shattering-logic-to-explain-the-flynn-effect/

Test bias. It is often argued that the lower mean

scores of African Americans reflect a bias in the intelligence tests themselves. This argument is right in one sense

of “bias” but wrong in another. To see the first of these,

consider how. the term is used in probability theory. When

a coin comes up heads consistently for any reason it is

said to be “biased,” regardless of any consequences that

the outcome may or may not have. In this sense the Black/

White score: differential is ipso facto evidence of what

may be called “outcome bias.” African Americans are

subject to outcome bias not only with respect to tests but

along many dimensions of American life. They have the

short end of nearly every stick: average income, representation in high-level occupations, health and health

care, death rate, confrontations with the legal system,

and so on. With this situation in mind, some critics regard

the test score differential as just another example of a

pervasive outcome bias that characterizes our society as

a whole (Jackson, 1975; Mercer, 1984). Although there

is a sense in which they are right, this critique ignores

the particular social purpose that tests are designed to

serve.

From an educational point of view, the chief function

of mental tests is as predictors (Section 2). Intelligence

tests predict school performance fairly well, at least in

American schools as they are now constituted. Similarly,

achievement tests are fairly good predictors of performance in college and postgraduate settings. Considered

in this light, the relevant question is whether the tests

have a “predictive bias” against Blacks. Such a bias would

exist if African American performance on the criterion

variables (school achievement, college GPA, etc.) were

systematically higher than the same subjects’ test scores

would predict. This is not the case. The actual regression

lines (which show the mean criterion performance for

individuals who got various scores on the predictor) for

Blacks do not lie above those for Whites; there is even a

slight tendency in the other direction (Jensen, 1980;

Reynolds & Brown, 1984). Considered as predictors of

future performance, the tests do not seem to be biased

against African Americans

http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/research/Correlation/Intelligence.pdf

el jefe - your condescending tone does nothing to further your argument.

Do I think the scientists who signed the WSJ article are dupes? Yes. So do many of their colleagues; after any such bombastic article appearing in a major newspaper, you might expect a response. In this case, Donald Campbell (former president of the American Psychological Association and highly respected expert in experimental methodology) wrote a response to the article explaining why it was off-base, why he didn't sign it (when asked) and why others didn't sign it (when asked). There have been other responses too, e.g. Harrington 1997. Why didn't you bother to look for such responses? So here we are, you have your WSJ experts on one hand, and a slew of other experts on the other. Exactly like I said before, there is no result here that suggests we can reject the null hypothesis.

(By the way, far more psychologists say explicitly that IQ tests are NOT good measures of intelligence; no one really takes Gottfredson seriously about that.)

Now, my example with hockey was meant to be illustrative, not a real-world example. Sorry that you didn't get that. My point was that as soon as you claim that the test is about 'nurture' (which you suggested), then you leave completely open the nature of the explanation (which is all that matters); i.e. the differences could just as well concern test bias, and this is a point that so many other posters have addressed.

You are right that there is a 'fact' about different IQ scores. Nothing you have said shows that there are innate differences or even non-innate differences in actual intelligence; all we know is that there are differing scores on a test that is widely believed to be flawed. Because the quantitative difference tells us nothing about underlying explanation, it is a non-result. For Diamond to not mention this non-result and is not an example of intellectual dishonesty (sorry for the triple negative there!).

As for the poster below (spearmon, I think), I guess that he or she is talking more about scholastic aptitude tests. Sorry, here again the research does not support the conclusions parroted by the Cato institute. If they do not respond to Freedle (2003) and (especially) Santelices and Wilson (2010), they simply have no argument.

el jefe, my suggestion to you:

1. learn rigor, including proper experimental design

2. understand what it means to be intellectually dishonest

3. look for research beyond major newspapers if you want to seriously argue a point

4. stop using the rhetorical 'really' - it makes you sound like a teenager

Well done sir. 10/10

BMI -- A lot more coherent and researched than my comments.

As a little story for those reading here. Apparently the writers/reporters on the WSJ have been of the following opinion. The WSJ does not need comics - they have the editorial pages as their equivalent. This is reported to be the opinion of the WSJ reporters, not some made-up jest.

I find this reaction comical. The fact of the matter is it would be unbelievably statistically improbable for each of the planet's ethnic groups to have the same average general intelligence. It would be similar to expecting each of the planet's ethnic groups to have similar average height or to have similar average eyesight. All the data suggests there are differences; the only reason everybody calls foul on it is because they think being more intelligent makes them superior people. Instead of attacking the source of the problem (equating innate intelligence with worth as a human being), we just lie to ourselves about differences between averages in groups.