Race and IQ
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CALLER: What I’ve been seeing, at least on the level of the popular media and the way the idea of genetics is presented, is a kind of genetic determinism, in which the public at large is being led to believe that a gene is sort of individual, almost like an organism itself, the selfish gene and all that sort of thing, which then is responsible for a specific quality or characteristic appearing. And as far as I know, no one has ever proved that genes do anything except organize the synthesis of protein.
RAY PEAT: Yeah. I have – because I guess I have been interested in the subject for more than 50 years, and so I’ve noticed the things going on and tried to find out where they came from. The – in some of my newsletters, I’ll be talking about related issues, but the motivation for a lot of these ideas, around 1910 to 1920, were to stop immigration of Eastern Europeans and Southern Europeans to the United States. So they created IQ tests and showed that Russians and Jews and the various people that they didn’t want to immigrate that 85% of them were feeble minded, naturally they gave the tests in English. But these tests were very explicitly designed for racist exclusionary purposes. And many of these people have persisted in universities, the Bell Curve, for example, a real idiot at Harvard was one of the last hangers on. And these people had great success in getting published in science, the leading American science magazine. When I sent a tiny letter criticizing one of these genetic determination of intelligence, I think it was an 8 or 10 page article, I sent about a two-sentence letter. They sent me pages of anonymous referees, one of them – the only evidence that was cited for not publishing my little letter critical of the conclusions – I just said that conclusions have nothing what so ever to do with the text of the article. These cases of anonymous referees rejecting my comment. The only data cited was from Hitler’s racial hygiene [inaudible]got me interested in studying what was going on there And I saw that by studying that period, I saw that Konrad Lorenz was the architect of the racial hygiene, but he created the rationale based on American IQ racism. He created the rationale for exterminating inferior people. Konrad Lorenz was a Nazi. I think it was his last book. He repeated exactly the arguments of his 1942 and the founding papers of genocide. He repeated the exact arguments except he replaced exterminate with some slightly mild translation, but he never repented from this idea of eliminating genetic inferiority and…
"People need to start understanding that the system is systematically murdering them, and understanding that the situation is desperate, they need to see that solidarity with life, against capital, is their hope." RP
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@buckminster Thank you for the context.
Ray Peat is simply wrong in his interpretation. I am not so much concerned about the origin or purpose of the original IQ tests, because its a century later and the accuracy of them has improved significantly. We know that modern IQ tests do not have any "embedded cultural\ethnic discriminatory content" (as anti-IQ proponents like to claim), e.g. there is no "cultural bias"in a logic puzzle or a question that involves 3D spacial reasoning.
I think it would do you good to actually read some of the literature on Racial Science to understand it fully (if you would like some resources I would be more than happy to supply some), rather than just citing a couple quotes from Ray Peat and calling it a day. He is not right about everything. I know that because I have interacted with the literature in this field for quite a long time, and I am very comfortable with the content and its conclusions.
I feel as if you and Ray Peat are attacking this not from a pure scientific reasoning standpoint, but rather first taking the moral "anti-authoritarian" stance, then deriving your conclusions to mold with that view. Scientific fact and ethics have nothing to do with each other in this topic: racial differences in IQ , psychopathic behavior, life-history strategy, etc. are very well established, but of course moral claims are not derived from these facts; they are in two separate categories.
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@buckminster Damn not gonna lie, Ray was a complete idiot about IQ. It's like he barely did any research.
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@Hitler Yeah it's a "We can't have anyone inferior to another person intellectually, especially if it shows a bias towards or against different races according to a test so let's just attack the people who invented it and find anomalies to claim it's completely inaccurate." thing rather than valid criticism. It's also ridiculous for Ray to refer to the author of The Bell Curve as a Harvard idiot. Like it genuinely made Ray seethe to see that the bottom class has lower intelligence and it isn't the big scary rich white man holding them back from success.
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I think it would do you good to familiarize with Ray Peat's work, you know, the guy who inspired this forum. Because you made it clear you didn't even realize that racist genetics were incompatible with his work and it appears to be news to you that he wrote so fervently against them. As you will find in nearly all of his articles he at some point touches on this topic. It is a central theme of his work. Environment eclipse genetics, energy and structure are interdependent at every level, and we are regenerative adaptive beings always in development. Within that is the profound beauty of his message. I can't begin to rewrite all of Ray's articles to help explain it to you, nor would I care to. I am not naive enough to think I can change your mind, you are set in your ways and the only thing that will rehabilitate your philosophy of hate is personal development and life experience. But just know it's idiotic to impose them onto ray's work which is objectively counter to them.
You're holding tightly to the genetic IQ perspective because it helps you justify your abhorrent beliefs. I'm sure if it was disproven you would find some other reason to justify them. Even if it were true what good is it to justify subjugating and excluding other people based on an IQ test? There are many forms of intelligence not quantified by IQ. My dog has a low IQ, but in the world of scent she is a super genius and I'm a bafoon, to her that is a more important mark of intelligence. Say you prove afrikan bushmen have low IQ. Well they are super genuinses of survival and bushcraft. If you showed up to their culture they would think you are a monumental idiot who knows nothing, and would die helplessly. Another person may have a low IQ but be an incredible painter, or incredible mother, or have a profound compassion that improves the world and heals and lights up the day of all they encounter. In your context it's to justify hate. Which will get you no where. Its a toxic belief that creates a life of suffering. Everyone is best to outgrow whatever weird corner of the internet they trauma bonded with when they were lonely socially maladjusted adolescents.
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@buckminster applauds couldnt have said it better myself. Whats with the race obsession
, clearly people are miserable if this is what they focus on. -
Han chinese are very high IQ on paper but all of those rekt videos and my overall experience working with them have proven otherwise, perhaps something to consider.
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are there any black adults who have managed to score 160 or above on an IQ test? Black adults always seem to top out in the 140-150 range. I assume the black race is incapable of genius. Norway has a massive problem with untested smart people, as the number of people who take IQ tests outside of the military are very low compared to many other countries. Yet, there are at least three Norwegians who have scored 180+ on IQ tests. I assume there are dozens of Norwegians with an IQ above 180.
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@Sugar you always talk with this authoritarian little fag tone, like we're supposed to ascribe to your shitty beliefs just because. It doesn't matter one single bit what Ray Peat's message is when said message is wrong. After several generations, the Dutch didn't suddenly have their skin turn black in South Africa. Similarly, southern migrants moving up north consistently get mogged by European or American natives on every intelligence test and it has been that way since forever. There are mountains of genetic studies showing the exact opposite of what you claim, and Ray Peat's silly takes on twin studies don't negate them.
You ought to refrain from using words like 'racist', 'beautiful' etc. when these are meaningless adjectives you use to try and give negative / positive connotations to ideas that are respectively valid / invalid. There is nothing compassionate about having niggers multiply and screw up every environment that hosts them. There is nothing compassionate about being deluded and trying to delude others.
@buckminster said in Race and IQ:
If you showed up to their culture they would think you are a monumental idiot who knows nothing, and would die helplessly.
Do you know anything about colonial history?
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@Norwegian-Mugabe said in Race and IQ:
The validation of IQ is interesting. People says that IQ measures intelligence as people with higher IQ are more likely to get certain outcomes that the bourgeoisie values. Yet, people with extraordinary high IQ gets generally worse outcomes than people with moderately high IQ. If IQ is a valid test of intelligence because higher IQ leads to better outcomes in certain areas, shouldn't the correlation trend be perpetually positive? Are most of the people with 150 IQ dumber than the median person with 135 IQ?
Several explanations that come to mind:
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extraordinary intelligence lets itself more to outside-system thinking. A 110 IQ person thinks "what can I do to get good grades/get into a good university/get promoted at my job?". A 140 IQ person thinks "what flaws are there in the system that I can exploit to obtain the most money for the least amount of effort?";
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consumerism part 1: more intelligent people might be more immune to marketing and general social pressure to consume, and thus might be less oriented towards material gain. A 110 IQ person will watch an ad designed by 130 IQ people to manipulate them into buying a new phone and will work hard to obtain it; a 150 IQ person will not be manipulated and thus will not be motivated to apply themselves more;
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consumerism part 2: less intelligent people might be less able to occupy and entertain themselves with their own thoughts and inner experiences, and thus require more external stimuli that cost money. Diogenes could enjoy himself living in a barrel, while there are people who would start self-harming after a couple hours alone in an empty room;
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energy requirements: a high IQ brain is an energy hog, and thus with a damaged metabolism such a person might lack energy to properly perform. It doesn't matter much if your IQ is 150 if you cannot stop yourself from falling asleep during the day, get tachycardia from walking 100 meters, or cannot focus enough to drive a car. It might even manifest itself in specifically mental impairments: Ted Kaczynski (IQ 163) has made groundbreaking mathematical discoveries and he had managed to evade the feds for 18 years, yet his big brain apparently couldn't realize that his brother would inform on him, or that no one will be influenced by his manifesto;
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social connections: the higher is your IQ, the more isolated you will be. There's military research that shows officers should be only so much smarter than their subordinates - too much of a gap makes effective leadership impossible, as the higher-IQ person cannot empathize and understand the lower-IQ one. First of all, this is a major life impairment - avenues for conventional success are pretty limited for a high-IQ weirdo. Such a person will be passed for promotions and might struggle to even get a job. It also makes one a high risk for depression, anxiety and such. Second of all, such an isolated person will be more immune to social pressure to conform, since they cannot fit in anyway. So, less motivation to have a "proper career" or to buy the right status symbols.
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