Daily Archives: August 6, 2012

IQ and society

Robert Henderson


1. IQ and national wealth

2. Racial differences in IQ

3. Is IQ innate?

4. What is measured by IQ Tests?

5. Does an IQ test measure general intelligence?

6. The intelligence of erudition

7. Did Darwin have a high IQ?

8. Reason is not the primary driver of Man

9. Sociological forces 10. How primitive is primitive?

11. Speciation by culture

12. Race and  Man

13. An analogy with computers

14. The more primitive the society the less it relies on IQ related skills

15. Life in more complex societies

16. The increasing IQ demands of  modern society

17. Low IQ behaviour

18. High IQ behaviour

19. Majority and minority

20. The low IQ individual in a high IQ  society

21. The High IQ individual in a low IQ society

22. High status jobs and IQ

23. How the IQ  level of a society rises

24. Why have Asians not dominated?

25. Why have  whites dominated?

26. Blacks: the odd man out

27. A dysgenic future?

28. Conclusion


Appendix A White men can run

Appendix B Digital  technology

Appendix C Two high status blacks


NB Throughout I use the terms white, black and Asian as synonyms for Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid respectively.

1. IQ and national wealth

In  their books “IQ and the Wealth of Nations” and “IQ and Global Inequality” the psychologists  Richard Lynn  and  Tatu  Vanhanen advance the  theory  that  the  economic  state of a society is to a substantial degree reliant upon  the IQ distribution  within  the population,  with a tendency  for  higher IQ populations  to produce stronger and more sophisticated economies  than lower IQ populations.    But there is not a simple relationship between IQ and economic development, for example, Asians probably (see section 2) have a higher average IQ than whites, yet it is whites who have produced the richest and most economically sophisticated societies to date.  Moreover,  there is no uniformity of  economic development within races.  Lynn and Vanhanen’s thesis is that IQ is a necessary but not  sufficient condition for economic development.  Put another way, societies with a high average IQ  have the potential to progress to a sophisticated economic state but those with a low average IQ do not.

Such a conclusion is unsurprising because it mirrors what happens at the level of the individual – the lower the IQ of an individual the less likely the individual is to occupy a substantial and significant position  in  their  society. This individual tendency is  to  varying  degrees distorted by the amount of inherited material and social advantage an individual enjoys, but even within social groups with similar inherited advantage, the same tendency can be seen:  the lower the IQ the less  significant a position the individual is likely to occupy.  In addition, there are absolute limits to what someone can do with a particular IQ, for example,   someone with an IQ of 150 may or may not take a first in maths; someone with an IQ of 80 will never take a first in maths.

Lynn and Vanhanen’s correlations also suggest that the average IQ of a society will have a significant effect even if a society does not progress to the front rank of advanced states or peoples at any point in time. The Chinese and Japanese did not develop into modern industrialised  states of their own volition, but even at the pre-industrial stage they had much more sophisticated  economic systems  than populations with lower average IQs, for example, compare China and Japan with sub-Saharan Africa at any point before China and Japan were  forced into widespread  trade with the West in the mid nineteenth century and began to industrialise.

If Lynn and Vanhanen are correct, they have achieved something much more profound than simply discover a relationship between economic development and  IQ  because  the  economic state  of  a  society  has  fundamental implications for its social structure and social structure for the culture of the society. A more  advanced economy necessarily requires a more sophisticated social organisation than a less advanced economy because the social relationships needed to produce it  are inherently more complex. An industrialised state requires  large scale urban development to produce the concentrated population required to man factories. Urban development allows greater division of labour and increases the opportunity for a wider range of occupations, including greater scope for those which are not utilitarian such as the arts. Large conglomerations of people require extensive public administration and works.

What Lynn and Vanhanen are actually arguing for is a link   between average national IQ and general social organisation:  the higher the average IQ, the greater the opportunity for social complexity is the implication of their work.  If this is true then the general nature of a society  will be governed by the IQ distribution of its inhabitants.  Societies will share certain fundamental structural similarities because IQ distribution sets limits to what a society may be, although that does not mean societies with a similar IQ distribution will match each other in the detail of their respective cultures. Take as an example two tribes of hunter-gatherers, one in South America and one in Africa.  They will differ in their tribal rituals, the weapons they make, their marriage customs and the means by which they hunt and so forth, but they will share the same general social arrangements which allow them to survive:  a high degree of group dependence, the general means by which they live (hunting and gathering), the division of labour between men and women, a nomadic life and so on.

The evidence on which Lynn and Vanhanen base their theory   is substantial.  In IQ and the Wealth of Nations they examined nearly two hundred IQ studies from around the world to obtain average national IQs for 81  countries.  For those countries where the data is lacking Lynn and Vanhanen extrapolated their national average IQs from nearby countries with similar racial populations for which data does exist. For example, country A  with no test data has two  neighbours B and C with racially similar populations to country  A. Countries B and C  have  test data which allows their national IQs  to be measured  at 85 and 87 respectively. The national IQ of country A is given as 86, the mean of B and C. Objections were made to this form of estimation by critics but Lynn and Vanhanen  found a  very high correlation of 0.91 between the 32 countries which were estimated in their first book  from neighbouring country IQs but  calculated  from measured IQs in their second  book.

In “IQ and Global Inequality”, Lynn and Vanhanen increased the  number of countries for which  they were able to calculate national IQs from test data from 81 to 113. The correlation between IQ and per  capita income for 2002 (0.68) was the similar to  that in “IQ and the Wealth of Nations”.

For their second book Lynn and Vanhanen managed to calculate national IQs for all other countries without test data, thus obtaining national IQs for all 192 countries in the world. They found a correlation of 0.60 between IQ and per capita income for 2002 for the 192 countries. The correlation is close to that in their first book.

Lynn and Vanhanen have probably done as good a job as can be done with the available data in justifying their hypothesis by the correlation of data. However, it will not convince everyone, not even all of those who are not ideologically opposed to their ideas. Is  there another method by which their hypothesis can be bolstered?  There is – by taking the sociological/ anthropological/ historical and the commonsense route of appealing to what any individual can see for themselves in their everyday life.

Such an approach has the advantage of making the subject accessible to the general public, or at least to the intelligent and  educated lay reader. This is a vitally important consideration, because the implications of research such as Lynn and Vanhanen’s are as political as it is possible  for academic research to be.   By definition it is a subject which affects everyone and consequently should be  made accessible to as many people as possible.

I have a second end in view, namely, I want to explore the implications  of Lynn and Vanhanen’s  work if it does represent reality.

2. Racial differences in IQ

The largest difference is between blacks and Asians, or possibly if the white/Asian gap is not accepted, between blacks and  whites and Asians. Lynn and Vanhanen estimate the average of IQ  of blacks in sub-Saharan Africa at 70. Startlingly low many will think. I have more  to say on this  subject in section 26.

Estimates of black IQs elsewhere are problematic because so much of the evidence comes from the USA where there is a substantial white admixture within the black population.  The consensus amongst academics is that the American  black population has an  average IQ of 85.  Interestingly, this is similar to the average IQ found amongst the mixed race population of SA which was traditionally  known as coloured. This is strong  circumstantial evidence for a large genetic component to IQ.

Logic would suggest that if genetics is  the prime mover in determining  IQ,  the part of the black American population  without any  white admixture would have an average IQ similar to that of the sub-Saharan black population.  I have not been able to locate any study which attempts to sort the IQs of the “black” US   population by  racial composition, but Lynn and Vanhanen’s  calculated IQs for  countries  outside Africa which  have  overwhelmingly black  populations and  whose blacks have little white admixture support such a  view, for instance,  Jamaica  with an average national IQ of 72.  (IQ and the Wealth of Nations p76).

The difference between whites and Asians is much less stark, if it exists at all. The majority of studies support such a difference, although a few such as that of  Harold Stevenson suggest otherwise. Stephenson  “administered  a battery of mental tests  to elementary   school   children   in   Japan,    Taiwan    and Minnesota…Stevenson  and his colleagues  carefully  matched   children  in  socioeconomic  and  demographic  variables.  No significant difference in overall IQ was found and  Stevenson and his colleagues concluded ‘This study offers no support for the  argument that there are differences in the general  cognitive functioning of  Chinese,  Japanese and American children.” (The Bell Curve p274)

The authors of the Bell Curve, Murray and Herrstein  reviewed the literature thoroughly and  concluded: “In our judgement, the balance of the evidence supports the proposition that the overall Asian mean is  higher  than  the  white mean. If we had to put a number on it,  three  IQ  points currently most resembles a consensus,  tentative  though it  still  is (The Bell Curve P276).

Lynn and Vahanan  (pp  74-77 IQ and the Wealth of Nations)  give   average IQs  of China 100, Japan 106, North Korea 104,  South Korea 106.

However, IQs are not of a piece. For example, men and women score similarly but women have a narrower distribution than men, that is, fewer representatives at the extremes of the distribution. Similarly, there are differences in IQ configurations for blacks, whites and Asians.

Blacks score more strongly on verbal questions than the visiospatial; whites are best balanced between verbal and visiospatial, while Asians show slightly less strongly on verbal questions and significantly more strongly on the visospatial than whites, viz:

“East  Asians  living  overseas score about the same or  slightly  lower  than whites on verbal IQ  and  substantially  higher  on  visiospatial IQ.  Even in the rare  studies  that have  found  overall Japanese or Chinese IQs no  higher  than  white IQs (e.g.,  the Stevenson study of Japanese,  Taiwanese   and Minnesotans mentioned previously) the discrepancy between   verbal and visospatial IQ persists.   For Japanese living  in  Asia,  a 1987 review of the literature demonstrated  without  much   question  that  the verbal-visiospatial   difference   persists  even  in  examinations thoroughly  adapted  to  the Japanese  language and,  indeed,  in tests developed  by  the   Japanese themselves.” (The Bell Curve  p300).

That is the broad picture. It is important to realise that there are significant variations amongst the broad racial groups. In “IQ  and Global Inequality”  the “East Asian countries (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) all have IQs in the range of 105 to 108. The 29 European countries all have IQs in  the range of 92 to 102. The 19 countries of sub-Saharan Africa all have IQs in the range of 59 to 73. Much of the rest of the world has IQs in the 80-90  range.

The position of many of the  world’s states  is complicated by the existence of  very racially mixed populations. For example, India’s calculated national IQ is 81, which is below that of US blacks. But despite  such a paltry  national average India manifestly  has a very large  component in their population of the intellectually capable, a fact attested by their growing international importance in  the  area of intellectual  property. A low or mediocre overall national IQ does not necessarily equal no chance of social and economic advancement. What seems to be important  for  movement to a more sophisticated society is  that there is a sufficient weight of IQ related ability  rather than that all members of the society must be part of  a higher IQ  group (although if the number of low IQ individuals is larger than it would be in a homogeneously higher IQ population it will impose costs on a society).  What that sufficient weight is problematical, but clearly there must be sufficient people throughout the IQ distribution to do the more demanding IQ tasks, whether they be jobs needing an IQ of 100 or  jobs needing an IQ of 150. The necessary  number of people with IQs of  140+, is probably quite small. There is almost certainly  a  growing need for people  with  IQs in the range 110-140 because of the demands made by modern technology.

3. Is IQ innate?

In June 2005   Prof  Rushton and University of California psychology professor Arthur Jensen published a  60-page study in Psychology, Public Policy  and Law  in which they concluded: “Neither the existence nor the size of race differences in IQ are a matter of dispute, only their cause”.  Rushton revisited Andrew Duffy The Ottawa Citizen October 1, 2005 http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=6c9fe76b-f1 bd-4cfb-baa8-5d006efdf650&page=1

What is the cause? Is it nurture or Nature? That of course is the question that makes  the very notion of  IQ as a meaningful  measure of  mental ability anathema to most white liberals, which means most people with power and influence in the West today.

Liberals dislike the idea of IQ  tests  because it goes against the belief which underpins modern liberalism, namely, that no meaningful distinctions can be made between people as a group. A liberal may allow  that a  particular person may be good bad or indifferent in some respect but not the group. Many liberals in practice go beyond the repudiation of  group distinctions and apply the idea to the individual, claiming (or at least  implying by their behaviour)  that if someone is deficient in some quality it is merely a matter of  circumstances and upbringing.

The liberal would not necessarily be keen on IQ testing even if  IQ could be shown to be entirely the product of  the environment, because  that which is the consequence of upbringing may be as fixed as  that which is innate.  Unless it could be shown that IQ could be altered radically at every stage of life the liberal would be left with the awkward  problem  of what to do with those whose  IQ is already fixed. The liberal would have the further problem of how to alter society  to prevent future disadvantage due to the environment  If some magic genetic engineering  bullet  or other artificial means  such as   cybernetic enhancement  could  not be found  do  the job,   the only plausible means to improve IQ would be to radically reduce the differences in the  environments   in which children are raised.. If it was material differences which mattered that would be difficult enough, but what if it was found that the primary  causative agent of the development of IQ was  the influence of  family and peers? How would the child of  parents who lacked intellect  or  parents who had little interest in their child  be compensated for a poor environment?  As for material differences, it is noteworthy that  modern liberals show very little practical interest in reducing material inequality.  Indeed, most have bought into the free trade, free market ideology where property is sacrosanct.

There is a further problem for latter-day liberals: the fact that it is blacks who have the lowest average IQ.  Blacks are the ultimate politically correct group for  white liberals. If it was whites who had the lowest average IQ it is doubtful that liberals would be so utterly hostile to the idea of IQ as an innate quality.  Indeed, it is probable  that liberals would use the fact to bolster their  claims that on average blacks have poor social outcomes  compared with whites and Asians  because of  racism.

It is not only white liberals who have  an emotional problem with IQ as an innate quality. Most of the developing world (essentially  everywhere but those countries with Asian populations) has a problem because their  national IQs are substantially lower than those of the advanced nations. No people  are going to take kindly to the idea that they are as a people  innately inferior in some important respect.

What applies to nations applies to any member of a low IQ group anywhere, most particularly blacks because their average IQ is so   much lower than any other broad racial group. Such people will naturally resent being categorised as belonging  to such a group, regardless of the fact that group IQ says nothing about the individual’s IQ (although a person’s race will increase the probability of what his or her IQ is likely to be.)

The ideologically committed  nurturists  should reflect on  the  implications of what they are saying. The only way  mind could be divorced from natural selection  is if  it was not a product of  biology. But of course that is not what  the nurturists  think, for they  are  generally materialists who are normally more than happy to accept that mind is simply a product of brain. Consequently, what the  genetic determined IQ deniers  are in effect saying  is that natural selection does not operate on the  brain,  while they allow it operates on all other parts of not only Man but of the Natural World generally.

Interestingly, liberals  have no problem with  some genetic racial differences.  For, example, sickle cell anaemia is happily acknowledged by liberals  to be much more common in those of African ancestry  and   dNA tests which can predict with a high degree of probability  a person’s  race pass without comment.

The reason why white liberals normally have no problem with such genetic differences is twofold:(1)they do not  say anything about the human being as  a  human being because they have nothing  overtly to do with mind and(2) there is hard scientific evidence to say the differences exist – it would be literally absurd for a liberal to claim that sickle cell anaemia is not more prevalent in blacks.

There are other issues  which  are not so clear cut. A favourite  argument of those who support the idea of  racial difference in  IQ is  to invoke the  claim that blacks are on average innately more gifted athletes than whites  (there are considerable  evidential difficulties with this claim and I examine the difficulties in appendix A “White men can run“ ) and hence it is  not irrational or even unexpected  to find other differences between races such as those uncovered by IQ testing.  White  liberals  have a problem with this: they  are torn between  extolling an area of superiority   for blacks and the realisation  that if  genetic superiority is conceded  there  the absolutist nurturist argument for IQ  is weakened. This being so, they  normally  attempt to ignore the point, whilst allowing themselves to snigger in exquisite masochistic fashion about how “white men can‘t run“.

For those who are not hardline nurturists the  question is how large  a role genetics plays in IQ.  Most  psychologists  who accept that there is a genetic component to IQ estimate it at anything between 40 per cent and 80 per cent. There are good reasons to believe it is at the upper end of those estimates, even  plausibly above 80 per cent.

A child born in the most fortunate circumstances with every advantage of material  advantage, health  and education  may have an IQ of 80:  a child from the bottom of the social heap living without such advantages  may have an IQ of 160. That this disparity  between  environment and IQ can happen – and of course it  happens less dramatically all through the IQ distribution –  points to IQ being largely genetically  determined, perhaps even entirely determined by genetics, for why should high IQs be found  amongst the poor and low IQs amongst the rich if this was not the case?

There are plenty of examples of  men and women with little social advantage  excelling in demanding jobs. Take the case of James Brindley. Brindley was the eighteenth century engineer who built the first great canal in England for the Duke of Bridgewater. The man was  barely literate and came from a most unpromising background. Notwithstanding that he solved many utterly daunting engineering problems, problems which he had to solve from the bottom up because they were engineering challenges no one in England had previously solved. Clearly he was a man with a very healthy IQ, yet he had very little by way of education  and none by social advantage.  In fact many of the engineers of the Industrial Revolution were men of rudimentary education and poor  backgrounds, men such as John Harrison the watch and clock maker and George Stephenson of railway fame.

The great variation of IQ amongst any population is in itself a powerful argument against IQ being wholly or largely culturally/environmentally determined.  IQ is distributed within racial groups in a good approximation to the bell curve. Why should this be if  the cultural/environmental element is  dominant in determining IQ? Surely if it was dominant, the distribution of IQ would vary erratically according to the various circumstances of individuals, not merely differences in wealth but also  the propensity of  parents to drive children intellectually. Of course, there is a correlation between class and IQ but the average difference  between the classes is not  massive.  The fact that such variability does exist and that the distribution of IQ (although not IQ scores) has remained broadly constant over the century in which it has been measured strongly suggests that   IQ  is overwhelmingly determined by the  genes.

That IQ distribution varies not only between the broad racial groups but within  each racial population can be fitted into both the genetic and nuturist arguments. Sub-populations of the same race which are reasonably discrete would be expected to  vary because natural selection would operate  differentially on each sub-population, not least because societies will differ in the  mental demands they place on their members. For instance, a genetic explanation for urban dwellers scoring better than rural dwellers could  simply be that those who migrate to towns are both selecting themselves by making the decision to move  (with the implication that they  may be those with a higher  IQ  will self select themselves disproportionately)  and then when they get to the town they will be further selected by their  differentially  successful  breeding in their new circumstances.

More generally, if IQ is wholly or predominantly culturally determined, the sophistication of a society would  be the cause of varying  IQ distributions  within  and between races and any advance in social complexity would be not the result of increasing  IQ but simply  an emergent property of the organic structural development of  a society,  a  Lamarkian rather than Darwinian process, that is,  people would  be able to do more intellectually demanding things because  society demanded them and IQ would be improved. because they  were forced to do them. (The Lamarkian anaology breaks down at the point of inheritance).

Although halfway plausible nuturist explanations can  be produced  for IQ  differences  generally, they cannot be found for racial  differences. If  IQ is predominantly the consequence of nurture it  is very difficult to  see how a  nurturist explanation  could be given for  why  racial IQ difference is,  broadly speaking,  stable regardless of the nature of the society  in which a race lives. For example, why  should South Koreans, who were living in a  pre-industrial society until  very recently,   have a similar IQ  profile to those of Korean parentage  born and raised in the USA? There really  is not any  plausible non-genetic explanation for such uniformity. Indeed, it would be difficult to construct any nurturist argument, plausible or otherwise,  to explain it because  the differences of the two societies are so great. The best the nurturist could do is construct a wildly improbable scenario whereby different social pressures produced the same result.

If IQ was really radically changeable by improving social circumstances and by direct attempts to improve IQ  test  scores, the gains should be large not a few points, nor should they be seemingly temporary. Yet that is precisely  what is  found in  the  considerable number of attempts  to bolster  children’s  IQ  by placing  those from poor families in materially and culturally  superior circumstances.  Even the gains claimed  by the enthusiastic supporters of programmes such as Head Start in the USA (mostly in the range of 4-10 IQ points)  are significant but not startling. Nor do the gains  normally last  but are subject to “fade out” after the initial uplift, until a few years down the line nothing is left of the improvement. Those who are interested in the  detail of  both attempts to  raise IQ and sustain the improvement  will find a review of the academic literature at chapter  17 of The Bell Curve.

It is also true that apparent gains in IQ from enhancement programmes   occur at the lower end  of the IQ  distribution. Why is that those who start with an IQ of 150 do not make similar gains to those with IQs of 90?  The same applies to the “Flynn Effect”  which charts apparent rises in IQ generally  throughout the century in which IQ tests have been used.    The overall IQ increases but most of the increase is  found at the lower end of the IQ scale.   The most probable explanations for the Flynn Effect is that whatever cultural bias that existed in earlier tests has been  gradually squeezed out, secondary school education has become the norm at least in the West and the  diet and health  of  the poor has radically  improved.

It will be interesting to see whether the Flynn Effect continues in  advanced countries now that the material circumstances of the vast majority of the  population are  sufficient to  remove  the possibility of  inadequate diet or healthcare  being one of the reasons for depressed IQ and the vast majority of people in such societies live in urban circumstances. (There are already some suggestions from Scandinavia – “A long term rise and recent decline in intelligence tests performance: the Flynn Effect in  reverse”  Teasdale and Owen –   that the  rise in IQ scores is  diminishing or may even  have already ended.)

Tellingly, the proportionate IQ differences between races have also remained broadly similar despite the  “Flynn Effect”,   The black  psychologist   Thomas Sowell has attempted to explain   away   the black/white difference by  pointing out that ostensibly the black IQ scores of today are equivalent to the white scores of 50  years ago and by referring to the similar gap between whites from poor rural backgrounds and  urban whites when IQs were measured fifty years ago. Sowell’s attempt fails because the black/white gap has proportionately remained as great.  As black scores have risen, so have white scores. Consequently, it is difficult to see how the rise of black scores can be attributed to changes in culture or the environment.  I emailed Prof Sowell and had this exchange with him:

“Dear Professor Sowell

I  have come across your thesis that the black/white gap of one standard deviation is not abnormal there being other examples within a race, for example, between white rural communities and white urban communities. You also point out that black scores have risen over the past 50 years or so to that of whites of 50 years ago. “I see a problem with this argument:  the black/white gap has remained the same over the period, i.e., white scores have improved proportionately. If the lower black IQ is only a cultural/environmental phenomenon,  why should that be?”

Prof Sowell replied:

“As to changing IQs over time, James R. Flynn has written a number of things on that. As to how the black-white gap could remain the same if the difference is cultural, that seems less difficult to explain than substantial changes in IQ over time if IQs are hereditary. Incidentally, Professor Flynn has a book coming out on all this in the summer. The title doesn’t come to mind immediately but it will be published by Cambridge University Press.”

Frankly, his response to the problem is no answer at all. What the rise in   black and white scores does suggest is that the “Flynn Effect” either does not exist but rather is, as mentioned above,  simply a product of the changing nature of IQ tests etc. – the  modern concentration on culture-free tests could  be responsible for almost all  of the Flynn Effect IQ gain is on the visiospatial tests – or else all races are being subject to the same selective pressures which raise their IQs by a similar proportion, a proposition  which is on the outer edges of improbability.

Finally, here is a commonsense reason to disbelieve the nurturist argument. If it was possible to radically improve IQ by changing the environment or through training, as sure as eggs are eggs the rich would have long ago availed them of such knowledge to ensure that their children had high IQs.  The mass media and internet would be as full of adverts for IQ enhancement as for diets and cures for baldness. That this has not happened means there is no such magic IQ bullet or that at least no magic bullet which is known.

The primary evidence for some environmental influence is the fact that hose from  the same racial group tend to score less well on IQ tests if they come from a rural environment than those  from  urban environments, although that may be simply the consequence of inferior diet, healthcare  and generally harsher physical  conditions of life.

Personally I would be delighted if it could be shown that IQ is  entirely  or predominantly the result of nurture and could be enhanced through improving a person’s circumstances. Genetic engineering,  surgery  the use of cybernetics or  drugs  to enhance IQ is a another matter,  because they  would almost certainly produce populations with radically different IQ distributions. This could be dangerous.

A population with IQs genetically  or surgically enhanced to a high level – say, everyone  had  an  IQ  of  150 or better and  the  breadth  of  the  IQ distribution was between 150 and 200 – could carry the seeds of its own destruction.   After all who would do all the menial jobs? in a society in which everyone had a healthy IQ? Would  most people with such   high IQs even   are able to tolerate fewer menials but still relatively intellectually undemanding jobs such as technicians and junior white collar posts? A wide distribution of IQ is probably necessary for any human society to function.

Cybernetic  enhancement is less clear cut. It is possible to imagine a world in which people simply plugged into cybernetic intelligence boosters only where the person needed to perform higher. However, it is  unlikely that cybernetic use would be restricted to such modest and utilitarian  purposes. More probably, cybernetics would be used to permanently assist  mental  performance, not least because  an individual would have to lead a schizophrenic existence otherwise: bright in one part of their lives, not so bright in another.  A similar scenario would exist with drug enhancement.

4. What is measured by IQ Tests?

The general mental skills which IQ tests cover are the skills involved in   problem solving   which   rely   on    as    little    learned knowledge/behaviour as possible, the so-called culture free tests. These skills are those needed to deal with the unfamiliar, unfamiliar in both the sense of being pedantically novel and in the sense of  being absolutely novel.

Pedantic novelty is where a problem is truly novel, that is, it has never been  encountered before in this exact form but similar problems have been encountered. An example would be using a key you have never seen before to undo a lock you have never seen.

Absolute novelty is where the problem is something completely beyond the experience of the person. The individual has not encountered the exact problem in the pedantic sense of it being an identical problem and they have no similar experience from which they can extrapolate a rational solution to the problem they are encountering.  An example would be a Briton going on safari in Africa who has no experience of Africa and suddenly meeting a lion six feet away.

Modern IQ tests are designed as far as is possible to be absolutely novel. It is true that a person will encounter similar general types of problems if they take more than one supervised test or  rehearse  IQ questions.  But a general type of IQ problem does not provide a similarity sufficient to allow extrapolation to solve a particular problem of the type.   For example, in tackling IQ problems which involve spotting the odd shape or pattern in a sequence the solver knows what they have to do in terms of what result is required, namely, identify the odd man out, but that knowledge gives no hint as how they are to find the odd man out.

An IQ test is different from any other test, because every other type of test either permits subjective judgments or is deliberately knowledge dependent to a greater or lesser degree.   Even other psychometric tests seek the person’s opinion of their feelings or perception of some physical event, there being no right or wrong answers.  Exams dealing with specific subjects   allow candidates to score reasonably well without necessarily engaging in any high level intellectual activity – even someone taking a maths course can get a fair way simply by mastering functions which can be   applied mechanically (the more advanced the exam the less this tactic can be employed). An IQ test is different because ideally there is no knowledge  of inert facts, such as historical dates, speculation, matters of opinions or mechanical functions such as the rules of arithmetic which can be applied blindly.

Another way of looking at the demands of IQ tests  is to consider the long term effects of knowing both what a particular set of test   questions were and the correct answers to those questions. Suppose a group is first given an IQ test and afterwards provided with the correct answers, ostensibly to mark their own tests. They are allowed   ample time to study the answers but are not able to retain them in any written form.  Afterwards they are  told that they will  be called back for further tests in one year’s time.  When they are re-tested   the subjects are  asked to re-sit the IQ questions they first tackled a year before but without any indication that it was the same test.   Even if the subjects realised that they were taking the same test again, which not all would do,   it is improbable that many would be able to recall the answers from twelve months previously.  The only  way to answer correctly  with certainty would be re-solve the problems.

Those who claim that IQ tests only test how good people are at taking IQ tests are saying nothing useful, for any test of whatever nature on any subject by definition only  tests how good people are at taking the test.  The important question to answer  is whether what is tested is of value. IQ tests would appear to have value  because there is a strong correlation between IQ scores and life outcomes. This persistent correlation can be explained in two ways:  either it is merely the most colossal and continuing set of coincidences  or   IQ   tests are  measuring  abilities which  are  either  applicable  to  life in general or are abilities  which correlate strongly with other abilities which are generally applicable to human life .

5. Does an IQ test measure general intelligence?

Although IQ tests undoubtedly measure a wide range of mental ability and are valuable tools in predicting  whether someone is likely to be fitted for a particular job or academic course and are predictors of social outcomes.  But identifying useful  mental qualities is one thing, assuming that the qualities constitute the totality of intelligence  quite another. From early in the history intelligence testing psychologists have attempted to establish that the tests measure a quality of general intelligence  which they call “g” – the British psychologist Charles Spearman was the originator of the idea in the  early years of the twentieth century. The problem is that there is no absolute proof  that “g”  exists or that IQ tests measure it.  However, what IQ tests do plausibly measure is a general ability  which applies to a wide range of mental tasks for there is a strong tendency for individuals to perform similarly across the spectrum of tests which make up an IQ score, for example, a high IQ individual will score strongly on all IQ problems, although not with an exact evenness of performance.

But there is  an alternative explanation  for why individuals score similarly across the range of IQ tests. This  is that what is measured by such tests is a catalogue of different abilities, each  dependent on some structural quality of the brain, and that the normal development of the brain is such that each structure from which an ability derives develops in concert with all the other structures and, consequently,   the various abilities are kept roughly in step.  Put another way, a person with a high IQ scores highly across the range of tests because the brain can only develop in  a way which produces structures which are roughly equal in ability.

This is not quite as improbable an idea as it might seem at first glance because   normal organic development   displays  just such behaviour, for example, the growth of parts of an organism are normally proportionate to the individual organism’s size.  If this alternative explanation is correct, the practical effect of such a brain would be the same as a brain governed by some general principle of intelligence.  An analogy would be with computers which have programs designed  to  tackle  the  same  tasks  but  which  have    qualitative differences in power and scope. The case of idiots savants with high level specific abilities,  which in any other circumstances but those of the idiot savant  would be considered high IQ activities, could be accommodated within the hypothesis that intelligence is a conglomeration of separate abilities rather than being a single entity, for it could be that normal development is arrested in most areas and enhanced in  one or two. Indeed, high performing idiots savants provide a serious problem for those who wish to claim that “g” exists and the type of explanation offered by those in the field  – that the abilities of such idiots savants are talents  rather than intelligence – is scarcely convincing.

Against the idea of discrete abilities forming a suite of intellectual tools which give the impression of a single quality of intelligence is the fact that those with innate deformities and deficiencies of the brain  or damage to the brain utilise other parts of the brain to perform functions normally associated with  the deficient or damaged parts.

There is the further problem  for  the idea of ‘g’, namely, that there are clearly some forms of what would be considered high level intellectual activity which do not seem to fall into the obvious realm of IQ tested abilities, for example, literary talent, historical and sociological insight. It is true that those who excel in such fields will probably  have a healthy IQ, but it is not obvious how the abilities tested by IQ relate to the abilities displayed in such work. It might be thought that this is evidence for “g” and that performance in subjects such as history and sociology is simply an expression of “g”, that is, “g” is being tested by other means than an IQ test. The problem with that argument is that people with similar IQs, both in overall score and in the shape of the IQ, do not display equal facility  at intellectual tasks across the board and the difference in particular abilities cannot be put down to simply differences in upbringing or of temperament.

6. The intelligence of erudition

There is phenomenon which anyone who has gained a substantial knowledge of a subject may  recognise:  it is the point at which a qualitative change in  understanding appears to occur, where connections are effortlessly made between disparate pieces of data and a   general understanding of the whole emerges.   This is not a conscious process but an emergent property of the  accumulation of  information.  Is that IQ ability  driven?  It is clearly different from the type of ability  quantified from the exercises which comprise IQ tests, but equally it is not the simple application of  learned information to solve a problem.   Moreover, the phenomenon arises with all types of data. Einstein could not have developed his theories without his learned knowledge of the way the physical world worked both at the level of his personal experience and through absorbing the scientific discoveries, thoughts and mathematics made and developed by others. Similarly, the mechanic develops an “instinct” for what is wrong with an engine through the experience of tinkering with many engines.

Of course  the nature  of the intelligence of erudition  varies  from individual to individual, from the person who ends  up with  a mass of  data  and no clear overall  understanding of the data  (we all know people who display “a ghastly erudition”)  to the individual who clearly  sees not only  the wood from the trees but identifies  the important trees within the wood. Nonetheless, even the person who has no clear overall understanding of the data will generally have a better grasp of a subject than someone with a slight understanding,  no matter how intelligent that person should be.

There are interesting differences in the way this phenomenon develops and is sustained.   Mathematicians,   philosophers and physical   scientists frequently produce their best work when young,   after which they spend the rest of their lives trying to recapture their youthful intellectual zest.  Other intellectuals  such as historians and sociologists are notorious for producing their best  work when in middle age,   by which time they have ingested vast amounts of information  about both their subject and the way human beings behave generally, and have allowed whatever unconscious process occurs considerable time to organise, connect and elucidate what they have learned.   This suggests that erudition is  more useful in some areas than others, although it does not necessarily follow  that IQ  related ability is more important in subjects  such as maths and physics  than in history or  sociology – this would be so  even if it could shown that as a matter of contingent fact mathematicians and physicist  have higher average IQs than historians and sociologists (they probably do. It could be that once a certain  level of intellectual adequacy is reached people are drawn to subjects  by their personality rather than IQ related abilities.

To what degree is high ability in subjects such as history, sociology and literary criticism  IQ  ability  dependent? As mentioned above they do not obviously call on the qualities  measured by IQ tests. However, looked at more closely it is plain that these   disciplines rely on IQ dependent abilities such as the recognition of contradiction or the construction  of methods of quantifying social phenomena and, of course,  they  can involve the mastery of the indisputably high IQ subjects such as maths, physics or philosophy  where that is the subject matter to be studied within the context of another subject, for example, the  history of science or philosophy. But what do we make of  the ability of the historian to  concisely interpret a vast amount of data or the literary critic to see within a text echoes of other  writers and ideas?  Are those  abilities   IQ dependent in the same way as  understanding  a complicated  equation is IQ dependent?   There is a good case for saying that they are,  because what the   historian and the literary critic are doing is sifting material and assigning values  to it.  That is a form of pattern matching, although a very complex and diffuse one.

Let me take the cases of the chess players Garry Kasparov and the Polgar sisters to illustrate two aspects of the intelligence of erudition. Kasparov has an IQ of 135, good but not outstanding, yet he was able to become world champion at an activity considered exceptionally intellectually taxing. It was not solely or arguably predominantly IQ which made him world champion for there will almost certainly be many topclass chess players with substantially higher IQs. So how did he become world champion?  To become a  very high performing chess player requires not merely natural talent but the  building up of  a vast catalogue of games in one’s memory.  From that comes the emergent property of the intelligence of erudition to go with the IQ based abilities. Bearing in mind Kasparov’s relatively modest IQ and  the many higher IQ players he was competing with, plausibly it was the intelligence of erudition which was probably the prime determinant of his success.  Of course, other qualities not obviously IQ dependent come into play with high level chess such as courage and sheer physical stamina (I am assuming that the support staff and technology  available to any grandmaster will be much of a muchness) but understanding born of great familiarity with played chess games must have been by far the prime determinant.

The two Polgar sisters demonstrate another aspect of the intelligence of erudition. Their father set out from the early days to  deliberately produce two chess prodigies. He did this to substantiate his belief that particular abilities, including intellectual abilities could be instilled by training (shades of J B Watson).   He succeeded. The sisters both became grandmasters. That they did not become world chess champions  – an objection often made by those opposed to his ideas – is neither here nor there. The fact that he was able to take two babies and turn them into very high performing chess players – a very select band – is  persuasive evidence for the power of inducing intelligence in specific areas of expertise.  Of course, one cannot draw firm conclusions from a single instance such as the Polgars,  but it is food for thought when the question of intelligence is considered.

What happened with the Polgars is really no more than the age old trait of children following their parents into the same work or being put to an apprenticeship at an early age. Many societies have operated on the basis of  children following their parents’ occupations by law. Many of those occupations can plausibly be linked to IQ related abilities, especially visio-spatial ones, for example, those required of any craftsman. One could argue that genetic inheritance plays its part, but this is not  plausible where many generations are involved, both because the genetic inheritance of someone with an innate ability is diluted rapidly through the generations and also because presumably genetically related abilities generally suffer from reversion to the norm.

What would be interesting is a study of  how easy or difficult it is to induce the ability to undertake activities which would be considered IQ dependent. I have a  sneaking feeling that if those engaged in programmes designed to enhance IQ concentrated instead on programmes designed to enhance the intelligence of erudition  they would find it a more fruitful activity.

How valuable is  the intelligence of erudition  when compared with IQ related ability? Obviously, learned   ability  is fundamental to  all human societies, from the hunter-gatherer upwards. Most of what we  consciously do is guided by  our own  experience or the experience of others,   although of course knowledge is only valuable when it can be applied, whereas IQ related problem solving ability  in principle  can get you through  a very large number of possible  situations, both novel and familiar.    There is also a clear distinction between knowledge which can be applied  without  the need for any  external assistance and that which requires external assistance. For instance, knowing how to  use a calculator is useless without a calculator: knowing how to do mental arithmetic is a   skill always available.  But what of  really high level intellectual ability?  In its outcomes can erudition compete with innate IQ related  ability? Can someone without a startlingly high IQ make as profound a contribution  to intellectual  history as  those with such an IQ simply through intellectual application?  Step forward  Charles Darwin.

7. Did Darwin have a high IQ?

Charles Darwin is widely recognised as one of the most important intellectuals in history.  A strong case can be made for his theory of natural selection being the single most influential idea ever,  because not only did it profoundly change the intellectual relationship between man and his perception of his place in existence, its influence has stretched far beyond biology.  It might even be said to be of universal application because all natural repeatable events, circumstances and ongoing processes are subject to selection. Just as organisms compete to  survive so do inanimate objects and processes, whether natural or man-made.  A pebble  on the seashore made of granite will outlast one made of sandstone;   war machines will compete in  an arms race; ideas will clash and be selected or not according to their intellectual and emotional  power in a particular situation.   Today his idea  is applied increasingly  to design generally  using  computer programmes which mimic evolution  on projects  as diverse as  discovering the most efficient  phone network  and the design of new anti-bacterial drugs.

But Darwin’s importance goes far beyond a single idea. He contributed greatly to other parts of evolutionary theory including the descent of Man  and the development of emotions in Man and animals.   He was also a good guesser. Frequently  his hypotheses  were untestable in his own lifetime because the knowledge needed to test them were not available but have been given Further credence by later discoveries, for example, his belief that modern Man originated in Africa, an hypothesis which is widely accepted today because of DNA analysis. It is difficult to think of a man who has had a more profound intellectual effect on the world.

Darwin was obviously exceptionally intellectually capable in the sense that he produced very important work, but is there anything in his life and work which is suggestive of a genius level  IQ?  He did not show any noticeable aptitude for the traditionally high IQ subjects such as maths and philosophy, nor is his life before his voyage on the Beagle suggestive of any great intellectual power.  It is true that the young  Darwin  showed a strong interest in the natural world, both in biology  and geology, but this interest  was more that of a gentleman dilettante rather than of a serious scientist.

Even after returning from his voyage on the Beagle Darwin retained something of the gentleman dilettante, although he was very hardworking and persistent  in his interests. He spent more than twenty years toying with the idea of evolution through natural selection and engaging in other work which was largely a matter of observation. When he came  to publish his work on evolution he only did so because he is afraid that his ideas would  be trumped by the publication of Wallace’s very similar theory. (That he suddenly rushed  to publish gives the lie to the commonly retailed idea that he had withheld   publication for fear of a hostile   public   reception, especially from the devout.)   The most plausible explanation  for the delay is that Darwin simply did not have the motivation to make the intellectual effort to finish his great work until he was threatened with being trumped Wallace. It is only from that point onwards that Darwin   begins to produce the work for which he is chiefly  remembered today. He was no feverishly intelligent, intellectual  personality bursting to put his ideas before the public as soon as possible.

But although Darwin took a long time to get to the point of  publication,  he  undoubtedly  spent an immense amount of time and effort   assimilating information about the Natural world from his  teenage years onwards. By the time he  finished the Origin of Species  he had developed the intelligence of erudition to a very high degree.

Darwin’s working method was to create a mound of evidence on which he built sustained argument.  (Ironically, the critics of The Origin of Species frequently complained that he lacked powers of reasoning when in fact the book is one sustained immense argument).  The data he worked upon was not inherently difficult to master being primarily a question of observation by Darwin or others.   Anyone of normal intelligence could master it with sufficient application.   Where Darwin differs from the vast majority is in the tenacity with which he assimilated facts and the use he put the data   to after he had assimilated it.   What Darwin had was an  abnormally sustained concentration of thought .

So what are we to make of all this in the context of Darwin’s IQ? Obviously he had to have the mental wherewithal to  allow him to handle large amounts of data and construct coherent arguments from the data.  He needed to be able to see not only the wood for the trees but to see the important trees in the wood. The question is how he managed to accomplish such tasks.  Was it  primarily IQ related  ability or is it a consequence of learning? The material he dealt with suggests the latter, that he had the intelligence of erudition in spades.

Based on the content of Darwin’s work and his failure to display any  aptitude for indubitably high IQ subjects such as maths, there is no  reason to believe  he had a very high IQ. He needed an IQ high  enough  to  allow  him  to  undertake  the  tasks  of assimilating   essentially   simple information and engaging in a sophisticated analysis of it. Perhaps an IQ in the 110-120  range would have fitted the bill for those tasks.

8. Reason is not the primary driver of Man



Of course  Man is in  vastly more constrained  circumstances than the omnipotent, omniscient god. Human beings  live within the general constraints that applies to every other organism.  We copulate, eat, drink, and sleep, fight, respond to weariness perform our bodily functions in the same way  that an animal does, without any great thought. We feel desire or necessity and act on impulse.


















9. Sociological  Constraints







10. How primitive is primitive?

If the current estimates of hominid evolution are correct, the variety classified as modern Man has a surprisingly short geological history, the upper estimates being a paltry 200,000 years.  Nor is that history a simple progression.   The remains of the older examples of modern Man normally have more ancient features than the younger examples, but occasionally younger remains displaying ancient features are found. This  is  a more significant fact than it might seem because fossils of Man are very rare  and hence it is telling that even a few should show ancient features at the “wrong date” for it suggests that the more archaic forms of Man might not only have lasted a long time but in substantial numbers.

How little is still  known about human evolution is illustrated by  the recent discovery of  remains  by the Koobi Fora Research Project   in the  Ileret region, east of Lake Turkana. in Northern Kenya  which appeared in Nature magazine. (nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7154/abs/nature05986.html) These suggest that  Homo habilis and  Homo erectus  co-existed for half a million years. The significance of this is that it makes the generally accepted descent of Man from Homo habilis to  Homo  erectus to  Homo sapiens improbable, vis:

‘”Their co-existence makes it unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis”, explained Meave Leakey….”

The fact that they stayed separate as individual species for a long time suggests that they had their own ecological niche, thus avoiding direct competition,” she added. ’Fossils put new branch on human family tree Daily Telegraph   09/08/2007.

There is truly no point in the past at which it can be said here is the origin of modern Man. Darwin put the case nicely before there was any significant hominid fossil record: “Whether primeval man, when he possessed but few arts, and those of the rudest kind, and when his power of language was extremely imperfect, would have deserved to be called man, must depend on the definition we employ. In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point when the term ‘man’ ought to be used.  But this is a matter of very little importance. So again, it is almost a matter of indifference whether the so-called races of man are thus designated, or are ranked as species or sub species; but the latter term appears the more appropriate.”  (Descent of Man – chapter The Races of Man).

At what point can  Man be said to be acting in a qualitatively different  way from other animals?  Here is Darwin once more:   “I have seen, as I dare say   have others,   that when a small object is thrown beyond the reach of one of the elephants in the Zoological  Gardens, he blows through his trunk on the ground   beyond the object so that the current reflected  on all sides may drive the object within his reach. Again a well known ethnologist, Mr Estoppels,  informs me that he observed a bear in Vienna making with his paw a current in some water as to  draw a piece of floating bread within reach.  These actions of the elephant and bear can hardly be attributed to instinct or inherited habit, as they would be of little use to an animal of nature.  Now, what is the difference between such actions? when performed by an uncultivated man, and by one of the higher animals?” (Darwin: The Descent of Man – chapter Mental Powers.)

Darwin concluded that there was little difference in the general approach of the higher animal and man in his primitive state, although he allowed that “There would no doubt be this difference between  him [the savage] and one of the higher animals, that he would take more notice of much slighter circumstances   and conditions, and would observe  any connections between them after much less experience, and this would be of paramount importance.  I kept a daily record of the actions of one of my infants, and when he was about eleven months old, and before he could speak a single word, I was continually struck with the greater quickness, with which all sorts of objects and sounds were associated together in his mind, compared with the most intelligent dogs I knew.  But the higher animals differ in exactly the same way in this power of association from those low in the scale, such as the pike, as well as drawing inferences and of observation.” (ibid)

If Darwin is right – and there is as so often with him, plausibility in his reasoning – it  might seem  reasonable to classify human beings by behaviour, they only being accepted as full members of homo sapiens when they have reached the point where their behaviour is clearly qualitatively different from that of animals.   Obviously such a  judgement would  be extraordinarily contentious because of its social and   political ramifications, but  stripped of that difficulty could criteria be formulated which would be definitive?  It would not be simple.  For example,   a reasonable criterion might seem to be  to pose the question does  this or that population of Homo Sapiens   go  beyond the fundamental behavioural imperatives of other animals which are to obtain food,  breed and raise young?  The difficulty with that approach is that it is possible to  explain all human behaviour in such terms, that is, all human behaviour ultimately serves such ends: a  man does something which displays exceptional ability: he is enhancing his  biological fitness by advertising his desirability as a mate: a  woman shows an abnormal facility for  handling children: she demonstrates her desirability as a mate and so on.

The old favourite for defining humanity, tool use,  will not get us far. Animals use tools.  It is not even possible at the most primitive observed human level to  point to a  large  library  of  tools  or artefacts let alone tools and artefacts of any great sophistication – the Tasmanians (indubitably part of the modern model of humanity at the physical level) at the time they encountered Europeans were reckoned to have a minute number of tools, viz: “So far as we can ascertain, their entire tool-kit at the end of their history consisted of a mere eighteen items – digging sticks, some very basic  stone implements, spears, grass rope, baskets, hides (from which to ambush prey) and traps (for birds). In short, a list that is not so different in size or content from the accredited list of tools for modern chimpanzees. If we make allowances for qualitative differences in the toolkits   of chimpanzees and those produced by modern humans, there are really only two things in the Tasmanians’ toolkit that the chimpanzees do not have   – containers for carrying things (such as baskets and gourds) and structures (things like hides and traps).” Robin Dunbar The Human Story p150.

It  might  seem obvious  that all tools and artefacts are the  consequence   of  human  imagination,  yet  how  far   they   are independently  imagined  and  how far the  simple  consequence  of  the observation of accidental behaviour and its translation into  something more  permanent  and  sophisticated is a moot  point, not merely in the world of the hunter-gatherer but in pre-industrial  societies generally. Some  troops  of chimpanzees will use sticks to get termites out of a termite hill. This behaviour presumably originated because an animal in the  band  was poking  a termite hill with a stick – a  perfectly natural activity  for chimps  which are very curious animals – and noticed that termites  ran up  the  stick and the animal  continued to use the trick which  in  turn  was copied by other members of the band. (That this behaviour is not innate is  shown  by  the  fact that different chimpanzee  populations   vary  in  their behaviour  in  this and other instances of tool  using  or  exceptional behaviour,  that is,  some  do it, some do  not  and  different  chimp populations   will  use  variants  of  the  same  tactic).  It  is  not unreasonable  to suppose that most early  human advances were  made  in much this way, the observation of the accidental consequences of  behaviour followed by their imitation.  Is  the creation of tools and artefacts in such a manner really imaginative or is it simply a function of  memory. The organism does something and remembers the consequences of doing  it and  associates cause and effect.

If not tools what about the production of artefacts (defining artefact as a physical object deliberately produced  by  an  organism by radically altering its components’ natural state)? Failed again I’m afraid  – think birds’ nests and otters’ dams.

What about behaviour which seems to go beyond mere immediate utility?, For example, do not  all modern humans perform rituals to appease or conjure gods or spirits or at least engage in behaviour we define as magic to alter the world?  Probably, although the sophistication of such ideas vary greatly from society to society.  But where is the dividing line between behaviour which is repeated and self-conscious ritual?  After all many animals display behaviour which might well be described as rituals if they were seen in Man.   Nor  is such behaviour  limited to the obvious realm of courtship, for example, chimpanzees  ‘perform “rain dances” to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning during tropical storms, and one of their most outlandish performances  is the “carnival,”   when as many as thirty individuals come together for a period of fantastic noisemaking which may last several hours.’ (The emergence of Man John E Pfeiffer p 276).

It might seem that the system of complicated signalling we call language is qualitatively different from anything an animal does, but even here the distinction is not absolute because animals use sound to communicate specific messages, for example, threat calls,   warning calls, courting calls. Human language obviously goes far  beyond that in terms of its scope,  but is there a qualitative difference in the basic function performed by the use of animal vocalisation? It is difficult to see human language as fundamentally different in terms of basic function, although the range of information transmitted is massively greater and more varied.

Nor is all human language equal in its functionality. Consider the case of the Piraha, an Amazonian tribe with several hundred members.   They have been in contact with Brazilian culture for two centuries or more, yet they display some very odd traits one of which is to have no sense of number? An American linguistic anthropologist Daniel Everett has studied them from 27 years.  Apart from their innumeracy, Everett reports that “the Piraha is the only people known to have no distinct words for colours. They have no written language, and no collective memory going back more than two generations.  They don’t sleep for more than two hours at a time during the night or day. Even when food is available, they frequently starve themselves and their children…    They communicate almost as much by singing, whistling and humming as by normal speech. They frequently change their names, because they believe spirits regularly take them over and intrinsically change who they are. They do not believe that outsiders understand their language even after they have just carried on conversations with them. They have no creation myths tell no fictional stories and have no art. All of their pronouns appear to be borrowed from a neighbouring    language.” (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LA C/200408 20 NUMBERS20/TPScience/ – Friday, August 20, 2004)

The Piraha’s innumeracy is particularly interesting.  ‘Their lack of numbering terms and skills is highlighted in a report by Columbia University cognitive psychologist Peter Gordon that appears today in Science.    Intrigued by anecdotal reports that Prof.  Everett and his wife Karen had presented about the matchlessness of Piraha life, Prof. Gordon conducted a number of experiments over a three-year period.   He found that a group of male tribe members — women and children were not involved because of certain cultural taboos — could not perform the most elementary mathematical operations.    When faced with a line of batteries and asked to duplicate the number they saw, the men could not get beyond two or three before starting to make mistakes.    They had difficulty drawing straight lines to copy a number of lines they were presented with.  They couldn’t remember which of two boxes had more or less fish symbols on it, even when they were about to be rewarded for their knowledge.    A significant part of the difficulty related to their number-impoverished vocabulary.    Although they would say one word to   indicate a single thing and another for two things, those words didn’t necessarily mean one or two in any usual sense.  “It is more like ones and twos,” ‘  according to Gordon.

‘Prof. Gordon said the findings are perhaps the strongest evidence for a once largely discredited linguistic theory.   More than 60 years ago, amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf argued that learning a specific language determined the nature and content of how you think.    That theory fell into intellectual disrepute after linguist Noam Chomsky’s notions of a universal human grammar and Harvard University professor Steven Pincer’s idea of a universal language instinct became widely accepted.    “The question is, is there any case where not having words for something doesn’t allow you to think about it?” Prof.  Gordon asked about the Piraha and the Whorfian thesis. “I think this is a case for  just that.”     Prof.   Everett argues that what the Piraha casedemonstrates is a fundamental cultural principle working itself out in language and behaviour.’ (Ibid)

If the Whorfian theory is correct, or at least describes a quality which profoundly affects the way the world is perceived, other  behavioural divisions  between  the various populations of  Man  must  exist.  (The ideas of a universal grammar and a universal language instinct are  not necessarily  incompatible  with  the idea that  a  particular  language determines thought for there could be a basic language template that is then  altered by experience.  Moreover, it is conceivable that  natural selection  creates  subtle  brain differences  between  populations  to accommodate differences in language).   To any  Whorfian differences in populations  may be added the vast differences in cultural  expression, some  of which could be laid at the door of linguistic  determinism  of thought.

That leaves us with culture. Here Man does indeed seem to stand alone. He  undoubtedly  creates culture in a way that no other organism does, both in terms of the depth and the variety of  the cultures created. A case can be made for some animals, for example, chimpanzees, having a capacity for culture, but  at best their  cultural activities  such as termite  fishing are very rudimentary  and few in number.  Most importantly, Man uses culture to distinguish between  different populations of humans, even if  the populations are biologically similar.

11. Speciation by culture

If the argument  for Man’s special place in Nature is moved to  the ground of culture,  Man’s position as an organism with unique qualities which differentiate him from all other organisms  undoubtedly becomes  stronger,  but at the cost of  threatening  his  position as a species as traditionally defined.

Objections have been raised to the conclusions  of  Everett and Gordon,  primarily  in terms of  their interpretation of  their observations,  but  assuming there is a fair degree of  objective truth about their data, it is reasonable to ask are the Pirana   teetering on the edge of what counts as fully human if behaviour is the defining  criterion? It is  the wrong question to ask. The  right question to ask is can  homo sapiens be meaningfully designated a species as a species is defined for every other organism?


It  is worth adding that the traditional concept of a species is far from secure. It is a man-made classification which is often found wanting. For example,  the North American Ruddy Duck and the  European  White-Headed Duck are classified as separate species.  The introduction of the Ruddy Duck  to  Europe has resulted in widespread interbreeding  between  the supposedly  separate  species to the extent that  conservationists  now fear for the survival of the White Headed Duck.  It is also true that a growing  amount  of   traditional  taxonomic  classification  is  being overturned by DNA analysis.

Another  interesting  trait  is that  members of a  species  will  have different  breeding  propensities  across its  distribution,  that  is, members of the supposedly single species will breed differentially with different parts of the total species population.  For example,  take an animal  which is common to Europe and bring individuals from  different geographical parts of the continent together and it may be that those found in the  East of  the distribution  will be less likely or refuse altogether to  mate with the those in the West.  These barriers to breeding are clearly not purely due to major differences in physical biology. Probably there is an element of behavioural difference which reduces the propensity to breed.

Animals use various triggers to breed: aural, chemical, condition of feathers  and so on. These are seemingly automatic processes whereby one individual responds to another without conscious thought. Even behavioural triggers such as mating rituals can be viewed in the same light. Man, although not divorced entirely from  such triggers, adds conscious thought to the process of mate selection. Does that not put Man in an entirely separate category to all other organisms, namely,  the one organism who can potentially breed freely across the entire species population?  Potentially yes, but in practice no for Man’s capacity for conscious thought and decision making does not mean  his breeding is not constrained by the triggers which control other organisms, especially behavioural. For example, most people choose mates who are of the same race as themselves even when they have ample opportunity  to do otherwise.

Even at the level of biology I wonder if Man is quite as  discrete as he imagines.  To the best of my  knowledge no  one  has  tried to create a cross between a human and  a  chimpanzee  or a bonobo  –  I sincerely hope no one ever does.  But  putting  aside  any natural  revulsion,  would  it be so surprising if  such  a  cross  was possible?  Would  it be any more of a intra-species leap than  say  the production  of  a mule or a liger (lion/tiger) through  the  mating  of different species?  I would not wish to bet against it.

As  for the future,  genetic engineering may break  down  distinctions between  species,  for  example,  by   genes  from  one  species  being implanted into another.  Lastly,  genetics and/or cybernetics may  lead to  modifications of human beings so substantial to create what are  to all  intents and purposes unambiguously separate  species of Man with vastly differing abilities. There may come a point where the concept of a species becomes redundant.

12. Race and Man

The most potent of human behavioural triggers are racial differences for they exercise the strongest control over the group in a territory where different racial groups exist. Race trumps ethnicity where the ethnic clash is one of people of the same race but different ethnicities.  Place a significant population of a different race into a territory where ethnicity rather than race is the cause of unrest and the ethnic factions of the same race will tend to unite against those of a different race.






























13 An analogy with computers




14. The more primitive the society the less it relies on high IQ related skills

The  evidence  of  palaeontology (the  scarcity  of  hominid  remains), of archaeology  (the absence of evidence of  large scale human  settlement anywhere before about 7,000 BC),  of  anthropology (studies of extant  hunter  gatherers), extrapolations  from  non-human  primate behaviour and the practical implications of being a  very large  animal, (within the top 5 per cent of land animals by size.)  make it certain that  Man’s  roots lie in small groups  of hunter  gatherers. Man’s  natural group “in the wild”  is that of the small band of  perhaps  25-100 people.

Hunter  gatherer  societies are based primarily on knowledge not reasoning. To survive the individual members have to know a great deal about the world about them but they are not often called upon to solve absolutely novel problems.  They live in a world which remains  broadly stable.  Once  something  is learned it will  normally  remain  useful throughout  an  individual’s life, for example, the behaviour  of  an animal species will remain the same in its general aspects.  That  is not  to say life in  such societies is undemanding – as Stephen  Pinker puts it in his “How the mind works”,  being a hunter gatherer is akin to enduring a lifelong camping trip without mod cons or rescue services  – but the demands made are different from those arising from other  forms of human society.

Survival  in  such circumstances requires a detailed  knowledge  of   the animals  and  plants  in the habitat –  their  appearance,   behaviour, locale  and uses,  including the medicinal and the usefully toxic  such as    curare.   Close familiarity with the terrain within  the  group’s range  is a must,  as is a  knowledge of the weather and  the  seasons. To be an efficient member of the group the male hunter-gatherer   will need to learn to stalk game and have the courage and ferocity to deal with dangerous animals and other hostile groups of humans.  To aid direction finding,  some knowledge of the  stars will probably be acquired.

That is just the start. The hunter-gatherer will also need a number of manual skills ranging from those needed for hunting –  spear throwing, arrow shooting, trap setting, the making of fire and so on  – and for the manufacture of all artefacts which cannot be found in nature  – clothes, bows and arrows, spears, fish-hooks,  baskets and suchlike.

The  female members of the tribe,  in addition to needing many  of  the skills  required  of  the men,   will have to deal  with  the  problems arising from  childbirth and maternal care.

To be fully integrated into his group the  hunter-gatherer will need a deep  knowledge of the  accumulated  customs, ceremonies  and beliefs of his tribe or band and also  a knowledge of other neighbouring  groups  to  be  able to participate in the  resolution  of  inter-tribe disputes within the confines of the belief system of the tribe.

This  might seem a tremendously demanding  catalogue of learning, but  it  is not  onerous  in  reality  because the information  and expertise is acquired over a long  time and  under  the most propitious circumstances.  The child learns in the easiest way  by  directly  observing how others do it and by tuition which   is  either one-to-one  or  given  in  a   small  group.

Nor  is  the  required knowledge very intellectually demanding. It is almost all concrete information. Even  knowledge of the  group’s myths can be no more than the  acquiring of concrete data  because the myths  can be treated as  a set of narrative  stories which  are  simply passed down from generation  to  generation  without causing intellectual enquiry. Indeed,  questioning of the myths will almost  certainly  be  seen as mortally dangerous and be discouraged  by severe punishment  because it will be deemed to risk angering either a god  or  gods or  cause some other form of cosmic disturbance  such  as creating bad karma.

Of course,  building up such a suite of skills and knowledge means that an  individual has, or a group of people have, at some point  originated the  acquisition of the various skills and elements of  knowledge,  but the  large  majority of those skills and knowledge  can  plausibly  be ascribed  to  the  normal process of  finding  solutions  to  immediate problems raised by the environment rather than to individuals  looking beyond the obvious. It is the difference between devising a simple trap to  catch  an animal based on observation of the animal’s  behaviour  – which  gives  the basic information  needed to devise the  trap, for example, dig a pit here  –  and working  out that fibre can be gathered from  an animal  and  converted into cloth,  a process which requires an act of  imagination beyond the information supplied by observation.

Regardless   of  the  origin  of  the  skills  and  knowledge  of   the hunter-gatherer, the individual hunter-gatherer will be able to acquire them  simply as learned skills. There will be no necessity  to  change things.  Indeed, as mentioned above, it will probably be dangerous for the  individual member to try to innovate because the tribe as a  whole will view any deviation from tried and tested ways as  dangerous. Such a  brake   on innovation is almost certainly  a valuable  attribute  at the  level of the hunter-gatherer tribe  which is necessarily very reliant on social cohesion.

The nearest the hunter-gatherer gets to an intellectual life is in the creation of tribal myth, especially the explanation of the tribe and the  world’s  origin  and the assignment of animate  qualities  to  the inanimate, spirits in volcanoes, the sky, rivers and so on. That Man should create myths  is  natural for   a self-conscious being  will  necessarily  wonder about such things  as  mortality  and existence. Of course, the creation of  myths is an exercise of the imagination,  but it is difficult to see that  it makes   any   heavy  intellectual demands. There is a  world of  difference between a creation myth which simply asserts that this or that happened (for example,  Genesis) and the theological/philosophical consideration of what existence entails (for example,  Aquinas’   attempts  at  a  proof  of  God).   The  former  is  simply storytelling to provide an  answer,  the latter an attempt to use reason to  provide  an  answer  from  the  observed  and  necessary  facts  of existence.

Change generally will be tend to be seen as dangerous. What is known to work  through long usage  is safe; that which is novel  is  potentially dangerous. To that may be added the fact that it is simply psychologically easier to do what you already know. Learning new things is mentally demanding.

The fact that Man spent hundreds of  thousands of years (including most of his “modern Man” period of the past 200,000 years or so) with  precious little cultural change is powerful circumstantial evidence of  the very strong  innate reluctance  of  human  beings  to depart from customary  ways.  Even  in historical  times  we know that change has often  been   extraordinarily slow in societies which were the most advanced at the time, for example, the stereotypical artefacts of ancient Egypt which change very little  over several millennia or  the dress of the Chinese which was  much the same in 1,800  AD as it was  in 1,000 AD.   Even those living  lives in  advanced societies today show a strong reluctance to alter their ways,  although their ability   to resist change is increasingly limited (see appendix B).

The concentration on concrete thinking probably underpins a reluctance  to change because the understanding and acceptance of radical change  requires abstract  thought. The individual has to think through the consequences, construct a mental model of what will happen.   Someone  may stumble by accident on a  simple  new behaviour which advances Man’s ability to control his environment,  for example, that a prey animal is attracted by a particular bait or that a plant has medicinal effects. But no complex advance, for example, the invention  of the wheel, is going to occur by simple observation  and copying because it requires someone to go beyond copying and visualise something which does not exist.

The  physical senses of  people living  as hunter gatherers are much heightened compared with those living in modern industrialised urban societies.  This is scarcely surprising because the  hunter-gatherer  has to concern themselves with the natural world in the same way that  an animal in the wild does: both must be on constant guard against predators or other forms of danger and be alive to the opportunities for obtaining food  and other materials.  The heightened senses and the  need to concentrate on the present may effect how people think by  either training the mind in that direction or by selecting  individuals with such innate traits.  Perhaps it is impossible  for a  mind  to efficiently perform radically different functions such as a concentration on the immediate and concrete and deal with abstractions. If so, this could either be a consequence of innate difference or a difference in experience which programs the mind.

The fact that the life of a hunter-gatherer is very physically  demanding, both in  terms of  simply surviving and in the manual  skills  which must be routinely exercised, may have an effect on  intellectual development. Perhaps a concentration on  physical activity may  dull the intellectual processes even if the brain is equipped to potentially do far more intellectually, or to put it another way,  the brain is programmed to do manual work by the demands of the society in which the hunter-gatherer lives and has  less inclination  for  intellectual activity because of that programming. The hunter-gatherer will also have his concentration on potential  dangers from  predators and other bands of men, just as  a prey  animal will be constantly  looking out for danger.

In summary, the hunter-gatherer has a large suite of skills and  knowledge  which allow him to deal with circumstances as they arise, but there is little or  nothing  which  requires high level reasoning  or  invention.  The knowledge  of  the group is passed from generation to  generation  with little change.

What  is  required  in  such  a society  is  a  very   strong  memory, especially  as such societies are pre-literate (it has long been  noted that people in pre-literate societies frequently have extraordinarily  powerful memories and  good powers of recall), and the ability to  readily  access and apply the knowledge.

The  implication of all this is that a  hunter-gatherer  society  will require  a substantially smaller aggregate intelligence than more  complex  societies. Alternatively  it could be argued that a lesser aggregate intelligence  is what is actually required in less complex societies, that is,  it is optimum  state for the ecological niche into which they naturally  fit. Increase the  average IQ of the group and the society  will  have  the potential to develop different behaviours, for example, it may  become less socially cohesive because there are more individuals who  require less social support to  cope  or whose greater intelligence leads  them to  innovate. That could reduce the fitness  of  the  hunter-gatherer group because higher IQ behaviours are inappropriate.

None of this  means a simple society is biologically unfit per se. They fill their niche in the Natural world successfully,  indeed, have  filled it for most of the vast stretch of hominid existence. In parts of the world they fill  it to this day. Their evolutionary fitness is only called into question when they meet more complex societies with which they cannot compete. When they do this can have the most traumatic effects. Take the case of the Australian Aboriginals who  have  a   large  experience  of living   in state-sponsored    reservations.     The    amount of aboriginal self-determination  has varied over the years,  with the general  trend being  towards  ever  more  self-governance. This  trend  is  now  being reconsidered because of its ill-consequences, viz:

‘Releasing  a  new  report into the nation’s health,  Mr  Abbott  [Tony Abbott,   the   Australian  health  minister]  said  the   system   of self-governing   Aboriginal  communities  created   “appalling   living conditions”  where problems such as petrol-sniffing,  domestic violence and child sexual abuse were rife…

‘The report said Aboriginal health was declining at a time when that of the  rest  of  community  was  markedly  improving.   Death  rates  for indigenous  infants  are  three  times  higher  than  for  the  general population.

‘Mr Abbot’s audacious plan proposes giving administrators  wide-ranging powers to organise basic services such as water, transport and sewerage –   and   reverse   what   he   calls   the   pervading   “culture   of directionlessness”  in remote Aboriginal settlements.’ (Daily Telegraph 22/06/2006).

A  plausible explanation for  this state of affairs is that the Aborigines are  being asked to live a life for which they are not equipped. and that at least part of that unfitness is  down to Nature.   The nurturist will of course argue that the  present state of Aborigines is simply a consequence of the  destruction of their traditional way of life, which in one sense is true. What the nurturist does not and cannot explain is why  populations adapt to meeting more sophisticated  cultures  with differing degrees of ease. It is never an easy or pleasant thing to put aside old ways which are comfortable, but  the experience of  white and Asian societies in adapting to new , more  intellectually demanding circumstances is utterly at  odds with that of  peoples such as the Aborigines.  Europe and its  colonial offshoots such as the USA industrialised quite rapidly when shown the way by Britain; Japan took up the industrial banner  in the 19th century and China almost certainly would have done if it had not been emasculated  by foreign powers.  Korea and China itself have shown since the second world war how readily they can create an industrial society.  Most tellingly whites and Asians adapt to more intellectually demanding circumstances regardless of where they are. This is almost certainly because  of their superior IQ distribution.

15. Life in more complex societies

The  more  complex a society the greater the need  for  high  IQ. As the  number of humans living in social proximity  increases  more sophisticated social structures  are required. A settled way of life amplifies this need further. The variety of occupations  increases and, most importantly, the amount of stored knowledge becomes both larger and, once writing is available, more stable. Social organisation becomes  looser and informal social support lessens. In place of a single world view competing ideologies vie for supremacy. Change and innovation become much more probable.  There is so much more to potentially think about and learn, although any  individual may  actually  have to know less than the hunter-gatherer to survive because  of division of labour.

The  individual in such a society  is  required to both learn more complex  and  less  immediately obviously  practical  skills  and knowledge and to deal with a greater  range  of human  personalities  and ideas. A man’s  life contains less  physical activity. As he works with his brain rather than his hands, his focus of attention  changes.   Knowledge becomes  obsolete through innovation and  consequently the need to learn throughout life  increases. There is  less  certainty  and  fewer simple  cultural mooring posts. The individual has  to make more intellectually demanding decisions.

To live in  a more complex society requires a qualitative change in mental abilities.   There is an ever increasing shift from  learning  that  which is concrete  to that which is abstract, both in terms of understanding the whys and hows of the  natural world at a level beyond mere surface observation, for example, the extraction of  metal from ores,   and in contemplating the organisational problems posed by  larger  associations of human beings. Much of what is  to be  learnt  has no connection with the  natural world and consequently no innate interest for Man who has to persuade himself  intellectually that such  things should be learnt because  they lead to  useful  outcomes.

The existence of writing enhances such behaviours but it does more than that. The  storing of information in a stable  form means that  information can be disseminated more widely and  more certainly. Oral traditions inevitably  result in  variation. So of course  do  written  records but  they are  far less prone to change, especially  where   moveable type printing  exists.   Moreover, a written record is a permanent statement of what was thought or claimed  at one time. It can be compared with later written or oral accounts of the same subject in a way that  a society with a purely oral tradition can  never compare past and present accounts. In addition, written  documentation  allows not only a vast increase in what can be handed down from generation to generation but also  much more complex information. It also greatly extends the time over which information may be transmitted.  According to Plato,  Socrates lamented the use of written records because he believed they  stifled  the intellect, but  what would we know of Socrates today if  no written records had been made of his thought? The answer is nothing.

As societies become more complex the way in which people learn changes. Instead of invariably learning by personal instruction and example, human beings often have to learn  without direct human assistance, for example by reading,  or by listening to the spoken words of others without any practical demonstration. This is because in  modern industrialised societies the number of people who really understand the  technology which is in general use is seriously inadequate. This means that people are  routinely expected to use technology without  a proper understanding of it because there is no one to instruct them in its use.

16. The increasing IQ demands of  modern society







17. Low IQ behaviour





18. High IQ behaviour




19. Majority and minority



The  larger  the  minority group the more  extreme  its  position  will become  because the larger it  is the easier it is for a member of the minority to live without having social inter-action with the  majority population. This will make the  majority population even less inclined to offer aid to members of the minority.  As mentioned previously (Welfare, Ethnicity and Altruism), there  is  also solid evidence  that the more racial and ethnically divided a society is,  the less  willing are its members, and particularly those of  the  majority group, to  provide for social goods such as welfare or healthcare.



Minorities of Ashkenazi Jews and  Asians  in  Western countries  have  higher average IQs than the societies  in  which  they live,  but there are two important differences between  their  position and  the position of whites in SA and their  majority black population.   The first  is the fact that  the  difference  between Ashkenazi  Jews and Asians and that of the  US majority  population is nothing like as great as that between US blacks and whites .  The  second difference is that  the white  average IQ of 100 is adequate to  create and sustain an advanced modern society.

20. A low IQ individual in a high IQ  society



http://www.patienthealthinternational.com/ncm.aspx?type=news&param=9145  11 November 2005












The  upshot  of  the  weakening of social  provision  and individual ethnic help  is, of course,  an  increased inability of the those with weak IQs to live  comfortably or fulfilling  in an advanced  society. At best they risk being reduced to permanent pensioners of the more intellectually able members of their society.

21. The High IQ individual in a low IQ society




22. High status/high IQ jobs





“We have obtained SAT data on classes entering  twenty-six of the nation’s top colleges and universities. In 1975, most of the  nation’s elite private colleges and  universities  formed the  Consortium on financing Higher Education (COHFHE, which amongst other things,  compiles and shares information on thestudents  at  member institutions, including SAT  scores. We have  obtained these data  for the classes entering  in  1991 and  1992…  In addition,  the figure includes data  on  the University  of Virginia and the University of  California  at  Berkeley in 1988.” (The Bell Curve p451).










But  over-qualification  applies  only  to  those   who   are   not beneficiaries of “positive” discrimination and lower IQ candidates come from  the groups who do benefit from such favouritism.  Because of  the reasons  given above,  they can survive because the job does  not  make intellectual  demands  which  unambiguously reveals   their  inadequacy.  In addition, those who benefit from “positive” discrimination will tend to generally benefit from  political correctness,  for this will drive those outside the protection of political correctness – in the developed world  white doctors, nurses,  technicians and  administrators-   to  cover up the inadequacies  of  the  low  IQ politically correct  protected doctor.  Ironically,  the higher than necessary IQ of those doctors outside the politically  correct fold will assist  in the process of  covering up because they will tend to  be more competent at doing so  because of their higher IQ and  greater competence.











23. How the IQ  level of a society rises








24. Why have Asians not dominated?

































A similar refusal to  engage with white societies  can be found in Japan, which after some experience of  white merchants and priests, took the dramatic step of sealing off Japan from all but the most  limited European  contact for three centuries until the American Commodore Perry  forced trade with the white world upon them in 1853.



25. Why have whites dominated?

Plausibly, whites have been the culturally dominant race – in the sense of  creating the most sophisticated societies to date –  because they  marry a high average IQ with a superior verbal ability to that of Asians.  This means they can both handle the IQ demands of an advanced sophisticated society and have sufficient sociability to create structures which extend the group loyalty and sense of oneness beyond the family or tribe  without resorting to unashamed   authoritarian control,   for example civil society and representative government.   They display strong traits of initiative, imagination  and intellectual curiosity, traits which may be linked to their relatively high sociability, a behaviour which encourages emulation and competition between and within the sexes. Other biological traits such as testosterone levels somewhere  between blacks and Asians may also promote such behaviour.

There  is evidence that enhanced traits of individuality and imagination go back to the beginnings of modern European man. The vast majority of extant cave paintings in the world are found in Europe, especially  in the  west of the continent. (The  cave art of the Palaeolithic and  the finely  honed flint tools of the later Stone Age, whose workmanship goes far beyond the  demands of the demands of simple utility, arguably represent a higher state of development than the 19th Century Tasmanians).

The great ancient white civilisations  which arose around the Mediterranean, those of Greece and Rome, show an immense fertility of  mind. It is here that we first find evidence of analytical  thought as a conscious pursuit.   Their  art is both extensive and  varied and subject to fashion, that is, it changes regularly over time. That art, both visual and literary,  is concerned  with either homo sapiens or gods who share human qualities, evidence of a similar mentality to that which drove the Renaissance.  In terms of  advanced social organisation, the Greeks created  the idea of direct democracy  and the Romans incorporated  democratic aspects into the first great European political entity.

These traits continued throughout the mediaeval European world,  even  though they were  gradually placed ever more firmly  in the constraining context of Christianity. Illuminated European manuscripts often   reveal a lively irreverence and interest in the  profane world  in their illustrations,  monarchs, great nobles and religious orders vied with one another to produce ever more magnificently egotistical  material statements in the form of  gorgeous  illuminated manuscripts,  great  castles and religious buildings,  parliaments  were  created in many kingdoms.  Intellectuals such as Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Peter Abelard and William of Occam  wrestled with the implications of existence. Then came the  Renaissance which  saw the qualities of individuality and imagination given full rein, aided by the  advance of the vernacular throughout Europe and,  most importantly, printing.   From that point onwards the  general cultural advance of Europe  has never faltered and has produced science,  high technology, representative government  and an ever changing kaleidoscope  of artistic endeavour.  These were the building blocks of modernity.

The acceptance of Christianity  within Europe  is interesting in itself  for the religion embodies the notion  of individualism, both in the personification of God and the individual’s relationship  with God.  Moreover,  the placing of God in human form  in the person of Christ echoes  the  humanising of  the Greek and Roman gods.  Old wine in new bottles.

26. Blacks: the odd man out

Blacks  occupy  a  special place in the  relationship  between  IQ  and social  organisation for two reasons:  they have the lowest average  IQ and   the difference in IQ distribution between them and the other  two broad  racial  groups (whites and Asians) is much greater  than  it  is between  whites  and Asians, assuming the latter gap exists.

Many  have  difficulty accepting the average black African  IQ  of  70. Professor  J  Phillipe Rushton of the  University  of  Western  Ontario addressed  this  disbelief  in  an  intriguing  article  for  VDARE.COM  ‘Solving  The African IQ Conundrum :  “Winning Personality”  Masks  Low Scores'(http://www.vdare.com/asp/printPage.asp?url=):”I know that the figure  is  not  a fluke….  because for the last  six  years  I  have collected  African IQ data on hundreds of students at  the  prestigious University  of  the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg,  South  Africa.  The average IQ for these African students turns out to be 84. Assuming they score  15 points above the general average,  as university students  of any  group typically do,  then an average African IQ of 70  is  implied exactly what the direct measurements show.”

Rushton  goes on to use the out-of-academic-fashion concept  of  mental age: “An IQ of 70 in adults…is equivalent to a mental age of about 11 years.  This would make the normal range of mental ages found in Africa to  be from less than 9 years to almost 14 years.”  (The average IQ  of whites is 100 which means their normal range of mental ages is 14 to 18 years.)

But not all low IQs are equal according to Prof Rushton, viz:  “An IQ of 70 suggests mental retardation: at least  it  would  in the White populations of  Europe,  North  America, Australia and New Zealand. There it would frequently  be associated with dysfunctional social behaviour and visible deficiencies.

“This is because, as Arthur Jensen pointed out in his 1998 book,  The g Factor,  retardation in Whites is often the result of a single gene  or chromosomal  anomaly,  which  also causes  physical  abnormalities  and mechanical deficiencies effecting motor or speech skills. But, clearly, these  abnormalities and deficiencies are not seen in the bulk  of  the black population of Sub-Saharan Africa.”

As for measured personality traits Rushton  says “They  are  outgoing,   talkative,  sociable,   warm,   and   friendly. Psychometrically  speaking,   they  score  high  on  the   Extraversion personality  dimension.  They  are also much  less  anxious,  shy,  and fearful  than Whites  they are low in the Neuroticism  dimension.  This combination  of  high  Extraversion and low Neuroticism  results  in  a socially dominant personality profile. ”  This contrasts with the  more introverted behaviour of whites and the even more introverted behaviour of Asians.

Rushton also cites studies which show that blacks

- rated  themselves as more attractive than did whites.

rated  themselves higher in reading,  science  and  social  studies  than  whites ,  although  they knew  their  academic  performance was lower than whites.

Put together the mental age of 9 to 14 and the psychometric traits listed above and much is explained. In any society/, whether they are in the minority or majority,  black  adult behaviour , and especially black adult male behaviour,  commonly mimics what one would expect  from children  varying from the pre-pubescent to the  early adolescent:  high  self-esteem regardless  of  the  objective  facts  of their lives, a lack of self-consciousness, considerable vocalisation, a  propensity to noisy display generally,  a love of the  gaudy,   a  poor ability to handle abstract  reasoning, a failure to understand the consequences of actions, a weak sense of personal responsibility and a general sense of living in the moment.

White bias ? Well, apart from the objective evidence of  traits such as a disproportionate tendency to desert the mothers of their children, a lack of sexual continence resulting in the fathering of children with multiple mothers  and disproportionate criminality (The Bell Curve documents these traits in great detail)  it is possible to point to such things as  the content of rap music (the child’s wish to shock) and   the widespread addiction to  “bling” (the child‘s wish for display).  Nor is such behaviour the preserve of low status blacks but is common amongst high status blacks – see appendix C.

Take one trait, the propensity  for violence.  Blacks display this  to a high degree  whether  they are in the majority or the minority.  Sub-Saharan Africa since decolonisation is littered  with massacres,  ranging from the one million Hutus killed in  Rwanda to less organised slaughter in places such as the Congo and Sierra Leone.  In advanced states such as the USA  the black involvement in homicide, as both killer and victim,  is remarkable, viz:

“Around 8,000 of nearly 16,500 murder victims in 2005, or 49 percent, wereblack Americans, according to the report released by the statistics bureauof the Department of Justice.”. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070809202217.9us2orhu&show_article=1

Most of the killings of blacks were by blacks. The fact that blacks are so willing to kill other blacks whether or not they are in the majority or minority points to a general propensity for violence rather than one enhanced by white racism towards blacks or black racism towards whites.

The British experience is similar to the that of  the US.  In Britain it is  impossible to get  comprehensive  statistics on crimes by race – I have made strenuous efforts to do so using the British Freedom of Information Act but  without success. The next best thing is  personal research  using  the mainstream media. I  did  this for two years as a by product of  a column  entitled The Joy of Diversity which I wrote  for  the magazine Right Now! The column catalogued the immense ethnic mayhem  which  has become part of British life. To compile it I kept cuttings  of ethnic  misbehaviour and compared it with another file of  white crimes of  the same type.  The proportion of  murders, serious assaults and rapes, especially gang rapes, which  were committed by blacks was comically high. In the case of gang rapes of a victim of a different race to the rapists,  the rapists were almost always black –  I was unable to find a single instance of white gang  rape of a black victim. Shootings were overwhelmingly a black crime.

Behavioural  differences between blacks,  whites and Asians  have  been objectively measured. Prof  Rushton writes:  “Temperamental differences, measured  objectively by activity recorders attached to arms and  legs, show  up in babies.  African babies are more active sooner and  develop earlier than White babies who, in turn, are more active than East Asian babies.  Motor  behaviour  is  a  highly  stable  individual  difference variable.  Even among Whites,  activity level measured during free play shows highly significant negative correlations with IQ: more restrained children average higher intellects.”

There is nothing new about such ideas. Francis Galton mused about racial behavioural differences in the nineteenth century, while over a quarter of a century ago  Edward Wilson reported on studies by D G Freedman (1974,  1979)  on  new born   infants  which  “demonstrated  marked   racial   differences   in locomotion,  posture,  muscular tone and emotional response of  newborn infants  that cannot reasonably be explained as the result of  training or  even conditioning within the womb.  Chinese-American newborns,  for example, tend to be less changeable, less easily perturbed by noise and movement,  better  able to adjust to new stimuli  and  discomfort,  and quicker  to  calm  themselves than  Caucasian-American  infants.”  P274 Sociobiology;  Abridged version.

The fact that black babies develop more rapidly than whites and whites more  rapidly than Asians  probably explains why black children often appear advanced  when they are young and then seem to regress in relationship to whites and Asians as they get older.  They are probably not regressing but rather whites and Asians are attaining their full development at a later stage. An analogy can be made with the development of Man’s  nearest relative, the chimpanzee. A chimpanzee infant is  advanced compared with a human infant in the early stages of  their lives but soon falls back. The difference in racial development may be the consequence of the differing  average  brain sizes in blacks, whites and Asians (the larger the brain, the longer it takes to develop after birth), although there could be more subtle structural differences  which play a part.

Fluency of speech is particularly important for Prof Rushton because  he believes it misleads non-whites to overestimate black intelligence. He emphatically  concludes “…the  greater talkativeness of Blacks does not indicate brightness,  it often masks a low ability to reason  abstractly.”   I would agree with this.  Fluency  is  no guide to intelligence in itself because people can be fluent while saying little of significance. More sophisticated  speech can be produced  by those  of  no great  intellect simply by creating  a catalogue of  learned phrases and speeches in much the same way  that  a comedian will build up a library of jokes in their  memory –   politicians are the prime example of this.  It is also true that someone who  takes the   verbal lead,  especially in circumstances where people  are  often inhibited,   will  tend to influence  others simply because they  speak confidently when others do not.  (It  is  possible  to get some idea of a person’s  IQ  if  their speech   is analysed  properly.  The indicators of a decent IQ  will  be those  verbal behaviours which replicate the type of  mental  exercises found  in IQ tests,  for example,   the ability to follow or develop  a logical  train  of thought,  the ability to  spot  contradictions,  the ability  to  understand analogies and their strength or  weakness,  the competent    use   of  metaphor,   the  use  of  clever   puns   arising spontaneously,  the ability to understand and explain  complex  matters and   the ability to take new data and manipulate it intelligently  and rapidly.  In a social situation  the  presence or absence of such qualities will normally be missed, hence the over-estimate of black mental capacity).

In summary, blacks  find it difficult to live in high IQ societies where they are a minority because (1) having a low IQ in itself makes living in such a society difficult, (2) their inferior IQ distribution means that there are few members of their own racial group with respectable IQs to assist those with lower IQs and (3) their racial difference sets them apart from the majority high IQ population and consequently they cannot gain the support they require to live in a high IQ society from the majority high IQ population.

Where they are in the majority their natural inclinations and limitations drive them towards behaviour which is incompatible with a sophisticated society.

Their weaker IQ distribution and the “shape” of their IQ – relatively strong on verbal questions, relatively weak on non verbal questions – is such as to promote childlike behaviour, behaviour which is amplified by adult physicality and experience.   Other biological differences such as high testosterone levels may also amplify their naturally   immature behaviour .

When blacks live in advanced societies their innate tendency to behave in a manner which is, in the terms of an advanced society, anti-social, is amplified by their inability to compete with the higher IQ race(s) in the society.

27. A dysgenic future?

Since Hitler, unapologetic eugenics has  been  beyond the Pale in mainstream political and  academic discourse, although it chunters along unnamed in abortions for the genetically unfit and raises its  head occasionally in books such as The Bell Curve which explores the effects of differential breeding, mainly  in the USA,  and concludes that there is a risk  of a serious dysgenic  effect on national IQs.

The dysgenic effects feared by the Eugenics movement in white societies  in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were that much higher breeding rates of the less able (in practice defined as the poor) would bring about the degradation of the human stock of nations. This was a  false fear in the context of the racial make up of  white societies of the time because there is   a phenomenon known as reversion to the norm. This means that  higher IQ parents will tend to have children with lower IQs than their own, while lower IQ parents, i.e., those below the mean, will  tend to have children with IQs higher than those of the parents. The effect of this would be to roughly maintain the distribution of IQ in a population. Thus, if the poor, less able, call them what you will,  in  a population breed more freely than the more able, the long-term loss of intellectual resources in a population should be slight going on non-existent.  However, there is a nasty fly in the ointment: each racial group maintains its own IQ distribution regardless of where a particular population lives – the Japanese in America have the same IQ distribution as Japanese in Japan, blacks in Jamaica a similar distribution to those of sub-Saharan blacks.  Hence, a low IQ racial group  will remain trapped in its inferior IQ distribution Moreover, even with inter-racial breeding the average IQ  will still be depressed to a degree when people from lower IQ racial groups breed with a higher IQ group.

If a low IQ minority increases through immigration or breeding  at a faster rate than the high IQ majority three effects will be felt: (1) the intellectual resources of the country will decline, (2) an ever more substantial part of the  resources of the high IQ majority will have to be devoted to containing the effects of the low IQ minority and (3) there will be a tendency for members of the high IQ majority to emigrate to countries where there is either a smaller low IQ minority or the natural resources (especially land) of the country are greater, the consequence being to further reduce the intellectual resources of the country they are leaving. Increasing white flight from Britain in the first decade of the 21st century is a  good example of this trait.

If the  aggregate level of intelligence is what matters to the maintenance of  a sophisticated society,  there must be a point at which the society cannot be sustained  if the aggregate IQ is reduced below whatever is the  minimum level. This  is the danger which faces  advanced countries  which have experienced  and are experiencing large-scale immigration of low IQ races.

The different personality traits of blacks, whites and Asians may mean that the efficiency of a society composed of two or more of the races would be less than that of one composed of only one the race.  One race may perform better in a racially homogenous society than another, for example, perhaps it is more important for blacks to be in a homogenous society than whites or Asians because the IQ difference is simply too great for blacks to operate efficiently in a high IQ society.  Perhaps Asians with their reduced sociability have a greater need for formal order and find it difficult to integrate into   the comparatively free wheeling societies of whites,   although their superior  IQ  allows  them  to find  strategies  to  live  within  such societies without integration.    It may be that the marrying of   relatively high   sociability and high average IQ amongst whites means that they are best able of the three major racial groups to function with large minorities of the other racial groups within their society because the social forms they naturally create are more flexible than the societies created by blacks and Asians.   However, even if true, that would not mean that a mixed society is beneficial to whites, merely those whites are better able to accommodate minorities   and mitigate their ill effects.   (It is worth noting that the economic, political and cultural dominance of whites over the past 500 years has been accomplished by societies which enjoyed a very large degree of racial homogeneity).

Where one of the groups  in a population is much smaller than the other the larger will naturally dominate,  especially in public matters such as politics.  But where neither can naturally dominate how will things such as the political system  be determined?   Because of innate personality biases one racial group may naturally favour representative government, the other some form of authoritarian government. There is no obvious way of deciding the matter short of violence.

What is certain is that racially mixed societies will be less cohesive than racially homogenous ones.  The reason is obvious:   the natural sense of “tribal” solidarity is fractured.  People feel at best less natural sympathy with other racial groups and at worst a suspicion and antipathy to them.  Of course, it is not only racial difference which creates such a situation for ethnic differences, whether historical or cultural, can have a strong divisive quality.  But there is a fundamental difference between cultural and biological difference: the former is susceptible to  change  on a human time scale:, the latter is  not.  An immigrant of the same racial type as the majority population of the receiving country but of a different ethnicity  can have children who can  be assimilated  within a  generation  to the point where they are indistinguishable from the native majority. An immigrant of a different racial type  can remain set apart from  the receiving country’s majority population  indefinitely  if they  and their descendents  retain their racial type by breeding with others of the same race.

Ethnic solidarity is essential to the coherence and survival of a population.  In his “On Genetic Interests”, Frank Salter concludes “Territory is a collective fundamental good for  harmonising   familial and ethnic genetic interests and securing long-term genetic continuity”. This goes to the heart of ethnic solidarity and survival. This dictum applies to a large degree even where a  population does not have formal control of the territory because numerical dominance on the ground is nine parts of the biological law. Britain  provides a first rate example with the Welsh and Scots maintaining de facto territorial control of their territory.

The societies most at risk at present are white societies because it is they which have experienced and are continuing to experience mass immigration of racial groups which differ from their own majority populations.  Whites are also  displaying low fertility rates, most below replacement level,  while immigrant groups are generally  breeding  above replacement level, often well above replacement level.

Why  are whites showing such a disinclination to breed?  In part it is selfishness. In pre-modern  societies (including many still extant) Man  has frequently acted to restrict population at   the level of the individual,   particularly    by infanticide, a very widespread behaviour throughout history. It is not that great a leap in human behaviour for individuals to move from “I must kill this baby because I do not have the resources to raise it” or “to  try  to  raise  the child  will lessen the  chances  of  my  other children” to “I will not have a child because to do so will lessen my own chances of satisfying my own desires”.

This mentality is bolstered by any political ideology which exalts the individual and diminishes the coherence and importance of the ethnic group, whether that is a band, tribe or a nation. Liberal Internationalism is such a creed, which adds to overt individualist propaganda the effects of mass immigration and so-called free trade and free markets, all of   which attack the economic and territorial security of nations.  This increases the insecurity of  whites who breed  less freely  as a consequence.

But the position is more complex than simple ideology. Even in the more prosperous developing countries – where attitudes to breeding are still traditional – demographics are shifting towards the advanced country distribution. Clearly, increased prosperity and security is an important driver of reproductive change.  Longer  life spans also probably have an effect,  although exactly what is difficult to assess – if I had to venture a guess the effect would be that the longer the life the less feeling of urgency in the individual to breed.

There is also the question of what constitutes  genetic inheritance from a human standpoint – note I say from the human standpoint not what genetics  may tell us.  Because sexually reproducing organisms halve their genetic transfer every generation (more or less), the genetic inheritance  of  any  individual  is  soon diffused  to  the  point  of practical non-existence within the context of the ethnic group, although a significant   genetic similarity between members of an ethnic group and more broadly within a racial group continues.  Human beings unlike animals can be aware of this. Such people breed regardless of this fact and tend to favour to others genetically related to them tenuously if at all by blood, such as in-laws and  great grandchildren or grand nieces and, of course,  if the individual is not aware of the rapid genetic dilution he or she still shows such favour to those who are not genetically close.  What matters to the individual is the continuing of the genealogical line regardless of the genetic content of the line. It is the cultural transfer which counts.  No other animal has such an imperative.

Whatever the  reason for white  demographic decline  it does raise the question of what would be the objective consequences if whites  became greatly diminished in numbers and  power in the world or even vanished as a distinct race. Judged by the history of the world to date it would in all probability remove  from the world  the race most capable of  imaginative thought and invention.  That could mean  the future development of Man  took a much narrower and more limited course.

It is also true  that whites  majority societies  have been the only ones which have  meaningfully honoured the liberal with a small “l” values  which  have ameliorated the cruelty which is a normal part of most societies.  If  white dominated  societies  ceased to exist  through whites becoming the minority in them or because they have been so fragmented  by immigration  that the values are extinguished by ethnic strife, there can be no confidence that the values  would survive at all.

28 Conclusions

The general differences between societies plausibly express   the societal differences in IQ:  the more complex the society the greater the need for IQ related problem solving; the less complex, the greater the reliance on knowledge based behaviour. That is not to say that complex societies do not rely greatly on knowledge or that the simplest society allows no room for reasoning. Rather, it is  that the balance between IQ related problem solving and knowledge is differs according to the nature of the society.

If IQ is largely innate this raises some immensely difficult  moral questions for  any society.  Take away sentiment and  the hard truth is that on rational grounds no white or Asian society would want to host a large black population because that will substantially lower the average IQ of the society, with all the problems that brings in terms of anti-social behaviour and the loss of national intellectual capacity.

To say that the IQ distribution of a race implies  nothing  at the individual level may be pedantically true but  it does not alter the fact that if  a low IQ race is present in substantial numbers most will have low IQs.  In a high IQ society that is a problem  for such individuals because there is less opportunity  to lead a normal life for the low IQ individual. There is not self-evidently “a place for everyone”.

Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen  provide a clear message:  some societies, and most particularly those with a predominately black population, simply do not have sufficient people with IQs high enough to sustain a modern society. There are two rational conclusions  to draw from their work.  The first is that it is pointless for advanced states to keep on trying to modernise countries with low IQ populations which   cannot sustain the sophisticated societies needed to maintain an advanced modern state and  those populations should be left to find their own level.

The second is that the only active intervention which might conceivably improve conditions in low IQ states is their  formal re-colonisation and permanent administration by the advanced states, for that at least would bring order and societies which had infrastructure which worked.

The first course of action has the difficulty of seeming cruel at worst and heartless at best.  The second is a political  non-starter because of the sacrifices those in the advanced states would have to make in terms of  money and personnel and the almost certain guerrilla resistance of at least  part  of  any  population  which was subject  to  an  attempt  at re-colonisation.

Lynn and Vanhanen’s remedy for the problem is the half-way house between decolonisation and doing nothing. They advocate transfers of wealth   and expertise from advanced high IQ societies to the IQ deficient ones.    Not only is this profoundly unlikely to be something the populations of   advanced states will tolerate for ever, but the experience of 40 years or more of vast amounts of Aid being poured into low IQ countries shows that such assistance is worse than useless because it invariably produces corrupt regimes and large Aid dependent populations.

If Lynn and Vanhanen are right, the cold reality is that there is currently no way of  radically changing the nature of  low IQ societies. Indeed, by feeding them with Aid  the donors are making matters worse because they help to increase the low IQ populations  vastly beyond  the level at which a viable society for the population could exist.   However,  low IQ populations may not be forever because even if  IQ is now substantially innate it may not be so in the future. It is probable that within the next fifty years genetic engineering, chemical manipulation, surgical alteration and cybernetics may provide humans with  the capacity to  raise the IQ of  those with low IQs. This would of course raise  immense moral questions as well as practical difficulties such as who would  provide the expertise and materials needed to change the IQ of hundreds of millions of people.

Other things being equal, the vast majority of adults would seek the highest  IQ for their child, or if the alteration could done after birth at any age, to seek the highest IQ for  themselves and  their children.   It is also true that in an society where there was any meaningful democratic expression it would be impossible for a government to deny such engineering to those who wanted it.

But it probably would not be left to the individual. If some  states positively insist on altering the IQ of  their entire populations, this would lead to fears that any country which did not follow suit would be left behind in the competitive struggle between societies. Alternatively, manipulation of IQ could be selfishly  used by elites to create a permanent advantage for themselves. Not a pretty future to contemplate.

Appendix A White men can  run

“Let’s start with the biological differences in sports, which is something almost everyone observes. Jon Entine’s recent book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It, addresses the old cliché that “White men can’t jump” (and the new one that Oriental men jump even less well). Entine shows that in sports, it is Black men and women who can sky! And yet, as the data also show, it is mainly Blacks of West African descent who excel at running over short distances, while Blacks of East African descent – from Kenya and Ethiopia – excel at marathon running over long distances. These differences between East and West Africans show that taking an average can sometimes gloss over important distinctions. Still, Blacks from both East and West Africa excel at one or another kind of running. In sports, Blacks as a group, have a genetic advantage. “ J Phillipe Rushton http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/images/jpr21-chart1.jpg

The idea that blacks are inherently more athletic than whites  (and even more so than Asians) is widely  accepted as true even in academic circles  which deal with racial difference.  People look at the finals  of  track events at the Olympics and  see a disproportionate number of  blacks, especially in the sprint events, and conclude that this correlation between race and  athletics winners proves the case for black athletic supremacy. The problem with this  conclusion is that it  is merely a correlation and a correlation which has not been subjected to rigorous examination.

There are good reasons to suspect that black athletic  advantage  does not exist.  In the late  nineteen seventies and eighties the 800 and 1500 metres events  were dominated  by whites such as Seb Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram. Their times look good today – Coe’s 800 metre record only went a few years ago.  The current Olympic 400 metres champion is  the  white man Jeremy Warriner. The 200 metres at the  Sydney Olympics was won by a white man  the Greek Kostas Kenteris. When the black Michael Johnson (arguably  the greatest track athlete of the past  half century) won the 400 metres in the Atlanta Olympics he was followed home in second place by the white Roger Black.

If whites can  compete  successfully as the people mentioned above competed , clearly whites are not genetically incapable of beating even the best black athletes. Of course,  there is still the question of whether one race is on average more naturally endowed with  athletic ability than others,  but if  there are substantial  numbers of whites who win  at the highest level and set times which blacks do not beat either at all or by much, then it is reasonable to question  whether whites are on average inherently inferior as athletes. The starting point for such questioning should be  the numbers participating in athletics in the various disciplines and their racial and class distribution.

Fifty years ago most  Olympic  track winners  were white. Then as decolonisation took place  and multiculturalism gripped  hold of  places such as the USA and Britain, more and more black athletes entered  track athletics. They began to dominate  the  sprints, then the longer distances. The question is did blacks  begin to dominate because  they were inherently superior to whites or because the number of whites  taking up track athletics was  far fewer than the number of blacks doing so?  An analysis of overall numbers is required.  I  have been unable to identify such an analysis.

Then there is the question of class. Athletics has  the reputation of  being a largely middleclass pursuit for whites in the West, while black athletes  are perceived as coming from poorer backgrounds. If these perceptions are correct,  the white athletes are being drawn from a much smaller  population. An analysis of  the class of athletes is  required. Again, no such analysis appears to exist.

During the time of the  Soviet Union those countries which came  within the European Communist bloc were concerned with winning as many medals as possible. This pushed them to concentrate on the events which were less competitive and more  susceptible to coaching because of their highly technical nature. These were the field events such as the javelin and high-jump. This further reduced the number of white athletes  potentially available to compete in track events.

Athletic scholarships  may also have a role in promoting  black  athletes, especially in the USA. Political correctness  may have caused these to be given to blacks disproportionately. An analysis of  how scholarships are  awarded, for example, are they formally or informally reserved for blacks?   Similar exercises are needed for  charities who  make awards to athletes  and for bodies which dispense taxpayer funded aid to athletes.

If a human activity becomes dominated by one  race,  ethnic group or class, there is a tendency  for those outside  whatever the group it is to cease trying to engage in the activity.  If  blacks have done  disproportionately well in  sprinting  over the past forty years,  whites will  tend to drop the idea of even trying to enter competitive sprinting.

That blacks do not all excel in the same type of  events is a pointer to a cultural rather than a genetic reason for  their disproportionate success in recent decades. The idea that blacks from the West Coast  of Africa have one advantage and blacks from the East Coast another  is rather odd bearing in mind the size of Africa and the racial diversity found there. It would make sense to say this local population group had this advantage and another that advantage if the groups were isolated  (this might be the explanation for the island of Jamaica‘s remarkable record of producing great sprinters), but  it stretches credulity to believe the entire continent below the Sahara  is divided by different types of  genetic athletic advantage, especially as it is known that there have been in historic times  large scale movements of people  who originated in West  and central Africa to Southern and Eastern Africa (the Bantu peoples).

The fact that East Africans shine in middle distance events  is plausibly  a consequence of the fact that Kenyan  government put considerable resources into promoting  middle distance running after the success of Kip Keino.  It is noteworthy that the rest of East Africa has not produced an army of  such athletes and that many of the outstanding runners of the past ten years have not be East Africans but north Africans who are racially very different.

Even the claim that most top black sprinters  come from West Africa is debatable. Slaves were taken from deep into the heart  of Africa. Most of the black top sprinters come from the USA or the Caribbean.  Many have a white admixture. Very few West Coast Africans are top sprinters, despite large numbers of West Coast Africans  who have emigrated to the West.

The fact that many top “black” athletes are of mixed white/black parentage is telling. Why should that be if blacks have an innate athletic advantage?  Surely  the less white blood the better?

Finally, there is the  question of drugs. Many sprinters have tested  positive for drugs  in the past thirty years. Most of those have been black,  an unsurprising fact because most  top sprinters  have been black during that period. Many others have provided tests which suggested drug use without being sufficiently high to fail a drug test.

The physiques  of most black sprinters  in the past twenty years in particular have looked suspiciously like  those of bodybuilders, a group which is notorious  for using drugs such as steroids. Unless the truth about drug use in the period of black sprinting ascendancy  is known, and it probably never will be,  it is difficult to assess exactly what is the natural athletic ability of a runner.

Appendix B Digital technology

Technological  change  has been  making  increasingly  severe   demands  on  human beings for around 300 years. There  was change before then of course, but it was slow and most people   could live their lives without  having to adapt to radically   new ways of living.

Things  began to speed up as the Industrial Revolution began and an argument can be made that the century  1815 and 1914  saw  more radical technological  qualitative  change than any generation before or since. But  that  change  was the difference between living in  a  still  largely  pre-industrial society (in 1815) and  an  industrial     society  in its  early middle age (in 1914).  Moreover,  the  change  did  not actually require the vast  majority  of  the  population to master complicated machines at their work,  let  alone in their own homes.

In  1914 the most complicated machine most people had to operate was probably the telephone and vast swathes  of the population would not even have had to go that far into  the  world  of technology. Not only that, because  machines  then were either mechanical or part mechanical,  i.e.,  not   electronic, just looking at the way a machine was made  often allowed the intelligent  observer to have a fair guess at how  it  worked and to see  what had  gone  wrong  if it malfunctioned.  Even  work-related machines which required skilled operators, such as  machine  lathes,  were not   fundamentally difficult to understand, although the dexterity  required to operate them often took time to acquire.

Things remained essentially  the same until  the advent of personal computers and the widespread use of digital technology.  Machines became   more and more predominant in advanced societies but they were   not,   in  most  instances,  complicated  to  use. This  was  particularly  true  of those machines used in  private  life.  Telephones just required the user  to dial;  washing machines  had  a  start  button and nothing else; televisions  and radios  simply needed switching  on;  cars were simply  designed to travel. Then came digital technology.

Computers are like no other machine ever invented. They have  a  unique combination of  an unparalleled public and  private   use  and   a  central importance to  economic  activity and public  administration.   The  potential  penalties  for  the   failure  of these machines  are vastly greater than  for  any   other  piece  of  technology.   Not  only  can  an  immediate   application  of a computer be ended,  as can happen with  all  machines,  but  computer users also  risk  losing  networking  capacity  and, if they have not useable backed up copies  of   their computer data, the loss of their entire records and conceivably the loss of the means to continue their business. Computer users are also vulnerable to outside sabotage though hacking  and viruses.   No other machine has ever  exposed a society to such risks through its ubiquity and vulnerability to outside influences.

These machines are also vastly more demanding of time than   any  other  machine  ever  used  by  the   general   public. To  master computers to the  degree where a person does not lie helplessly in the hands of  experts  is a  demanding and continuing   task.   It is unlikely that many could or would manage it  without making  computers their  profession.   In fact,   even   supposed  computer  professionals   are   only   knowledgeable in   their  specialist  areas:   a   hardware  specialist has no deep knowledge of software and vice versa, while programmers long ago lost any detailed understanding of an entire program. It is also true that many self described IT experts are anything but. They get by with a small amount of IT knowledge  because of the general level of ignorance amongst the general public and the fact that most problems can be overcome by re-booting or by  reinstalling programs.

The computer age  is a stunningly  recent   phenomenon.  Most people even in the West   would  not  have   used  a  computer before 1985.  Probably a majority  had  not   done  so by 1990.  By the end of the 1980s  the nearest  most   would have got to a computer  would probably have been   bank  ATM  machines.  The internet was esoteric and laborious,  the   web barely more than a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye.   Even    in  the  world  of  employment  computers  were  still   used   sparingly.

As  with  computers actually called computers,  so with the other machines which  cause much  grief now.   The mobile phone was  a status symbol  and   the size of a brick, while  landline phones were still phones   boringly   restricted   to   simply   phoning   rather   than    mini-computers with a tendency to bemuse.   Microwaves had  a  simple   choice  of power.  Refrigerators did  not  offer  to  remind  you  of  what needed to be ordered.  TVs   tended  to  simply work when switched on.

In  the past 15 years all this has dramatically changed.   We  are in  a world in which computers are absolutely integral   to  business and public administration and they are  now  the  norm rather than the exception in homes.  For most people, it  is  literally impossible to escape them.   Worse,  they  have  become ever more complex to use and invade ever  more  of our lives as microprocessors are inserted  into  the most unlikely things such as clothes.  Machines  generally   are more demanding. To use This has profound implications for  people  both in  high IQ and low IQ societies.

Even to use computers at a low level  of expertise, such as using a word processor to its  full capacity and  sending email  efficiently , requires  a degree of concentration and  knowledge with which  a substantial minority are uneasy.  More demanding activities such as  spreadsheet  use  or the construction of a database  are inaccessible to the majority. Most  people  have only a  minimal knowledge of the  capacities of their operating system . This lack of expertise  afflicts the young as well as the old, which suggests that this is going to be a permanent  problem because the young have grown up with computers.

Of  the commonly used programmes  search engines  are particularly interesting from the point of view of IQ. Everyone  who uses a computer can use a search engine at some level, but  the skill with which they use search engines varies massively.  This is unsurprising because the search engine is  the  commonly used program which most calls upon IQ related abilities.  It relies not simply on knowledge but  also  problem solving. To perform a function in a word processor  requires the user  to apply inert knowledge, go to this menu, use this function etc. To use a search engine efficiently for anything but a simple search for a certain website  requires the ability to formulate questions  in the most pertinent way.  I never ceased to be amazed how at many people  use search engines ineptly, often comically so. I should not be amazed of course because the ability to do so is IQ dependent.

The implications for those with a low IQ are these: the lower the IQ, the more the person will struggle in an advanced society because the use of computers is increasingly inescapable.  In a high IQ society the low IQ individual will struggle but the society  as a whole will  manage. In a low IQ society there will simply not be the IQ firepower to sustain a society based on digital technology.  In a high IQ society  the low IQ part of the population will be left increasingly in a technological no man’s land, unable to competently use the technology but forced to use it simply to live.

The constant learning process

Personal  computing  began in the mid  seventies. A  person  starting then would have had to learn the BASIC  programming language.   By the early eighties they would have been using DOS. By 1990s Windows   expertise  was  necessary.   Since  1990  successive   editions  of  Windows  have  varied  considerably  from   the  previous version requiring further learning.

What  goes for  operating systems applies also to most  other programs,   which   when  they  are   upgraded   often   bear    surprisingly little  resemblance to the  version  prior  to  them.  Certainly,  if one moves from an old   program   to  a version  which has been uprated twice, the chances are  that knowledge  of the original program will be of little use  in  understanding the new one.

Apart from the effort needed to constantly learn new programs  and to attend to such things as installations of software and hardware, the other great drawback of computers is the amount of time which can be spent on maintenance.  It is all too easy to find a  day  or  two  slip by just sorting out a single relatively  simple  computer problem or learning how to use a new program.

The nature of what is to be learned

The burden  of learning is   especially heavy because of  the  nature of that which is to be learned. This  is what might be termed   dead information.   There is no  intrinsic  interest in what is to be learned. It is merely a means to an end.  To operate  a program all that is needed is a knowledge of   the  menus  and  function keys.   That is precisely  the  type  of   information  which  is least palatable to  the  normal  human  mind.  Hence,  it is the least easy to learn for most people.    The  computer is in effect forcing human beings to  act  like  computers, something utterly alien to them.

Intelligence  is  of  little  use on its own.  Computers  are  information   driven  machines.  Put the most intelligent man in the world before a   computer  and  he  will  be utterly helpless  if  he  has  no  computer  experience.  Even  if the  man  has  some  computer   experience,  he will be as incapable of using  a completely   unfamiliar type of program as the dullard.

The substitution of function for intellect

That  computers are function rather than intelligence  driven  is  objectively  demonstrated  by the fact that all  of  what   might be called the administrative  operations of a  computer – file management,  loading of programs etc –  could be  done by a computer program.

When I watch the young using computers,  obvious or disguised in the shape of phones and the like,  I get a feeling of deep  unease.  They  so  obediently pull down  menus  and    select   options  that I wonder at the difference between them  and  a  robot.  The  machine is driving the human being at  least  as   much  as  the  human  being is  driving  the  machine;  brute  machine functionality is replacing intellect.

There  is  only so much any human being can  learn,  both  in terms  of time and mental impetus.  If increasing amounts  of  both are required by computers simply to operate them,  where  will that leave intellectual development?    Worse,  will the  ability  to  operate  machines become  to  be seem as the  most  important activity of  human beings?

The myth of youthful expertise

It  is true that those who have grown up with  computers  are   more  comfortable  with the machines than those who  came  to them in adult life – the latter still comprise, more than 50 per cent of the population. It is worth noting.   However,  the idea  that  the young  generally  have any  substantial understanding of  computers is dubious going on simply wrong. A recent survey  by the global market-research company Synovate, reported:

“We found that people tended to fit into one of three categories: 27 per cent are what we call ‘cybernauts’ – people who like to be ahead of the game in terms of technology. However, the majority, 53 per cent, are ‘average Joes’. They don’t love technology per se, but view it as a facilitator – it helps them to communicate or entertain themselves. They tend to use it in quite a functional way, such as emailing, banking or shopping online. Then there are 20 per cent who we describe as ‘digital dissidents’, meaning they actively dislike using technology and avoid it wherever possible.” Daily Telegraph 30 6 2007  The myth of the MySpace generation.

The  young know how to use the internet and web,  can work  a  word processor and  use programs which really interest  them.  But  let  their   computer develop  a  fault   which  renders Windows  unstable or unusable or  a piece of hardware  fails,  and  they are,  in most cases,  as helpless  the  generations which did not grow up with computers.

What  the young do have which  older people do not  have   is group  knowledge.  A schoolchild of today can call  on  the computer  knowledge of their peer group and the assistance of   teachers.  Those  a little older who are in work  still  have   their  peer  group  to  help them   if  they  get  stuck.  In  addition,  if they work for a large employer they can call on the  expertise  of the employer’s IT  department  or  service contractors.

Computers  have only been in schools since the mid  eighties.  Anyone over the age of forty (arguably,  over the age of  35)   will  not  have  a  peer group on  whom  they  can  call  for  assistance  with  computers  (and  other  machines)   because   almost  all  of  those  they  know  well  will  be  of  their approximate  age  – few people have  close  friendships  with  those who are  much younger than themselves – and the  people   who  are  their age will have little computer  experience  or knowledge.   The  best they can hope for is  assistance  from  their children if they have any,  and then it is pot luck  as   to how computer competent those children are and how  willing  they  are  to help the parent.   If an older  person  has  no  compliant computer literate children and  does not work for a   large employer,  he or she will  be utterly isolated from the   knowledge   needed   to  deal  with even   basic computer developments.

The  science  fiction writer Arthur C Clarke  pointed  out  a  good few years ago that there comes  a point with  technology  when it became indistinguishable from magic for all but the initiates. The dangers of that are obvious: for that which is not generally understood  gives the few who do understand a power over those who do not.  That potentially gives private corporations and governments a great stick with which to beat   their  customers  and citizens into  submission,  either  for  profit or political power.

Where the technology is as vital and central to a society  as  computers  have  become,   there  is  the  further  and  more   fundamental  risk   of society reaching a  state  where   the   technology  can  no longer be either properly  maintained  or  controlled.

Appendix  C Two high status blacks

“You’re a child: that’s what makes you so f**king scary”. The character Dr Nicholas Geharty to Idi Amin in the film The last king of Scotland.

The interesting thing about the quote for our purposes is the “You’re a child”.  That is precisely what Amin was, from his love of self-awarded titles (“His Excellency,  President for Life,  Field Marshall Al Hadji, Dr Idid Amin,  VC,  DSO,  MC,  Lord of all the Beasts  of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and  Uganda  in particular”  was his full honorific  catalogue)  to  his often murderous outbreaks of personal violence.

Amin’s general  behaviour cannot even be described as adolescent: it is pre-pubescent,  for example,  his roll  of titles is  the sort of  list that  a  young boy might make when playing,  his   acts  of murderous  personal  violence  an   extension   of   a  child’s  temper tantrum.   Of course, having the body of an adult with its strength and adult sexual appetites and a greater experience of life generally  than a  child,  Amin’s behaviour did not exactly replicate that of a  child, but it was still  childlike.   His adult additions to the armoury of  a child’s abilities  did not make Amin  more adult,  but rather  provided him with new means of expressing his childlike nature.  That was  what made him,  in Geharty’s words  “so f**king scary”. A child in a child’s body  with  a toy gun is one thing: a child in an adult’s body  with  a real gun quite another.

That Amin should have behaved in the fashion he did should surprise  no one.  Lynn  and  Vanhanen  give the average  IQ  of  Ugandans   as  73. The behaviour  Amin displayed is precisely that which one would expect from someone with an IQ around that number, namely, that of a child.

Of course Amin  is just one example,  but his  behavioural traits are  found throughout  black Africa and everywhere else where blacks are found  in large numbers.  It does not matter whether one looks at  blacks  living in   the  poorest black African state or blacks living in  an  advanced First World state, the same things are found: a disproportionately high incidence   of   violence, general  criminality,   poor   educational achievement,  poor  work record (either broken or in low  grade  jobs), high  benefit dependency  (where  available),   sexual   incontinence, desertion  of children by fathers and women with children by  different fathers. These traits show through strongly even where the black is in a privileged position.

Take the life of the  soul singer James Brown who died  in 2007. Brown was born in the USA to  a mother who abandoned him when he was four.  His father handed him  over to his aunt Minnie  who in turn shifted him on to another aunt who ran a  brothel in Augusta.  Brown spent his formative years in the  brothel and developed a penchant for petty crime. So persistent was this behaviour that  at the age  of 15 he received an 8-16 year sentence.   Brown  actually  served three years and turned to crime again when he came out, although he was also trying to forge a musical career at the same time.

So  far  so explicable many readers will be thinking:  a  boy  and  man shaped by his dismal childhood.  The first thing to say in response  to that is that the mother’s desertion of her child,  the father’s  giving away  of  the child and the first aunt’s moving on of the  child  to  a brothel are symptomatic of one particular black behaviour, child desertion. The second thing is that when  Brown’s  life took a great turn for  the  better,  his  delinquent behaviour did not vanish.

Brown’s musical career took off in 1956 when he was 23.  From that time onwards he enjoyed great material success and celebrity for the rest of his life.  One might have imagined that his troubles  with the criminal law  were behind him.  Not a bit of it.  Here is his   Daily  Telegraph obituary:  “Throughout  his  career Brown had  brushes  with  the  law, culminating  in  a  six-year jail sentence  in 1988  for  assault  with intent  to  kill,  drunken driving and other traffic offences.  He  had burst  into  a  business conference at a hotel toting  a  shotgun   and accusing someone of having used his private bathroom.  There followed a 100mph police chase  which ended with the police shooting out the tyres of his pick-up truck.”  (DT 26 12 2006).  Brown was 55 at the time  yet still behaving like a child, his response to a trivial matter – the use of  his  private bathroom – being  stupendously  disproportionate.   In short,  neither age nor his change of circumstances from petty criminal to successful celebrity resulted in a change of mentality.  Of  course, it could be argued that his childhood conditioned his  adult behaviour, but  I  cannot readily think of any white or Asian  celebrity  who  has carried youthful violent criminality into their late middle age.  It is worth  adding  that he was reputedly regularly violent to  his  various wives, of which he had four.



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