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1. What is intelligence?
One simple, straightforward definition of intelligence is is “problem-solving ability.” Another definition is “that which IQ tests measure.” Egalitarians will object, “Since we can’t all agree on a definition, it’s a useless concept.” Not true! Intelligence is like heat. We know the difference between hot and cold, and we can measure fine gradations of heat. Some people will say, “It’s too hot in here!” while others say, “It’s too cold!” Does this mean we must discard the concept of heat? No. Almost any definition of any word could give rise to disagreement. We don’t have unanimity on definitions of many important constructs which we use every day, but we carry on nevertheless, and we are much better off with them, than without them.
Egalitarians also love to say, “But IQ isn’t everything!” That’s true. (Is there anything which is everything?) But IQ clearly is something very important. Those who pooh-pooh it have an impossible task explaining why IQ is the single best predictor of success in school and in life. How could anything which measures nothing – or even something trivial – predict success so well?
2. There are many admirable human qualities that aren’t measured by IQ tests. There will never be consensus on what all of those qualities are. What gives any of us the right to decide which ones to phase out?
There’s already a consensus on the fundamental traits we value – for example, what traits would you want to see in your children? Most people want their children to be healthy, intelligent, sane, law-abiding, and conscientious – meaning possessing good character (honest, hard-working, concerned for well-being of others). These are universally valued traits. Have any parents, anywhere, ever said, “We’re hoping our son will grow up to be a psychopath”? Or, “We hope our daughter will be retarded”? These values were exactly the same 100 years ago, and 1000 years ago.
Another way this consensus is expressed is in government expenditures on hospitals, research on diseases and mental illness, prisons, police, etc. We as a society are already very clearly trying to change people, using environmental engineering in a marginally-effective attempt to make people smart, law-abiding, sane, and healthy. Why not do something that really works?
A “right” implies there’s something in it for us, when in reality, there’s nothing in it for us. I believe that we have a responsibility to future generations, and a great and unique opportunity to help them. We already agree on what is good, and what is not. There’s absolutely no doubt about it – we are quite sure that we wouldn’t want to be diseased, retarded, a criminal, a psychopath, or insane – so it’s no great leap of faith to assume people of the future don’t want that, either.
But it’s not as if a “Eugenics Court” will dictate each individual who can and cannot be born! A likely scenario is that legislators, in response to public opinion, will form a new Eugenics Department that will provide attractive incentives for criminals and the mentally deficient to be sterilized, and incentives for bright, healthy couples to have more children, and medical professionals to help prospective parents make decisions on how best to utilize the new reproductive technologies.
3. Everyone knows that IQ tests are biased – what makes you think they’re not biased?
“Everyone knows” that IQ tests are biased because the media keep telling us this, but it’s an outright lie. Here’s an example of real bias: Say an IQ test is created and standardized in England, and the vocabulary section includes words like “lorry” and “scones.” If this same test were given to American kids, these items would stand out rather conspicuously. When you looked at the data, you would recognize immediately that: (1) answers to these questions were merely random guesses, (2) kids who scored high on the test as a whole weren’t any more likely to get them right than those who scored low, and (3) older kids didn’t do any better than younger kids. This means they’re worthless questions with no predictive value for the American kids, because all they do is add “noise,” thereby reducing the reliability and validity of the test. Furthermore, if nobody ever bothered to look at the data and delete these questions from the American version, they could legitimately be said to be “biased” against American kids in relation to the English kids.
By analyzing the data this way, it’s possible to determine definitively whether a test is, or is not, biased against any group, or whether particular items are biased. If a test doesn’t satisfy the criteria for bias, it’s not biased. People’s feelings, and what may appear on the surface to be bias, have nothing to do with making this determination. Also, there’s the crucial question of whether the test predicts success equally well for all groups. The fact is that IQ tests and other standardized tests predict success in college and in career in blacks as well as whites.
In Arthur Jensen’s authoritative work on the subject, Bias in Mental Testing, he found that IQ tests are not biased (using statistical criteria), except that the tiny unreliability of the tests slightly favors low-scoring groups. Also, it’s hard to imagine how the argument of bias in favor of Caucasians could be refuted any more effectively than by the finding that American kids of Japanese ancestry score higher on average.
7 comments
I got a question for Marian: Can creativity be measured?
As one of those poor sods that rely on the more intelligent for much of life’s necessities (Hey! spell check makes me look pretty smart) there must be more to IQ than meets the eye. High IQ people can’t really believe that we are all equal and they can’t all be rotten to the core willing to betray their family for a few bucks – at least Judas had the decency to top himself after his great betrayal.
Marian certainly gives us much food for thought. As an aging low level hospital worker I am leaning towards the Catholic position of large families with a balancing reduction in keeping alive at any cost the “medically unfit.” I wouldn’t euthanize anyone but doctors could time their coffee breaks a bit better. But I’ll leave these high IQ issues to the Marians of the world.
The fanaticism which post-modern liberals attack the concept of innate intelligence ought to be an indicator that IQ tests reveal some truth. We see egalitarian ideologues attempting to suppress reality, silencing opponents, and generally dragging the rest of society down with them. Look at Shockley, Jensen, Rushton, and many more.
A practical test is to look at the last half century. If egalitarian ideology were the reality, then why is it that post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa is such a running debacle? Same comment can be made about the denizens of America’s inner cities after several generations of dysgenic population breeding. The crime, the educational failures, the infrastructure collapse–all are common whether we are talking Detroit or Kinshasha. How many egalitarian ideologues are willing to entrust their children’s future to the “intelligence” of those populaces?
Let’s assume that by the end of the 21st century, egalitarian ideology has been discredited. How will future historians look back on the current era? As some sort of dark ages for science? Will they marvel on how the truth was suppressed?
The very real risk today is that if other countries take a realistic view of the genetic factors behind intelligence — as the Chinese are reported to be doing — then they will come out ahead in the Race for High IQ.
Exactly. We’ve never denied that environment is important in reaching full potential. Our opponents on the other hand have often vehemently denied that genetics has any importance whatsoever. Yet we’re portrayed as the fanatics.
To engage in a bit of liberal bashing here: liberals like to portray themselves as modern day Galileos, standing for science against an “ignorant” and “bigoted” establishment. Yet liberals themselves are the establishment in much of academia, the media, government, the corporate world, etc. And they do quash science when it does not fit their ideological delusions. Thus, the campaign against genetic factors of intelligence.
As James Burnham once noted, McCarthyism allowed liberals the thrill of pretending to be non-conformists even when they were 100% conforming to their own ideology, no dissenters allowed!
Many interesting comments. To “me”: yes, there are tests of creativity, but the question is how good they are? Around 1985 I did an interview with Raymond B. Cattell (one of the most brilliant psychologists who ever lived) for The Eugenics Bulletin http://www.eugenics.net/papers/eb7.html which I edited, and I asked him pretty much the same question. I thought his answer was fascinating. He said that there are tests of creativity, but that he doesn’t regard them highly because they don’t really correlate with creative achievement. He said that IQ plus certain personality traits – namely dominance and ego strength – correlate highly with creative achievement. These traits often make a person difficult, but if you compare creative people in a number of fields to their less-creative colleagues, these factors emerge.
In response to R_Moreland – about the egalitarian ideology. I don’t think this is just a “fashion,” so I don’t think it will ever just vanish on its own. I think it’s here because some people, namely Jews, benefit from it. I don’t mean all Jews, of course, but what might be called (for lack of a better term) “organized Jewry.” They promote immigration of all kinds of races to America and Europe because it’s in their interest to Balkanize the whole Western world. (Of course, in Israel only genetic Jews are allowed to immigrate.) Also, Jews are responsible for the anti-eugenics hoax https://counter-currents.com/2014/07/against-good-breeding/, so they can make sure we all have dysgenics (while they practice eugenics in Israel), presumably because they want to achieve greater and greater political and economic dominance over gentiles of European descent. All these political policies are based on egalitarianism. It won’t be so much that people will look back on this time and think we’re idiots but that we were brainwashed by dishonest people with evil motives. I’m getting too far afield, and I’m not an expert on this – Kevin MacDonald and Greg Johnson are experts – but I felt compelled to weigh in.
1) Dominance and ego strength might be useful personality traits in creativity, I don’t think they are the most important ones. I think imagination is the crucial one. After all, when you create you create something that doesn’t already exist, therefore you’ll have to imagine it first. And since projecting wild and useless fantasies is no real creativity, a sense of order and relevance in imagination is also important in creativity. So creativity is the ability to concretize in the outer world ordered and relevant imaginations. I think that if you can develop a psychological test that tests for the ability of ordered and relevant imagination you can test the potential for creativity.
2) The Jews have always practised a dual strategy not only for survival but also for supremacy. That dual strategy is strengthening the in-group but at the same time weakening the out-group. Thus Jews preach and promote egalitarianism and multiculturalism for the goyim but practise elitarism and ethnic nationalism for themselves. This doesn’t seem “contradictory”, “hypocritical” or even “immoral” to the Jews in the least, since both are “good for the Jews” which is for them the only criterion in all things moral. A Jew who is engaged in weakening goyim, no matter how destructively, is a “moral” Jew, since that activity is “good for the Jews”. We live presently in a “dark age” because we live in a “Jewish age” in which the destructive Jewish dual strategy in politics, culture and science is practised on us to the full.
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