I have long been a member of the racial "hereditarian" school of thought, and I listen to the American Renaissance podcast. They have plenty of problems, and I have plenty of differences with them. Nevertheless they seem to get it right much more often than they are commonly credited. I am more in line with the more free spirited thinkers on such matters, such as Richard Hanania, Bo Winegard, and Sam Harris.
If we were to seriously resolve the Flynn effect, it is likely with biology. That may seem absurd, but both sides of the debate are out of touch with the biology as it really is. A "reaction norm" is a range of trait values that follow from a single genotype and depend on a range of environmental values. Further, states along a reaction norm can be heritable, i.e. locusts tend to reproduce locusts and grasshoppers grasshoppers, though you may see a shift from one to another over many generations depending on population density. Neither side of our debate has really confronted that possibility, preferring only to ignore it. (But, I am working on it as a personal scientific project, as I think I have proved that many human traits have shifted due to decreasing juvenile mortality, our genes shifting from offspring quantity to quality.) In the end, then, though they have closed their minds to such solutions to such problems as the Flynn effect, the hereditarians would still end up being mostly correct. The anti-hereditarians will have nothing to do with biology to explain intelligence differences either across generations or across races.
I think we need to confront the implicit doctrine that equality is the default hypothesis. That would be plainly wrong if we were to apply that doctrine to racial height differences. Some races are taller than others, and it seems to follow largely from biology. Why should it be so different for intelligence? Why should we assume from the get-go that all races are equally smart? You can point out a lot of puzzles and potential escape hatches, but that isn't the same as building a probable model of the human species in which all races have equal intelligence. I don't think any serious thinker would do so, either, as they prefer to either defend the racial hereditarian model or (more commonly) attack it, not build any convincing alternative.
"I think we need to confront the implicit doctrine that equality is the default hypothesis. That would be plainly wrong if we were to apply that doctrine to racial height differences. Some races are taller than others, and it seems to follow largely from biology. Why should it be so different for intelligence? Why should we assume from the get-go that all races are equally smart?"
This, for me, is the most important argument with regards to race and IQ. With our recent DNA discoveries, the default hypothesis should at best be agnosticism about cognitive equality between population groups. Assuming that all groups would magically have the exact same brain structure when the brain has been under selection pressure AND various populations have interbred with different species (Neanderthals, Denisovans, etc.) doesn't make sense.
My article never makes the claim that there are no genetic differences among the races. Rather, it makes a specific argument that much research on IQ gaps has been flawed.
This response confuses me. Why don’t you explicitly reject the claim? If not in the article, then in the comments.
Your article clearly stated that you were once a racist but no longer am. Perhaps I am wrong but you seem to imply that you were a racist in the past because you did believed that there was evidence of genetic differences between races. Then the evidence changed your mind, so you are no longer a racist.
Do you believe that anyone who believes that there are genetic differences between races is a racist? You seem to strongly imply that in the article.
If no, then why were you a racist in the past but not now?
If yes, then why do you not explicitly reject the theory that there are genetic differences between the races?
Because it all just boils down to wanting to change his life/career and needing to engage in new mood affiliation. It’s embarrassing to have to lie about this outright but it’s hard not to once you get pinned down on specifics.
Fair enough, but that really does not answer my question.
In your other answers to my questions in the comments, you stated that you believe that there is an average difference in intelligence between the races. Some people, particularly on the Left, regard that as a racist view (I disagree with that by the way).
So I am still confused as to why you were a racist in the past, but not now. Or why you claim that your opponents are racists. I guess is that it comes down to your definition of the term "racist."
Personally, I believe that the best definition of racism is:
"A world view that perceives the race of a person as one of the most important defining characteristic of person and therefore people in different races should systematically be treated differently."
That really is a moral stand that really has nothing to do with scientific evidence.
I fully acknowledge that racists can hide behind scientific theories to legitimize their views, but it is the moral stand that defines racism, not scientific beliefs.
I got here from the comments to Seb Jensen. This is a useful and convincing argument, thank you.
The self-multiplier concept of people using free will to create "environmental" effects by leveraging small genetic predispositions is intuitive, as anyone who has struggled to learn a musical instrument can attest :) It's also a pretty obvious one, as it boils down to practice makes perfect, and that doesn't need to have any genetic component at all in most cases. There's no gene for programming, obviously, and yet learning it can boost your G significantly:
One of the most bizarre parts of Jensen's argument is where he blows off the entire possibility of anything like that, offhandedly claiming free will doesn't exist and that this was all worked out by philosophers years ago! Apparently choosing to do something difficult and becoming more intelligent by doing so is an experience none of these researchers has ever had?
I find it darkly amusing though that you complain that a journalist misrepresented what you said, to the extent of just making things up ... and then you link to the NY Times as evidence that Trump is racist. Apparently irony is dead, because that article is full of gross misrepresentations of the same type you complained about in your own interview.
Welcome Alistair! I'm glad you got something out of my article! Yes, it's odd that it took so long for intelligence researchers to formulate the individual and social multipliers. Since individual multipliers augment our natural genetic advantages, until Flynn, they were lumped in together with the genetic component of our character. I think you might find Flynn's What Is Intelligence interesting!
I find I am somewhat confused by putting multipliers forward as something new and contrary to strong hereditarianism, as I feel that strong hereditarians make the same argument to explain why heritability increases over the lifespan (individuals choosing environments that amplify their innate proclivities).
After reading some of the discussions, it seems to me like this boils down to a discussion of definitions, broad vs. narrow heritability. To me, no version seems obviously more correct. Is there a good reason to prefer one over the other?
Another aspect of this is that we are talking about non-shared environment here, no? As the multiplier model would primarily show how people come to be more different from each other, assuming only small direct genetic causality.
I am not sure that I understand your logic. As far as I know, no hereditarians believe that there is no environmental impact on intelligence. It is their opponents who claim that there is no genetic impact. If your claim is that it is both, then how are you not largely supporting the hereditarian argument?
Unless you claim that there is evidence for no biological differences, then you are a weak hereditarian rather than a strong hereditarian, no?
My argument is that there is much environmental influence that isn't measured by twin studies and thus that IQ is much less heritable than people like Murray think.
I just read the article. I do not have the background to assess the validity of the evidence, but you have convinced me that there is legitimate scientific evidence for your claims.
Sorry. Based on your behavior in this article and in other comments, I can see that you are an ideological activist pretending to be an objective scientific. I have no confidence in your judgement.
After having read through the article and the follow-up plus comments, I think it would be fair to also point out that the article author has somewhat walked back his claim that the issue has been resolved decisively, mainly because the author of a study central to his claim has made a more balanced claim (molecular estimates being too low and twin study estimates too high, the truth likely somewhere in the middle).
Further, both have stated that even under their model, IQ is decently heritable. In my understanding, the main argument is that for different pathways, indirect effects.
Highly interesting! Perhaps one could raise one more argument about twin studies: if even adopted identical twins do not share the exact same environment, they are likely to share a similar one. If we look at which kinds of people are likely to adopt, and which kinds of people are likely to get approved for that by the orphanage, I think there will be a lot in common. Basically they will be likely nice environments, very functional families. Shitty childhoods usually come from unwanted pregnancies.
You should talk with Hanania. He too repudiates the racist right to which he once belonged. I think he has nuanced views on hereditarianism.
Maybe you can write about where you stand on free speech? Do you support the broad effort to marginalize, stigmatize, deplatform, bankrupt, and remove tenure protections for people who believe the things you used to believe or who simply — like law professor Amy Wax — find them interesting and worthy of unbiased study?
I'm all for unbiased study. I'm not familiar with all the cases, but when it comes to someone like Nathan Cofnas, I think his removal was perfectly justifiable, as he never acquainted himself with many of the objections to his views and thus did poor scholarship.
Cofnas has lots of good scholarship that has nothing to do with race. Many of his papers are not about race at all. For instance he has a paper about the incest taboo. Even granting that you are right, publishing some bad papers is not at all grounds for removal. Else lots of biologists would lose their jobs because of the replication crisis. Academics are judged by their best jobs, not their worst ones.
I do think Nathan acquainted himself with the objections to his views.
You should look at Flynn's critique of that argument in What is Intelligence? He thinks that Jensen/Rushton's whole idea that the Flynn effect isn't g-loaded misses the point. We just gain in whatever skills society encourages us to develop, and these have just happened to be in skills that aren't particularly g-loaded.
His removal was justified? If so that proves too much, as surely he’s no worse than most scholars doing all kinds of dubious research. And that’s not even including the Not Even Wrong-style research that’s unfalsifiable with vague methodological grounds.
How do you explain Ashkenazi overrepresentation among top scientists and billionaires without the hereditarian hypothesis? Do you think Jews are 20% of billionaires in the US because we just have a cultural love of money or something?
I would say it's probably due to slight Jewish advantages in IQ and other skills, plus a lot of individual multipliers. Jews get strong cultural incentives to rise to the top, and they individually create environments that develop and strengthen their small innate advantage.
I don’t think so. If you look at the USSR Jews were pretty assimilated and yet many Jews and many half-Jews were doing well in chess and science and everything else. If you look at Israel, the Ashkenazim do similarly to elsewhere whereas non-Ashkenazi Jews do similarly to whites. In the PISA exam, Haredi girls in Israel beat secular ones on both reading and math despite barely getting a secular education. They are more Ashkenazi.
Anecdotally I know 2 very smart half Ashkenazi people who were not brought up with any Jewish culture.
Could you delve deeper into the criticisms of Arthur Jensen? And if you really want to be taken seriously, I suggest you write about the flaws in the articles by Emil Kirkegaard and Sebastian Jensen.
Jensen was one of the psychologists who believed that racial IQ gaps were mostly genetic in origin, and he believed that because of the Bouchard twin studies that I discuss. The point I'm making is that the twin studies overestimated the heritability of IQ, which means that Jensen and others like him based their work on false premises.
Thanks for the suggestion! Maybe I'll critique other Substackers in the future. However, I have a lot of interests, and I don't know when or even if I'll write about race again. Today I'm going to be publishing a big article about how human psychology and culture are designed to protect us from the fear of death.
The r^2 from a GWAS model is not a credible estimate of a trait's heritability. That's not what GWAS is for. Their advantage is that they can identify specific SNPs associated with a trait, but the drawback is that they fail to capture all the heritability.
Also, I don't think it's true that the gap is shrinking. I don't know what's going on with the handful of outlier studies in the chart in the Vox article, but they're not borne out in real-world tests. The gap in the SAT has held fast at one standard deviation, for example. The gap did shrink in the mid to late 20th century, but it's plateaued since then.
Note that hereditarianism is not a justification for racism. We don't need to use race as a crude proxy for behavioral traits when we can measure those traits directly. We shouldn't discriminate against black people (or white gentiles) in hiring for cognitively demanding jobs, but we also shouldn't freak out and go on a witch hunt for racists to blame for their underrepresentation among qualified candidates.
Geneticists disagree with you. There are many GWAS that estimate heritability for various traits. See Sasha Gusev's site: https://theinfinitesimal.substack.com/ These geneticists think that GWAS heritability estimates are intellectually defensible and credible. Saying that these studies fail to capture heritability is assuming the validity of twin studies.
I have long been a member of the racial "hereditarian" school of thought, and I listen to the American Renaissance podcast. They have plenty of problems, and I have plenty of differences with them. Nevertheless they seem to get it right much more often than they are commonly credited. I am more in line with the more free spirited thinkers on such matters, such as Richard Hanania, Bo Winegard, and Sam Harris.
If we were to seriously resolve the Flynn effect, it is likely with biology. That may seem absurd, but both sides of the debate are out of touch with the biology as it really is. A "reaction norm" is a range of trait values that follow from a single genotype and depend on a range of environmental values. Further, states along a reaction norm can be heritable, i.e. locusts tend to reproduce locusts and grasshoppers grasshoppers, though you may see a shift from one to another over many generations depending on population density. Neither side of our debate has really confronted that possibility, preferring only to ignore it. (But, I am working on it as a personal scientific project, as I think I have proved that many human traits have shifted due to decreasing juvenile mortality, our genes shifting from offspring quantity to quality.) In the end, then, though they have closed their minds to such solutions to such problems as the Flynn effect, the hereditarians would still end up being mostly correct. The anti-hereditarians will have nothing to do with biology to explain intelligence differences either across generations or across races.
I think we need to confront the implicit doctrine that equality is the default hypothesis. That would be plainly wrong if we were to apply that doctrine to racial height differences. Some races are taller than others, and it seems to follow largely from biology. Why should it be so different for intelligence? Why should we assume from the get-go that all races are equally smart? You can point out a lot of puzzles and potential escape hatches, but that isn't the same as building a probable model of the human species in which all races have equal intelligence. I don't think any serious thinker would do so, either, as they prefer to either defend the racial hereditarian model or (more commonly) attack it, not build any convincing alternative.
"I think we need to confront the implicit doctrine that equality is the default hypothesis. That would be plainly wrong if we were to apply that doctrine to racial height differences. Some races are taller than others, and it seems to follow largely from biology. Why should it be so different for intelligence? Why should we assume from the get-go that all races are equally smart?"
This, for me, is the most important argument with regards to race and IQ. With our recent DNA discoveries, the default hypothesis should at best be agnosticism about cognitive equality between population groups. Assuming that all groups would magically have the exact same brain structure when the brain has been under selection pressure AND various populations have interbred with different species (Neanderthals, Denisovans, etc.) doesn't make sense.
My article never makes the claim that there are no genetic differences among the races. Rather, it makes a specific argument that much research on IQ gaps has been flawed.
This response confuses me. Why don’t you explicitly reject the claim? If not in the article, then in the comments.
Your article clearly stated that you were once a racist but no longer am. Perhaps I am wrong but you seem to imply that you were a racist in the past because you did believed that there was evidence of genetic differences between races. Then the evidence changed your mind, so you are no longer a racist.
Do you believe that anyone who believes that there are genetic differences between races is a racist? You seem to strongly imply that in the article.
If no, then why were you a racist in the past but not now?
If yes, then why do you not explicitly reject the theory that there are genetic differences between the races?
Because it all just boils down to wanting to change his life/career and needing to engage in new mood affiliation. It’s embarrassing to have to lie about this outright but it’s hard not to once you get pinned down on specifics.
No, I informed myself about an issue and changed my mind. You should try it!
No, it is pretty clear, you changed your ideology, maybe for career reasons. I no longer trust your judgment.
Fair enough, but that really does not answer my question.
In your other answers to my questions in the comments, you stated that you believe that there is an average difference in intelligence between the races. Some people, particularly on the Left, regard that as a racist view (I disagree with that by the way).
So I am still confused as to why you were a racist in the past, but not now. Or why you claim that your opponents are racists. I guess is that it comes down to your definition of the term "racist."
Personally, I believe that the best definition of racism is:
"A world view that perceives the race of a person as one of the most important defining characteristic of person and therefore people in different races should systematically be treated differently."
That really is a moral stand that really has nothing to do with scientific evidence.
I fully acknowledge that racists can hide behind scientific theories to legitimize their views, but it is the moral stand that defines racism, not scientific beliefs.
How do you reconcile your SPLC-approved views with your “lying eyes”?
I got here from the comments to Seb Jensen. This is a useful and convincing argument, thank you.
The self-multiplier concept of people using free will to create "environmental" effects by leveraging small genetic predispositions is intuitive, as anyone who has struggled to learn a musical instrument can attest :) It's also a pretty obvious one, as it boils down to practice makes perfect, and that doesn't need to have any genetic component at all in most cases. There's no gene for programming, obviously, and yet learning it can boost your G significantly:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.559424/full
One of the most bizarre parts of Jensen's argument is where he blows off the entire possibility of anything like that, offhandedly claiming free will doesn't exist and that this was all worked out by philosophers years ago! Apparently choosing to do something difficult and becoming more intelligent by doing so is an experience none of these researchers has ever had?
I find it darkly amusing though that you complain that a journalist misrepresented what you said, to the extent of just making things up ... and then you link to the NY Times as evidence that Trump is racist. Apparently irony is dead, because that article is full of gross misrepresentations of the same type you complained about in your own interview.
Welcome Alistair! I'm glad you got something out of my article! Yes, it's odd that it took so long for intelligence researchers to formulate the individual and social multipliers. Since individual multipliers augment our natural genetic advantages, until Flynn, they were lumped in together with the genetic component of our character. I think you might find Flynn's What Is Intelligence interesting!
I find I am somewhat confused by putting multipliers forward as something new and contrary to strong hereditarianism, as I feel that strong hereditarians make the same argument to explain why heritability increases over the lifespan (individuals choosing environments that amplify their innate proclivities).
After reading some of the discussions, it seems to me like this boils down to a discussion of definitions, broad vs. narrow heritability. To me, no version seems obviously more correct. Is there a good reason to prefer one over the other?
Another aspect of this is that we are talking about non-shared environment here, no? As the multiplier model would primarily show how people come to be more different from each other, assuming only small direct genetic causality.
I am not sure that I understand your logic. As far as I know, no hereditarians believe that there is no environmental impact on intelligence. It is their opponents who claim that there is no genetic impact. If your claim is that it is both, then how are you not largely supporting the hereditarian argument?
Unless you claim that there is evidence for no biological differences, then you are a weak hereditarian rather than a strong hereditarian, no?
My argument is that there is much environmental influence that isn't measured by twin studies and thus that IQ is much less heritable than people like Murray think.
Fair enough, but do you:
1) Believe that there are average differences in intelligence between the races.
2) That difference is partly explained by genetics?
I think that question is really up in the air now that we're starting to do molecular genetics. IQ doesn't look very heritable anymore. See https://open.substack.com/pub/theinfinitesimal/p/no-intelligence-is-not-like-height?r=4952v2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I just read the article. I do not have the background to assess the validity of the evidence, but you have convinced me that there is legitimate scientific evidence for your claims.
Yeah, it’s really hard to understand population genetics these days. It’s a lot harder to understand than twin studies.
Sorry. Based on your behavior in this article and in other comments, I can see that you are an ideological activist pretending to be an objective scientific. I have no confidence in your judgement.
I will take a look at the article, but do you believe that there is an average difference between races that needs explaining in the first place?
Yes, there is an average difference.
After having read through the article and the follow-up plus comments, I think it would be fair to also point out that the article author has somewhat walked back his claim that the issue has been resolved decisively, mainly because the author of a study central to his claim has made a more balanced claim (molecular estimates being too low and twin study estimates too high, the truth likely somewhere in the middle).
Further, both have stated that even under their model, IQ is decently heritable. In my understanding, the main argument is that for different pathways, indirect effects.
Highly interesting! Perhaps one could raise one more argument about twin studies: if even adopted identical twins do not share the exact same environment, they are likely to share a similar one. If we look at which kinds of people are likely to adopt, and which kinds of people are likely to get approved for that by the orphanage, I think there will be a lot in common. Basically they will be likely nice environments, very functional families. Shitty childhoods usually come from unwanted pregnancies.
You should talk with Hanania. He too repudiates the racist right to which he once belonged. I think he has nuanced views on hereditarianism.
Maybe you can write about where you stand on free speech? Do you support the broad effort to marginalize, stigmatize, deplatform, bankrupt, and remove tenure protections for people who believe the things you used to believe or who simply — like law professor Amy Wax — find them interesting and worthy of unbiased study?
I'm all for unbiased study. I'm not familiar with all the cases, but when it comes to someone like Nathan Cofnas, I think his removal was perfectly justifiable, as he never acquainted himself with many of the objections to his views and thus did poor scholarship.
Cofnas has lots of good scholarship that has nothing to do with race. Many of his papers are not about race at all. For instance he has a paper about the incest taboo. Even granting that you are right, publishing some bad papers is not at all grounds for removal. Else lots of biologists would lose their jobs because of the replication crisis. Academics are judged by their best jobs, not their worst ones.
I do think Nathan acquainted himself with the objections to his views.
Race IQ gaps are genetics. Cofnas is right and you're wrong. You need to remove him because you would lose the argument.
Same old same old with the race deniers.
You are the one who does not care about the counter-arguments here, like the Flynn effect and the GWAS.
Yes, the Flynn Effect. Where you try to convince me that my grandparents were all retarded.
I know about the Flynn Effect. I also know what subtests it affects and doesn't affect. I know people haven't actually gotten "smarter".
Yes it’s not on g.
You should look at Flynn's critique of that argument in What is Intelligence? He thinks that Jensen/Rushton's whole idea that the Flynn effect isn't g-loaded misses the point. We just gain in whatever skills society encourages us to develop, and these have just happened to be in skills that aren't particularly g-loaded.
His removal was justified? If so that proves too much, as surely he’s no worse than most scholars doing all kinds of dubious research. And that’s not even including the Not Even Wrong-style research that’s unfalsifiable with vague methodological grounds.
How do you explain Ashkenazi overrepresentation among top scientists and billionaires without the hereditarian hypothesis? Do you think Jews are 20% of billionaires in the US because we just have a cultural love of money or something?
I would say it's probably due to slight Jewish advantages in IQ and other skills, plus a lot of individual multipliers. Jews get strong cultural incentives to rise to the top, and they individually create environments that develop and strengthen their small innate advantage.
I don’t think so. If you look at the USSR Jews were pretty assimilated and yet many Jews and many half-Jews were doing well in chess and science and everything else. If you look at Israel, the Ashkenazim do similarly to elsewhere whereas non-Ashkenazi Jews do similarly to whites. In the PISA exam, Haredi girls in Israel beat secular ones on both reading and math despite barely getting a secular education. They are more Ashkenazi.
Anecdotally I know 2 very smart half Ashkenazi people who were not brought up with any Jewish culture.
Thanks for sharing. Definitely an interesting read and probs to you for sharing something so vulnerable.
Could you delve deeper into the criticisms of Arthur Jensen? And if you really want to be taken seriously, I suggest you write about the flaws in the articles by Emil Kirkegaard and Sebastian Jensen.
Jensen was one of the psychologists who believed that racial IQ gaps were mostly genetic in origin, and he believed that because of the Bouchard twin studies that I discuss. The point I'm making is that the twin studies overestimated the heritability of IQ, which means that Jensen and others like him based their work on false premises.
Thanks for the suggestion! Maybe I'll critique other Substackers in the future. However, I have a lot of interests, and I don't know when or even if I'll write about race again. Today I'm going to be publishing a big article about how human psychology and culture are designed to protect us from the fear of death.
Dutch height increases mirror IQ increases: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries?country=USA~NLD
Does that mean height is not very heritable?
Rather, it seems to suggest that environmental changes were in fact dramatic and positive.
The r^2 from a GWAS model is not a credible estimate of a trait's heritability. That's not what GWAS is for. Their advantage is that they can identify specific SNPs associated with a trait, but the drawback is that they fail to capture all the heritability.
Also, I don't think it's true that the gap is shrinking. I don't know what's going on with the handful of outlier studies in the chart in the Vox article, but they're not borne out in real-world tests. The gap in the SAT has held fast at one standard deviation, for example. The gap did shrink in the mid to late 20th century, but it's plateaued since then.
Note that hereditarianism is not a justification for racism. We don't need to use race as a crude proxy for behavioral traits when we can measure those traits directly. We shouldn't discriminate against black people (or white gentiles) in hiring for cognitively demanding jobs, but we also shouldn't freak out and go on a witch hunt for racists to blame for their underrepresentation among qualified candidates.
Geneticists disagree with you. There are many GWAS that estimate heritability for various traits. See Sasha Gusev's site: https://theinfinitesimal.substack.com/ These geneticists think that GWAS heritability estimates are intellectually defensible and credible. Saying that these studies fail to capture heritability is assuming the validity of twin studies.
If you were a white ethno-nationalist racist or somehow concerned about the white European race you would have more credibility.
I use a cultural lens to differences in group averages in IQ here:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-novel-take-on-group-differences