We are talking about relatively small differences in the mean between various populations. When it comes to the progress a society makes, it's not the mean of the population that matters near as much as the capabilities of individual outliers -- the inventors who actually make things happen. And whether the societies rules encourage or suppress them.

"In the United States today, most claims regarding differences between ethnic ‘populations’ in relationship to IQ test performance are based on statistically derived data that relate to scholastic aptitude tests (e.g. Flynn, 2006). With this in mind, and acknowledging the superior educational attainment of African blacks in the United States (and elsewhere) it can thus be argued, because of their superior educational attainment levels, that they must also surmount far more in number and more difficult scholastic aptitude tests, in general, which in turn would require higher level IQs (see Gottfredson, 1998; Ostrowsky, 1999). As whites on average do not, or are unable to attain the same levels of academic achievement within these (their own!) academic institutional frameworks, they must also by the racialist thinking employed by some, possess significantly lower cogitative indices on the group level (e.g. Jensen, 1980; Gottfredson, 1986, 1998). In fact, attainment differences of these ‘grand’ magnitudes would suggest that American whites, in particular, are at a significant intellectual handicap when matched against immigrants of black African, East Indian, and East Asian descent. Incidentally, most American whites themselves are the children or grandchildren of “self-selected,” voluntary immigrants from Europe (Ogbu and Simons, 1998), and thus these trends can not be said to result from immigrant selectivity." -- and much more here:
https://www.africaresource.com/sci-te...

The science of human genetics is still changing... perhaps some day there will be a genetic test that actually differentiates groups of humans... not sure that would be a good thing should it come about. Certainly the way humans have done it (basically how someone looks) for tens of thousands of years has not work out well.

Whenever I see a study that reports based on race I try to find how they determined race of each member of the study... sometimes self identification, sometimes third party subjective identification, NEVER have seen one that used genetic identification (as there is not a test.) Federal government guidelines since 1997 races is a social construct based on self identification used by Census for instance. Not verifiable since answer can change each time asked and not validatable since no objective test. Crazy to use that data for DoJ and Courts to redraw Congressional and Legislative districts. Going to get messier before it gets better.

I accept the general claim, but we could be even more specific: Baghdad in the 1100s; Florence in the 1200s; London in the 1600s-1700s; Birmingham in the 1700s-1800s; Detroit 1920-1950; Austin, Texas; 1990-Present; Silicon Valley 1960-2010...

I do agree that what measures "intelligence" is material achievement, given that "material" must be the result of intellectual achievement. That is why a "renaissance" includes arts and sciences. You cited "China" in the 1300s. I knew something from numismatics that was reinforced later by a college class in History of China: when the Kitai "barbarians" pushed on the northern margin of Sung Dynasty China, people fled to the south. The "Southern Sung" saw not a collapse from overcrowding, but a flourishing of arts, philosophy, trade, and commerce. Look to a similar event: the flooding of the Zuider Zee tripled the population of Amsterdam in 1287. They were not "overcrowded" into poverty.

That's all fine, but the fact is that crime statistics are weighted away from the higher income clusters. Cops in the suburbs let families deal with their own problems on theory that "these are good people" whereas cops in the inner city are "cracking down on crime." Child abuse and spousal abuse speak to the issue.

Also, it matters what the crime is. The robbery of a liquor store in an urban neighborhood is typified: "typical" for the perpetrator's social context. However, when engineers, accountants, and lawyers at General Motors decided that settling claims in court by people who were harmed or killed was cheaper than fixing the production process, that, too, was "typical" crime -- but not called for it was.

Crimes are the result of wrongful epistemology: blanking out, rather than focusing -- or genetics...

We can all guess... I suggest that you consider the Flynn Effect. The general IQ is rising. As CircuitGuy and others pointed out, we have a more intense cognitive load. Just driving a car is a challenge and about 40,000 people per year fail the ultimate test.

... right, otherwise they would not be "social problems." That said, I do point out that "crime knows no neighborhood." In other words, no place is special for bad (or good) behavior. There is as much crime in the country and suburbs as there is in the city. The specifics may be different. Typically, an engineer living in the suburbs does not rob the neighborhood liquor store. He commits other crimes, generally of greater magnitude.

I see than you took a thumbs down for that. I plussed you back to 1.

Yes, I read the book some years ago, and I was impressed with the original research, and I accepted the findings -- broadly. I then read The Mismeasure of Man by Ashley Montague which refuted The Bell Curve; and, again, I was impressed, and accepted the findings broadly.

There is no such thing as "race." What we call "race" is just culture. It is true that gene pools exist. Preparing a lecture to middle schoolers on crime scene investigation - my degrees are in criminology - I was digging into blood grouping. (What most people call blood "typing".) I do not have the details here now, but a hospital in the UK was doing some survey for some other reason and getting people to come in off the street for lab samples. It turned out that group of neighbors showed up and as a secondary consequence of the research, it turned out that apparently these people had some protein that no else ever had. They were all from the same village in India. My maternal grandfather was Hungarian. When one of my grand-nephews was born, the doctor asked "So who's Hungarian?" The kid had "Mongolian spots" two purple birthmarks at the end of his back. My brother and I do not. His son does not. My brother married a girl whose parents were northern (Swedish and "English" whatever that means); and the baby's mother's parents were Jewish (whatever) and Puerto Rican (New Yorkers both). And then... after five generations of mixing, two dots... Fascinating...

But IQ? No.

You can breed people to be smart or stupid - tall or short, fat or thin, dark or light ...

But our modern society demands far more intelligence from the least of us than any hunter-gatherer could have needed. And even so, I accept Carl Sagan's opinion that the so-called "primitive" people had and have more need to be true scientists because their lives are so precarious that they cannot afford ignorance: they know what they need to, and are not confused about the facts. We have the luxury of mistaken theories about economics, politics, and racing high performance automobiles. Both broad claims are true. It depends on context.

If African-Americans have lower IQs than White people, it is only because (1) A-As are denied opportunities and (2) IQ tests are culturally biased.

Even if it were true that Irish-Americans have lower IQs than Japanese-Americans, it would say nothing about individuals.

Individualism is within the nature of the universe. The size of the molecule and the existence of isotopes suggest that within your own body no two hemoglobin molecules are identical.

(I just saw this, having been away for a couple of days.)

I read the book ,many years ago as part of a psychology class. I found it interesting, well researched, but had a bit of issue with the clumping races together, even though in general, the results bore out the author's comments. It trouble me that the white race is decreasing in IQ in the past few years. Current IQ data shows the Hispanic IQ slightly even though mos of them attended US schools! I have seen results that show a child starting school actually decreased in intelligence the longer than ar in US schools.
I want to read the follow up book, which does address the white IQ. I do not see the book as racist, but merely scientific. We hasve to factor in the reversion to the mean, as well, which says to genius parents will not create a necessarily higher IQ offspring. Chelsea Clinton has a lower IQ than Bill or Hillary.
The one take away I get, as to the importance of IQ, is that IQ has to be at a certain level before true critical thinking skills come into play. Below that level, which Obama was, they are not a driving force in decision making. That is important as to how world decisions are made. I don't think IQ is necessarily owned by the college educated, as I have known some very high IQ plumbers and truck drivers, with excellent thinking skills.Schools are not our friend when it comes to IQ. Talking with children early and encouraging discussion seems to be a factor in critical thinking and IQ enhancement as they enter school.

It is my understanding that every time this is done the differences in the mean is significant to reject the null hypothesis. Which then leads to discussions of biases in the test which account for the unacceptable difference.

Could be. Actually I should have used that example.

Hi Herb,
Isn't that the story of Forrest Gump?

No, but I saw an interview. The man is not a racist...that's just silly. However, I think he hasn't accounted for culture, language or mysticism's.

If an entire culture, like the jungles of Africa or South America; even islam...then daa...they will not have a whole lot of stored information nor a useful integration of that information. They could not compare to the civilized world...but most could adapt and increase their IQ's. Language, (reading and writing) and metaphors are very important here.
I am using the works of Julian Jaynes here and the notion that, for the most part, IQ is just a measure of stored information, and an ability to use that information to solve problems etc.

There is a Big difference between Compartmentalized information in the brain and integrated knowledge of the mind.
These differences really stand out in government as we observe it these days.

"Too much made of IQ. Whatever one's is, one goal should simply be to be as productive as possible and accept who you are. "
Yes. This is what it comes down to.

KevinSchwinkendorft's comment reminded me think distribution is every bit as important as the mean. Also the distribution of IQs probably is not Gaussian (i.e. a "bell" curve). It could happen that they have the same mean, but they're distributed such that extremes are much more frequent in one group. In this case the top geniuses (outliers) would be mostly from one group, making meetings of geniuses wrongly appear really racist.

This reminds me that there has to a point to looking at groups. We could waste time doing analyses of whether random physical traits (e.g. detached earlobes) is correlated to random abilities (e.g. ability to recognize faces), and it would just be indulging a fetish for grouping people unless the answer might lead to meaningful scientific understanding.

I expect he said nothing wrong that political correctness can't screw up.
Too much made of IQ. Whatever one's is, one goal should simply be to be as productive as possible and accept who you are. It is only the push for economic equality that makes it relevant as to who is at fault for what and who owes who based on genetic differences.

" My prediction is that the gap between those of the highest levels of cognitive ability and lowest levels has continued to widen in the past 2 decades."
This would be interesting. They key is the size of the group of cognitively impaired vs gifted rather than a "gap", right? I'm guessing the most intelligent person minus the most impaired person is constant, but we're interested in the the distribution. My wild guess is there are fewer people with severe cognitive impairment b/c modern jobs are more cognitively intensive, so people have an incentive to work on this area. OTOH, maybe technology and higher living standards allow impaired people to live longer and have more kids than they would have in the past. I agree with Ed75 that any study of only 23 years would pick up a lot of statistical noise.

"he shows that many social ills (ex. illegitimacy, crime, child neglect/abuse, etc.) are highly clustered at the lower end of the cognitive ability distribution (regardless of race)."
All my anecdotal (non-scientific) experience indicates it is a cycle. Low cognitive ability --> bad choices --> poverty --> kids with low cognitive ability, and the cycle continues.

Among very successful people, there's a higher rate of having a rough childhood. A few people rise out of the cycle of poverty and are actually stronger for it. Or maybe they had stronger genetics that made them rise out of it. My impression, though, is the bad childhood steels them. Most people do not escape the cycle.

Once you're out of poverty, I suspect those genetic factors begin to predominate.

"While the media would have you believe that these problems are evenly distributed among all individuals, it simply isn't true."
I do not understand why the media would lie and say social problems are not correlated with cognitive ability. It would be an old and interesting result if we found an even distribution of social problems.

I've not read "The Bell Curve," but I have heard of it. It is perfectly legitimate to calculate the average IQs of different populations (e.g., "black" vs. "white"). It would be almost impossible for the two means to be exactly equal, if the averages are reported to enough "significant figures." But, one should also calculate the sample standard deviations (sigmas) of the two populations, and then one can test the hypothesis that the two means are equal. You do this by evaluating a statistical test (like a "Z" test, where Z = (m2 - m1)/SQR(sigma1^2 + sigma^2)). The square root term represents the "pooled" standard deviation between the two populations. If this Z value is greater than some cutoff (like 1.96 for a 95% confidence level), then you reject the null hypothesis that the two populations are equal, and conclude (with 95% confidence) that the two values are sufficiently different as to be "outside statistics." If Z is "small" then you accept the null hypothesis that the two means are the same (to within statistical variation). Of course, the two means (m1 and m2) will be different to some degree, but such a test will determine whether it is statistically significant or not. I would strongly suspect that m2-m1 is small compared to the pooled sigma in this example, assuming a sufficiently large sample was used.

That's not really the case. Epigenetics was unknown at the time Murray wrote the Bell Curve and it can show material genetic changes in one generation.

Speculating here: Culture (working philosophy) and population IQ or at least leadership IQ may not always be in sync for advanced living for the general populace. Maybe the cultures you are pointing out were times when the two were in sync and flourished relative to the rest of the world during those periods. For example, I would speculate the founders of the US were above the mean in IQ and since they adopted an improved working philosophy for their government and society at large, a leap in living conditions evolved. Consider also, the likes of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, et al may have had higher IQs, but adopted seriously flawed working philosophies. Smart people don't always check their premises but proceed on their beliefs anyway.

The flaw in Murray's proposition has always been the question of how to measure IQ to account for cultural differences. Lacking a reliably unbiased measurement system, I believe he erroneously attributed cultural influence on the results as genetic.

Supposed race difference in intelligence is as controversial as purported sexual preference determined by genetics. Each has proponents with radically different interpretations. Most blacks are offended at the idea they are claimed to be intellectually inferior, but there are a few who see this as another justification for welfare for their inherent disability. This is similar to the "gay gene" controversy, where some welcome the idea that the sexual preference is predetermined, and some fear the idea, as it might lead to discrimination and the abortion of fetuses the have the gene.

Yes I read it years ago when it was first published (1994) and had a chance to talk to Murray a few years later at Freedom Fest about it. It disturbed him that many people missed the whole point. Sounds like nothing has changed :-(