Highest IQ???

Tasthius

Speaking of the "higher IQ societies" (those more exclusive than Mensa), here is an interesting history done by a fellow who knows more than one of the prominent members of the community: Highly suggested for entertainment value.

A Short and Bloody History of the High IQ Societies

hitssquad

Quote by selfAdjoint

Quote by hitssquad

This formula shows that for two normal distributions, A and B, where A has a mean = 100 and SD = 15 and B has a mean = 85 and SD = 12 (thus corresponding to typical IQ statistics for the white and black populations) the probability that the "score" of a randomly selected individual from distribution B will exceed that of a random individual from distribution A is precisely 22 percent

In words, better than one black in five is smarter than the average white.

No. These are just aggregates of IQ scores. Current American IQ tests are somewhat biased in favor of blacks. The actual IQ difference between blacks and whites in terms of pure g is 19.65 (1.31σ * SD 15) points:

A further validating feature of these data is revealed by the linear regression of the standardized W-B differences on the tests' g loadings. (The regression equation for the W-B difference, shown in Figure 11.6 , is D = 1.47σ - .163). The regression line, which indicates the best estimate of the mean W-B difference on a test with a given g loading, shows that for a hypothetical test with zero g loading, the predicted mean group difference is slightly below zero (- .163σ), and for a hypothetical test with a g loading of unity (g = 1), the predicted mean group difference is 1.31σ. The latter value is, in fact, approached or equaled by the average difference found for the most highly g-loaded test batteries using highly representative samples of black and white Americans twelve years of age and over. In the black and white standardization samples of the Stanford-Binet IV, for example, the mean difference is 1.11σ; for the WISCR, 1.14σ; and the most precisely representative large-scale sampling of the American youth population (aged fifteen to twenty-three), sponsored by the Department of Defense in 1980, showed a W-B difference of 1.3σ on the AFQT. 36

(Arthur Jensen. The g Factor. pp377-378.)

An American black meeting the white mean would be 1.64σ (19.65σ / 12) above the black mean. This would put him at the 95th percentile of the black distribution. Hence, in terms of pure g, only 5% of American blacks - and not 22% of blacks - exceed the American white IQ mean. Only 1 in twenty blacks is "smarter" than the average white.

*BlackVision*

Do you happen to have statistics to compare Asians and/or Ashkenazi Jews to Whites as well?

Monique

On the credibility of A. Jensen:

In his book The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould, the late Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, makes three criticisms of Jensen's work:

The first criticism is also the criticism most commonly leveled against Jensen by other anthropologists and biologists: that Jensen misunderstands the concept of "heritability." Heritability measures the percentage of variation of a trait due to inheritance, within a population. Jensen, however, has used the concept of heritability to measure differences in inheritance between populations (Gould 1981: 127; 156-156).

The second criticism is relatively minor: Gould disagrees with Jensen's support of the attempts of others to calculate the IQ of dead people (such as the famous Polish astronomer and Prussian monetary theorist Copernicus) (1981: 153-154).

The third criticism is significant: Gould disagrees with Jensen's belief that IQ tests measure a real variable called g or "general intelligence," which can be measured along a unilinear scale. This is a claim most closely identified with Cyril Burt and Charles Spearman. According to Gould, Jensen misunderstood the research of L. L. Thurstone to ultimately support this claim; Gould however argues that Thurstone's factoral analysis of intelligence revealed g to be an illusion (1981: 159; 13-314).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race

Tigers2B1

Here are some links to results of monozygotic twin studies and the high correlation found when comparing IQ results. In fact, IQ results have a correlation in almost direct relation with the degree of genetic relatedness. I seriously doubt this is mere coincidence and I doubt very seriously that anyone will find any study from an .edu source that substantially differs from these. The monozygotic twin studies implies a very strong correlation of genetics and IQ. IQ results of monozygotic twins raised apart and together, siblings raised apart and together, adoptees raised together and compared to biologically unrelated persons raised apart all point to the inescapable conclusion that IQ is heritable to a high percentage. In fact, the argument is no longer whether IQ is heritable as once maintained by the ‘blank slaters’ - but whether it’s 40, 50, 60, 70 or 80% -- heritable --

http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/MEDIA/NN/ns.html

http://www.atlantis.edu/~nutmeg/neuro/twinstudies.htm

Monique

What I'd like to see is a study that compares correlation of IQ scores of monozygotic twins raised apart to correlation of IQ scores of unrelated matched individuals.

selfAdjoint

There is a major new paper on the physical correlates and heritabilitiy of g.

See the summary at GNXP, and then follow the link there to read the whole PDF file. To all those people who claim IQ and g are fictions, here's the evidence they are real.

And Monique, it's not very productive at this late date to quote Gould's Mismeasure of Man against Jensen. That book has been shown by professionals to be tendentious and misleading. It's agit-prop, not science.

Monique

I agree cognitive abilities can be inheritable.

But you have to agree that the effect is most clear in MZ twins, less clear in DZ twins, even less clear in siblings, disappearing in cousins. So how would you justify extending MZ twin data to a whole population.

I will believe data on restricted purified groups, not on undefined populations such as Asians and whites.

shonagon53

Quote by selfAdjoint

It's agit-prop, not science.

I just read your article. If that isn't agit-prop, then what is.

It's full of subjective appreciations and bold statements which are open for ideological debate. It's a highly political article, using a warrior tone and a combattant style of reasoning.

Just one quote (about the ideological relevance of HapMap):

"We will know that we are triumphant when educated people believe that human genetic differences matter and they matter intensely."

-Now that's the tautology of the matter: the HapMappers will need a lot of lobbying to shove that up "educated people's" throats. They believe what they want to believe. (They use the word "believe" themselves.)

-For me, and for many "educated people" (they're called "nihilists" by the HapMap fundamentalists) genetic differences are so small, that they don't matter very much; the equality is far greater and far more important.

Deciding how "intensely" they matter is a purely social, cultural, political and ideological matter.

Sorry, no escape from politics on this one.

You know, many educated people (the ones who will be triumphant) have read Fukuyama's "Our Posthuman Future" and they understand the basic fact that whenever you're trying to assess the "importance" of genetic differences, you're out of science and into politics.

Tigers2B1

Quote by Monique

What I'd like to see is a study that compares correlation of IQ scores of monozygotic twins raised apart to correlation of IQ scores of unrelated matched individuals.

Well - here is a chart (linked below) showing IQ results and the correlation with the degree of genetic relatedness (including unrelated individuals) -

Note that this guy doesn’t appear to be an advocate based on the subscript -- so, I suspect that if pushed, I could find stats that are more compelling than these -

http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/IQ_Correlations.htm

selfAdjoint

Quote by shpnagon53

I just read your article. If that isn't agit-prop, then what is.

I agree that GNXP and related sites like Steve Sailer and Griffe du Lion are political to the max, and their use of genetics and statistics is racist (although you know, you have to refute the statistics and genetics, not just call names).

But the paper is not racist and the bullet point summary of it is good, comments apart. This is genuine scientific data.

hitssquad

Quote by shonagon53

Quote by selfAdjoint

There is a major new paper on the physical correlates and heritabilitiy of g.

See the summary at GNXP, and then follow the link there to read the whole PDF file. To all those people who claim IQ and g are fictions, here's the evidence they are real.

And Monique, it's not very productive at this late date to quote Gould's Mismeasure of Man against Jensen. That book has been shown by professionals to be tendentious and misleading. It's agit-prop, not science.

I just read your article. If that isn't agit-prop, then what is.

selfAdjoint said "summary." The GNXP text linked to by selfAdjoint contains, according to the introduction "First, a bulleted list. Then, my commentary, and finally the full Thompson/Gray PDF."

Quote by shonagon53

It's full of subjective appreciations and bold statements which are open for ideological debate.

The summary ("bulleted list") section - aside from the use of the word "Intriguingly" in Point 4 of the "Behavioral Genetics of IQ" section - does not appear to contain agitprop. In contrast, the commentary section that follows it does appear to contain, or be, agitprop. Here is the former:

these are the points reviewed by the article, divided by subheading:

Neurobiological determinants of intelligence as measured by IQ:
1. Posterior lesions often cause substantial decreases in IQ. Duncan and colleagues suggested that the frontal lobes are involved more in Gf and goal-directed behaviour than in Gc (Fig. 2). In addition, Gf is compromised more by damage to the frontal lobes than to posterior lobe...
2. MRI-based studies estimate a moderate correlation between brain size and intelligence of 0.40 to 0.51
3. g was significantly linked to differences in the volume of frontal grey matter, which were determined primarily by genetic factors... the volume of frontal grey matter had additional predictive validity for g even after the predictive effect of total brain volume was factored out
4. Only one region is consistently activated during three different intelligence tasks when compared to control tasks...The surface features of the tasks differed (spatial, verbal, circles) but all were moderately strong predictors of g (g LOADING; range of r, 0.55–0.67), whereas control tasks were weaker predictors of g (range of r, 0.37–0.41). Neural activity in several areas, measured by a positron emission tomography (PET) scan, was greater during high-g than low-g tasks.
5. Speed and reliability of neural transmission are related to higher intelligence (reviewed in Refs 15,20). Early neuroimaging studies using PET found that intelligence correlated negatively with cerebral glucose metabolism during mental activity54 (for a review, see Ref. 55), leading to the formulation of a 'neural efficiency' hypothesis...
6. Gf is mediated by neural mechanisms that support the executive control of attention during working memory...greater event-related neural activity in many regions, including the frontal, parietal and temporal lobes, dorsal anterior cingulate and lateral cerebellum. Crucially, these patterns were most distinct during high-interference trials, even after controlling for behavioural performance and for activity on low-interference trials within the same regions
7. RAPM scores obtained outside the scanner predicted brain activity in a single left parietal/temporal region, and not in the frontal lobes.
8. An exploratory fMRI study60 (n = 7) indicated that parietal areas are involved in inspection time tasks, specifically Brodmann area (BA) 40 and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (BA47) but not the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Behavioral Genetics of IQ:
1. Monozygotic twins raised separately following adoption show a correlation of 0.72 for intelligence
2. For 48 identical twin pairs separated in early infancy and reared apart, Bouchard et al.83 found remarkably high between-twin correlations for verbal scores on the WAIS (0.64) and for the first principal component of special mental abilities (0.78)
3. Psychometric g has been shown to be highly heritable in many studies, even more so than specific cognitive abilities (h2 = 0.62, Ref. 87 compare with Ref. 88; h2 = 0.48, Ref. 89; h2 = 0.6–0.8, Refs 90,91)...
4. Intriguingly, the influence of shared family environments on IQ dissipates once children leave home — between adult adoptive relatives, there is a correlation of IQ of -0.01
Molecular Genetics of IQ:
1. Chorney et al.104 discovered an allelic variation in a gene on chromosome 6, which codes for an insulin-like growth factor-2 receptor (IGF2R), that was linked with high intelligence...
2. Later studies identified a second IQ-related polymorphism in the IGF2R gene, and others in the cathepsin D (CTSD) gene, in the gene for an acetylcholine receptor (CHRM2)106, and in a HOMEOBOX GENE (MSX1) that is important in brain development107, 108.
3. Influence of each polymorphism was minimal — variants of CHRM2 accounted for a range of only 3–4 IQ points, whereas different forms of CTSD accounted for about 3% of the variation between people...None of these associations has yet been replicated by other research groups
4. Some patients with microcephaly also possess the ASPM mutation, indicating that a shortened version of the gene might lead to the development of fewer cerebral neurons and a smaller head.
5. Polymorphism in the human brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene is associated with impaired performance on memory tests
6. Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene influences the activation of working memory circuits. COMT polymorphisms seem to be highly specific to some prefrontal cortex-dependent tasks in children.
7. Dopamine receptor (DRD4) and monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) polymorphisms are associated with differences in performance and brain activity during tasks that involve executive attention

Quote by shonagon53

You know, many educated people (the ones who will be triumphant) have read Fukuyama's "Our Posthuman Future" and they understand the basic fact that whenever you're trying to assess the "importance" of genetic differences, you're out of science and into politics.

It appears that the commentary section that follows the above-quoted article summary may gave been written intentionally in an agitprop style.

shonagon53

Quote by selfAdjoint

I agree that GNXP and related sites like Steve Sailer and Griffe du Lion are political to the max, and their use of genetics and statistics is racist (although you know, you have to refute the statistics and genetics, not just call names).

But the paper is not racist and the bullet point summary of it is good, comments apart. This is genuine scientific data.

I agree that the article is sound science, but there's a tad of propaganda in it too. I think we can agree on that.

The basic question remains: do you agree that judging to which extent "genetic differences" matter ("intensely" or not), is always a cultural, political, social and ideological judgement?

Isn't that what makes science mere science, and once you're out of that realm, politics begins?

Most scientists agree that global warming, caused by humans, is a scientific fact. But the extent to which this matters, and what, if anything, we should do about it, is always a political question. (In this case: there are sound arguments to say that Kyoto is important, but that there are far more important things, like the war against terror, aids, hunger, or providing sanitation and clean water to people).

So once again, genetic research is genetic research. Nothing more, nothing less. What we do with it, and how important we judge these scientific findings to be, is always a socio-political problem, open for debate. The HapMap people simply "state" that they think that genetic differences in IQ matter very much. But this is clearly an ideological debate.

Wouldn't you agree with that?

Tigers2B1

A question on the correlation of brain size and IQ results. While I understand that this correlation exists in both men and women (when compared within sexes) -- women, on average, have a smaller brains and fewer neurons than men even after correcting for body -- without similar differences in IQ results. Is the reason for this diffference known?

Is this related to the differences in male and female brains -- that is, men are more aggressive and the areas thought to control agression are proportionally larger in men --- while the portion that links the right and left sides of brains is larger, after considering body size, in women. Maybe women use their brains in less of a lopsided manner?

Vance

Quote by Tigers2B1

A question on the correlation of brain size and IQ results. While I understand that this correlation exists in both men and women (when compared within sexes) -- women, on average, have a smaller brains and fewer neurons than men even after correcting for body -- without similar differences in IQ results. Is the reason for this diffference known?

Is this related to the differences in male and female brains -- that is, men are more aggressive and the areas thought to control agression are proportionally larger in men --- while the portion that links the right and left sides of brains is larger, after considering body size, in women. Maybe women use their brains in less of a lopsided manner?

I am sorry for my ignorance but may I ask what makes you think men are more aggressive than women since I think it depends on each person and on circumstances in which each individual is educated and grown up ?
Or am I misreading your post at any points up there ?

Thanks,

Monique

LOl, I google the words agression and testosterone and out came a PF thread
Agression: Men vs Women

Tigers2B1, efficiency of the neuron routing is important too and not just neuron mass :)

selfAdjoint

Quote by shonagon53

So once again, genetic research is genetic research. Nothing more, nothing less. What we do with it, and how important we judge these scientific findings to be, is always a socio-political problem, open for debate. The HapMap people simply "state" that they think that genetic differences in IQ matter very much. But this is clearly an ideological debate.

Wouldn't you agree with that?

Yes I would. Part of my problem is that the folks I call the "tabula rasists" - including Gould and Lewontine but also a lot of vaguely leftist journalists - have for decades tried to tell the public that the good science is bad science, that the people who do it are in the line of the bad old eugenicists, and so on. Not in our Genes and Mismeasure of Man were salvos in that war. All I want is for the scientific tradition that this paper represents, and that Jenson represents be allowed to continue without smearing.

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