Note: Repost from the old blog.
From an article by Philippe Rushton, hereditarian, a revelation about yet another instance of skyrocketing IQ increases in the second generation born in the West after migrating from the less developed areas.
Previously, we noted that the children Jamaican immigrants to the UK (IQ = 71) have IQ’s of 85-86, typically within a single generation. That is a gain of 14.5 IQ points merely by being raised in the West. Hereditarians have offered many rationales for this. The usual is that the Jamaican immigrants were already very bright anyway (as we will see with Moroccans and Turks in Netherlands, this is not true).
Another is that Jamaicans in the UK are very heavily bred in with Whites to the point where they may be only 1/2 White. This is not true – UK Jamaicans are only 12% White (Jamaicans in Jamaica are 9% White).
The children of Indian and Pakistani immigrants to the UK (IQ = 81.5) have IQ’s ranging from 92 (Rushton) to 96 (a figure I prefer). Call it 94. This is a gain of 12.5 IQ points merely by being raised in the West. The counter-argument here once again is that this group is self-selected.
Taken together, the children of Jamaican and East Indian immigrants see rises of 13.5 IQ points merely by being raised in the West. It is true that beyond the initial jump, we are not seeing more rises.
However, a strong initial jump is perfectly consonant with a hyperinjection of massive intellectual stimulation, good health care, proper diet, etc. This is probably all related to a higher standard of living. Higher standards of living seem to be somehow translating into long-term rises in IQ. The mechanisms can be debated, and we have done so on this blog.
Education, a massively-stimulating environment (computers, cell phones, TV, movies), proper nutrition, good health care, and myriad other things have been suggested, but the mechanisms for the rises are still somewhat mysterious.
Now, via Rushton, we have yet more evidence of a Flynn Effect in immigrants to the West. First generation Moroccans and Turks in Netherlands had IQ’s of 81. This is low. The Moroccan norm IQ is 84 and the Turkish norm IQ is 90. So, contrary to the argument that only the very brightest immigrants are going to the West, it seems instead that the less bright immigrants are arriving instead.
The second generation has IQ’s of 89. 89 is around the Turkish average, but it is 5 points above the Moroccan average. At any rate, it shows a Flynn gain of 8 points simply by migrating to the West. Rushton tries to explain this away somehow, but he doesn’t do a good job of it.
The evidence for massive IQ gains in second generation immigrants to the West is now becoming overwhelming and it is going to be harder and harder for hereditarians to explain this stuff away.
Comparison of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants to the West and the resulting Flynn Effect gains, apparently solely by being born and raised in the West. The common factor behind rising IQ’s in the West may be related to rising standards of living.
1st 2nd Gain UK Jamaicans 71 85.5 14.5 UK East Indians 81.5 94 12.5 ND Moroccans/Turks 81 88 7 Average 78 89 11.5
3
20
20
20
The Flynn Effect can only do so much.
Lysenkoism is dead.
What of the children of Mexican immigrants to the US? That’s extremely important, and I haven’t seen too much on it.
This suggests an increase in IQ for Mexicans born in the US.
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/search/label/Mexican%20Americans
Yeah, unfortunately, it does not seem to be going on too much with Hispanic Americans. I see only a 2-pt rise or so. Not good.
Hi Mark, I just did a post on this called Permanent Gangland America.
I’m a 2nd generation Berber born in London and initially from Algeria. I was educated in a private school and am now a software engineer. My IQ is identical to my peers. Among Caucasians, I believe there is almost no difference in genetic potential for intelligence.
The Arab software engineers are also equal in IQ, though it could be said that the profession filters out the lower IQ Arabs and so we only see the Arabs at the higher end of the standard distribution and that the Arab average remains lower than the European average in the same way that the Indians in google are the smartest Indians and the average Indian IQ remains low. There is no evidence to the contrary, but I disagree. I believe any Arab raised in identical circumstances to other Caucasians will be equally intelligent, controlling for major physiological factors such as height and nutrition.
Unfortunately there have been no studies on the subject. There was a study on adopted black babies into white families and the IQ gap still remained. I’d be very interested to see a similar study on North African and Arab children.
The adoption studies are rather toothless. They are toothless because the desired control (environment) is not truly realized. A child spends but a fraction of his or her life near only the parents. A far greater percentage of the time (unless it’s a case of strict homeschooling) is spent among peers in the larger society. The lingering IQ gap could be explained by genetic causes, but it could also just as easily still be explained by environmental ones—namely the “toxic” (to the extent that it supersedes and negates whatever positive influences better parenting could/would have) nature of American culture at large . All in all, adoption studies, as they have been carried out so far, have failed at the very premise of their design. Twin studies have basically the same problem, since greater society will see a black skin when the child is alone, regardless of what race and sensibility the parents are (and this is ignoring many, many other complications and variables, such as the utero conditions, etc).
To cut a very long story short, the most robust case I have seen so far for the hereditarian side (in which the environmental control actually seemed to be relatively satisfactory) is Jensen’s study in which he found that the children of wealthy, high IQ American blacks scored as well on their SATs (which have about a 0.7 correlation with IQ) as poor American whites. Jensen concluded that this definitively proved genetic causes and suggested that we were witnessing regression to the racial, genotypic mean. Now, of course, this could also be explained by the same exact environmental reasons as given above, but, since money (rather than mere parenting) has a particular sort of power, I was more swayed by Jensen’s reasoning.
However, that was until a couple of years ago, before data from the UK came out. Studies done on GCSE* (which also has about a 0.7 correlation with IQ) test takers across the major British ethnic groups showed that the children of British black African immigrants scored at least as well and better than British whites (and they scored much better than British Caribbean blacks for that matter, who have a degree of white admixture). It may also be worth noting that mixed-race children also scored on par with British whites, neither better nor worse. The predictable strawman here is to say that this is because the immigrants were selected/screened; in fact, this is irrelevant. According to Jensen’s own reasoning, we would expect to see at least SOME evidence of regression to the mean of the native stock population, even if the parents were on the extreme right of their race’s bell curve. Given that we see none, and, in fact, the opposite, it must be concluded that, at the very least, a hereditarian model in which regression to the mean is a phenomenon, is thus far falsified. Of course, people are free to devise other hereditarian hypotheses (in whichever way that may be possible, seems like a hard sell to me), but the arguments against selective immigration become much harder to make (though there’s always the good, clean, fashioned freedom of association line, which the White Nationalists foolishly underutilize), whatever these alternative scenarios may be.
Additional opposition to the British results rely on late-age-expression-of-heritability (which is a rather shaky, hand-wavy, mental gymnastics-y premise in of itself) and grade inflation arguments. These arguments are diffused fairly convincingly by this paper, however: http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/7916/1/DCSF-RR029.pdf
Personally, for now, I’m firmly back on the side of the American culture being just that toxic as far as race is concerned. Yes, and I mean, THAT toxic, to the extent that it’s poisoned much of the rest of the world. Until/unless further, properly designed experiments show otherwise, the hereditarians occupy the defensive stance in this debate.
*People will argue that this is not an adequate/appropriate way to determine IQ, that they’re not adequately g-loaded. Fine, disregard the findings, but then you can’t complain when someone disregards Jensen’s findings.
Thank you for your thoughts, I found them interesting. Indeed, while to me there is definitely a real IQ gap between blacks and whites, I’ve been on the fence as to its causes so far as there’s so little real evidence. The existence of men like Thomas Sowell who were not brought up with the modern degenerate ‘black’ culture makes me doubt the genetic theory.
Yes, the IQ gap is very real. The issue is when people are absolutely certain (on either side) about what the causes are. At the moment, Alt-Right types online are far more prone to making these sorts aggressive, unjustifiably certain statements (in essence, hijacking the imprimatur of the “Truth” and “Reality” before any discussion can even really begin), while, on the other hand, “egalitarians” are somewhat lazy and non-copious in their argumentation, probably because they haven’t really had to contend with these ideas in any sort of serious/rigorous way for the past several decades (PC culture and all).
Again, to me, the evidence as it stands seems to be more against hard hereditarianism. Many hereditarians have already recognized that, in order to save their hypothesis, they would, at the very least, have to concede that groups like the Igbo and Yoruba of Nigeria are particularly exceptional within their internal stock populations. But then what happens their evolutionary psychology reasoning (which is fundamental to their subsequent arguments regarding immigration)? Muh “tens of thousands of years farming in the cold” line? What selective pressures were the Igbo subject to that other closely neighboring subsaharans weren’t? Surely, there must be SOMETHING different…but I’ve failed to find any evidence for this….
Hayve Bromier
“…but the arguments against selective immigration become much harder to make (though there’s always the good, clean, fashioned freedom of association line, which the White Nationalists foolishly underutilize)…”
Yes, I think so as well. I agree that there are other good arguments that can be made for limiting immigration (and generally against mass immigration).
I would typically I think be in favor (though of course not always/necessarily in a absolute strict sense of purity) of preserving (in societies) a strong/predominant continuity of culture identity and heritage (and a predominance at least of the native or founding ethnicity or cultural group of the country), which I think (that kind of continuity that is) is beneficial to all societies (and which is strongly—at the collective level—tied to a shared ancestry and history).
Greater cultural/ethnic homogeneity is generally good for societal cohesion and trust, among other things.
It is or should be, in my opinion, each nation’s business own whom it wants to admit or not, according to its own particular rules, whatever those may be.
My hope/preference is that conditions improve in a variety of countries (including those that currently send many immigrants abroad)—i.e. that they improve their own conditions (that is as much as possible/they can), where they are at home—including those nations where they conditions are currently disfavorable (of course that is mainly the job/responsibility of those that live in those countries).