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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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THIRTY YEARS OF RESEARCH ON RACE DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY is a pretty comprehensive survey (60 pages!) in favor of the hereditarian view on intelligence. I found it to be a good read.

However, it was published in 2005. Does anyone know the current status of that survey? Are its findings still up-to-date with our understanding of race and genetics, or have the evidence its based on since shown to be inaccurate?

Have there been other surveys of similar scope and comprehensiveness since then, whether for or against the hereditarian view?

Jayman's blog has a lot of more-recent information which you may find interesting. Be sure to check the sidebar for other stuff.

That said you're probably about to get chastised for a low-effort (and probably bad-faith) TLD and I can't say I disagree.

Can you link me to literature on individual vs group contributions to cognitive ability ?

I've heard about regressing to the mean, where top percentile parents will the child's cognitive ability move towards their combined group means, rather than the parental mean.

IE, if:

inherited_iq = a*(mom + dad IQ) + b*(maternal group IQ + paternal group IQ).

Then what would a & b look like ?

Put simply,

  1. If 2 geniuses from a low group IQ community have a child, then is the child less likely to be genius than children of other geniuses ?

  2. If 2 normies from a group with high group IQ have a child. Is the child more likely to be genius than children of other normies ?

This is a misunderstanding of regressing to the mean. Regression to the mean after selection happens because some part of IQ is non-inherited, and it is IQ as a whole that is selected for. When you go to the next generation, the part of IQ which is non-inherited returns to baseline, while the inherited mean does not, so the next generation will have a lower mean IQ. There's no spooky group inheritance involved.

But the answer to both questions is yes.

Regression to the mean after selection happens because some part of IQ is non-inherited

So it is environmental.

But the answer to both questions is yes.

Wait, wouldn't the contradict your point ?

If it is straight up regression to the mean, then the child of any 2 identical geniuses is just as likely to be a genius as the child of any other 2 geniuses. Because all children of geniuses will regress to the overall mean of mankind at the same rate. (assuming the same environment)

So the answer for both would be 'No'.

I'd phrase my statement as : "Once you control for parents + environment, is the avg IQ of the parents' groups completely irrelevant?".

or

"Obama and Michelle's kids, can be expected to be as smart as a Chinese Obama and Chinese Michelle's kids".

So it is environmental.

It could be non-linear genetic (like favorable heterozygous combinations), or it could be random.

You speak of "mankind" but bear in mind, that during last hundreds of thousand of years, there were different species of humans (like, say, Flores Hobbit) and divergence started from seemingly small differences at first like we see now in extant populations. ... for a simple one-gene example, think of probability of two dark-eyes Swedes to produce a light eyed child vs probability of two dark-eyed Nigerians to produce a light eyed child. These Sweden parents probably have one recessive copy of allele for light eyes, the Nigerian parents almost certainly don't.