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I'm surprised that more people here aren't talking about Scott ripping off the bandaid in his latest series of posts, which very much take an IQ-realist and pro-Lynn stance, and without really mincing words about it.
Scott has tip-toed around the topic in the past, largely playing it safe. There was some minor controversy almost half a decade in the past when his "friend" (one who had ended up marrying Scott's enbie ex Ozzy) leaked private correspondence between the two of them where Scott explicitly acknowledged that he believed in population-wide IQ differences but felt he couldn't speak up about it. Going back even further, on his now defunct but archived LiveJournal, he outlines his harrowing experience doing charity work in Haiti, where the sheer lack of common sense or perverse and self-defeating antics from the populace knocked him speechless.
I note (with some pleasure) that Scott raises some of the same points I've been on record making myself: Namely that there's a profound difference between a person who is 60 IQ in a population where that's the norm, versus someone who is 60 IQ due to disease in a population with an average of 100.
What's the wider ramification of this? Well, I've been mildly miffed for a while now that the Scott of ACX wasn't quite as radical and outspoken as his SSC days, but now that he's come out and said this, I sincerely doubt that there are any Dark and Heretical ideas he holds but is forced to deny or decline to defend. It's refreshing, that's what it is. He might not particularly delve into the ramifications of what this might mean for society at large, but he's not burying the lede, and I have to applaud that. It might we too early to celebrate the death of wokeness, but I think that the more milquetoast Scott of today being willing to say this matters a great deal indeed.
Debating the existence of racial IQ differences is boring because they so obviously exist. Now that we're allowed to talk about it, I find myself not really wanting to. There really is no legitimate debate.
I think a more interesting subject is why these difference exist. Is there any settled science on this? I assume that Ashkenazi have higher IQs due to some sort of selection process that happened in the shtetls. But why are Japanese smarter than Britons, Britons smarter than Sicilians, and Sicilians smarter than Sub-Saharans?
My guess is that these could be relatively recent selections (as in, last 2000 years or so). The British population, for example, underwent a millennium long selection process whereby rich people had many more surviving children than the poor. And, even though class mobility was limited it was not non-existent. Smart people became rich and had more children. Do this for 40 generations and IQ will rise significantly.
On the other hand, Italy had higher urbanization than Great Britain during the Middle Ages. Cities, then as now, acted as IQ shredders. Smart people moved to the city where, due to pestilence, they had sub-replacement fertility.
In the year 500, places like Italy, Turkey, Greece, and Syria were far more advanced than northern Europe. But this very advancement may have led to them gradually falling behind in IQ due to higher urbanization.
This is all rank speculation of course. That's what makes it fun!
I'd also like to hear theories about how the East Asian package (high IQ, low agency) came to be...
Harsh winters is the obvious explanation for why light-skinned races (Whites, Jews, Asians) are the smartest while dark-skinned races (Blacks, Indians, Aboriginals) are the dumbest. Obviously, high latitudes select for low melanin that their inhabitants might better absorb precious sunlight and create vitamin D, but whole months without food also select for low time-preference and the ability to plan ahead; you need to work hard most of the year and make sure to save food and wood for winter and avoid eating the seed corn even when you are really hungry. By contrast, tropical jungle environments where there is food year-around which cannot be stored for long before rotting in the heat and humidity inherently select for impulsivity and r-selection. Big brains are calorically expensive; if you don't need them, evolution is not going to make them for you and might even take them away. See Spiegelman's monster and Homo floresiensis.
First of all thanks for sharing the links. Those were interesting.
I wonder. After all, the Inuit aren't particularly bright as far as I know.
And humans originally evolved big brains in Africa. If food was easily available and abundant year around, there would have been no need for big brains in the first place.
So humans evolved big brains, and then underwent additional selection pressure to get to an even higher level of intelligence outside of Africa. I believe that this is likely intra-human selection pressure in a Malthusian environment. Selection came about because of societal pressures. How else can we explain the extreme intelligence of the Ashkenazi?
Greenland has an average IQ of 99, slightly higher than Denmark(lol). I suspect the dominant reason for the lack of eskimo rocket scientists is, firstly, lack of eskimos, and secondly, a culture that doesn't value education because they're still partly a traditional culture and the more urbanized ones are, well, impressively culturally dysfunctional. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
I tried to find a source for the average IQ of Nunavut. Nothing that seemed remotely trustworthy and plausible. Also apparently IQ is an acronym for something different in an eskimo language.
Also the extremely high rate of alcoholism. There are very few rocket scientists who are functional alcoholics.
Yes, I said the urban ones are impressively culturally dysfunctional.
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I doubted you so I looked up the data elsewhere and got a similar result. European admixture is only about 25-30% (source: Claude pulled it out of its butt) so that can't fully explain it either. It would appear that Greenlandic people possibly are much smarter than the average Native American.
Maybe there is something to this northern latitude thing, although I still don't really feel it.
I mean, by that literal statistic, eskimos are slightly smarter than Europeans- northern European countries are mostly clustered around 96-98.
I'd still like to find data on average IQ in nunavut. But I remember reading that siberian tribespeople have similar grades to ethnic russians and are estimated as having IQ like mongolians; eskimos are relatively recent migrants from Siberia IIRC, so it's very possible to me that this is the same gene mutations that led to high oriental IQ.
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