I could just tell everyone wants to jump into this issue yet again. I will make no comments in this thread that go beyond the author's presentation of the subject.

William Saletan writes 3 pieces in Slate here, here, and here. I don't read Slate but have heard through secondary sources that they are left of center. If that's true then they should be commended for the evenhanded presentation.

To read all three will require some investment in time but you'll be paid off in the end.

The third last paragraph of the final article made me smile, and it's a sign of things to come.

I can't wait till all harmful do-gooders get shown up as intellectual frauds.

One man's response to Saletan: No, Blacks are not Dumber than Whites

This subject might be relevant if there was a significant difference between an IQ of 95 and 115.

Not significant at all really, just double the difference between average Jew and non-Jewish white.

Also, the effect of a mean difference becomes more pronounced as you move away from the mean (in both directions).

Nice, but let's take it a bit further.

Imagine there are two groups with a billion people each. One group has 10,000,000 people with IQs above 130. The other group has 100,000 people with IQs above 130. Does the subject become relevant?

Now go to 150. One group has 1,000,000 people with IQs above 150. The other group has 1000 people with IQs above 150. Relevant?

Go the other way. One group has 500 million people with IQs below 75. The other group has 20 million people with IQs below 75. Relevant?

If I was to put these two groups in identical starting conditions at the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, what do you think their respective societies, technologies, literature & philosophies would look like today?

Why is this about Whites and Blacks? Why aren't these intellectual luminaries debunking the notion that Whites are dumber than Asians???

Perhaps it's because just about every one of their retarded scapegoats (culture/repression/minority status/socioeconomic status/educational attainment/nutrition) proves exactly the opposite when you look at the White/Asian differential?

I would expect the high IQ folks to be more technologically advanced then the lower IQ folks, but I could be wrong. Are you suggesting that American Indians, who are genetically the same as Asians, must be genetically inferior IQ wise to the rest of the civilized world because they were easily conquered by Europeans and in the 1500's on forward to modern times didn’t have the literary and technological advances of the Europeans?

0.2% of the population, 25% of the Nobel Prizes.

Still waiting for why this isn't statistically significant.

according to this book, average Israeli IQ is below that of many european nations. Is the book inaccurate? Where is your data from?

Perhaps he's getting his information from here: Attempted world-wide compilations by Herrnstein and Murray, authors of The Bell Curve, Richard Lynn and Rushton of average IQ by race generally place Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians at the top

link

Although my reasoning for posting here is really not to refute Snowball, but rather to give my self an excuse to compliment him on his location: “Where the citizens kneel for sex.” This is a location that I constantly strive for and I compliment Snowball in his success.

Here we go again . . .

Most of the work that is cited in that Slate article has been shown to be flawed methodologically.

To sum up the argument that has been made on this issue several times:

- What IQ tests measure and what the general intelligence factor (g) means is highly debated

- There is probably some genetic component to intelligence

- Environmental factors >>>>>>> Genetic factors

- The evidence that the IQ difference between races is genetic is tenuous at best

Damn near every bit of social science has warts or worse. Some is fraudulent, some skewed by agenda. Some is withheld since it doesn't confirm (or rejects) the beloved PC hypothesis, as in the recent revelations regarding Robert Putman.

So when I look at any race/IQ research from the last 40 years I assume there exists pressure to conform, as academia rewards the small players when they do. I think that older research might sometimes include a racist taint as well. But so many trends have occured over and over, a critically thinking observer is going to reach similar conclusions to Saletan.