Nobody is Buying Mainstream Intelligence Research
Well, almost nobody
As IQ testing has been developed and studied, the “mainstream consensus on intelligence” has been developed, which is that:
Intelligence is heritable, though the magnitude of the heritability is debated (40-90%).
Some contaminants may affect intelligence (e.g. lead), but the size of this effect is extremely small (<1 point).
Intelligence peaks at somewhere between 15-25 and then gradually falls off, with steep declines ocurring after 60.
Intelligence cannot be increased through cognitive training/education, though cognitive training/education can improve specific abilities such as mathematics.
Interventions to improve IQ through special education programs had some promise in the 20th Century, but large, modern studies find no effect of these interventions.
Intelligence has a causal effect on life outcomes independent of confounding variables such as parental social status, sex, and race.
A factor called ‘general intelligence’ (g) is hypothesized to exist from the strong positive manifold that is observed when different cognitive abilities are tested (e.g. vocabulary size, mental rotation, memory).
Most people will believe these things when you tell them to them. People who are intelligent tended to be like that ever since they were children, and people who are intelligent tend to be proficient at a wide variety of tasks even when they are not connected to schooling or knowledge. Somewhere along the way, they learn the other side of the mainstream:
Races typically differ in their levels of intelligence, notably, Black people score about 15 points lower than Whites on tests of intelligence. Oh, and those Jews who are 17% of America’s billionaires and 30% of our nobel prize winners? Their average IQ is about 107-115.
These differences extend to employment tests and high stakes tests.
IQ tests do not contain bias in favor or against certain races within nations.
These differences in intelligence between races are not due to heritable factors.
Uhhh… What?
So, if intelligence is influenced by heritable factors and cannot be improved through cognitive training, how is it that genes do not play a role in race differences in intelligence? Sure, some might cite some 80 year old adoption study that fails under critical examination or some reverse p-hacked analysis of polygenic scores, but neurotypical and competent people don’t change their minds because of one piece of evidence. They do so if the organization of facts is no longer consistent with a given “meta-belief” and abandon it for a new one. And how are you supposed to reconcile the mainstream consensus on intelligence with perfect genetic equality in endowment for intelligence between races?
Maybe, along the way, they pick up on the fact that race differences in achievement attenuate, disappear, or switch directions after controlling for intelligence, but the same is not true for parental achievement/social status. Therefore, generational differences in status between races cannot be responsible for modern differences in achievement/economic status if intelligence research is to be taken seriously. This, I believe is actually the strongest argument in favour of hereditarianism — if it is true, then the only things that can explain race differences in intelligence are culture or genes.
After learning about IQ, people tend to go into 3 different directions:
Option 1 (HBD): mainstream science on intelligence is wrong, and races differ in their genetic endowments for intelligence.
Option 2 (normie): mainstream science on intelligence is correct, and “cultural” factors are responsible for race differences in intelligence, whatever those factors are.
Option 3 (Woke): mainstream science on intelligence is wrong, and all of it is wrong. g is a statistical artefact, the intelligence ~ achievement correlations would disappear if socio-economic status would be properly controlled for, and heritability is a fake statistic.
Some people who take option 2 are true believers, but many are only promoting a noble lie for political purposes or self-interest. For the left, 3 is the noble lie, as it allows them to deny superiority by heredity and divert funding to friends for useless political projects that supposedly improve social equality. Note that this lie is not only for the purposes of attempting to undermine racial inequality, but inequality between competent and incompetent people, and high status and low status people - this is not all about race.
In a future where the evidence for genetic racial inequality starts to become undeniable, I could see the left embrace hereditarianism the same way that the right is slowly accepting/tolerating secular beliefs. I doubt this hereditarian left will be much better than the old one — the secular right is not less right wing than the Christian right. Do those guys even support eugenics?
As Hanania said, there are a suprising number of people like deBoer and Harden who are able to hold the ideas of innate biological inequality and left wing beliefs with no (apparent) contradictory feelings. Yes, they deny innate racial differences, but this is obviously a lie, if they were to speak plainly about this subject, they would be cast out of their political movement. That is not to say that innate biological inequalities do not favor the right wing, they obviously do, but that the left will not accept the political implications of it the same way the right did.
There is a possibility embryo selection (aka eugenics) will become a politically toxic subject within the next 20 years - because it works, not because it doesn’t. This technology will lead to increased levels of observable inequality in society, and will become even more contentious if this tech is not used at the same rate across classes and races. Because of this, I predict that it will be restricted to health-related traits to avoid these isues or made unfeasible due to bans or overregulation.
(Yes, I am aware that most intelligence researchers, when asked privately, will tell you that genes contribute to differences in intelligence between peoples. Privately is the word doing the heavy lifting here — good luck getting one of them to admit it.)
“ There is a possibility embryo selection (aka eugenics) will become a politically toxic subject within the next 10 years… This technology will lead to increased levels of observable inequality in society, and will become even more contentious if this tech is not used at the same rate across classes and races. ”
Very good essay, I must read it again after some thought. Immediately however, I think the timeline is a bit optimistic. For one, the technique of embryo selection is in its infancy—still developing, expensive and not commonly used. Second, the results should become apparent (measurable) following a generational timeline, which seems longer than 10 years. Third (a combination of the above two observations) the technique will begin on a smallish scale and grow (become popularized) with time. Initial success may therefore be masked until numbers of subjects reaches a size that can be shown (recognized) to be significant in effect.
I’m not worried as much about the concept being proven however, as I believe the “technique” is already in use, albeit in a different and less effective and universal form. We call it “assortive mating”. It has been going on forever, but became more frequent in the USA since WWII and the GI Bill. I for one see it (this form of eugenics) as the only solution to our current “racial” problem in the USA. To me the question is, “Is it too late to help keep this country intact?”
> There is a possibility embryo selection (aka eugenics) will become a politically toxic subject within the next 20 years.
Going to happen much sooner. Hanania is bottom selling $HBD.