There is one particular subset of blacks who add credibility to your statement. There are a group of immigrant black Africans, from Zambia I believe, who as a group earn a higher wage than their white peers. A simple reason is each possesses a master’s degree where their peers do not.

@parsifal

You can distort anything by addressing subsets instead of the whole.

That the differences are exaggerated by culture is a meaningless observation. In other words self evident.

I don't really care about racial differences in IQ because whatever the answer is it is a side issue to how many low IQ non minorities there are. Society is being bifurcated by IQ and it looks like it will only get worse. Add to that the brain drain from disadvantaged places and we have plenty to worry about.

When our AI masters take over the intellectual elite will finally understand the problem.

@wolfhnd Statistics do not support you. There is a marked difference in SAT scores that show there is, in fact, merit in the conclusion that race is a factor. If you wished to debate the issue you’d be better served by pointing to the USSC decision in Griggs v Duke Power...but since you didn’t...

@parsifal

Where did I say otherwise? My point is that from a practical perspective low IQ non minorities are a bigger problem in terms of the division of society along IQ lines. That begs the question what is a non minority. Certainly as demographics shift my point is questionable. But I offer it more of a means of illustrating that focusing on race misses the main issue and not as an invariable "truth".

@wolfhnd Oh hell, I dunno. What does “You can distort anything by addressing subsets instead of the whole“ mean then?

Or are you just gaslighting?

@parsifal

It means that immigrants tend to have a higher IQ than non immigrants unless you are stupid enough to have open borders.

@wolfhnd References?

@parsifal

The average IQ of Zambia is 79.

I was unable to find a study that compared the average IQ of the host country to those migrating out. When I said open borders that would include the way green cards are issue. So I may have needed to go into more detail and not been so flippant. I apologize.

The U.S. does not have an IQ requirement for immigrants. But both Canada and Australia have more restrictive immigration policies with Australia being the most restrictive that may act as a proxy for measuring how policy effects the IQ of immigrants.

"For example, for the US there is gap of 4 IQ points between natives and immigrants favoring natives. Considering the shares of both groups, this leads to an immigration based ability loss of 1 IQ. For Canada the gap is only 1 IQ (-0.30 IQ loss). For Australia the gap is even reversed with –1 IQ (immigrants higher) leading to an immigration based gain of +0.30 IQ. The largest gains are given for rich Arab states of the Persian Gulf (up to +7 IQ in the Emirates). Larger losses are observable for Central and Western Europe (around –1 to –2 IQ)."

[ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

The comparison to the native population could be misleading as what we wanted was the IQ of the host nation. Which I could look up but I think the point is clear.

@wolfhnd I have seen some graphic here that graphed IQ and country of origin showing the disparity high to low and implying since there are nations with lower scores the conclusion (not mine) might be a racial difference - asians and caucasians scoring higher, Africans and “brown people” in general scoring lower.

That is not my conclusion simply because it removes completely any consideration to a whole raft of issues that also play a factor from the level and quality of education thru nutrition, socio-economics of the family, etc.

I agree your point that determinism is part of the problem, as it can deny people the freewill to be moral agents and find meaning in life. But not about what the "ubermensch" is - a man who seeks the truth in himself and in nature, who strives to be his own best possible self. I don't think that way of life necessarily "provides tacit support for the racism and dystopia".

@skaarda

Your point is valid up to the point when you consider that the Ubermensch is an irrational concept looked at from the deterministic perspective. If you are an incompatibalist the Ubermensch doesn't have freewill to seek truth or strive he is just as much a wet robot as anyone else. It doesn't resolve any philosophical questions. I'm not a big fan of Nietzsche.

More importantly as the cultural ape humans cannot be self made. We can forgive Nietzsche for his misunderstanding of the human condition. Evolution was a new idea he was probably not even incorporating into his philosophy and the evidence for building a complex understanding nonexistent.

We now know that culture enabled the evolution of a big brain. We have clear understanding of how swarm intelligence works. We know that DNA only sets the environment for reevolution and is not analogous to construction instructions. We have a better understanding of cultural evolution and the relationship between it and group fitness. All things you have to know to understand the human condition.

Freewill evolved out of the need to have a "rational" basis for punishment. It's not about freedom but responsibility in an artificial environment based on the unnatural necessity for productivity. A Ubermensch doesn't exist in a vacuum. If they don't serve group fitness they are a dead end. No part of the hierarchy is less essential than any other. If one part is sick the whole organism is sick.

Civilian creates a kind of artificial eusociality. The queen is as much a slave to the workers as the workers are to the queen.

@wolfhnd It appears I have much to learn in this area. Can you say more re."Civilian creates a kind of artificial eusociality."

@skaarda

The phone keeps "correcting" my spelling. Civilian = civilization.

I would read E.O. Wilson on group selection as a start because even that is oddly controversial. The intellectual community is obsessed with the history of eugenics. Perhaps because in the 20th century it was a creature of the left. They made it a creature of the right by associating Nazism with conservatism. That conservatives are more associated with war or being hawkish actually speaks to a mechanism of group selection. An example being the elimination of almost all tribal societies around the world.

The leap from group selection to artificial eusociality is part of what is called multilevel selection although I think I'm the only one using that explicit of language.

Jordan Peterson had an interesting insight into the social mechanism that keeps group selection taboo when he said Dawkins wasn't evolutionary enough. Oddly it's clear that Darwin had predicted the concept of multilevel selection. In Darwin's time it had not yet become taboo to point out that some cultures were more likely to dominate based on their technological sophistication. It would be a mistake to think of technology as just mechanics because language is a technology. There is obviously some reluctance to accept cultural evolution in the way physical evolution is accepted. Little wonder that since determinism dominates the intellectual environment. Intellectuals are afraid of turning into monsters by following their own philosophy.

I'm a quasi compatibalist because I believe in a limited form of freewill. Again intellectuals don't like this concept because they have the feeling that they are self made. It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to be an incompatibalist and believe you are self made but that is where we are at. It takes a lot of ego to turn everyone into a zombie accept yourself.

I may try to make a more coherent post on the topic someday but I wouldn't go espousing these ideas if you are worried about being cancelled. So far the rather esoteric nature of the research has been a weak shield but that can't last.

@wolfhnd The concept of cultural evolution makes sense to me. I see Wilson is a prolific writer; a celebrated scientist. Perhaps will start with Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies.

Last figure I saw was that more than 70% of black children are born to single women. That has nothing to do with income, with education, with opportunity, or with “white oppression”. It can only be attributed to culture.

@parsifal it's also a problem of misguided (read Dumb) government welfare policies that reward single parent homes or should I say penalize homes with two parents.

@parsifal Then why do certain biological groupings have a much higher propensity of being reared in single mother households? Culture doesn't occur in a vacuum. It sprouts from biology. We need to start using the terms bioculture and biospirit.

@BritonCasey It could be because the afore mentioned misguided (read dumb) government policies are disproportionately directed towards them.

@BritonCasey Why? Welfare.

Case in point - in the early 1990’s the Globe and Mail newspaper ran a week long full-page series on poverty in Toronto. One day they posted a photo of a mom and dad sitting at their kitchen table and the article explained how this family of four had to survive on welfare, government child tax credits, food stamps, etc...It wasn’t enough to picture them with beer cases stacked in the corner and ashtray on the table, the article went on to explain how their income was barely above the poverty level and what a hardship it was, and gave the figure. Well, I’m not very bright - I calculated the difference between their social assistance income and my working full-time, 40 hour a week job: about a dollar an hour. What is the advantage of working hard for a living when all you need do for a living is drop a few kids and hold out your hand?

@Augur2748 Then why is it #African students from affluent households perform no better on achievement tests than poor Whites and Asians? Are we to assume that affluent Blacks have the same culture and family structure that impoverished Whites and Asians do?

@ZuzecaSape What I call family culture is also affected by the wider cultural background as well. Have a look at Charter's "chart by race and income", below. SAT score increase for the same race by family income quite handily. I suspect a similar effect would be seen if income and race were held constant and family wealth were the independent variable. At the same annual income level, families who own their homes (equity, not value) vs renters; or those who own businesses vs those who are purely wage earners, would show higher child SAT scores.

Bone structure & DNA - skin is the last thing they need

@SpikeTalon If culture and family structure were the prime drivers of race achievement gaps, then why hasn't half a century of school and housing integration had no effect?

Likewise, why is it that African students from affluent households perform no better on achievement tests than poor Whites and Asians? Are we to assume that affluent Blacks have the same culture and family structure that impoverished Whites and Asians do?

@ZuzecaSape School and housing integration etc have only made things worse, and don't always have a direct effect on family structure.

I question the achievement tests part, as some do better than others.