From a new paper by Mingrui Wang and Richard Lynn:
Data are reported for intelligence of children in China assessed by the Combined Raven’s Test in 1988, 1996 and 2006. The IQ of the samples increased by 15.0 IQ points over 18-year period. The British IQ of China in 1988 and 2006 is estimated as 94.8 and 109.8, respectively.
It seems that rural Chinese teens in 2006 were already as bright as their urban counterparts in 1988.
This is comparable to increases in South Korea between 1970 and 1990.
Note that Raven’s tests see some of the biggest increases due to the Flynn Effect, while increases in verbal, arithmetic, and Backward Digit Span tend to be some of the lowest.
Reading the paper and noting how they avoided iodine deficiency areas led me to wonder about the IQ impact of lacking the micronutrient, and it seems that it is a significant environmental effect:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/07/23/how-adding-iodine-to-salt-boosted-americans-iq/#.WzFxdOjwZhE
If I had the opportunity, I have a pet theory of association between omega-3 and phospholipid consumption as well with population level IQ.
We are told that after 1924 IQ increased by 15 pnts and nobody noticed until now. Because presumably the IQists kept normalizing their scale to 100 pnts average. So how much smarter are we now comparing to people before the iodization program started? 15-30 points? Do we really need these 15-30 pnts? It seems that Western civilization was doing pretty good in 19 century and early 20 century? Or would the iodization if stared earlier prevented WWI or Bolshevik revolution?
Actually, instead of calling this a “Flynn Effect”—which is supposedly quite uniform across different populations—isn’t this much more like what I described as a “Super-Flynn Effect” in my major Race/IQ series from a few years ago, which provoked so much controversy and criticism at the time:
http://www.unz.com/runz/race-iq-and-wealth/
http://www.unz.com/author/ron-unz/topic/race-iq/?ItemOrder=ASC
Admittedly, I did argue based on Lynn’s existing dataset, that East Asian IQs might be considerably robust against cultural deprivation, suggesting that any Super-Flynn Effect would be less likely to occur in those groups.
But, utu, how you gonna get them back down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paris? I mean you don’t need a devastatingly high IQ to do agricultural work, like the vast majority of Westerners did for the vast majority of Western civ. But it ain’t 1900 anymore. A nation of circa 1900 iqs might be fine for defending a ridge from a cavalry charge, but won’t fare quite as well as beating China to the Singularity and Space Colonization
You still believe in strong hereditary IQ Unz?
It puzzles me how one can get IQ test results with this kind of differences within a single generation (~25 years), which means only economic and consequent social reasons account for it, and then claim genetics play a significant role in determining IQ. The score difference is certainly more significant than that between genetically diverse populations in Europe, for instance.
there are people who claim flynn effect is bogus.
“Genetics” vs “social construct” is a false dichotomy.
For example, coal mining is obviously highly heritable, but there’s no such thing as a ‘coal mining gene’.
Iodine deficiency is another highly heritable thing that isn’t genetic.
The commentator utu, besides being our Maori-inspired Nemesis, also writes excellent comments such as this – you cannot simply decouple either genetic or environment effect from each other and drive a clear line through.
The difference between a mesomorph and a ectomorph, for example, is genetic but neither one will fully develop into his phenotype with insufficient nutrition. But provided an enriched environment for both, the environmental effect will be modulated by their genetic influence to provide the phenotypical expression in terms of body fat, muscle, etc. A similar process may be happening for cognitive organs.
Well, you know my thoughts about modernity.
Do you think that individual IQ increases may collectively be harmful?
Beyond those three factors (that we can think of, one being a fusion of two factors), there may be “unknown” factors.
With this level of unimaginable complexity, doesn’t it make much of the search for IQ and genes seem rather simplistic?
Something similar happens with nutrition – individual chemicals we know have certain effects on health, but the way they interact with the thousands of other chemicals is often unknown. Vitamin C in an Apple may have different effects than in broccoli (theoretically, as an example).
It may be the analytic approach – where the unit of analysis is the smallest possible analyzable element – has reached its limit, and we must “level up” on our unit of analysis.
This would yield much less precision, and we’d have to grow comfortable with “sort of knowing” – but it may yield tangible results we don’t fully understand, but have a real impact on our lives.
Everything is complex. We use models to account for as much as possible. No point in just giving up.
Not just giving up – using a different approach. Zooming out, as it were. After zooming in has been pushed to the limit Or a blend of both.
But I really shouldn’t say these things yet 🙂 the zooming in approach has to fail for many more years yet until people will begin considering alternatives.
For me the biggest puzzle associated with the Flynn Effect is that it doesn’t show up in the verbal, arithmetic or even Backward Digit Span tests as it does for Raven’s Matrices. I realise that Raven’s tests are not immune to coaching effects (though one would presume appreciably less than for the verbal and arithmetic tests) but do you have an answer to the conundrum?
IMO this explains most of this paradox: https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/03/10/major-discovery-about-the-flynn-effect/
Consequence: http://pumpkinperson.com/2016/03/12/evidence-of-teeny-tiny-brains-in-19th-century-france/
OT: Curious as to the Polish/EE perspective on this, as this seems to be a sign of systems and infrastructure challenge to them, and I think will be a meaningful pointer as to the economic sustainability of nationalist governments.
In Europe’s east, a border town strains under China’s Silk Road train boom
Some other notes:
Still unprofitable but running strong on subsidies. Fundamentals are strong – it arrives twenty days faster than by boat.
Due to slowdown on Polish border, traffic has been diverted to Finland. It also mentions Lithuania and Estonia. My personal experience is that Finland and Estonia both have the experience to capitalize on this.
Interesting that Russian tracks are different from European tracks and therefore transfers has to be done by crane. Seems to an odd thing to bottleneck so hard on.
I’m confused by this, the difference in gauge standards dates back to Imperial times, it is not some new thing with no precedence, why didn’t they anticipate this? I think dual gauge tracks would be a lot easier than using cranes (of course, it takes time to install them).
Another small victory against the poz:
As anti-gay sentiment in Hong Kong grows, LGBTQ children’s books are disappearing from shelves
Fortunately, there is always the cat lady to save them.
Someone invade that island already.
Working on it…give us time…
Peace.
sea food
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Fabinyi/publication/297657860/figure/fig1/AS:[email protected]/Apparent-per-capita-seafood-consumption-in-China-1985-2011-Food-balance-sheets-of-the.png
strong hereditary limit on maximum IQ – whether people reach that limit is a separate question
height – starve a population with genes for tallness and they won’t be tall
IQ – starve a population with high IQ potential of iodine and they won’t be intelligent
iirc it was deliberate to hinder invasion
Speaking of Taiwan, what in the world is Madame Vegetable English doing? She went 寻亲’ing in South East Asia and cancelled visa restrictions for South East Asians to move to Taiwan??? And why are there power outages in Taiwan? How did the Greens get into power in the first place with this level of competence?
Here’s my general feelings – its been awhile since I’ve talked about Taiwanese politics because its pretty dumb. Its the only place where long debates about the righteousness of independence continue, with neither power nor even will whatsoever to actually bring it about.
KMT had been steadily losing power for some time as their governance was seen as overall less hip and they also had a corruption scandal; Taiwanese power was also decreasing relative to China’s and KMT moves were probably seen as appeasement of the Communist Party. With increasing effort to differentiate themselves from the mainland and drawing on anti-waisenren sentiment, TaiDu was able to pull together a coalition of the fringes: pre-KMT taiwanese, natives, pro-Japanese groups, liberals, etc(the so called pan-green coalition).
Well, they are in power now but as can be pretty obviously demonstrated, they don’t really have the competence to rule. So the two ways to keep going forward is to cargo culture “Western” values hard as with the increasing pozzing efforts and to hack democracy, by importing more “iron votes” for themselves through immigrants.
Its typical leftism: highly capable at politics, and nothing else.
Me too.
Test your pet theory on Inuits. Plenty of iodine and omega-3.
Good point. The Inuit also make one wonder about the cold winters theory. Though supposedly they have a good visual memory: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201211/cold-winters-and-the-evolution-intelligence
Keep in mind that it is possible to have a high correlation despite the presence of exceptions.
(1) We do not know what Flynn effect is? More questions about IQ tests should be asked. I am pretty sure that the IQists were aware of instabilities of IQ scores and kept it hidden for years. You do not advertise that your scientific endeavor rest on feet of clay. It was not that they did not notice. Come on, they had access to raw data before normalizing them all the time. James Flynn was a whistleblower who hoped to sink this pseudoscience enterprise but the beast learned to swim in its own sewage and refuses to sink.
(2) The two studies about iodine (one from Switzerland and one for the US) are very indirect and inferential. IQ test scores were not preserved. The claim that 1924 iodization process increased IQ scores by 15 points on the basis how many recruits were sent to Air Force and how many to Army while the demands during the WWII for both services were administratively tuned and changed is ridiculous.
(3). If the IQists are willing to send Afro-Americans to Liberia because of 15 IQ points difference how come they did not notice the 15 difference in 1930-40. How could they put up with their own parents who they outscored by 15 points?
I try to avoid the term IQ. I prefer to speak of IQ score. At least it exists. I have been around people who are great at cross word puzzles or around people who are great at Scrabble and I was whole my life around myself. I do not see many redeeming qualities in ability to to solve some puzzles. Can it be harmful? Absolutely by putting too much focus to it to the exclusion to other mental qualities.
If you eat that stuff,can you get smarter? Scarey stuff,eh kids?
If you eat lead, you will get dumber. Amazing, eh?
Cold Winters theory described things very well up until 10,000 BC. Then the split into hunter-gatherers, nomads, and agriculturalists muddied things up somewhat.
These are just so stories that can’t ever be verified but since they are grounded in some pop understanding of evolution it is acceptable for intelligent people to keep repeating them. It is pretty much inconsequential and harmless except that it gives a false impression of knowledge.
Why do you assume that Inuit would be an outlier?
It is extremely impolite to criticize another’s religion.
Hm, any idea as to why the traffic from China became more intense? Yea, bring them on, the Baltic states can take care of it (Latvia especially has the capacity) and provide a good service (value for the money, fast, EU customs, storage, reloading, etc.). They’re working on the infrastructure to be able to transfer from the Russian tracks to European, hopefully that’ll be in place soon. You could potentially reach Latvia from Western China in 8 days. There’s a logistics company in Riga that transfers Chinese cargo to Germany.
The issue was that there was uncertainty as to how much Chinese cargo there would be (they don’t send all that much to Northern Europe and there hasn’t been all that much so far). So, if it’s increasing, like the above article states, it’s not a bad sign.
You would make an excellent inquisitor, utu, but I think you know that well. Your argument focuses on gaps on any postulate, which for something as fuzzy as intelligence or human performance in general, are essentially impossible to deny. I am not sure, however, this is the most useful tack in order to gain greater understanding toward cognitive performance in humans.
It is entirely possible to notice a phenomena without understanding its mechanism. Much of medicine is like this, as you know; we know that the body produces carnosine, which indicates that it is probably vital, but there is little solid information of what it is used for. In fact, it seems almost common among medicine that an chemical effect is noticed but its mechanism is poorly understood. I would feel like the Flynn Effect is similar.
Insofar as noticing a difference in IQ, I don’t really know if it was distributed in such a way that it would be noticeable. You are, for example, incredibly patient and understanding of the senior members of this board and one could wonder if cognitive aging might impact their IQ. I am sure that even if there was such a discrepency, people would be able to put up with their parents and dismiss any differences in understanding in the same mild way as you have.
My feeling of IQ scores are that there are simply a measure of potential ability, and far from a perfect one. I would compare them to VO2 scores for aerobic capability for humans, and even though it is the “gold standard” for aerobic exercises, when measuring for actual performance in an aerobic activity such as running, your best measurement for a population would be obviously to test them in the actual activity and then use that as a past benchmark. But failing that, then VO2 scores can prove useful because they relate to a number of aerobic activities. The same would go for the IQ test scores, even if they can only be produced and be an indirect observation of puzzle solving; one could, perhaps, use chess ELO and it’ll also be a metric for intelligence, only even fuzzier and less useful. Insofar as its relationship with performance, I believe that the commentator res has argued on that much more eloquently and with more mathematical precision than I could do. So as long as we respect that it is only a metric, fuzzy in many ways, but nonetheless the best that we have at the moment, I think it has utility.
Its cheaper than air travel and faster than sea travel by at least two weeks, so it does actually serve a niche despite misgivings advertised in Western media. With subsidies, it seems like its going well and I imagine it’ll turn fully profitable soon especially as the infrastructure and paperwork jam gets better.
It would be interesting if the main beneficiaries turn out to be the Baltics.
Chess ELO would make for an excellent proxy for IQ, if children were to be subjected to chess lessons 9-5 every day for 12 years and chess skills were to largely determine employment prospects. 🙂
Of course, this is approximately the case with respect to verbal and arithmetic skills. Not so much with coaxing patterns out of strange shapes.
if
stage 1) HGs: north > south
stage 2) farming: south > north
then
Inuit would be smarter than southern HGs but less smart than southern farmers
they noticed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_iodine_deficiency_syndrome
mountainous regions had it worst
I’ve seen the Inuit IQ listed as 91 somewhere although I don’t know the source since it was a GIF. I know that in the same chart the IQs of Native American groups were surprisingly low.