To what extent do you believe the following:
- There is a difference in the innate potential for intelligence amongst various branches/groupings/races/ethnic groups of human beings
Given that:
- Human ethnic groups differ very largely in other observable metrics: height, pigmentation, cranial structure etc.
- There are branches of the human phylogenetic tree that have split off 200k years ago (the San for instance)
- IQ scores ('g') are excellent proxies for overall intellectual achievement
- However, The Flynn Effect (recently reversed) indicates a sustained meaningful (>1std) gain to IQ scores within groups from 1920-2000
- GWAS association and twin studies have a 'missing heritability' problem
- Historical achievement is by no means geographically evenly distributed; and exceptional groups such as Ashkenazi Jews have remarkably over-achieved in the hard sciences despite "discrimination" (pre 1950). However, Ashkenazim in Israel underperform greatly and relatively speaking, there have been very few Israeli scientists of note.
- However, the overall history of human achievement has not been a clear-cut case of outright intellectual domination (which is what you'd expect over the long run) but one of cyclical rise-and-fall with a moving locus of overperformance from group to group (Mesopotamia and Egypt laid down a lot of the foundations of post-Neolithic civ).
- There is a difference in the innate potential for intelligence amongst various branches/groupings/races/ethnic groups of human beings
Given that:
- Human ethnic groups differ very largely in other observable metrics: height, pigmentation, cranial structure etc.
- There are branches of the human phylogenetic tree that have split off 200k years ago (the San for instance)
- IQ scores ('g') are excellent proxies for overall intellectual achievement
- However, The Flynn Effect (recently reversed) indicates a sustained meaningful (>1std) gain to IQ scores within groups from 1920-2000
- GWAS association and twin studies have a 'missing heritability' problem
- Historical achievement is by no means geographically evenly distributed; and exceptional groups such as Ashkenazi Jews have remarkably over-achieved in the hard sciences despite "discrimination" (pre 1950). However, Ashkenazim in Israel underperform greatly and relatively speaking, there have been very few Israeli scientists of note.
- However, the overall history of human achievement has not been a clear-cut case of outright intellectual domination (which is what you'd expect over the long run) but one of cyclical rise-and-fall with a moving locus of overperformance from group to group (Mesopotamia and Egypt laid down a lot of the foundations of post-Neolithic civ).