Dear Aspiring Polymaths,
I hope you’ve had a wonderful, productive week! This week, I’ve compiled some links about IQ. This topic comes up often, with many people believing all sorts of crazy, crazy things about it that result in horrible public policy and a confused, misinformed public. However, misunderstanding the research around IQ costs us billions of dollars every year and has stymied scientific research into one of the most important factors of human performance. So, let’s talk about it!
October 19th, 2023 Learn Arena Codex
Many income, status, and wealth gaps are in reality IQ gaps, and our society is horrendously, obscenely unfair for people who have lower IQs as a result of an unlucky draw of the genetic lottery. You can see that in this link, which shows a comprehensive overview of IQ tranches by ethnicity. The poorest groups among us are the lowest IQ, and the richest, the highest IQ. Our society rewards IQ above all else. Why is it fair to distribute status and wealth based on a cognitive trait beyond the realm of an individual's control? https://twitter.com/eyeslasho/status/1712451656753791281
You can see this same IQ distribution data in far greater detail here. https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1712204977387581827
The problem here, from an ethical perspective, is twofold: IQ is highly heritable, with the lowest estimates being around 50% and some being as high as 80%, and IQ drives so much that matters to us about life. Higher IQ people are, on average, happier, healthier, thinner, fitter, live longer, are wealthier, make more money, and are better at their jobs. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/24/11723182/iq-test-intelligence
In fact, having a higher IQ makes you better at literally every job, not just specific types of jobs. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fapl0001150
IQ is one of the most well-replicated and grounded findings in all of modern social science. Some people claim IQ “doesn’t measure anything,” “just measures test-taking ability,” etc., but that is self evidently wrong. IQ is a measure of intelligence, the ability to rapidly solve problems, which is why IQ is correlated tightly with everything that you would think is improved by the ability to rapidly intake information and solve problems. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11683192/iq-testing-intelligence
Low IQ is also associated with lots of bad things, like propensity to commit violent crime. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016028961500077X
The problem here is that, were I more popular, there would be attempted cancellations of me right now for saying anything I've said here, even though it's all clear data and research that is well done and accurate. Some of this is from Vox, an absolute bastion of leftism. I would get canceled regardless because the blank slate concept is the rot at the core of the progressive project, so they must vehemently deny that genes exist lest their entire philosophical edifice crumble. As such, they must deny genetic correlation with anything as well as IQ as a concept. https://archive.ph/hoUlv
More on the blank slate, this time in video form. https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_human_nature_and_the_blank_slate?language=en
At this point you may think "ok, the progressive left is in fantasyland on this, but it doesn't hurt anything, right?" Oh boy, does it. We have spent 10's of billions of dollars and wasted millions of children's lives because we keep attempting silly educational interventions that cannot and will not ever have the impact we desire because that impact would require the blank slate to be true. Because it isn't, we continue this charade every year, at the cost of our children's joy and our nation's future prosperity.
This blank slate belief is also at the absolute core of the criminal justice reform movement, which has resulted in drastically increased crime rates in the United States over the last few years. In the eyes of the progressive, there are no innate (as in genetic) traits like IQ or aggression that could influence the likelihood of criminal behavior, so the cause of crime must be something else like poverty, so we must defund the police and spend that money on welfare instead! We are currently reaping the consequences of this ideology as we all sit and watch the 24th video of a CVS being looted in broad daylight as we scroll twitter, numb to the degradation this ideology is causing.
At a more fundamental level, this blank slate ideology is also destroying basic scientific progress. You see, the progressive academics of the world have come to realize that these IQ trends and impacts, and other important genetic impacts on human behavior, are so glaringly obvious in large scale genetic data that simply having access to this data might result in some people thinking The Wrong Things. As such, the NIH has blocked access to the world's best genetic database if they think your research might touch anything relating to how genes impact IQ or human behaviors. We cannot improve the human condition, we cannot discover how to increase IQs, we cannot invent methods for manipulating the human genome for the betterment of all, if we are not allowed to study it! https://www.city-journal.org/article/dont-even-go-there
Here's the craziest part to me: accepting the relationship between genes and things like race and IQ makes left-wing egalitarian claims stronger, if the left would only accept them! There is an entire ethical framework called luck egalitarianism that handles this beautifully. The logic of it is intuitive: how on earth is it fair that some people get to live in luxury and riches while others live in squalor solely because of their genetics, a factor they have zero control over that is determined entirely by luck? While I myself disagree with this ethical framework, you can see how it would make the left's egalitarian claims and goals stronger, not weaker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck_egalitarianism
The bottom line here? Genetics are real, IQ is heritable, and IQ is a strong determining factor in many things that matter to us as a society. It is unjust that society is oppressive to low IQ people, and we should work to remedy this through social and cultural norms around acceptance and consideration as well as through rapid technological advancement aimed at understanding IQ better so that we can increase it technologically.
A world where anyone can upgrade their IQ at any time lies at our fingertips if only the progressives and their blank slate ideology would get out of the way. With genetic engineering, up-and-coming nanotechnology, human-computer interfaces, and artificial intelligence, we can squash the problem of the random distribution of IQ to individuals once and for all. We can create a world where IQ is a choice, not a blessing or a curse.
But that would require us first to be able to talk about it at all.