Pissed off about psychologists' use of REGRESSION TO THE MEAN

These people... I mean the likes of Philippe Rushton. They bend the truth to forward their personal racist agendas and then claim that we liberals are bending the truth to match reality.

Let's talk about regression to the mean.

Simply stated... it means that for a continuously distributed inherited characteristic (like height, people are anywhere between 4 and 8 feet tall, they don't vary in discrete units of 1.05 feet), the characteristic an offspring inherits will regress towards the means of that characteristic in his parents' populations. Now, Rushton argues that whites' average IQs are 100, asians are 106, and so on and so on... so obviously white children will regress towards 100... but this is wrong, and who gives a flying fuck what Rushton thinks? We're meritocracies, not racist states.

There's such a thing as ASSORTATIVE MATING.

Let's pretend. There's a population with an average IQ of 100. There are two lucky offspring (not related) from that population with IQs of 130 whose parents (4 parents... to emphasize that they're not related) all had IQs of exactly 100. They're more likely to mate with each other than some other person of IQ 100... this is called assortative mating. Now, statistically speaking, their offspring will likely have an IQ of 115. Right? So, let's assume they have many children and at least one turns out to have an IQ of 130 or higher. Now he will again mate with another person of above average intelligence, perhaps with another person who is also the product of similar assortative mating practices. The end result is that his "population" will have a significantly higher average IQ than his race's average. In genetics it seems that the definition of population is constantly being revised to suit particular purposes... but in this case the most appropriate definition would relate to a person's genetic history because that's the best indicator of his offsprings' IQs. Let's say an individual's population is defined as the group of individuals with which he might choose to mate (because of assortative mating, this population is likely to have a shared genetic history as far as IQ is concerned).

So even regular assortative mating is expected to produce lower and higher IQ "populations" (defined as above) within a single race. But the definition of population is further narrowed because we also judge our mates (or serious romantic partners) based on their families. I personally have a strong feeling that people judge me not only on my own intellectual achievements (or characteristics), but also those of my family (I'm lucky there). This is common among families which produce more intelligent children... it has been my experience that intelligent people are more choosy about whom they will mate with (not necessarily about whom they will sleep with). A person's skin color, however, will not miracolously change as his/her family's IQ goes up.

Point is: I personally know of black families with a respectably long (can only be so long) ivy league legacy.

This is so ridiculous. It didn't hit me how full of shit this guy was until he started to talk about K-type mating. Many of the scientific geniuses of the past were known to be philanderers. Decidedly not K (which is more "dad" as oppposed to "cad"). Svedberg, for instance. It just irks me because it feels like he's imposing his own morality upon others.

Then he calls us equivocators who are trying to sidestep the truth about racial inequalities.

I challenge Rushton to measure the IQs of students at a prestigious university who marry other students at (said) prestigious university. Then measure the IQs of their offspring (if they have any). Let's see how well his flawed version of regression to the mean holds up against empirical evidence.

Lastly, I did read some guy's parsing of the liberal viewpoint on this intelligence thing: Well, we're supposed to believe that IQ doesn't matter and have all these arguments justifying that notion... but nevertheless claim to have high IQs. This is incorrect in both cases (if applied to me):

1. I believe IQ does matter. I believe, nevertheless, in an intellectual environment where everyone is afforded equal opportunity high IQ individuals will succeed and have better mating chances. In academia, intelligent individuals do better, are happier, and probably have better mating chances (controlling for other factors like height, physical attractiveness, etc.). This is at least true of high IQ people who elect to go into professions that require high IQs. What I don't believe is that skin color (or cultural background) should have influence on your chances to get a job. Furthermore, IQ tests can be fickle. There are many legitimate reasons why someone might not do well on an IQ test. In college (and especially in hard sciences) students and professors constantly have to prove that they possess the required intelligence to do their jobs. IQ tests are almost completely superfluous in this case. Yes, intelligence can help... but no amount of intelligence will render sweat and blood unnecessary. Nose to the grindstone, baby. Even the GRE, which is basically an IQ test (granted the testee understands the optimal strategems for the computer adaptive test and so forth), does not predict graduate students' success or failure well. Personally, I believe this is true because by the time you graduate from college with a high enough GPA to attend grad school, you've shown you have the smarts required to succeed in grad school. Any additional smarts is (almost) superfluous. Then, you have to show you have the toughness and grit to complete a PhD thesis, which is no small tast... and while intelligence certainly doesn't hurt, it doesn't help as much as you would think (creativity and the willingness to get messy and make mistakes helps more I think).

2. I don't claim to have a monstrously high IQ. I do very well on somewhat g-loaded IQ-like tests like the GRE, the GMAT, and the MAT (see previous posts). But on traditional IQ tests with harsher time limits (like the wonderlic) I would probably score 120 - 130. That's not monstrously high.