Having lived or worked with indigenous peoples on three continents, and having known several Nobelists, I found they share at least one tangible characteristic of intelligent people: they could all perform and/or explain extremely complex matters in extremely simple ways.
Our IQ tests are not as broadly applicable as its advocates imagine them to be, but their predictive value remains high for parameters that we deem highly significant.
With all due respect, it seems like you're taking offense to the hereditarians and using the vernacular "dumb" where I don't believe they do. Perhaps their ethnography is impoverished and therefore their theorizing for why IQ differences have emerged incorrect. It would be interesting to read better informed theorizing for these differences. Surely the Bushmen have evolved a type of intelligence that as you say is different than what is measured by IQ and similar tests. Nevertheless, IQ remains a useful measure of the type abstract reasoning that is predictive of many positive modern outcomes at the individual and group level. Isn't this broad result something that should be dispassionately considered by anyone interested in understanding the different rates of modern economic and social development around the world?
I think we have done great damage to our ability to understand the world and its diversity by conflating IQ with all types of intelligence and conflating that with intrinsic human worth. The latter conflation is rightly considered repugnant, and the emotional response leads us to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I disagree with "Surely the Bushmen have evolved a type of intelligence ... different than what is measured by IQ."
There are a few possibilities:
1.) IQ only measures performance on IQ-test-like activities and not other cognitive skills.
I think this is implausible; there's a lot of evidence from Western countries that "practical" non-school-like skills, such as those involved in mechanical jobs or in the military, correlate with IQ tests.
2.) IQ scores correlate with a wide range of cognitive skills *in countries where going to school is the norm*, but they are obviously inapplicable for hunter-gatherers who have never been exposed to pencil-and-paper tests.
Under this hypothesis, you would expect things like:
*if you can detect any inter-individual variation at all between hunter-gatherers on an "IQ test", the better scorers should also be better hunters
*if you came up with a hunter-gatherer-style problem-solving challenge to give to Westerners, the Westerners who did best would also have higher IQs on traditional tests
Hmmm look at these quirky bushmen! I guess when blacks assault us and consume colossal amounts of public resources we cant fault their low IQ and low impulse control
Every one of us is only smart about our own world. This essay made me think of pilotage navigation and the cognitive faculties needed to use the sea and rivers, not just for fishing but for trade and movement. The inferential evidence for humans doing it is ... old. Older than Homo sapiens. In fact, all that fish protien has likely played a key role in the evolution of our brains, so no ancient people fishing, no Bell Curve of any sort.
Having lived or worked with indigenous peoples on three continents, and having known several Nobelists, I found they share at least one tangible characteristic of intelligent people: they could all perform and/or explain extremely complex matters in extremely simple ways.
Our IQ tests are not as broadly applicable as its advocates imagine them to be, but their predictive value remains high for parameters that we deem highly significant.
With all due respect, it seems like you're taking offense to the hereditarians and using the vernacular "dumb" where I don't believe they do. Perhaps their ethnography is impoverished and therefore their theorizing for why IQ differences have emerged incorrect. It would be interesting to read better informed theorizing for these differences. Surely the Bushmen have evolved a type of intelligence that as you say is different than what is measured by IQ and similar tests. Nevertheless, IQ remains a useful measure of the type abstract reasoning that is predictive of many positive modern outcomes at the individual and group level. Isn't this broad result something that should be dispassionately considered by anyone interested in understanding the different rates of modern economic and social development around the world?
I think we have done great damage to our ability to understand the world and its diversity by conflating IQ with all types of intelligence and conflating that with intrinsic human worth. The latter conflation is rightly considered repugnant, and the emotional response leads us to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I disagree with "Surely the Bushmen have evolved a type of intelligence ... different than what is measured by IQ."
There are a few possibilities:
1.) IQ only measures performance on IQ-test-like activities and not other cognitive skills.
I think this is implausible; there's a lot of evidence from Western countries that "practical" non-school-like skills, such as those involved in mechanical jobs or in the military, correlate with IQ tests.
2.) IQ scores correlate with a wide range of cognitive skills *in countries where going to school is the norm*, but they are obviously inapplicable for hunter-gatherers who have never been exposed to pencil-and-paper tests.
Under this hypothesis, you would expect things like:
*if you can detect any inter-individual variation at all between hunter-gatherers on an "IQ test", the better scorers should also be better hunters
*if you came up with a hunter-gatherer-style problem-solving challenge to give to Westerners, the Westerners who did best would also have higher IQs on traditional tests
Why is it repugnant?
Hmmm look at these quirky bushmen! I guess when blacks assault us and consume colossal amounts of public resources we cant fault their low IQ and low impulse control
Fascinating!
I'm also always fascinated by the tendency of scientists to just grab their favorite measurement tool and apply it to explain basically everything
Every one of us is only smart about our own world. This essay made me think of pilotage navigation and the cognitive faculties needed to use the sea and rivers, not just for fishing but for trade and movement. The inferential evidence for humans doing it is ... old. Older than Homo sapiens. In fact, all that fish protien has likely played a key role in the evolution of our brains, so no ancient people fishing, no Bell Curve of any sort.