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While I generally agree with the thrust of your argument, I will play devil's advocate:

1. The hereditarian argument is not that Europeans universally are superior in all environments. It is that Europeans perform better on certain measures in certain environments. A Swedish person living in an agrarian economy is not much more economically productive than an Indian or Turkish person. However, put them in an industrial economy, and the Swede becomes more productive -- their latent talents are put to use as opportunities increase. In agrarian societies, food is far too expensive, and as a result, productive labor is "locked." In industrial societies, the price of food begins to decrease, which allows this labor to be "unlocked." When societies are "locked," the difference in IQ doesn't matter much. When societies are "unlocked," then IQ differences start to matter more.

2. Another way to view this is through the lens of social mobility. In an aristocratic society, 90% of people are locked into farm work. They cannot sell their labor on an open market, because labor markets are controlled by a guild system. It is impossible to buy or sell land, because it is inherited. Once social mobility becomes possible, then the intelligence of the peasantry starts to matter more, because smart peasants can move upward, and dumb aristocrats lose their wealth over time due to their newfound ability to sell off land for quick cash.

3. East Asian is not underperforming when you consider that the Chinese are misrepresenting the IQ of their population. This is because the Chinese scores are disproportionately urban scores, which ignores the lower IQ of their rural population. This would be like defining the American IQ the scores of the suburbs of Chicago, while ignoring Appalachia. If we adjust the scores for this deceptive practice, then China isn't lagging far behind what we would predict from its IQ.

4. Israel is not a majority Ashkenazi society. It has a large Arab and Mizrahi population. The Israeli economy performs in line with the national IQ of Israelis.

5. I agree with you on African IQ, although black Americans are 25% European by ancestry, and they are a selected population of Bantu slaves, not representative of the entire continent of Africa.

6. Regarding America, white Americans are a selected population. White Americans are selected from Northwest Europeans who left Europe to seek opportunity abroad. Due to the smart mover effect, I would expect white Americans to be 5 IQ points higher than white Europeans -- which is in line with the fact that white Americans outscore all European groups.

Jan 14
at
7:52 PM

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