This one is a big one, and it’s specifically about this guy named “Race__Realist” on Twitter (formerly racerealist88) and some comments he has made on IQ interventions, the malleability of intelligence, some philosophical quibbles about “reducing the mental to the physical”, and so on; yeah.. this guy is a nutcase. All his arguments will be taken from his blog.
First comes the essay named “Knowledge, Culture, Logic and IQ”. Typical quote-by-quote response as always:
However, one of the most forceful arguments for the environmentalist (i.e., that the cause for differences in IQ are due to the cultural and social environment; note that an interactionist framework can be used here, too) side is one from Fagan and Holland (2007). They show that half of the questions on IQ tests had no racial bias, whereas other problems on the test were solvable with only a specific type of knowledge — knowledge that is found specifically in the middle class.
Fagan & Holland (2007) never found any evidence of test bias. They found no evidence of differential item functioning, nor of non-invariance in the test questions, or of anything resembling bias. They didn’t even test whether they were assessing the same thing before or after their interventions. It is very likely that they were not. They even cited Dolan, Hamaker, Lubke et al. without mentioning that their studies all supported strict factorial invariance and thus the comparability of psychometric factors and the lack of cultural and psychometric bias against one group or another. Finding MI implies comparability and that the differences are due to differences in the means of the ability, not the intercepts, nor the loadings, or something hidden in the residuals. The studies they cite do support that the differences are due to differences in cognitive ability, and not what Race__Realist claims.
But some hereditarians say otherwise — they claim that since knowledge is easily accessible for everyone, then therefore, everyone who wants to learn something will learn it and thus, the access to information has nothing to do with cultural/social effects.
This is only a strawman and nothing more. If knowledge were to be an outside factor in IQ tests, this would lead to a failure of invariance. This leads me to a dismissal of the rest of his paragraphs regarding “knowledge”, and moving on to the rest.
Jensen’s Default Hypothesis is false (Fagan and Holland, 2002). Fagan and Holland (2002) compared blacks and whites on for their knowledge of the meaning of words, which are highly “g”-loaded and shows black-white differences. They review research showing that blacks have lower exposure to words and are therefore unfamiliar with certain words (keep this in mind for the end). They mixed in novel words with previously-known words to see if there was a difference.
Fagan and Holland (2002) did not test for measurement invariance either. I suppose it didn’t hold, based on the fact that the same construct was not being measured in this unrepresentative sample. The claim that “knowledge is highly g-loaded” is both non-sensical and baseless. For the majority of the gap testings, measurement invariance holds across race & ethnicity and so this hypothesis is not even plausible, let alone possible. The hypothesis itself also makes no sense, as the gap has not budged a bit in around 150 years.
For instance, Ceci (1996) shows that familiarity with words dictates speed of processing to use in identifying the correct answer to the problem.
The hypothesis of whether or not this is reverse causal to IQ was not tested. Because of lack of malleability of g, I am inclined to believe IQ dictates familiarity with words.
Cahan and Cohen (1989) note that nine-year-olds in fourth grade had higher IQs than nine-year-olds in third grade.
This does not account for the Wilson Effect. The Wilson Effect is important because it demonstrates that since the heritability of intelligence becomes higher in adulthood, IQ scores observed in ages younger than 18 will later regress to the average of the individual’s group (in this context, their race). This applies to other papers he cites (like Cockroft et al., 2015; Castles, 2013; Davis, 2014 and Gordon, 2005).
since the four groups were shown to exhibit no significant differences in motor, or perceptual discrimination ability it follows that differences among the four groups of boys in Bender Gestalt performance are assignable to interpretative factors. Furthermore, significant differences among the four groups in Bender performance illustrates that the Bender Gestalt test is indeed not a so called “culture-free” test.
This is a quote from Hoffman (1966), which Race__Realist interprets as a bias. This does not logically follow. There’s a lot of problems with this, too. To begin with, we don’t know whether the groups differed in g or just the observed scores. What’s more, there’s no indication of bias causing the differences in groups, nor was measurement invariance tested. This is the general trend with the studies he cites.
Drame and Ferguson (2017) and Dutton et al (2017) also show that there is bias in the Raven’s test in Mali and Sudan. This, of course, is due to the exposure to the types of problems on the items (Richardson, 2002: 291–293).
Sure. There’s certain groups that will not be able to take certain tests due to their lack of understanding of how to take them; but this does not in any way equate to the Black-White gap in the U.S., nor does it tell us anything about g-loaded tests in general. This is a very cherrypicked example of a clearly unrepresentative sample.
This, obviously, shows that the Raven is not a “culture-free” measure of inductive and deductive logic.
No. This is a complete non-sequitur, and this conclusion is in no way “obvious”. The fact is, when measurement invariance holds we can safely say there is no bias in what is being measured across groups. Also, when the people from “another culture” are being trained to understand the test and the language barrier is gone, the comprehension barrier is gone, &c., then the only thing explaining the scores would be a lower intelligence. I guess you could apply Occam’s razor here too. He then cites Heine (2017) but ignores the Hadza people are less intelligent than sub-saharan Africans.
So there you go. All his data are either faulty or interpreted incorrectly, so his conclusion is unwarranted. Moving on
Here he talks about the fade-out effect.
Since IQ tests — along with other tests of ability — are experience-dependent
They aren’t. Like I previously stated: “If knowledge were to be an outside factor in IQ tests, this would lead to a failure of invariance.”
then the logical position to hold is that if they are exposed to the knowledge and experience needed for successful test-taking then they will score higher
This doesn’t follow, as IQ tests are not “experience-dependent”.
Now, if we think in the context of the HS and similar interventions, we can see why such stark differences in scores appear, and why some studies show a fade out effect.
Race__Realist, above this, quoted Howe (1997) and Sauce & Matzel (2018) to say that the reason fade-outs happen is because interventions pause. Indeed, when interventions pause fade-outs do happen, but they are not dependent on the pausing of these interventions. I am inclined to believe this since these intervention gains aren’t on the latent abilities and are instead relegated to specific subtests. These things fading is consistent with people opting into their own environments. When the intervention ends, they move back to the less-stimulating environments they’re predisposed to. That’s an idea. To elaborate on the latent abilities part, well; there have simply been no interventions showing g gains. There have been neurotoxins lowering g, but they do not account for the Wilson Effect and they are not well replicated.
IQ scores can and do increase is evidenced by the Flynn effect, so that is not touched by the fade-out effect.
That is exactly what the fade-out effect meta-analysis demonstrates. They are not g gains/latent ability gains, just observed score gains. Affecting scores but not constructs may be worthless, as these gains predict nothing.
HS and similar programs show that IQ is, indeed, malleable and not “set” or “stable” as hereditarians claim.
We see yet another strawman. This is not what hereditarians believe. Instead, they (myself included) believe that latent abilities/g are not malleable by the environment, and when they are, it’s usually because of biological-environmental effects.
So, Race__Realist decided to lie on Twitter again, (with nothing of substance) and I guess I have to respond to this. Yes, if X is quantitative it is measurable because you cannot quantify without measurement. Any objection to that is prescriptive and relies on ad-hoc assumptions.
The claim that IQ tests aren’t experience- dependent seems like a joke
is not an argument nor is it an objection. We know they aren’t only because invariance holds.
wilson effect is arbitrary
No it is not. This is literally the reason an average heritability figure in adulthood exists. The more I read into this guy’s arguments the more I understand why he pursued philosophy instead of math.
Toxins are bad
Yes they are but the toxins that are relevant to the gap are not on g (because the rest are unrelated). This is a joke. Not a critique.
