It's unpersuasive, to say the least. Very young children (age 4), very small number of children with black mothers, and extremely noisy data. Glad well didn't imagine this study, but he certainly imagined its findings to be much more more robust and generalizable than they actually are.
Also, both mothers and fathers in the white female/black male couples were more educated than the black female/white male couples. And the latter actually had slightly higher incomes on average, ruling out poverty as an explanation for the gap.
Interesting. This study isn't mentioned in Flynn's article. It may be that Malcolm Gladwell was inserting his memory of this study into his memory of Flynn's presentation.
I've rewritten my post to discuss the findings of the Willerman et al. study.
Not on topic, but it would be interesting to hear your comments on this new paper providing genomic evidence for Gregory Clark's theory of the fundamental cause of the industrial revolution:
This is fascinating! I was expecting that Davide Piffer would repeat his earlier study with a larger sample of genomes, but this study has come earlier than expected. It provides a more detailed look at the increase in mean cognitive ability of the English population between 1000 and 1850.
Two preliminary observations:
- It looks like there was an acceleration and then a deceleration, with most of the increase occurring between 1400 and 1700.
- The increase in the "smart fraction" is impressive. The top 1% in 1850 was equal to the top 0.01% in the year 1000. This finding points to a considerable increase in the subpopulation of highly intelligent people above and beyond what would be expected from population growth alone. Intellectuals were no longer voices crying in the wilderness. They could now meet and socialize with other intellectuals. It was this potential for synergy that caused the Enlightenment and then the Industrial Revolution.
I am thinking that EA might not be the best estimate for what intellectual contributions one might expect from a population, though it obviously nevertheless correlates strongly. I remember that there was a strange discrepancy between the IQ and EA polygenic scores of Ancient Greeks in Evolutionary Trends of Polygenic Scores in European Populations From the Paleolithic to Modern Times. The Romans had higher EA polygenic scores, yet their intellectual contributions were mostly derivative of Greek innovations: verism from Hellenistic art, De Rerum Natura from Epicureanism, encyclopedic compilations based mostly on Greek thought (Pliny the Elder's Encyclopedia), etc. Roman contributions were mostly in (very good) fundamentals: for example, Cicero noted that the Roman Twelve Tables "surpass the libraries of all the philosophers, both in weight of authority and in plenitude of utility." Or consider this citation from a Greek observer: "The extraordinary greatness of the Roman Empire manifests itself above all in three things: the aqueducts, the paved roads, and the construction of the drains." Could these not be compared to the excellent idea of civil exams or what Francis Bacon called the "great inventions" ("printing, gunpowder, and the magnet") of Chinese civilization? There is even a quote parallel to that of Cicero: "... no empire, no sect, no star, seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these three mechanical discoveries."
I suspect that verbal intelligence might be even more closely related to innovation than something like spatial intelligence, yet both would (I suppose) be measured as if they were equivalent by IQ polygenic scores. What I notice most from Greek civilization is an extreme capacity for meta-reflection and a unique tolerance for ambiguity, as can notably be seen in plays like the Oresteia and Antigone, or in the mere existence of people like Socrates and Aristotle. My guess is that La Griffe du Lion was onto something when he attributed an outsized influence to verbal IQ. There is a unique disposition to not simply wish to recompilate like Pliny the Elder (Roman) or Vincent de Beauvais (Medieval French) did.
A significant portion of EA polygenic scores may reflect non-cognitive factors, notably monotony avoidance and the ability to sit still in a classroom.
Can you tell me where in that paper the authors say that the Romans had higher EA polygenic scores than the Greeks?
If you check Figures S14 and S15 of the supplementary material, you can see that Iron Age Italy has the highest EA scores. The authors note, "The overall rankings were quite similar, with the lowest scores for hunter-gatherers, Neolithic Middle Easterners, and Copper Age Iberians, and the highest for Iron Age and medieval Italy (Supplementary Figures S14, S15, S16)." Figures S14 through S16 also show that the Bronze Age Greeks had middling EA scores but the highest IQ PGS. As the study states, "A significant divergence was noted in the sample of ancient Greeks from the Bronze Age in the comparison between IQ and EA. The Bronze Age Greeks, while displaying average scores on EA, manifested the highest scores in IQ PGS." Something else I’ve found interesting is that the decline in IQ PGS observed in Imperial Italy is not as dramatic as the decline in EA PGS.
To be fair, throughout this discussion I’ve been referring to the accomplishments of Classical Greece, whereas the study specifically measures the scores of Bronze Age Greeks. While there might have been some continuity in selection across periods, a dark age followed immediately after the Bronze Age, which suggests a potential cognitive decline. Moreover, it’s not clear which Bronze Age Greeks are represented. Minoans, Mycenaeans, or both? In my opinion, the Minoans were more impressive. Perhaps the Ancient Greeks followed a pattern similar to the Italian populations, with periods of high intelligence interrupted by one notable decline. The Greeks truly deserve a thorough, period-by-period analysis of their cognitive traits. I guess remains that don't show selection bias could be recovered from mass graves caused by massacres, plagues, or shipwrecks (they found one skeleton in the Antikythera wreck)?
I know this one. It's Willerman et al, 1974:
https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/willerman-et-al-1974.pdf
It's unpersuasive, to say the least. Very young children (age 4), very small number of children with black mothers, and extremely noisy data. Glad well didn't imagine this study, but he certainly imagined its findings to be much more more robust and generalizable than they actually are.
Also, both mothers and fathers in the white female/black male couples were more educated than the black female/white male couples. And the latter actually had slightly higher incomes on average, ruling out poverty as an explanation for the gap.
Interesting. This study isn't mentioned in Flynn's article. It may be that Malcolm Gladwell was inserting his memory of this study into his memory of Flynn's presentation.
I've rewritten my post to discuss the findings of the Willerman et al. study.
Not on topic, but it would be interesting to hear your comments on this new paper providing genomic evidence for Gregory Clark's theory of the fundamental cause of the industrial revolution:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/392808200_Genomic_Evidence_for_Clark's_Theory_of_the_British_Industrial_Revolution
This is fascinating! I was expecting that Davide Piffer would repeat his earlier study with a larger sample of genomes, but this study has come earlier than expected. It provides a more detailed look at the increase in mean cognitive ability of the English population between 1000 and 1850.
Two preliminary observations:
- It looks like there was an acceleration and then a deceleration, with most of the increase occurring between 1400 and 1700.
- The increase in the "smart fraction" is impressive. The top 1% in 1850 was equal to the top 0.01% in the year 1000. This finding points to a considerable increase in the subpopulation of highly intelligent people above and beyond what would be expected from population growth alone. Intellectuals were no longer voices crying in the wilderness. They could now meet and socialize with other intellectuals. It was this potential for synergy that caused the Enlightenment and then the Industrial Revolution.
I am thinking that EA might not be the best estimate for what intellectual contributions one might expect from a population, though it obviously nevertheless correlates strongly. I remember that there was a strange discrepancy between the IQ and EA polygenic scores of Ancient Greeks in Evolutionary Trends of Polygenic Scores in European Populations From the Paleolithic to Modern Times. The Romans had higher EA polygenic scores, yet their intellectual contributions were mostly derivative of Greek innovations: verism from Hellenistic art, De Rerum Natura from Epicureanism, encyclopedic compilations based mostly on Greek thought (Pliny the Elder's Encyclopedia), etc. Roman contributions were mostly in (very good) fundamentals: for example, Cicero noted that the Roman Twelve Tables "surpass the libraries of all the philosophers, both in weight of authority and in plenitude of utility." Or consider this citation from a Greek observer: "The extraordinary greatness of the Roman Empire manifests itself above all in three things: the aqueducts, the paved roads, and the construction of the drains." Could these not be compared to the excellent idea of civil exams or what Francis Bacon called the "great inventions" ("printing, gunpowder, and the magnet") of Chinese civilization? There is even a quote parallel to that of Cicero: "... no empire, no sect, no star, seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these three mechanical discoveries."
I suspect that verbal intelligence might be even more closely related to innovation than something like spatial intelligence, yet both would (I suppose) be measured as if they were equivalent by IQ polygenic scores. What I notice most from Greek civilization is an extreme capacity for meta-reflection and a unique tolerance for ambiguity, as can notably be seen in plays like the Oresteia and Antigone, or in the mere existence of people like Socrates and Aristotle. My guess is that La Griffe du Lion was onto something when he attributed an outsized influence to verbal IQ. There is a unique disposition to not simply wish to recompilate like Pliny the Elder (Roman) or Vincent de Beauvais (Medieval French) did.
A significant portion of EA polygenic scores may reflect non-cognitive factors, notably monotony avoidance and the ability to sit still in a classroom.
Can you tell me where in that paper the authors say that the Romans had higher EA polygenic scores than the Greeks?
If you check Figures S14 and S15 of the supplementary material, you can see that Iron Age Italy has the highest EA scores. The authors note, "The overall rankings were quite similar, with the lowest scores for hunter-gatherers, Neolithic Middle Easterners, and Copper Age Iberians, and the highest for Iron Age and medieval Italy (Supplementary Figures S14, S15, S16)." Figures S14 through S16 also show that the Bronze Age Greeks had middling EA scores but the highest IQ PGS. As the study states, "A significant divergence was noted in the sample of ancient Greeks from the Bronze Age in the comparison between IQ and EA. The Bronze Age Greeks, while displaying average scores on EA, manifested the highest scores in IQ PGS." Something else I’ve found interesting is that the decline in IQ PGS observed in Imperial Italy is not as dramatic as the decline in EA PGS.
To be fair, throughout this discussion I’ve been referring to the accomplishments of Classical Greece, whereas the study specifically measures the scores of Bronze Age Greeks. While there might have been some continuity in selection across periods, a dark age followed immediately after the Bronze Age, which suggests a potential cognitive decline. Moreover, it’s not clear which Bronze Age Greeks are represented. Minoans, Mycenaeans, or both? In my opinion, the Minoans were more impressive. Perhaps the Ancient Greeks followed a pattern similar to the Italian populations, with periods of high intelligence interrupted by one notable decline. The Greeks truly deserve a thorough, period-by-period analysis of their cognitive traits. I guess remains that don't show selection bias could be recovered from mass graves caused by massacres, plagues, or shipwrecks (they found one skeleton in the Antikythera wreck)?