The Series That NeedED to be Done
fringe:
I read through this and was impressed by the amount of research and your willingness to be straightforward. But I think what you’ve produced has some gaps and leaves some questions unanswered.
For example, in “The Broad Arc of Data” you ask if it’s plausible that there is an equal environmental gap between Africans in Africa and the US as between Blacks and Whites in the US, but you don’t pursue the question. If we assumed equal average IQ for each group given identical environments, what would explain the difference?
European Whites and the Americans that came from them have lived in an intellectually enriched and economically wealthy (and stable) environment since the Roman Empire. In contrast, African blacks lived in a relatively unenriched and unstable environment until being forcibly removed 400 years ago.
Initially they were denied education, except in those things pertaining to the work they were given. Blacks in the UK and US took the first step toward intellectual advancement about 150 years ago, when the slave trade was outlawed and slaves emancipated. But, at least in the US, they weren’t free to pursue equal environments until 50 years ago (an equality that has not been achieved). That’s not even two generations.Perhaps it is remarkable that blacks in the US and UK have closed half of such a broad gap so quickly.
Research has shown that (in mice, at least) acquired intelligence can be passed on genetically, but in the study it only lasted one generation. The implication is that it is not simply the presence in the enriched environment that leads to increased intelligence for a population, but cumulative gains over successive generations. As a population, blacks in the US and UK are still only beginning to have sustained access to the quality of environment that whites have had for hundreds of years.
There is also the research that led to Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows, which demonstrates that the brain is physically molded by experiences throughout life, not only in childhood. On average, white women are three years older than black women at the time of their first birth, meaning more time for growth in an enriched environment and more growth to pass on.
These two findings, combined with the 14-16 point gain to date, suggests that as blacks improve their environment relative to whites and have children later (as trends suggest), the gap will close further. Social factors could hinder that advancement—and the proverbial “head start” could make it impossible to overcome—but all things being equal, it’s a reasonable expectation.
