The Innateness of Greatness: Using the Best Ingredients

Every good cook understands that using the best ingredients can make all the difference between a good dish and a great dish. The concept is the same with human greatness: start with the best, then make it better. Practise will only get you so far. If you want to be great -- the best -- you will need something extra.

Michigan State University cognitive scientist Zach Hambrick looked at the influence of working memory on human performance. He and his team compared the performance of different individuals with different levels of working memory -- which is closely related to human intelligence.

In a provocative new paper, Hambrick suggests working memory capacity -- which is closely related to general intelligence -- may sometimes be the deciding factor between good and great.

In a series of studies, Hambrick and colleagues found that people with higher levels of working memory capacity outperformed those with lower levels -- and even in individuals with extensive experience and knowledge of the task at hand. The studies analyzed complex tasks such as piano sight reading. _SD

Hambrick disagrees with David Brooks and Malcolm Gladwell when thy claim that intelligence plays no role in lifetime achievement and success:

Hambrick’s response: “David Brooks and Malcolm Gladwell are simply wrong. The evidence is quite clear: A high level of intellectual ability puts a person at a measurable advantage — and the higher the better.”

Research has shown that intelligence has both genetic and environmental origins, Hambrick said, yet “for a very long time we have tried and failed to come up with ways to boost people’s intelligence.”

Hambrick and his fellow researchers continue to study the issue. “The jury’s still out on whether you can improve your general intelligence,” he said.

“We hold out hope that cognitive training of some sort may produce these benefits. But we have yet to find the magic bullet.” _Psychcentral

The PC Thought Police -- as personified by Brooks and Gladwell -- would like to paper over human biodiversity, and the importance of inborn traits and aptitudes. But modern human societies have gotten themselves in a deep mess, and need all the help they can get. If ever there was a time to develop human greatness to meet a challenge, this would be such a time.

And no, technology is not the answer. Technology will be helpful, but technology can lead to dependency, and the loss of certain human faculties. The technology-dependent human will be at a severe loss at times when his technology breaks down or is inaccessible.

Hambrick's research is a shy and tentative "toe in the water." Modern academia, media, and politics are extremely bigoted against the idea of human differences in aptitude and capacity for greatness -- although many of these same academics, celebrities, and politicians readily claim greatness and eliteness for themselves.

This is yet one more example of a crucial area of human study which is not being dealt with honestly or competently by the mainstream. A politically correct "consensus" is inadequate to the task of facing the real universe and its challenges.

Descent of Africa Tests the Honesty of the Politically Correct

There was a great global rejoicing over the death of the apartheid regime of South Africa, and the coming of majority rule in 1994. Media analysts -- regardless of political persuasion -- were genuinely ecstatic over the rise of democratic self-governance in South Africa, and expected great things from Africa's richest nation, after apartheid.

But something happened along the road to paradise for South Africa. Things got worse for everyone except the few corrupt insiders within the ANC. Crime, corruption, disease, poverty, human misery, all much worse -- and worsening with time, just as in Zimbabwe under Mugabe. But if you try to get a leftist's honest opinion about the ongoing descent of South Africa, you may find the going a bit rocky, to say the least.

The central problem of writing about South Africa is that it is almost impossible to explain the country's slow-motion catastrophe in terms that make sense to foreigners... All power concentrated in the hands of an over-mighty President who attempts to prolong his rule. The decay of infrastructure through poor maintenance alongside a pronounced taste for prestige expenditures. Power cuts for the people, the arrogance of power for the elite and an ever-growing chasm of inequality between...

...When Mugabe took power in 1980, Zimbabwe [formerly Rhodesia -- ed.] was regarded as one of Africa's jewels, a country with good infrastructure, deep soil, and a thriving agricultural sector, whose exports were the country's largest sources of foreign earnings....Mugabe turned nasty, organizing mobs to drive white farmers off their land—a move intended to restore the dictator's popularity with the masses. Instead, it destroyed the country's banking system, which in turn led to soaring inflation and generalized economic collapse. With most of his subjects facing starvation, Mugabe and his generals resorted to naked repression.

...As for Mbeki, the godfather of the African Renaissance backed Mugabe from the outset, shielding him against condemnatory United Nations and Commonwealth resolutions and blocking the Human Rights Commission's attempts to investigate his atrocities. South Africans were told that Mbeki was working behind the scenes to prevent Zimbabwe's implosion, but the country imploded anyway, driving millions of refugees into South Africa, where they sat on street corners, attempting to exchange worthless billion-dollar Zimbabwe banknotes for bread crusts. Zimbabwe's implosion had become part of our implosion, and still Mbeki remained silent

...Elsewhere, we have FAILED BILLION-DOLLAR EDUCATION PROGRAM; WHISTLE-BLOWER MURDERED; WIFE OF NIA CHIEF ON TRIAL FOR SMUGGLING COCAINE, the NIA being our CIA. And finally, the story of the hour: The National Prosecuting Authority has abandoned its investigation into the whereabouts of $130 million in bribes generated by South Africa's notorious 1990s arms deal.

In the West, scandals of this magnitude would topple governments. Here, they are almost meaningless. Most will never be pursued or resolved satisfactorily. The electorate will not stand up and scream, "Enough!" In many cases, the alleged culprits won't even be investigated, and the incompetent bureaucrats who presided over the education fiasco will not be fired. In a week or two, these stories will be blown off the front pages by equally hair-raising scandals, most of which will also just fade away. It's been like this for years, and there comes a time when you stop paying attention lest the drumbeat of bad news drive you mad. _BookForum

NationsOnline
Africa was colonised by several foreign powers, whose nation-building badly disrupted the tribal and language infrastructure which had existed in pre-colonial times. But then, when maintaining their colonies proved too much for European powers after WWII, their African possessions were "dispossessed" and left largely to fend for themselves.

But oddly, Africa did not rise out of poverty like Japan and Germany had done -- after World War II, or like South Korea did after the Korean War, or like China did after it rejected Maoism in favour of a more pro-business economic environment. No, Africa went downhill after de-colonisation, rather than upward.

Yes, you will see numbers claiming that certain African nations are growing economically, and certain to rise from poverty "any day now." But if you look more closely, you will see that the oil and mineral dictatorships of Africa are selling natural resources to outsiders -- the leaders then stashing their profits in overseas bank accounts. Not the kind of prosperity a nation could actually build upon to benefit most of its citizens.

Corruption, disease, poverty, violent tribal and ideological conflict -- everything that was true of the rest of Africa except Rhodesia and South Africa, suddenly began becoming true for Zimbabwe and majority-rule South Africa. How does one explain this near-uniformity of poverty, hopelessness, disease, violence, and near absence of achievement across an entire sub-continent? If one is a leftist -- once euphoric over the emergence of majority rule in Zimbabwe and South Africa -- how does one explain the ongoing collapse of once-rich and once-proud nations?

If one is not a leftist, he might look at such things as "race, genes, and disparity." Such biologically-based factors involved in the study of evolutionary human biodiversity may correlate far better with the actual conditions on the ground, in Africa, than more abstract concepts which are far more popular with the leftists and proto-leftists of media, academia, popular culture, and most political organisations. But the modern intellectual world has little tolerance for demonstrable, evidence-based theories, if they contradict politically correct dogma.

And for at least that reason, one cannot truly hold an honest discussion about Africa with most leftists. Of course, many evidence-based theories contradict politically correct dogma, so Africa is not the only topic which is verboten, in terms of honest discussion.

Anyone who wants to make his way to the higher levels of achievement in the politically correct world, must needs adjust his crap detector to its lowest possible setting, so as to be able to tolerate the PC crap which passes for common wisdom among most pseudo-intellectuals in academia, media, culture, and politics.

Those of us who are unable to make such adjustments will just have to create something better on our own.

Getting to the Bottom of IQ Differences

The old IQ comparison studies that looked merely at skull size or head circumference as proxies for brain size, have been superceded by more advanced brain imaging capable of precise measurements of whole brain, total grey matter, total white matter, specific brain centers, and specific brain pathways and networks. These volumes are, to a large extent, under genetic control. A new era in comparing group IQs is dawning, thanks to advanced brain imaging and matching analysis of brain genetics. And a new era in improving gene expression relating to cognition is near to dawning -- as long as the key research is carried out and not obstructed out of a misguided sense of "political correctness."

Brain size as measured by MRI correlates highly with IQ. Specific brain networks and brain centers are even more highly correlated to IQ than gross brain size. In fact, a particular type of MRI analysis -- diffusion tensor imaging -- may supersede traditional IQ tests as the most objective means of testing IQ.

Anyone who truly wants to get to the bottom of the question of IQ differences between population groupings, will want to see the best designed, executed, and analysed research possible done on the subject. Anyone who is afraid of having such research done, does not truly want the question answered, and is lying to himself and everyone else when he claims that "there are no IQ differences, and even if there were it wouldn't matter!" Such persons' voices should be ignored as mere noise by all of those committed to finding the best answers to important questions.

A recent UK study at UCL Institute of Child Health, finds that teens who were delivered premature at birth have significantly lower brain white matter and IQ. (Abstract Annals of Neurology) For this study, it would be helpful to match by ethnicity, sex, and SES.

Between species, a longer gestation and breast feeding, correlate with larger brains, higher cognition, and longer lifespan.

And on and on. As brain genetic expression is correlated with advanced brain imaging with greater precision, and further correlated with IQ (and executive function), the larger global picture of human brain development should become clearer. At that point it will be impossible to deny the glaringly obvious group differences in brain function, and how these differences manifest themselves on a societal and economic level.

Being an HBD denier is growing more untenable every day.

Recent Study Relating IQ/Human /Capital to per capita GDP

Update: Here is a handy per capita GDP Predictor, which provides a 0.97 r correlation (!) between its predictions and the actual GDP numbers, using national IQ and an economic freedom metric (plus "tweaks") as input. (via Brian Wang) Methodology is provided at the link.

Wikipedia
Heiner Rindermann, of the Chemnitz University of Technology, has a study being published in the upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study looks at 90 countries, correlating the intelligence of the populations with the per capita GDP -- in an attempt to understand the relationship of human capital to national economic well-being.

The researchers collected information on 90 countries, including far-off lands from the U.S. to New Zealand and Colombia to Kazakhstan. They also collected data on the country’s excellence in science and technology—the number of patents granted per person and how many Nobel Prizes the country’s people had won in science, for example.

They found that intelligence made a difference in gross domestic product. For each one-point increase in a country’s average IQ, the per capita GDP was $229 higher. It made an even bigger difference if the smartest 5 percent of the population got smarter; for every additional IQ point in that group, a country’s per capita GDP was $468 higher.

.... “In other words, it’s the ability of a person to solve a problem in the most efficient way—not with violence, but by thinking,” Rindermann says. He wrote the new study with James Thompson of University College London. _PsychologicalScience_via_NextBigFuture

Many factors are involved in the determination of national prosperity, including economic freedom, rule of law, property rights, and trust. But study after study appear to indicate that cognitive ability is as important as the other factors. In fact, certain minimum levels of average cognitive ability may be necessary for some of the other important factors to be reliably present.
Here is more on that topic by Rindermann in an abstract taken from an earlier (2007) study:

. It is shown that in the second half of the 20th century, education and intelligence had a strong positive impact on democracy, rule of law and political liberty independent from wealth (GDP) and chosen country sample. One possible mediator of these relationships is the attainment of higher stages of moral judgment fostered by cognitive ability, which is necessary for the function of democratic rules in society. The other mediators for citizens as well as for leaders could be the increased competence and willingness to process and seek information necessary for political decisions due to greater cognitive ability. There are also weaker and less stable reverse effects of the rule of law and political freedom on cognitive ability. _ScienceDirect

It is crucial for the future of humanity that the genetic fraction of the underpinnings of differences in average population intelligence (see map) not be denied or downgraded. Any attempts to explain all or most of the differences in population average IQ by nutritional, educational, or other environmental factors without including the genetic component, is counter-productive for future generations. Nutrition, education, and environmental intellectual enrichment of all kinds are all important -- but not sufficient for the goals of any philanthropic humanist worth the description.

The best hope for long-term improvement in average human intelligence exists within a broadly applied, advanced genetics. Such a program is likely to result in smaller IQ and EF gaps between populations -- proportionally -- than at present. The only thing to be achieved by following a politically correct path of HBD denial, is the continued and inexorable descent into a dysgenic Idiocracy.

NYTimes Discovers, Denies Racial IQ Differences

Update 30 November 2010: I am adding a more rigorous graphic portraying SAT score by race by SES. The source of the image is sociologist La Griffe du Lion.   SAT math scores are a fair proxy for IQ scores, and this graphic illustrates the clear and sustained gap between white and black scores, all the way across the SES spectrum.  More observant readers would have already noticed the contradiction in the graphic further down (2nd image down), showing IQ scores and IQ gap by SES.  Despite the IQ gap remaining at about 1 SD (15 points) all the way up the SES spectrum, the PC graphics designers chose to narrow the IQ gap as the SES rose.   Such gratuitous editorials-in-graphics form give social science a bad name.   I left the IQ gap graphic in despite a number of problems, to see if any reader would point out the most obvious one -- the erroneous narrowing of the gap.  Please try harder next time.  ;-)

In tony suburban Shaker Heights, Ohio, funding is generous, support programs aimed at black students (about half of the student population, not an alienated minority) abound, there is no ability tracking (students track themselves), and such racism as can be found is too intermittent to destroy the academic curiosity of a human being of normal resilience. Yet blacks there cluster at the very bottom of the school _McWhorter

We know that blacks -- particularly black males -- lag in academic and professional achievement worldwide, whenever pitted against members of any race except Australian aboriginals. There is no limit to the number of excuses given for why blacks cannot compete -- poverty, a sick culture, racial discrimination, legacies of slavery, a history of tropical diseases, lack of role models... A new report described in the NYTimes takes another look at the "achievement gap." The report finds that poverty cannot be used as a credible excuse -- the achievement gap starts at the earliest stages of life, even among wealthy blacks.

“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.” _NYT_via_IHE

The achievement gap only widens as children grow older, as can be seen by comparing testing results for all age groups. There is a good argument to be made that only 4% of American Blacks are qualified for a rigorous 4 year college degree -- regardless of their socioeconomic class or preparatory training.

The denial of human biodiversity (HBD) goes deep in American academia and general culture. Genetics is a relatively new science compared to political and economic philosophy, and will require time to be integrated into the general psyche -- particularly when it is fighting against embedded prejudice.

The sheer persistence of the racial achievement gap across time and geographic space argues for a more rigorous examination of its causes -- no holds barred, no topic off the table for research and publication. That is the only way to achieve as level a playing field as we will ever get, and it will require the deepest understanding of genetics possible.

This map shows IQs of indigenous people for various continents and nations. European and East Asian people evolved to average population IQs of roughly 100 or slightly higher. Most of the rest of the world's population IQ average is somewhere between 80 and 95. Only among African and Australian aboriginals does one find average population IQs which are so low as to allow one to foresee a worldwide stratification in achievement whenever these low-IQ groups might be paired against higher-IQ groups in an academic or professional achievement race.

This is basic information that has been known since the early 1900s when reliable psychometric testing first became available. How ironic that it is those claiming to be most educated and sophisticated who are the slowest to comprehend the obvious -- and to use that information in order to help those who lag. For it is the persistent denial of basic facts which holds those who lag down, without any genuine hope.

IQ and HBD Deniers Being Backed Into a Corner

The project is novel in its size; most brain-imaging studies have looked at tens to hundreds of brains. Scanning so many people will shed light on the normal variability within the brain structure of healthy adults, which will in turn provide a basis for examining how neural "wiring" differs in such disorders as autism and schizophrenia.

The researchers also plan to collect genetic and behavioral data, testing participants' sensory and motor skills, memory, and other cognitive functions, and deposit this information along with brain scans in a public database (although the patients' personal information will be stripped out). Scientists around the world can then use the database to search for the genetic and environmental factors that influence the structure of the brain. _TR

Technology Review provides more information on the Human Connectome Project, sponsored by NIH. The ambitious project aims to do far more than to build more accurate maps of the human brain connectome. This project aims to do some genuine cognitive science. And that is likely to make a lot of HBD (human biodiversity) deniers very nervous.

"We want to learn as much as we can, not only about the typical patterns of brain connectivity, but also about the differences in wiring that make each of us a unique individual," says David Van Essen, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis, who is one of the project leaders. "If you're good at math, and I'm better at certain types of memory, can we identify some of the wiring characteristics that account for those differences?"

The most detailed studies to date of the neural circuits that connect one brain cell to another have focused on animal brains, because scientists can examine the animals' living tissue cells and their networks under a microscope. "We don't know how our species specifically is wired up," says Michael Huerta, associate director of the Division of Neuroscience and Basic Behavioral Science at the National Institute of Mental Health, and director of the Connectome project. "There is an entire class of data that is missing from neuroscience that is fundamentally important for how the brain works and how it breaks down in different disorders." And because researchers will be scanning only identical and fraternal twins and their siblings, the scientists can get a sense of the role that genetics and environment play in shaping brain structure. Structures of the brain that are highly dictated by genes will be more similar in identical twins than in fraternal twins, for example. _TR

There are more technical details at the link above. It promises to be a fascinating project on many levels.

Perhaps the scientists involved in the huge project have not yet taken the pledge of strict political correctness. Perhaps they have not gotten the memo directing them to avoid any research which might be used to explain cognitive or behavioural differences on the basis of genetics.

All issues of political correctness aside, the modern tools of science and computation are giving us the potential to finally understand many aspects of ourselves which had been closed to us. Some of these things may prove unsavoury, but in order to wisely move into the future we must be honest about our past and present.

Tracking Intelligence Using Tensor Imaging and MEG Tracking Intelligence Using Tensor Imaging and MEG

In a study of 11,000 pairs of twins from four countries, we have recently shown that the heritability of IQ increases linearly from childhood (about 40 percent) to adolescence (about 55 percent) to young adulthood (about 65 percent). Why? No one knows, but my guess is that the answer involves what is called genotype-environment correlation: as children grow up, they increasingly select, modify, and even create their own experiences, partly on the basis of their genetic propensities. _Plomin

An exciting new approach to studying human cognitive function involves using diffusion tensor imaging to monitor the function of the brain's white matter connectivity. The white matter connections between gray matter brain centers contribute to overall cognition -- and they can be tracked in near real time. Studying human intelligence in this way completely bypasses so-called "stereotype threat", test design bias, and other excuses commonly given for why particular groups tend not to test well on IQ tests.

The type of MRI typically used for medical scans does not show the finer details of the brain's white matter. But with a technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which uses the scanner's magnet to track the movement of water molecules in the brain, scientists have developed ways to map out neural wiring in detail. While water moves randomly within most brain tissue, it flows along the insulated neural fibers like current through a wire.

Most DTI scans break the MRI image into tiny areas and measure the diffusion of water molecules through each one in six to 12 directions, which is sufficient for detecting thick bundles of neural fibers. But places where wiring overlaps appear as a blur. Newer variations of diffusion imaging measure diffusion in 50 to 500 directions. Computer algorithms synthesize this data into a three-dimensional picture showing the most likely paths of nerve fibers through each area, and then stitch together the information from multiple points to create a wiring map.

The strength of the diffusion signal--the extent to which it reveals a clear direction--is used to gauge how organized the fibers of the white matter are. A stronger diffusion signal may indicate more fibers or thicker myelin; scientists don't yet know. But the newer diffusion imaging methods have revealed a strong correlation between the strength of this signal--what researchers refer to as the "integrity" of the white matter--and performance on a standard IQ test. "DTI turns out to be one of the most sensitive MRI measures we have for cognitive function," says Vincent Schmithorst, a neuroscientist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

Thompson refers to his diffusion maps as "pictures of mental speed." Previous research has repeatedly linked IQ to processing speed, and other studies show that processing speed in turn is tightly linked to the quality of one's white matter. Does that mean intelligence is determined by how fast the brain works? If so, does finding the key to processing speed in the brain mean researchers have finally found the secret to intelligence?

In reality, speed is probably not the only determinant of IQ. "One of the things that is important for IQ is frontal-lobe function, which is involved in planning, decision making, and weighing evidence," Thompson says. "I wouldn't think of those skills as being entirely reliant on mental speed."

Some of the newest theories of intelligence suggest that the crucial factor may be how efficiently information moves around the brain, rather than just how quickly. In a recent study led by Martijn P. van den Heuvel, a neuroscientist at University Medical Center Utrecht, in the Netherlands, researchers defined efficiency as the number of links it takes to get from one node to another--both in specific brain areas and all over the brain. Just as a direct flight from Paris to Chicago would be considered more efficient than one with a layover in London, a direct link between two parts of the brain would be more efficient than an indirect route.

Van den Heuvel and colleagues found that people with above-normal IQs of 120 and up had the most efficient brain networks. "Our hypothesis is that IQ is about how the human brain can integrate different types of information, how easily it can get information from one brain region to another," van den Heuvel says. "These activity patterns are highly influenced by white-matter structures in the brain, how the brain is connected."

Richard Haier and his collaborators are now working on a new method of measuring information flow around the brain using magnetoencephalography, or MEG. MEG measures the magnetic fluctuations around neurons as they fire, allowing scientists to track the millisecond-scale sequence of neural signaling in the brain as people perform different tasks, such as pressing a button in response to a light. Researchers hope to figure out how the flow of these signals differs with intelligence--whether smarter people follow the same sequence but faster, for example, or whether their brains skip a few steps in a circuit. "When you add the timing of the nodes and networks," says Jung, "then we're really talking about how the brain works in real time." __TechnologyReview

Development of such objective forms of intelligence testing was crucial, in order to put the field beyond reach of the HBD deniers such as Nisbet, Flynn, Kamin, Spelke, and the whole gang of "blank slaters." Cognitive science has grown beyond that reactionary group of obstructionists. It is time to get to work before the Idiocracy grows any more intractable and unstoppable than it already is.