sethoflagos

When someone gets around to researching the balance between instinctive first guess and deductive reasoning skills for individuals with exceptionally high IQ scores, I suspect they may be surprised by the results (particularly if they're from the western academic tradition). But it may lead to a some understanding of the role of shamanism, religious ecstasy, psychotropic drug use, yogic meditation, and that nasty little link with schizophrenia. And why these practices with very ancient roots should not be dismissed as lightly as they usually are. Instinctive response is a very fast acting process. If only we could harness and train it.........

I'm sorry, Mel. For a while back there I thought you were receptive to different perspectives on this issue. Now you're simply using 'g' as a substitute euphemism for IQ I guess due to IQ's bad publicity. I've really said all (probably more than all) that I had to say on the matter. Toodle pip.

It told me that one culture that is barely 500 years old and in denial of its own particular self-generated social problems, has no business telling distant cultures of which it has no understanding, and which have survived every trial that the last 50,000+ years has thrown at them, that they don't have what it takes to be biologically successful. Our feeble inbred lines are only ever one virus strain away from obliteration.

Interesting viewpoints. I don't know whether this holds true in SA but one cultural difference that struck me when I first moved out here is that when there was a problem to be solved, the European instinct was to wander off to a quiet corner and start jotting down thoughts on paper, while the immediate response of the Nigerians would be to call for a communal discussion. Very strange at first. But it got me thinking. Maybe it's possible to make good judgment calls consistently not just through the capabilities of your own genes but by pooling resources with your neighbours. That is, the 'clever' genes that guide you in acting intelligently don't necessarily have to be inside your own body - they might be inside someone else's. This approach would allow different individuals within the community to specialise in developing the thought processes that came naturally to them - instinctive, experience based, visual, spiritual, deductive or whatever, and not waste individual resources on developing faculties that came more naturally to others. The common requirement for such a process is that all parties must have strong oral communication skills. I'm not sure I've ever met an African who wasn't fluent in at least two languages, which certainly puts me to shame. Perhaps this might also shed some light on why written language in sub-saharan Africa was typically surrounded in taboo and often strictly restricted to the village doctors and post-menopausal women Incidently. has anyone picked up on the correlation between geographic mean IQ and the complexity of the traditional writing system. Is it purely a coincidence that the highest mean scores are amongst those populations who traditionally use pictogrammes?

Which blacks? And why the need to assign a single number that is only ever a partial description of the attributes of a single individual, to a population (however you define that population) whose long-term survival is at least in part influenced by its genetic diversity? Actually, I don't believe that there are any points here upon which we disagree at a fundamental level. I do believe however that that your concepts (and the words you use to define them) are way too loosely defined and generalised to aid any deep understanding. Although I have no particular aversion to the word 'black' (my wife would identify with it), it's rather like the word 'fish'. From our point of view, it includes both the previously mentioned three-spined stickleback and the whale shark. An evolutionist whale shark however, may point out with sound justification that from his point of view, we are some kind of terrestrial stickleback. The broader you generalise your definition of a population, the more genetically diverse that population becomes, and the more exceptions there are for a generalised theory to account for. To put this back on topic, have any alleles favouring high intelligence either been lost or never acquired by 'Africans' as a whole? If that is your proposition then you're going to have to come up with something far more solid than some flimsy, subjective correlation to demonstrate it. It only takes one African of exceptional intelligence by global standards, to suggest that the proposition has no meaningful value. Contrast this to a demonstrably evolutionary genetic trend - the emergence of the sickle-cell trait within African populations in response to malaria. Positive selection for a trait with many negative side effects in return for 90% protection against cerebral malaria demonstrates a number of things: not only the huge influence of malaria on African populations, but a clear causal route and mechanism that is altogether lacking in proposition of the OP. Btw cerebral malaria does some seriously nasty damage to your IQ.

4sd is 60 IQ points above the mean IQ of the population under discussion. In a population with mean IQ of 100, 130 is not so very rare and should be exceeded by one individual in 44. But in a population with a mean IQ of 70, individuals with 130+ scores should occur nearly a thousand times as infrequently. For myself, accounting for the phenomenon of rare high intelligence within a population is the major challenge any theory of intelligence has to address. If it was purely a matter of combinations of alleles, then the mere existence of exceptional individuals implies that those alleles must be present in the genome. They may only occur with low frequency, but they must be present and therefore available to increase in frequency through evolutionary selection processes when survival demands intelligence. So even in this purely inheritance based view, we have to call on environmental conditions to explain low frequency distribution of particular alleles. And once we admit that, then the wedge is in the crack. Genetics and environment must act dynamically in concert. Higher frequency expression of high intelligence within any population is under environmental control and is therefore plastic, not immutable.

No. IQ 145 would be 3 sd above a norm of 100. My numbers come from IQ 130 above a norm of 70 (Lynn estimates many African nations as being lower than this). A distance of 4 sd (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rule)is roughly exceeded by 1 in 30,000. Which would be roughly 100 individuals a year in Nigeria, only 3% of whom would elect for engineering, of which most would select for a discipline other than chemical engineering, and the 1 per year I'm left with is Bering Strait's IQ elite who has emigrated to the US or UK to explain the statistical dilemma he faces in those communities. The numbers just don't add up. Too many good students for such a low estimate of population mean. You really need to work on presenting arguments that are both concise and coherent. That's one outward sign of intelligence I try and instill amongst the people I'm privileged to mentor. The argument is only undebatable because you lack the capacity to debate it. I do not believe that you understand the word 'logic'. Whatever font you present it in. Just as a matter of interest, how old are you? My kids grew out of this level of debate when they were about 12. As far as I'm concerned, you have made no points worth addressing. However, feel free to come to Lagos and present them (since so few of your heroes have bothered to actually come here and do the fieldwork). I'm sure that your points would be addressed in the manner they merited.

I'd appreciate your opinion on this line of thought..... The Nigerians I work with need to have IQs that are pretty high by global population standards, of the order of mean + 4sd of their population IQ distribution in the terms of the Lynn camp. Let us assume that their high IQ is significantly under genetic control (not a concept I reject btw). Simple genetic inheritance is an either/or thing, so in order to get any distribution at the 4sd level (~1 in 30,000 of the population) many loci must be involved (otherwise you just get a simple binary distribution like gender). 1:30,000 is equivalent to flipping a coin and getting heads 15 times in a row. So the order of magnitude estimate for my 'clever African' is he/she was fortunate to get the 'clever' allele at 15 loci. (The actual numbers are irrelevant, it's the principle that counts). But here's the crux. For this to happen, those 15 'clever' alleles need to be circulating in the genome of the parent population. Which means that they haven't mutated through some adaptive mechanism into 'dumb' alleles, or gone extinct through genetic drift. The 'white admixture' theory doesn't really work, since the high number of loci involved would imply that the highly achieving individual was of the order 99.97+% white in total genetic content. The more loci involved, the more the 'clever' alleles must be inherent in the local population genome. The fewer loci (necessary to give any credence at all to the admixture argument) the more obviously bimodal the distribution must become, the more difficult it becomes to explain exceptionally high performance, and the more urgent the requirement to identify the key loci in order to establish any credibility. To me, a far more parsimonious explanation is that under many typically African conditions phenotypic expression of intelligence is largely suppressed by the many plagues of this continent. There's currently a great flowering of cultural advancement in a number of west African states and if that correlates with anything, it's the emergence of a sizeable middle class over the last 30 years or so (post colonial independence). They are too good and there are too many of them to be consistent with your statistical analysis. For the reasons outlined above, the fact that there is an 'IQ elite' in Nigeria (and it only has to produce one highly exceptional individual) demonstrates that the genetic material necessary to achieve that excellence is inherent in the parent population. So my statistical evidence is Wole Soyinka - our Nobel laureate. I could have chosen from many others.

Except recent studies of the performance of African immigrants to both the US and UK when analysed by nationality or tribal affiliation. http://www.unz.com/article/the-iq-gap-is-no-longer-a-black-and-white-issue/ This is consistent with my own experience of mentoring Nigerian graduates in chemical engineering over the last 17 years. Even with the many shortcomings of the Nigerian education system, it is supplying a steady stream of young people suitable for one of the most intellectually demanding of professions. This group should not exist if the data, assumptions and interpretations of Lynn et al were correct.

Thank you for that link. It's one that everyone following this thread should read very carefully. One small factette that isn't mentioned is that practically every kid in Africa grows up learning some local version of mancala (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancala). Superficially very simple but the strategic complexity is very deep, extremely so in songo, which is the version I tried to master when I was based in Gabon. I was a fairly serious chess player back in the UK and assumed that with a bit of practice I'd soon be able to take on anybody. Not so. We still play a Nigerian version (ncho in my wife's language) now and then. She lets me win occasionally.

If these figures were true (any reasonable permutation of them), And the figures meant something meaningful about overall intelligence. And that the frequency distributions follow a Gaussian curve. The suggestion in the data that the means are within the order of one standard deviation of each other implies that there is considerable overlap in the distributions. This has profound implications on the interpretation of that data that are being lost in the loose language been used here. If the mean IQ of population A is higher than the mean IQ of population B, this does not mean that all of population A has a higher IQ than every member of population B. Indeed, an average individual of population A ranked by IQ against a modest random sample taken from population B is highly unlikely to have the highest IQ. The expectation would be that he/she would rank somewhat above average in the mixed population. Therefore a statement of the generic kind 'population A is more intelligent than population B' is highly misleading and in context deeply offensive. The data is not incompatible with population B producing a significant number of Nobel prize winners. And indeed, this is what we see. The most able of any geographic region have significantly higher abilities than the bulk of any other population. We can take this further. If it is supposed that each geographic population is characterised by a distinct assembly of haplotypes (I hope that's the right word) then within each of those assemblages lies the potential for some individuals within those populations to achieve excellence at a global level. Seen in this light, the 'average' IQ of a population is pretty meaningless. Perhaps that society historically has needed more warriors and agricultural labourers than skilled craftsmen, and the IQ distribution amongst that population has skewed accordingly. But each population retains the same potential to adapt to new conditions and produce the requisite proportion of individuals of higher intellectual level when the need arose. What would have been the average IQ of the British population in the depths of the dark ages? I doubt if it would have been particularly impressive. Society's needs of the time were to plough clay and flay vikings. You don't need a particularly high IQ for those activities.

Like Couette flow (and indeed, all other simply defined flow regimes) the Rayleigh-Plesset equation is derived from Navier-Stokes. Or rather one set of Navier-Stokes for each of the two different phases, with the introduction of surface tension as a coupled boundary condition linking the two. While there is a certain unity to the Navier-Stokes equations in terms of keeping faith with the First Law, the Second Law tends to be spooned into it via a characteristic pressure-density relationship as essentially a boundary condition moreorless at the discretion of the investigator (with sound justification, one hopes). Perhaps one day, the Second Law may become more integral in the formulation of the Navier-Stokes, and the complexity of turbulent regimes be more clearly defined as an equilibrium distribution of energy in accordance with QED, I wonder which will be solved first.

Persuasive. I did find the more recent Fractionating Human Intelligence Hampshire, Adam et al. Neuron , Volume 76 , Issue 6 , 1225 - 1237 (http://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(12)00584-3.pdf) a far more comfortable read than a number of others that have been mentioned.

Given the history of this line of research, it is very tempting to dismiss the entire corpus as 'Ex taupi causa' (aka 'Fruit of the Poisonous Tree'). The archaeological record demonstrates quite clearly that the major technological advances of the prehistoric and early historical times (copper age. bronze age etc) occurred independently and roughly (give or take the odd millenium) contemporaneously around the globe. It is really hard to explain this if a priori assumptions are made of immutable differences in the basic intelligence of different global populations. Perhaps someone could identify some defective European marker that explained why iron smelting came so much later to Europe than say Sumer, the Ganges valley and a number of sub-saharan cultures (Nok, some Tanzanian sites)? Sounds ridiculous? Compare and contrast the agendas, Worth reading is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_of_Igbo-Ukwu For two reasons. One to wonder at the beauty and technical sophistication, and two to note the automatic switch to denial mode of the academic community. Science has shown itself incapable of policing itself effectively on this topic to date. I wonder if there is any cause for hope.

It's actually a lot more than a matter of contrasting ideology. Lynn has stated "What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the ‘phasing out’ of such peoples...Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality." When someone starts discussing the phasing out of whole cultures, several thousand of which are presumably the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa against which he seems to have a particular contempt, and which among many others would include the 'phasing out' of my dear wife, then it goes beyond ideology. I'm not going to argue this in your frame of reference, because your frame of reference systemically denies any view that contradicts your beliefs. It is founded on the logical fallacy of begging the question and goes downhill from there. Instead, I will turn this around. I married my wife because among other things, she has the wit to match me in verbal argument, which frankly is a rare find anywhere. Now her ability to express a coherent argument in English is far superior to what you've been able to bring to the table in this thread. And English is her third language. Now I pass your ridiculous little test with flying colours. Just out of curiosity I took my first IQ test since my early teens (http://www.free-iqtest.net/).After a few bottles of Gulder (and 40 prior years of moderate to heavy drinking) I think 146 pretty well puts me in Ubermensch territory doesn't it? In your terms? The key question is - who do you - according to your terms of reference - think needs to be phased out. My wife, or you. Because let's face it - you're not a high achiever are you?

Since that paper assumes Lynn's figures and conclusions uncritically as its starting point, how can its credibility be any higher? I'm sure you're well aware that much of Rindermann's referenced source material (Lynn, Jensen, Rushton, Gottfredson, Gordon among others) was heavily financed by the Pioneer Fund, an American foundation established in 1937 by Wickliffe Preston Draper after a visit to Germany to further two causes (according to its incorporation documents) 1) Encouraging the propagation of those "descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States and/or from related stocks, or to classes of children, the majority of whom are deemed to be so descended". 2) To support academic research and the "dissemination of information, into the 'problem of heredity and eugenics'" and "the problems of race betterment". The fund seems to have been extremely generous (and until it was 'outed' extremely secretive) to those researchers who managed to produce results in broad agreement with its aims. Lynn remains heavily involved in its administration.

But Lynn's figures have been thoroughly discredited haven't they? Your own reference cites the case of his estimate of the national average IQ of Equatorial Guinea being based solely on tests carried out on 'a group of children in a home for the developmentally disabled in Spain'. I presume you must believe this level of scientific rigour to be acceptable? Rather than, say, profoundly dishonest?

This may be totally off the wall (I'm an engineer) But could the universe be approaching zero average geometrical 'curvature' asymptotically in the same sense that its thermodynamic expansion asymptotically approaches absolute zero temperature? Edit: Afterthought. Could the flattening of spacetime curvature be in some sense the work performed by the expansion of the universe on its surrounding envelope?

Everything you say is true. Ironically, I did consider raising the postulates of thermodynamics as an example of an axiomatic approach to the definition of energy. But then decided that the point would probably be missed.

No. Not in science. Until someone comes up with a complete and comprehensive description of reality, no one will really be sure which phenomena are primitive and which are derived. In fact, the further we progress, the more abstract everything seems to become. So we make do with consistency, testability and repeatability, with all quantities on more or less an equal footing. It seems to work well enough. So perhaps you should save your idealism for philosophy class.

And you will never get one, for the simple reason that it is a universal quantity that exists in a multitude of different forms. And thanks to frames of reference considerations, we cannot even agree on a zero value, so it is only meaningful to discuss changes in energy. Ultimately, you end up with 'That property of a closed system that is conserved as a result of the First Law of Thermodynamics'. Delta E equals zero. How you conceptualise E is purely a matter of personal preference. But it must encompass the universal element - ie a recognition of the quantitative equivalence of heat, work, kinetic energy, gravitational/electrical/chemical potential, rest mass etc etc etc. Personally, I view it as the sum total of all motion or potential to move. Works for me. Others may differ.

It's actually a little worse than that. The energy sector is not short of capable people who understand the physics, their role in that physics, and the likely long term consequences of that physics. In most cases, they can call on much greater intellectual resources than any government department has immediately to hand, and more to the point, they know exactly how to do so, because getting the science right is the make or break factor in the development of their business. At boardroom level, the evidence has been weighed, and the only sensible course of action decided. They will strive to make as much profit as they can, while they can, before the manure hits the turboprop.

Section 25 (Waste Management) of Perry's Chemical Engineer's Handbook. Good general overview of legal obligations (for US at least), and practical means of meeting those obligations. Plus an extensive reference list for research into specific areas of interest.

Bit of a confusing post. It's not feasible to refrigerate from ambient to typical LNG temperatures in a single stage. Typically we might employ three stages in cascade, each using a refrigerant appropriate for the temperature range of that stage. Hence we tend not to look at different refrigerants in isolation, but a system of refrigerants that complement each other, such as the propane-ethylene-methane system. For instance, ethane isn't used, not because it's a poor refrigerant, but because it's an inefficient refrigerant for the temperature range between an economic propane expansion stage temperature and methane compression stage temperature. There's a very good introduction to refrigeration processes in the GPSA Handbook.

Not much left of a photon after an electron has absorbed its energy. Forgive me. In the absence of a better explanation, my mind can cope with seeing elementary particles as 'structured energy' with various properties of symmetry, directionality, physical size etc. Perhaps I give energy an inflated significance, But then, my main field is thermodynamics so what do you expect? At least you didn't come up with 'fields'. Or 'space-time'.