I have treated intelligence many times; for example:
Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part IV
Race and Reason: The Achievement Gap — Causes and Implications
“Wading” into Race, Culture, and IQ
The Harmful Myth of Inherent Equality
Bigger, Stronger, and Faster — But Not Quicker?
The IQ of Nations
Some Notes about Psychology and Intelligence
“Science” vs. Science: The Case of Evolution, Race, and Intelligence
More about Intelligence
Not-So-Random Thoughts (XXI), fifth item
Intelligence and Intuition
Intelligence, Personality, Politics, and Happiness
Intelligence As a Dirty Word
The material below consists entirely of quotations from cited sources. The quotations are consistent with and confirm several points made in the earlier posts:
- Intelligence has a strong genetic component; it is heritable.
- Race is a real manifestation of genetic differences among sub-groups of human beings. Those subgroups are not only racial but also ethnic in character.
- Intelligence therefore varies by race and ethnicity, though it is influenced by environment.
- Specifically, intelligence varies in the following way: There are highly intelligent persons of all races and ethnicities, but the proportion of highly intelligent persons is highest among Ashkenazi Jews, followed in order by East Asians, Northern Europeans, Hispanics (of European/Amerindian descent), and sub-Saharan Africans — and the American descendants of each group.
- Males are disproportionately represented among highly intelligent persons, relative to females. Males have greater quantitative skills (including spatio-temporal aptitude) relative to females; whereas, females have greater verbal skills than males.
- Intelligence is positively correlated with attractiveness, health, and longevity.
- The Flynn effect (rising IQ) is a transitory environmental effect brought about by environment (e.g., better nutrition) and practice (e.g., learning and application of technical skills). The Woodley effect is (probably) a long-term dysgenic effect among people whose survival and reproduction depends more on technology (devised by a relatively small portion of the populace) than on the ability to cope with environmental threats (i.e., intelligence).
I have moved the supporting material to a new page: “Intelligence“.
Politics and Prosperity 