The Smart Set (Part 1)

What Is Intelligence?

Photo by Anton Maksimov 5642.su on Unsplash

This is essay, the first in a series, is drawn from Edward Dutton’s book Making Sense of Race (2020).

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The most controversial aspect of the study of race—the thing that makes it untouchable—is undoubtedly intelligence. Contemporary academia can tolerate a discussion of race differences in ear-wax density. Intelligence, on the other hand, is considered highly offensive. It raises the specter of structural inequality in a "color blind" society and so-called "genetic determinism," the idea that an individual’s life is fixed due to factors he cannot control.

Regardless of our skittishness on the matter, race differences in intelligence are simply a consequence of our understanding of the races as subspecies of mankind. Regarding J. Phillippe Rushton’s Life History model of racial differences, the more "harsh yet predictable" an ecology is, the more likely it is to select for intelligence.¹ The ecology’s harshness will mean that basic needs are met to a lesser extent, ensuring that there are a larger number of more difficult problems to solve—such as how to keep warm and how to find food in winter, with the essence of intelligence being the ability to solve complex problems. When such an ecology is "predictable," intelligence will be heavily selected for, because intelligence allows people to be strongly future-oriented, planning for how they will survive the winter at the height of summer. Cooperative groups are more likely to survive in such harsh conditions, as has been shown by computer modeling and intelligence predicts the ability to solve social problems, get on with and trust other people, and regulate one’s emotions in order to avoid fights, as we will see below.² Also, the more difficult and the more group-oriented the ecology is, the more important intelligence will be in rising to the top of the male hierarchy, and thus attracting females. And to a lesser extent, intelligence will also predict being a successful mother and faithful wife, meaning it will be sexually selected for by males as well.

For all these reasons, it makes sense that intelligence is a component, at the group level, of a slow Life History Strategy. An environment that selects for lower intelligence is one in which easy and unpredictableyou can "live for today" and pick the "low-hanging fruit." A K-selected environment, on the other hand, is one in which restraint, problem- solving, and cooperation are required for survival. In that races are evolved to different ancestral environments, it makes sense that there would be race differences in intelligence and that these would be mainly genetic in origin.

The discovery of these average racial differences in IQ has, not surprisingly, led to a great deal of emotional outrage. When American psychologist Arthur Jensen (1923-2012) reported in 1969 that African-Americans had lower average IQs than White Americans, he received death threats, security had to escort him around the University of California at Berkeley campus, and the police advised him to move house.³ When Hans Eysenck (1916- 1997), a psychologist who had fled National Socialist Germany for Britain and who published on race differences in IQ, attempted to speak at the London School of Economics in 1973, his podium was pulled down by a "Maoist" student mob, and he was punched in the face.⁴ Many researchers who dare to enter this "forbidden zone," have found themselves subject to a variety of tactics, including being fired, suspended from teaching, subject to biased or dishonest misconduct investigations (where conformers would be given the benefit of the doubt), unfair research appraisals, withdrawal of funding, public condemnation by their university, withdrawal of honorary university positions, removal from the university’s website (when such positions cannot legally be withdrawn), and, of course, mob violence or the threat thereof.⁵ This is true of many of the scholars whose work is cited in this chapter, including Helmuth Nyborg, Richard Lynn, Noah Carl, Linda Gottfredson, Michael Woodley of Menie, and Jan te Nijenhuis.⁶ But before we turn to their controversial research, we must understand what "intelligence" is and how we can measure it.

What It Means To Be Smart

"Intelligence" can be defined as "the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.”⁷ In essence, intelligence means problem solving. The quicker you can solve the problem, then the more intelligent you are. The harder the problem has to be before it is simply beyond you, then the more intelligent you are.

Intelligence is quantified by the intelligence quotient (IQ), a score that can be derived from a number of standardized tests. These tests measure reasoning ability across a wide range of areas, for example, verbal, mathematical, and spatial. Abilities in these subsections positively correlate with abilities in the other subsections; in other words, if you’re good at one thing, you’re likely to be good at a lot of things. This insight allows us to posit that intelligence tests together measure an underlying factor called "general intelligence," which is designated as "g." This is the essence of intelligence, and it is what we are talking about when we say that one person is "more intelligent" than another.

What about specific cognitive abilities? We all know people who have, say, very good language comprehension but poor mathematical ability. But in fact, these people are unusual—the exceptions that prove the rule. Across a large group of people, all specific cognitive abilities are positively correlated with each other, and this is also true of most specific cognitive abilities for most individuals. Intelligence can be conceived of like a pyramid. At the base, there are numerous specialized abilities—such as throwing a dart—which are weakly associated with general intelligence. Above these are the key intelligence types of verbal, spatial, and mathematical, which even more strongly correlate with g. And g itself constitutes the apex of the pyramid.

In this line, intelligence shouldn’t be understood like a "talent," like say, one individual’s preternatural ability to shoot a basketball through a hoop or paint a beautiful landscape in watercolor—though, it should be noted that general intelligence is associated with better motor skills and focus. g can be described as the ability to apply the mind to the world around you—to think analytically and creatively. g also doesn’t mean that you’re "just good at taking tests." In fact, it correlates with a number of traits that are overwhelmingly considered to be social and moral norms: health, civic participation, trustworthiness, artistic creativity, and so on.

As mentioned above, it cannot possibly be argued that intelligence is "a very Western concept," a typical criticism of the scientific study of the matter. Proxies for intelligence, like general knowledge, social skills, and altruism, are things that are valued in all cultures.⁸ And intelligence is negatively associated with criminality, which is disliked in all cultures. Intelligence is also robustly correlated with education, income, and health. As such, intelligence cannot be dismissed as context-dependent or as only relevant in largely White countries— nor can it be dismissed as unimportant. And we know that these tests are reliable because their results correlate with other intuitive measures of cognitive ability, such as educational success.

The (Dreaded) Bell Curve

As mentioned, intelligence can be measured, however imperfectly, by IQ tests. This in itself is "controversial," due in large part to the fact that most people—including most intelligent people— don’t like the idea of being defined by a standardized test, or perhaps they simply don’t like taking standardized tests. But an IQ test—or something like the American SAT or GRE or Britain’s A-Level—is an intellectual challenge; it is a problem-to-be-solved. And an intelligence test is certainly less stressful than the "tests" of yesteryear, which included avoiding getting eaten by predators or storing up enough food and supplies in summer so you wouldn’t starve or freeze to death in winter.

Rather like height, IQ is "normally distributed" across a population through what looks like a "bell curve." Millions of individual instances form a clear picture in aggregate. Many things that can be quantified naturally form this kind of distribution. There is an average, a range that captures the majority of the sample, and increasing infrequencies at the extremes. For instance, among adult American males, the average height is 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 meters). Most people you meet in your life will be between 5-feet 6-inches and 6-feet 2-inches tall (or between 1.68 and 1.88 meters). Men either shorter or taller than these standard deviations are rare, and, of course, there are physical limits at both extremes.

Figure 7.1. Idealized Normal Distribution

With IQ, the population mean is set at 100, with a standard deviation (SD) of 15 points. Your intelligence is quantified relative to others from the same population group, which is typically those who live in your country. Intelligence increases with age during childhood, peaking at around the age of 35.⁹ Even a below average 16-year-old performs better than a very clever 3-year-old who can already read. IQ is therefore calculated relative to people of the same age. The average person scores 100; anything less than this is below average; and anything above it is above average.

Most people have an IQ of around 100, with the percentages with lower or higher IQs tapering off on both sides. As one standard deviation (SD) is already defined as 15 points, 68 percent of people have an IQ between 85 and 115, and 95 percent of people have an IQ between 70 and 130 (±2 SD). This is the "normal" range. If you score below it, you are classified as retarded. If you score above it, then you are exceptionally bright.

In 1994, most of the worldwide media were scandalized by the publication of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s Bell Curve.¹⁰ In fact, much of their data and argumentation had been familiar to specialists since the First World War. Herrnstein and Murray merely brought the science of intelligence back into popular relevance. The United States has a normal distribution of IQ just like any other country; on that point, there was no controversy. But Herrnstein and Murray’s thesis was that IQ distribution was the foundation of the American social-class structure. And being largely heritable, IQ simply can’t be overcome through public policy. The reaction became particularly inflamed when the authors broke down the data for Black and White IQs into separate distributions. These can be seen in Figure 7.2 on the next page. They observed that the average American Black IQ lags about 15 points behind the average White IQ (85 vs. 100)—one standard deviation. A standard deviation difference in averages is significant, but this still means that there is considerable overlap in cognitive ability between the two races. However, when the data are adjusted to reflect the frequency distributions proportional to the racial composition of the U.S. population, a more powerful image comes into view in Figure 7.3. The adjusted distribution reflects both the broad White middle class and the Black lower and under-classes, which were not participating in the wealth and abundance of their fellow citizens.

Much larger differences can be found around the world. Black Africans have an average IQ of around 70; the 85 IQ of African-Americans reflects the higher living standards in America and significant White admixture. Australian Aborigines are even lower at 64. The Northeast Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) have an average of 105, slightly higher than Europeans. Ashkenazi Jews average as high as 112 (or even higher according to some estimates).

Table 7.1. IQ Around the World

Northeast Asian / 105
European / 100
Arctic Peoples / 91
Southeast Asians / 87
Native Americans / 86
Pacific Islanders / 85
South Asians / 84
North Africans/Arabs / 84
Sub-Saharan Africans / 70
Australian Aborigines / 64
Bushmen / 54
Pygmies / 53

The insights of The Bell Curve, and similar efforts to take race and intelligence seriously, can be considered good news on many fronts. Politicians and social scientists long fretted over America’s decline in educational achievement and warned that American schools are "failing" or that the system is "broken." In fact, American schools only fail at the impossible task of overcoming thousands of years of human evolution. According to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), White Americans score at levels at or above most Western and Central European nations. And Black Americans score significantly higher than their cousins in Africa. Asian Americans even outpace students in Korea and Japan, possibly due to the IQ-Immigration nexus.¹¹

In the next installment of this series, we will turn to the history and controversies over IQ testing and critics of the concept of human intelligence.

1. J. Philippe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishing, 1995).

2. Robert Axelrod and Ross A. Hammond, "The Evolution of Ethnocentric Behavior," Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50 (2006): 1-11.

3. Arthur Jensen, "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?" Harvard Educational Review, 9 (1969): 1-123.

4. Hans Eysenck, "Introduction: Science and Racism," Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe, ed. Roger Pearson (Washington: Scott Townsend Publishers,1991).

5. Helmuth Nyborg, "The Greatest Collective Scientific Fraud of the 20th Century: The Demolition of Differential Psychology and Eugenics," MankindQuarterly, 51 (2011): 241-268.

6. Noah Carl and Michael A. Woodley of Menie, "A Scientometric Analysis of Controversies in the Field of Intelligence Research," Intelligence, 77(2019): 101-397.

7. Linda Gottfredson, "Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial With 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography," Intelligence, 24 (1997): 13-23.

8. David Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

9. Kathleen Kirasic, "Acquisition and Utilization of Spatial Information by Elderly Adults: Implications for Day-to-Day Situations," in Everyday Cognition in Adulthood and Later Life, eds. Leonard Poon, David Rubin and Barbara Wilson, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989).

10. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994)

11. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), "Results From PISA 2018— United States," https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_USA.pdf; see also, Steve Sailer, "The New 2018 PISA School Test Scores: USA! USA!" Unz Review, December 3, 2019, https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-new-2018-pisa-school-test-scores-usa-usa/.