Race and intelligence
Tying intelligence to racial characteristics is a dead number
Olga Tabolina, XX2 century
The repeated statement of the Nobel laureate that caused a scandal earlier this year James Watson about the difference in the intelligence of whites and blacks secretly warms the soul of many: Watson and I are good fellows! Not like some! The pursuit of intelligence goes in two directions. The first is to study, study and study. Checking information, building and verifying hypotheses... is long, tedious, the result is not guaranteed. Second: consider yourself a part of the community, smart by definition. The main thing is not to make a mistake with a system-forming feature. If you choose the community of "scientists" or "electricians of the 5th category", you can not avoid the hassle. If you take the inherited trait as a basis, you can make happy not only yourself, but also your offspring. Profit!
How things really are, tells Stanislav Drobyshevsky, scientific editor of the Anthropogenesis website.ru, author of the book "The missing link", Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology of the Moscow State University Biofac, which this year celebrates its centenary.
Elementary, Watson
"... Our whole social policy is based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, while all the tests show that in reality this is not the case."J. Watson
XX2 CENTURY. Why didn't Watson's statement revolutionize science?
Stanislav Drobyshevsky. It has nothing to do with science. Firstly, Watson has never studied anthropology or the study of intelligence. It's like I would now make a statement about the structure of DNA on the grounds that I studied it in my first year.
Secondly, Watson appeals to personal experience of working with laboratory assistants. It's about nothing at all. If he traveled every day in a suburban train, like me, he would have a different personal experience and a completely different idea of races. Personal experience is useful for the individual, but for science it is rather a source of cognitive distortion. Science operates with statistics.
Thirdly, he refers to the results of IQ tests. If it wasn't initially nonsense, he should have sounded the alarm – since the abolition of segregation, the IQ of blacks has been growing at a faster rate than that of whites.
XX2 CENTURY. What's wrong with IQ tests?
S. D. There are two jokes about IQ that are not really jokes. The first one says that the IQ test does not test intelligence, but a person's ability to pass an IQ test. This is a well–known phenomenon for a long time: people who have passed the test pass it better next time, and the more and more often they do it, the higher the result will be. The second joke is that the test shows only the intelligence of its creators.
By the way, the developers themselves have always said that this is an indicative thing with limited applicability, from which it is impossible to draw practical conclusions. And the fact that this test then began to be applied right-left is just the problem of people with low intelligence who did not understand which tool fell into their hands, and began to compare graduates of privileged schools with residents of bantustans. And until now, when comparing whites and blacks, they forget about social inertia. Segregation was finally eliminated around the time of my birth. The economic level, the possibility of entering universities, family traditions – all this remains from the old times and has a chance to level out only after 3-5 generations.
The problem is that those who pounced on Watson, for this statement, is understood even less in the question than he is. Now it's generally fashionable to take some celebrity and start kicking her for doing something wrong as a child. Trying to take away his Nobel Prize, as some suggest, is nonsense. If he discovered the double helix of DNA in 1953, then he has already discovered it, and no modern statements will cancel this. As a rule, they do not even try to oppose him in fact. It's just a hype–type, he's famous, and we'll make a show of it.
The third party – nationalists, racists – also do not understand what it is about, but they also want to have their share of the information pie.
XX2 CENTURY. Watson made his first statement about race in 2007, when he was 79 years old. He's 90 now. Maybe it's something age-related?
S. D. I did not see any insanity in his words, rather, it is a common misconception. At the same time, everyone preferred to ignore Watson's phrase that the topic should be studied – in which, I note, he is absolutely right. Because the only treatment for this nonsense, which is layered on all sides, is normal scientific research. To do this, there is a science of race studies, which very few people on the planet are engaged in, and mainly in our country. But the Russian nationalists are unaware of this, they are not very interested in real Russia at all.
Perhaps it will be a discovery for someone, but on controversial issues it is necessary to turn to scientific research, and not to elderly figures of culture and art. And even more so, not to any freaks, racists and people who are crushed by tolerance for the whole head. The only foundation for fighting delusions is science, not prohibitions and tantrums. I don't envy the American public in this regard, because they don't have racial studies. In this matter, they abandoned the scientific method of cognition. Now they are raking what they have.
Villages of geniuses and villages of fools
"The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God."J. Watson
XX2 CENTURY. If intelligence is inherited–and race is also inherited –then a correlation is possible. Then what are the racists wrong about?
S. D. To begin with, racists are trying to tie intelligence to other racial characteristics, in this case, to skin color. This is a dead number already because the racial characteristics themselves are not related to each other in any way. If you can't tell by the color of your eyes what a person's hair color or face shape is, then how can you tell what kind of intelligence he has? They can be combined as you like. Yes, they were grouped due to historical conditions – isolation in a certain territory, for example. But there was no relationship between them, and there is no. And there was a serious selection for intelligence everywhere. This is too important a sign for survival. In principle, it can be assumed that the heavier the environmental conditions, the higher the intelligence, but this is a guess, not a proven fact.
In addition, all racial characteristics are 100 percent inherited. If the population is fair-skinned, then the child will be fair-skinned. Other options are impossible, except by mutation. But you probably know a lot of examples when an unintelligent child was born in an intellectual family. Or vice versa – a genius was born from average parents.
XX2 CENTURY. And why is this happening?
S. D. Because intelligence is not a racial trait at all. Not everything is racial that is inherited. For example, genetically we have one head and two legs, but these signs have no racial significance. Racially diagnostic are those signs that have population variability, and one–headedness is too monotonous a sign. Similarly, too diverse signs cannot be considered as racial. And this fully applies to intelligence. It's too different for all people.
And given that intelligence is not only genetic, but also environmental, how can you evaluate it by race? It is influenced by many other factors: nutrition, stress, illness, upbringing, etc. In other words, race is a complex of traits that have nothing to do with intelligence. And there is not a single study that clearly shows the connection between race and intelligence.
XX2 CENTURY. There is a well-known case of the Italian teacher Maria Montessori, who studied with children who were considered mentally retarded, and then they showed a better result than ordinary schoolchildren. How large is the proportion of the non-hereditary component of human intelligence? What is the ratio?
S. D. It is fashionable now to give some figures: 70 percent, 40 percent… In fact, no one knows this even about the usual signs, and even more so about intelligence. If you see such a figure somewhere, it only means that it is taken from the ceiling.
Attempts are being made – the same twin method. But it is fundamentally unclear how this can be calculated at all. After all, it is not enough that a person has a predisposition to a certain activity. There must be a long series of factors for it to manifest itself and it can be fixed.
Let's say I have a genetic talent for music. In order for it to be realized, it is necessary that someone in my environment plays music. I must have access to musical instruments. And if I live in a society where there is no concept of music, then I may have the right genes, but I will never become a musician. I will show the desired result only if I am placed in a musical environment.
And so – for each attribute. The same Watson, whom we know as a brilliant biologist, would hardly have shown a good result if an artist had been raised from him. I don't know how he paints, but I've never heard of the artist James Watson.
Genetic inheritance and environmental influence are closely intertwined. It is impossible to realize what is not written in the genes at all. But even if there are genes without suitable conditions, there will be no result.
However, even if we manage to make calculations on one population, this does not mean that they will be true for other populations. The relationships that are captured in one place may not manifest themselves in other cases. Man is very diverse, and intelligence is his most variable part. Even people who have shown themselves brilliantly in one thing, in other areas can be absolutely incompetent. For example, a wonderful musician can be no mathematician, although it would seem that these are close things. But that doesn't mean he's stupid, does it?
At one time, there were experiments on breeding "smart" mice that pass the maze best of all. It turned out that these mice show poor results in tests where you need to press buttons. In humans, this is even more variable.
Apart from the fact that we can't really determine what intelligence is, the methods of calculating coefficients show more or less exactly the average value for the group. It doesn't work for the individual, only for the population. And a race consists of many such populations. That is, even if we find somewhere a "village of fools" and a "village of geniuses", it will not say anything about races, because there are other villages nearby, and there will be a different ratio.
XX2 CENTURY. Well, if we take the child of the biggest fools from the "village of fools", put him in a different environment and train him diligently – can he eventually become smarter than educated Europeans?
S. D. It's very individual. On average, a child from the "village of fools", no matter how you train him, will be lower in level than a child from the "village of geniuses". But this is on average. And individually it may turn out to be both. And what is the probability that he will be smarter or dumber, we do not know.
The peculiarity of human intelligence, our feature that distinguishes us from animals, is that a person has an extreme minimum of instinctive impulses stitched into the genome. There are only tendencies fixed genetically: excitability, love of adventure, temperament – something that is based on serotonin, dopamine, receptors and so on. But no specific solutions are stitched in us, except for a few primitive reflexes, like I ran into a sharp one – I pulled my hand away. Which, however, is not at all about intelligence, the very essence of which is the solution of non–standard tasks. Modern races all have, plus or minus, a single intelligence. And given the exorbitant individual variation, we generally cannot, taking one representative of a race, predict whether he is smarter or stupider than some representative of another race.
The fact that we can find a "village of fools" does not mean that everyone will be fools there. On average, yes. But this rule works for the village, not for the race. The race consists of many such "villages". And in any race there are more intelligent and less intelligent groups.
Am I smarter than everyone else in the world, rougher and whiter than everyone else?
"It is natural for a person to reason wisely, but to act stupidly."A. France
XX2 CENTURY. In one of your speeches, you said that if you put an African savage and a European professor in the taiga, we will immediately see a difference in their intelligence, and it will not be in favor of the professor.
S. D. It is. If you arrange such an intelligence test, some bushman will not just survive, but quickly provide himself with everything he needs. He will build himself everything he needs, build a fire and settle down with the maximum possible comfort. This shows how the concept of "intelligence" is multifaceted and not reducible to fashionable questionnaires. We, in fact, do not know what to measure it in.
In general, the basis of racist ideas, which, in particular, Watson voiced, is, firstly, a misunderstanding of what intelligence is. Many people believe that intelligence has fallen from the sky, that it is such a gift of God that we have – simply because it exists. That's not so. Our intelligence is a product of natural selection to solve certain tasks. It was formed in us in the same way as our hands, feet and all our other organs. And he did not appear in order to measure them, study at universities and count algorithms. It was selected from Paleolithic hunters (and not even the upper, but the lower), who solved the problems of interaction with the environment.
Now let's remember what races are. They existed even among ancient monkeys, but in their current form were formed about 12 to 4 thousand years ago. (In the Upper Paleolithic 20-40 thousand years ago there were their own races, they were ancestral to modern ones and were distributed differently on the planet). The opinion that whites are smarter than colored people implicitly implies that the mind was required and could only be formed in European conditions. That is, when hunting walruses, there is a selection for intelligence, and when hunting lions, there is no selection for intelligence. Or – in Europe, to get water and make a fire, intelligence is required, but somewhere in the desert it is not required. Complete nonsense, in a word.
And then, the very idea that whites are smarter than everyone else is based on several achievements that exist in a short period of time: IQ, the composition of Nobel laureates. Almost all the arguments will fit in the last 200 years.
But if we lived not now, but 60 thousand years ago, there would be no doubt that all the great discoveries were made by Africans. Microlitic technology, plate technology – all this is their merit. The Papuans of New Guinea had agriculture almost before anyone else – perhaps even earlier than in The Fertile Crescent. Ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, American Indians, Chinese, Vietnamese created very bad civilizations. And where was the superintelligent white race at that time?
When not only bronze, but also iron appeared in the Middle East, the whole of Europe ran with stone axes, in skins – in full. In Finland, the Mesolithic ended 2000 years ago, that is, they still ran with microliths. The inhabitants of the Russian plain were savages until the IX century, because it was banally cold – there were no normal plant varieties or animal breeds, and there were not many ores here. And nothing, they got up. Now, maybe not ahead of the whole planet, but at a very good level.
There are no dumb races, there are more suitable and less suitable conditions. In different historical epochs, in different historical territories, different races have achieved great achievements.
The centers of civilization are moving around the planet. New technologies, no matter who invented them, are quickly borrowed, and each time has its own breakthroughs. The one who first discovered the use of fire made a much greater breakthrough than the one who created the nuclear reactor. The one who invented the boat, we can say, became the founder of new races that inhabited the continents. The creation of liner tools, the melting of metals, the three–field are turning points in the history of mankind, and there were a lot of such discoveries. Ask any technologist or archaeologist, he will immediately dump out a bucket of achievements that have become decisive in one period or another. Moreover, both domestic and intellectual – for example, the invention of zero, discovered in parallel in India and in America.
XX2 CENTURY. And if we look at it from a historical perspective, who is smarter?
S. D. Hunter-gatherers. The closer a person is to nature, the more brains work. The farmer has everything on schedule: to plow, sow, compress ... Unusual situations happen, but as an exception.
If you read the notes about hunter-gatherers (or even better, the notes of the hunter–gatherers themselves, there are some), you can see how they solve some pretty big problems. For example, a hunter comes to an empty place in the forest, and he must understand who was here, how many people, what happened to them. And, I'll tell you, Sherlock Holmes is no match for hunter-gatherers. For them, any situation is non–standard, and they approach it creatively.
Another thing is that from the point of view of some particularly civilized gentleman, it may not look like that, but that's his problem.
XX2 CENTURY. Isn't degeneration waiting for us due to the fact that modern life has become safe?
S. D. In general, the evolutionary tasks that humanity faced when intelligence was being formed have already been solved in one way or another. But the main increase in the world's population is due to rural areas, and there, with the selection for intelligence, I think everything is fine now.
The female mind
"White niggas in a white ghetto."Vis Vitalis
XX2 CENTURY. The rhetoric about the intellectual superiority of whites over non-whites is consonant with statements about the difference in intelligence between men and women. What do you think about it?
S. D. About men and women, you can repeat the same thing. The genes responsible for intelligence are not on the Y chromosome responsible for gender. Everything there is determined by the SRY sequence: if there is one in the genome, then it turns out to be a man, and if not, a woman. The inheritance of intelligence is not related to this in any way, other genes in other chromosomes are responsible for it.
Here they can also refer to the different content of sex hormones in men and women. But this is not about intelligence, but about temperament. Hormones do not affect the level of intelligence, but the possibilities of its realization in specific environmental conditions. In some conditions, a more assertive temperament is preferable, in others – a calmer one, while intelligence can be anything.
What really affects intelligence is cultural differences. If there is an opinion in society that women are not capable of learning, and we will not teach them – on average they will be stupider. If the opinion is accepted in society that women are also people and they need to be taught, men and women will have the same intelligence. If it is accepted that women are smart and men are morons, women will be smart and men will be morons. And if society relies on the education of not all white men, but only blue-eyed brunettes, then only blue-eyed brunettes will be smart.
This can be seen in different countries. If there is no differentiation in teaching and preferences are not expressed, who to teach, boys or girls, there is no difference there. Look at the MSU employees – women and men about equally. And if you take some mega-Islamic country where women have to stay at home and keep a low profile, there will be no women in science there. Although even here it is necessary to avoid rough generalizations. For example, I recently visited Sudan, where there are more women in science than men. It has its own specifics. But it does not depend on genes in any way. Well, there are no female or male intelligence genes. Sex is determined by the Y chromosome and hormones.
In addition, we should not forget that the intellectual superiority of men affected a specific historical stage. There are a huge number of cultures where it was women who were engaged in creative professions – weaving, pottery, etc. For example, itelmen women in Kamchatka wove baskets of grass that did not let water through. Food was cooked in such baskets by plunging red-hot stones into them. It is clear that the Nobel Prize will not be given for this, but try to weave one yourself somehow.
XX2 CENTURY. Intelligence has become a fetish, but is there a social need for it? For example, the life of an office worker consists of repeating memorized operations, which, with a strong desire, can probably be taught to a monkey. If he is more intelligent than he is, he will only be distracted from work, think about the eternal and get drunk, don't you think?
S. D. When life is set up by smart people who built factories, factories, invented technologies in past generations, of course, you can live a moron. Don't worry about anything, watch YouTube videos all day and live in peace. But if this goes on for a long time, then the reserve of the great ancestors subsides, and the standard of living falls. Then there is a classic natural selection – morons die out in chorus, and the more or less intelligent ones have the opportunity to survive.
In principle, it is not even necessary to survive with the help of intelligence. Guinea pigs with very poor intelligence also somehow survived to the present day. Or here I have a birch tree under my window – she has no nervous system at all, and nothing, perfectly exists. But still, intelligence is our species feature. If you give it up, then it will no longer be a person. In addition, there is an example of hobbits on Flores, whose brains have decreased from 1 kg to 400 grams, and who, despite this, lived perfectly on their island. But this idyll continued until the Sapiens came. And after that, the Hobbits ended right away.
Still, if we want to remain human, we need to focus on our species–specific feature - intelligence.
Smart kids from Nothing
"If we don't play God, who will?"J. Watson
XX2 CENTURY. Let's say we want to get a generation of brilliant children. What to do: to cross scientists or to develop pedagogy?
S. D. As for the first option, now such a policy is being carried out in Singapore. People with a high IQ are provided with benefits: practically free loans, apartments, etc., so that they have more children. This is quite rational, although, of course, there is no guarantee.
In the past, states engaged in eugenics (Germany, USA) used negative selection: executions, sterilizations. Nothing good came of it. Well, positive selection – why not?
The difficulty lies elsewhere. You can, for example, "pump up the skills" of a dog – bring out one that perfectly brings ducks or pulls out of any crack what is stuck in it. If this is possible with a dog, then, of course, with a little more effort, you can bring out a person. But the question is, will we get an intelligent person in this way? Or will we get a "dachshund"? Intelligence is too big a concept.
Of course, there was such a selection in nature, otherwise we would not have evolved from Australopithecines. But in nature, it took millions of years to get the result.
The only potentially possible way to go this way quickly is genetic engineering. Too many genes are responsible for intelligence, and how inheritance goes there is not really known. But if this is understood, it will be possible to "twist" the genes. Grow a bucket of brains, effective super neurotransmitters, super synapses, and there will be a cool intelligence.
XX2 CENTURY. And how do you feel about genetic modification?
S. D. If we do not have an apocalypse in the next 50 years, then this is the inevitable future of man.
Gene modification is a cool medical method. Who will refuse that his children do not have Down syndrome, so that they do not suffer from congenital diseases? For example, I have congenital astigmatism. What do you think, if someone suggested that I get 100 percent vision in the zygote stage and have muscles like Hercules as a bonus, I would refuse?
Humanity has many health problems, and genetic modification allows many of them to be solved. Society spends a lot of money on the treatment of thousands of genetic diseases. Isn't it easier to fix it at the start? To do this, it is necessary to study this technology, and not to prohibit it. No one has achieved any breakthroughs with bans yet.
And when we solve this problem, it will be possible not only to treat, but also to improve people – to increase bone strength, reaction speed, and, in particular, intelligence.
XX2 CENTURY. Such human improvement will not lead to accelerated speciation?
S. D. Maybe. Depends on how to do it. Speciation is the appearance of groups that will not be able to interbreed.
XX2 CENTURY. Isn't that scary?
S. D. Is anyone afraid that there are more than 30 species of cats?
There is no good or bad in biology at all. Evaluation criteria are purely human problems. In biology, it's bad only if someone is extinct, and it's bad exclusively for him. For the rest, it's a holiday – an ecological niche has been vacated.
Genetic modification is already being carried out on humans, and the only thing that prevents it from being done on a larger scale is inertia. Banal human stupidity. But it will inevitably be implemented. Now the Chinese have done it, ensuring that children are immune to HIV. Then the Arabs, the Venezuelans, someone else will do it. They will build a laboratory somewhere on Easter Island, invite scientists there and provide services to those who wish.
Interestingly, we cannot carry out genetic modification, but it can be studied. That is, you can learn everything perfectly, but you will not be able to work in your specialty. There is a whole faculty of genetic engineering at Moscow State University, which trains specialists for Western laboratories.
In my opinion, this is insanity. There will always be more adequate people who will understand the profit and will implement it. Some people will be improved, while others will say: "We are so moral that we don't want to change ourselves." Guess which one of them will die out. And evolution will take its course.
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