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From Amazon:
Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own – November 11, 2015
by Garett JonesKindle $16.17
Hardcover $21.11
Over the last few decades, economists and psychologists have quietly documented the many ways in which a person’s IQ matters. But, research suggests that a nation’s IQ matters so much more.
As Garett Jones argues in Hive Mind, modest differences in national IQ can explain most cross-country inequalities. Whereas IQ scores do a moderately good job of predicting individual wages, information processing power, and brain size, a country’s average score is a much stronger bellwether of its overall prosperity.
Drawing on an expansive array of research from psychology, economics, management, and political science, Jones argues that intelligence and cognitive skill are significantly more important on a national level than on an individual one because they have “positive spillovers.” On average, people who do better on standardized tests are more patient, more cooperative, and have better memories. As a result, these qualities—and others necessary to take on the complexity of a modern economy—become more prevalent in a society as national test scores rise. What’s more, when we are surrounded by slightly more patient, informed, and cooperative neighbors we take on these qualities a bit more ourselves. In other words, the worker bees in every nation create a “hive mind” with a power all its own. Once the hive is established, each individual has only a tiny impact on his or her own life.
Jones makes the case that, through better nutrition and schooling, we can raise IQ, thereby fostering higher savings rates, more productive teams, and more effective bureaucracies. After demonstrating how test scores that matter little for individuals can mean a world of difference for nations, the book leaves readers with policy-oriented conclusions and hopeful speculation: Whether we lift up the bottom through changing the nature of work, institutional improvements, or freer immigration, it is possible that this period of massive global inequality will be a short season by the standards of human history if we raise our global IQ.
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Can’t wait for the sequel on negative spillovers.
I think you should break out estimates of various future national and global IQ projections based upon African birthrates, rates of African immigration, possibly Flynn effects, etc.
https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/
I don't think it has been updated with the new higher projections of African population growth. It would be useful to do so.
Why didn’t anybody else think of this before?
I blame Steve Sailer for not suggesting that an effective and efficient strategy for First World do-gooders would be to help Third World countries and their citizens by focusing on targeted micronutrient supplements to their diets.Replies: @MyNewUserName
There are some charts here of projections of falling global mean IQ from 1950 to 2050:
https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/
I don’t think it has been updated with the new higher projections of African population growth. It would be useful to do so.
You mean one data point is less predictive of a single outcome than millions of data points are of a general trend?
Who knew?
Straight out of 1984.
Anyone who has served on a jury knows that twelve people of good will and reasonable intelligence have the cognitive ability of the smartest one squared. Each one contributes something and poor conclusions are shot down rapidly.
Is this true or are you being sarcastic?Replies: @CJ
Next nominee for Oprah’s Book Club?
You know that one commenter had a good idea about iSteve putting amazon links and getting paid, The iSteve Book of the Week/Month club.
I watched The End of the Tour last night. IMDB 7.7
http://www.solarmovie.ac/watch-the-end-of-the-tour-2015-online.html
Jesse Eisenberg played David Lipsky, a Rolling Stone writer that interviews DF Wallace at the end of the book tour after the release of Infinite Jest. It was interesting in showing both the process Wallace went through on tour, and then Lipsky’s desire to be the ‘it’ author like Wallace, receiving both validation for his writing and some money.
Who knows maybe the iSteve book club could become one of those things, that “good news” item that authors could receive saying “you’re validated” and “you’re gonna get paid”. After all, like Coors used to (kind of ) say, “This ain’t no downstream blog.”
Saw this on Tyler Cowen’s blog. It seems like Jones is a GMU guy. I wonder how this belief in spillovers squares with their Open Borders religion.
He’ll be debating the GMU’s Caplan on Open Borders on November 10.
This "debate" is really just a professor publicity stunt. I hope Jones represents the con side with wit and sincerity. It seems that if these professors wanted to sort out their ideological differences, they would do it online in writing, not in a staged theatrical debating style. I'm still curious to see it.
I would like to see Sailer do more public events. Even if these debates are publicity stunts, I'd love to see Sailer on them. The only YouTube videos with Sailer are years old and have some priceless funny witty remarks.
The premise of the Jones book, raise global IQ through nutrition and education, seems inoffensive but weak. The world has put huge emphasis on formal education in the past several decades, and the global gains probably don't meet expectations.Replies: @C. Van Carter
Read Garret Jones’s comments on mass immigration from http://openborders.info/blog/garett-jones-responds-to-my-intelligence-post/
That’s the obvious conclusion to draw, but he is surprisingly blunt about it.
Jones is also an econ professor at GMU. He clearly sees a negative impact on host countries from mass immigration but seems to avoid the controversial subject in a public light. That is completely understandable because it is often frowned on for serious technical experts to get involved in public controversies.
Bryan Caplan has expressed huge admiration for Jones and hosted him as a guest blogger. Jones avoided immigration in his blogging. I find it odd that Caplan is such a fanatical public advocate for mass immigration policy, yet his peers sharply disagree. And their views don’t seem to logically inhabit the same universe. The mass immigration skeptics like Jones seem completely reasonable and sane.
I bet the theory is this: people in poor countries have low IQs, but that’s due at least to some significant degree to poor nutrition, etc. Consequently, even though such people don’t improve their own nation’s outcomes, should they come here, they could improve our nation’s outcomes. At the very least, being in our nation will improve them. I’m guessing that’s part of the stance.
On the other hand, in equilibrium, open borders should equalize IQ's across countries.
But I hear the "nutrition" argument a lot from I usually suspect from people who are simply not prepared to coutenance other, more awkward, reasons.
I have also heard many "wise" people say - in effect - that we should let the third world into the first because it has proven too difficult to reform the latter. David Goodhart in his book has also noted being told this many times. (If I remember correctly Caplan has suggested this.) Personally I think a nuclear bomb would do less damage but then again I am not an intellectual.
Certainly.
Like your child with an IQ of 125 marrying an immigrant with an IQ of 75 so their children can have IQs higher than 125.
Dumbing down is not something to be proud of.
“Whether we lift up the bottom through… freer immigration, it is possible that this period of massive global inequality will be a short season by the standards of human history if we raise our global IQ.”
So the answer to low national IQ is freer immigration? What does this really mean? Immigration _into_ failed nation-states? Or everybody in the world immigrates to the US and Europe? Or….?
All we have to do is raise global IQ? I’m glad we’ve got that problem solved.
Great way to break down the ingroup-outgroup ethnic morality blocking the road to a world government.Replies: @Boris Notspasky
Plenty of problematic statements in the conclusion, such as more effective bureaucracies. In today’s world an effective bureaucracy does less for more money.
They see it as a reason for more immigration.
Why is it always the same?
“We’ve collected all the data to prove only one conclusion, so let’s summarize that data by coming to exactly the opposite conclusion.”
I guess a guy’s got to eat.
We’ve been trying to uplift blacks for 60 years and it’s been a abject failure. Fact is you can’t uplift certain ethnic groups. Some are limited and some unfit for civilized societies.
Of course Jones doesn’t care about that. His tome is nothing but a excuse for 3rd world immigration into the West and what ever defects these newcomers have, it can be fixed by throwing trillions at them until they become like the natives.
Same old story, same failures but on a scales that will destroy the West.
The same website which hosts the open borders loon Bryan Caplan also has essays by Anthony de Jasay:
Open immigration folks actually want to take something--the quality of life of a nation--that's *owned* by a particular group of people and *give it way* for free to others. They aren't libertarians, but wild eyed redistributive socialists.
I'll add, that i think everyone actually senses this underlying ownership. Even the Open Borders do-gooders feel that these foreigners are showing up in *their* country. Even when they welcome foreigners they essentially say welcome to *my* country.... which is why they can pat themselves on their backs, because they sense they are giving away something that's theirs.
But, of course, like all leftist\SJW preening, it's based on patting oneself on the back for giving away stuff--e.g. taxes, jobs, the right to retribution, residency in advanced nation--that actually belongs to *other* people. It's theft.Replies: @C. Van Carter, @Reg Cæsar
http://news.yahoo.com/nastiness-threatens-online-reader-comments-053929979.html
Hilarious account of how many online “news” sites cannot handle disagreement or public opinion, so they are being forced to end reader comments. They want to have a monopoly on the narrative, and on being nasty.
Does this really say anything that the 2002 book by Lynn “IQ and wealth of nations” has already said?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations
You don’t improve the quality of the drinking water by emptying the sewer into the reservoir.
So, a higher IQ bureaucracy is going to……what? Shrink? Reorganize itself out of existence? No possible good can come making something more intelligent that eats twice it’s weight.
laughter. If it took , say 30 to 40 thousand years to get the various IQ averages of the races right now, how long does the New Revolutionary think it will take to…
Joe Webb
The GMU open borders loons work at the Center for Public Choice which was created by James M. Buchanan. Regarding justice in immigration he observed:
I haven’t observed cooperativeness and IQ to be particularly correlated. And Jones, as a professor, should have had ample opportunity to see high-IQ prima donnas in action.
You wouldn’t be able to do this experiment but I’ll bet a country of 100-IQ cooperative, conscientious order-loving Japanese would do way better than a country made up of 150-IQ Syrian rug salesmen out to screw everybody outside their clan.
The problem is a lot of middle class people think that immigration will create more white collar jobs for natives since first generation immigrants are willing to do the unpleasant menial jobs at low cost. They may not say this in formal communications but they certainly think this privately -eg, “I hate cleaing toilets, and working on factory production lines, thank God we have immigrants for that sort of stuff so I can have a nice clean job as a public relations officer. And not only does this create jobs for people like me, but it’s altruistic since poor foreigners get a chance to live in a nicer, wealthier country.”
They don’t factor in that second generation immigrants tend to get lazier and that the working class natives who are displaced by immigrants have to be compensated for with increased welfare payments. This ever expanding tax burden means companies and government departments are regularly downsizing and the non-essential jobs white collar jobs are being cut back with increasing frequency.
It may be part of their stance, but there is no re-set button for the rest of us if they are wrong on the downside.
I can’t believe that nobody’s mentioned *IQ and the Wealth of Nations* by Lynn and Vanhanen. It came out 13 years ago and was quickly shoved down the memory hole.
At $100 for a used copy, it’s priced not to sell. What a shock.
The Open Borders Loon is a curious variant of the Marxist. The Marxist says fairness requires redistribution of wealth and property, the Open Borders Loon says fairness requires redistribution of institutional and social capital.
“You wouldn’t be able to do this experiment but I’ll bet a country of 100-IQ cooperative, conscientious order-loving Japanese would do way better than a country made up of 150-IQ Syrian rug salesmen out to screw everybody outside their clan.”
Didn’t the son of a 150-IQ Syrian rug salesman build a company that destroyed Sony?
I see your (explanation of Caplan’s) point. I suppose, in theory, from a static global utilitarian point of view, letting low IQ foreigners enter our country might raise their IQ or living standards more than it damaged the citizens of a high IQ host country. Not pareto optimal but might maximize some social welfare function (Charles & David Koch’s social welfare function anyway).
On the other hand, in equilibrium, open borders should equalize IQ’s across countries.
“On the other hand, in equilibrium, open borders should equalize IQ’s across countries.”
What if they all equalize a good bit down? Negative progress, here we come.
When the Open Borders Loon says “we” I never know whom he’s referring to.
I have never claimed to be the brightest bunny so I would like to thank my fellow Kiwis for their high average IQ/smart fraction and ensuring I live in a pleasant country with excellent plumbing.
What if they all equalize a good bit down? Negative progress, here we come.
Suppose the top of the worst countries of the world move to the West. Though they are top in their own countries, if they are below average in the West, they both reduce the state of their home country (brain drain) and reduce the state of the West.
What are the chances of this actually happening? Has anybody looked at it?
I think he’s saying that even if you concede that some races have a higher IQ than others, this only puts a moral obligation on high-IQ countries to let in more low-IQ people, so that the latter can benefit from living in a society with a higher average IQ. Why should we keep the benefits of our superior cognitive ability to ourselves, locked selfishly behind closed borders? To the one-world liberal, there’s no reason why a person’s chances in life be circumscribed by the accident of being born in a Sub-Saharan country with an average IQ of 75.
Why allow only the few strong and industrious who can move to the West benefit. Move the benefits of the west to their home and make everyone there better off: the sick, the lazy the poor, everyone.
Much of the comments in this thread presume Garett Jones is an open borders supporter, which is not true.
This “debate” is really just a professor publicity stunt. I hope Jones represents the con side with wit and sincerity. It seems that if these professors wanted to sort out their ideological differences, they would do it online in writing, not in a staged theatrical debating style. I’m still curious to see it.
I would like to see Sailer do more public events. Even if these debates are publicity stunts, I’d love to see Sailer on them. The only YouTube videos with Sailer are years old and have some priceless funny witty remarks.
The premise of the Jones book, raise global IQ through nutrition and education, seems inoffensive but weak. The world has put huge emphasis on formal education in the past several decades, and the global gains probably don’t meet expectations.
http://mason.gmu.edu/~gjonesb/Replies: @Massimo Heitor
Yes, but the son was able to do it in American society, after he was brought up with American values and with an American partner. A beneficiary of “positive spillover’?
Another adopted Californian named Steve comes to mind...
“Didn’t the son of a 150-IQ Syrian rug salesman build a company that destroyed Sony?”
But that kind of proves his point. Jobs was pretty far out on the right-side of the sociopathy bell curve. Turned out great for his individual success, but does anyone think that a society made up solely of quasi-sociopaths would be very successful?
You need the cooperative, self-sacrificing worker bees. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians is problematic.
Jobs needed Wozniak along with 1000s of code monkeys and 1000s of electronics factory workers, etc
Make of it what you will, but there is the funny story of when Atari hired Jobs to do a job, and he used his partner Wozniak to do the work. However, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had paid him only $700, which they split 50-50. Later Wozniak learned that Atari had actually paid Jobs $5000, and Jobs kept the difference for himself, in true Syrian rug-merchant fashion. (As I recall, a version of this story was used in one of the last episodes of "Mad Men," where Joan is hired by a company to do a certain job, and Joan enlists the services of her new "partner" Peggy Olson, for a lot less than Joan was going to make on the deal.)
Of course Burke was thinking of societal arrangements more than the design of the next iPhone but clearly the reckless modification of mass immigration into settled societies which will jam the delicate mechanisms of careful regeneration.
The (inevitably imperfect) arrangements designed to cater for all sections of the bell curve are thus broken. But the progressives promise a new global utopia so it will be worth it...
Hilarious account of how many online "news" sites cannot handle disagreement or public opinion, so they are being forced to end reader comments. They want to have a monopoly on the narrative, and on being nasty.Replies: @Anonymous
Is it possible to have a decent comment section in a very general forum like mainstream news without real names for commenters? Even with real names, for the most general mainstream news that have a mass audience, the pool of potential commenters is big enough that enough people who don’t mind ranting and dominating conversations (like the proverbial crazy Uncle at Thanksgiving dinner) will be attracted to the comment threads
It’s as if people who haven’t read La Griffe du Lion are doomed to do a bad job of coming to the conclusions he so eloquently worked out more than 10 years ago:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/imm.htm
tl;dr – the mean IQ in the US is going to drop by 3 points by 2050 because of immigration – and that’s going to cost us 15% of our per capita GDP.
This "debate" is really just a professor publicity stunt. I hope Jones represents the con side with wit and sincerity. It seems that if these professors wanted to sort out their ideological differences, they would do it online in writing, not in a staged theatrical debating style. I'm still curious to see it.
I would like to see Sailer do more public events. Even if these debates are publicity stunts, I'd love to see Sailer on them. The only YouTube videos with Sailer are years old and have some priceless funny witty remarks.
The premise of the Jones book, raise global IQ through nutrition and education, seems inoffensive but weak. The world has put huge emphasis on formal education in the past several decades, and the global gains probably don't meet expectations.Replies: @C. Van Carter
“An even more important implication of my research is that low-skilled immigrants should be allowed to work in the world’s richest countries: Low-skilled immigrants have little or no net effect on the wages of the citizens of rich countries, but their lives massively improve when they are allowed to work in these countries. I’m currently at work on a book on these themes: The working title is Hive Mind: How your nation’s IQ matters so much more than your own.”
http://mason.gmu.edu/~gjonesb/
My other quote, where he says low IQ immigrants will tend to make high IQ nations worse, seems to conflict. I guess he believes the positives to migrants outweigh the negatives to the hosts?
no, it was the son of a German-American woman who put the hurt on Sony.
That's it, blame the Germans. Destruction must be in their genes. Look at what Hitler did. Having tried their act on the world, the Germans are now trying their act on their own country---why should those Syrians be allowed to have all that fun in their home country?
Always so convenient for the Garett Joneses of the world to ignore standard deviations.
All the schooling in the world and all the “better nutrition” (whatever the hell that means for r-breeding-strategy populations that have doubled in numbers again and again eating dirt cookies and bats) may in fact “raise” their IQ. Eventually. At huge cost to the more advanced host/overseer population.
From a mean of 65 or 70 or 75 to a mean of 70 or 75 or 80.
At those massively costly minorly improved levels, at plus-one SD the bulk of the population will still fall well below 95. You’d think somebody using the hive metaphor would understand population distributions a bit better.
And that’s ignoring the panoply of problematic behavioral traits that have been selected for in r-breeding-strategy populations (the opposite of patience, cooperation, and long/complex/abstract memory). Those traits will still be there even if IQ does raise the few meager points.
Also, the far more advanced host population will continue to develop its IQ base, ever shifting to the right. I.e., the undertow never will catch up and will only drain the host.
But we all can suss that Jones’s view is a combination of Magic Soil plus Magic Food plus Magic School equals Magic Hive.
These views are a pomo mashup–a mythopoetic chimera–of sacred soil, holy communions, insty-genius through osmosis, resulting in utopia.
Sony hurt itself by getting involved in movies and music and neglecting its core tech business. Do one thing well.
What a great quote. I vaguely remember one of the major libertarians (maybe Hayek?) saying something to the effect that no one really belived in socialism, because no one would ever dream of applying it on an international level – opening the borders of Western countries and demanding equality with the masses of the third world.
http://mason.gmu.edu/~gjonesb/Replies: @Massimo Heitor
Wow, I was wrong. Garett Jones is even a signatory on Tabarrok’s Open Letter to Congress. Why is he debating against Caplan on open borders? They are both on the same side?
My other quote, where he says low IQ immigrants will tend to make high IQ nations worse, seems to conflict. I guess he believes the positives to migrants outweigh the negatives to the hosts?
Anyone who has served on a jury knows that twelve people of good will and reasonable intelligence have the cognitive ability of the smartest one squared. Each one contributes something and poor conclusions are shot down rapidly.
Is this true or are you being sarcastic?
Sony isn’t a Japanese company any more.
Putting aside the usual ‘IQ can be equalized!’ nonsense, there is some truth to this. Given IQ is largely inherited, and arises from assertive mating, the more dim-witted the population is, the less chance there is of finding a mate that is a/personally attractive and b/intelligent. In some societies and localities, you can find someone who is both, but not so in other places.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/06/teenage-muslim-migrants-let-off-wrist-slap-violent-gang-rape/
“no, it was the son of a German-American woman who put the hurt on Sony.”
That’s it, blame the Germans. Destruction must be in their genes. Look at what Hitler did. Having tried their act on the world, the Germans are now trying their act on their own country—why should those Syrians be allowed to have all that fun in their home country?
“Jobs needed Wozniak along with 1000s of code monkeys and 1000s of electronics factory workers, etc”
Make of it what you will, but there is the funny story of when Atari hired Jobs to do a job, and he used his partner Wozniak to do the work. However, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had paid him only $700, which they split 50-50. Later Wozniak learned that Atari had actually paid Jobs $5000, and Jobs kept the difference for himself, in true Syrian rug-merchant fashion. (As I recall, a version of this story was used in one of the last episodes of “Mad Men,” where Joan is hired by a company to do a certain job, and Joan enlists the services of her new “partner” Peggy Olson, for a lot less than Joan was going to make on the deal.)
On Twitter, Noah Smith comments on the book, invoking the specter of The Bell Curve; Charles Murray responds; and the author engages with Murray (click on the tweet to see that part in the thread).
> through better nutrition and schooling, we can raise IQ
I blame Steve Sailer for not suggesting that an effective and efficient strategy for First World do-gooders would be to help Third World countries and their citizens by focusing on targeted micronutrient supplements to their diets.
This is why Jews achieved so much more in high IQ gentile nations.
Higher IQ Anglos and Germans built and maintained infrastructures and systems that allowed Jewish talent to thrive.
Einstein, no matter how smart, couldn’t have done shit in Zaire or Zimbabwe. He would have been too busy scrounging up just enough to eat.
Likewise,no matter how great individual courage is, it is useless when most in the military outfit are cowardly bastards.
"Jewish talent" is an artifact of the fact that only Jews are allowed to define their population so genetically narrowly.
For instance, if Scots Irish or Germans or Scandinavians were allowed to include only their up-to-sixth-cousins in their IQ means, all that magnificent Jewish mean IQ surplusage would dissolve like a Potemkin Village in the rain.
At $100 for a used copy, it's priced not to sell. What a shock.
http://www.amazon.com/IQ-Wealth-Nations-Richard-Lynn/dp/027597510X/Replies: @Anonym
Check out comment 19. I meant to ask “hasn’t already said” but didn’t because tiredness.
True. Though his paternal Syrian grandfather was a self-made millionaire.
Or, we could go down and colonize those countries, like Great Briton used to. We could impose western institutions, secular courts, the common law, independent judiciary, free market capitalism, private schools, a bill of rights (but not democracy – because then you cannot impose western institutions).
Why allow only the few strong and industrious who can move to the West benefit. Move the benefits of the west to their home and make everyone there better off: the sick, the lazy the poor, everyone.
Your comment and some subsequent comments regarding immigration and IQ made me think of something that happened over here a couple of years ago.
There was a trial in London (England) which began on 5 February 2013. Vicky Pryce (wife of a Member of Parliament) was charged with perverting the course of justice.
The trial collapsed because the jury, who it seems were mostly new Londoners, were too stupid to understand what was going on.
““After 30 years of criminal trials I have never come across this at this late stage. Never,” said Mr Justice Sweeney after reluctantly discharging a jury which had told him it was “highly unlikely” to reach a verdict on whether or not Vicky Pryce had been guilty of perverting the course of justice. “
“they didn’t even understand basic concepts such as “reasonable doubt”.
“A reasonable doubt is a doubt that is reasonable. These are ordinary English words that the law does not allow me to help you with,” replied the judge to question four (out of 10 the jurors had submitted). T heN there was arguably the most stupid question of the lot which the jurors had asked in all seriousness: “Can a juror come to a verdict based on a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it?” In other words: is it OK if we just guess? “The answer is a firm no,” responded the judge, “because it would be completely contrary to the instructions I have given you.” ”
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/379367/Are-some-people-just-too-stupid-to-serve-on-a-jury
The Daily Mail noted that:
““Of the eight women and four men on the Vicky Pryce jury, only two were white — the rest appeared to be of Afro-Caribbean or Asian origin.””
And..
“At least twice, the court finished 30 minutes early because a jury member had a ‘religious observance’ to keep.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281656/Vicky-Pryce-face-retrial-jury-fails-reach-verdict.html
So the answer to low national IQ is freer immigration? What does this really mean? Immigration _into_ failed nation-states? Or everybody in the world immigrates to the US and Europe? Or....?
All we have to do is raise global IQ? I'm glad we've got that problem solved.Replies: @Paco Wové, @Drapetomaniac
See, people from smarter nations can go establish businesses, set up and run functional institutions, etc. It’s a fabulous new idea that no one’s ever thought of before!
Another fabulous new idea that’s sure to work out. A global Section 8 program!
Don’t you feel fortunate to be alive during the golden age of the George Mason University Department of Economics?
exatly. But it is a larger trend. Everywhere you finde this new “we”. I always have the feeling that it is post-political, post-post-modern term. Like: all open questions are solves, only thing to do now is to do what we know is right. Maybe it was adopted from the “scientific community” discourse, as the truths those who say “we” take as given seem to be as valid as scientific consensus on some settled questions
The Jandalis supplied the engine, but the Jobses held the steering wheel. Every adoption is rooted in some tragedy, but often they can work out for the good, personal flaws notwithstanding. (I write this on a public iPad.)
Another adopted Californian named Steve comes to mind…
I blame Steve Sailer for not suggesting that an effective and efficient strategy for First World do-gooders would be to help Third World countries and their citizens by focusing on targeted micronutrient supplements to their diets.Replies: @MyNewUserName
and Head Start programs. Don’t forget those! We just haven’t tried hard enough in the US, I’m sure we can make the case for these in Sierra Leone
Proper farming is quite a high-IQ job when you think of all the logistics - especially when you have to construct roads and housing for the staff.Replies: @Bill B.
“You wouldn’t be able to do this experiment but I’ll bet a country of 100-IQ cooperative, conscientious order-loving Japanese would do way better than a country made up of 150-IQ Syrian rug salesmen out to screw everybody outside their clan.”
That’s an interesting point. This site and the HBD thing has been a real eye opener to me. It’s destroyed a number of notions I had.
But I don’t think the posters and even the “HBD movement” people are intellectually curious enough to investigate conjectures like this.
How much of the success of higher IQ people is because this enables them to find good deals or niches or whatever, and how much of it is because they don’t do stupid things with money, have future time orientation in general, avoid becoming addicted to drugs or alcohol, eating cheetos and drinking Big Gulps, spending life on a sofa in front of a tv…
And as regards your theory, isn’t that kind of the situation the west (meaning the western European and derivative cultures) have historically been in with China and the other high IQ asian societies? The gap may not be as big as you postulated, but it is still significant.
As they say in Perl programming, there’s more than one way to do it. But my impression of Chinese business ethics makes me wonder if reciprocal altruism and high trust isn’t a big advantage. Because with some of the stories I’ve seen written I wouldn’t do business in China.
You show me some product on a stand, they look ok, there is 50 of them (I counted), the price is good…
Sure. But having business dealings with the Chinese? Seems like you are asking to get ripped off.
What I’m saying is that maybe their personal ethos makes their societies lag in some regards, compared to what the average IQ indicates is possible.
Plus the Japanese are temperamentally different from the Chinese and even the Koreans. They seem to have high trust, even if they aren’t particularly altruistic.
The Chinese are as a group much more challenging: many are in fact out to get you, and they appear to have lower levels of trust amongst themselves, but in bth cases many of the same rules apply.
Constant cost shaving and quality cutting are not problems with Japan, but are with China. Getting good quality out of China is a matter of having boots on the ground or buying products intended for internal use by elite internal customers.
Much has been written on this, but as I have stated before, "Poorly Made In China" is probably the best all around book for the newly curious.Replies: @Chrisnonymous
Golf anecdote for you...
Speaking of future time orientation, one of my students is putting away money each week to buy her husband a very expensive set of golf clubs for his birthday... in ten years!
Not a house/college tuition... golf clubs!
At least the jurors in the Vicky Pryce case listened to the evidence, and it was only a minor case of perverting the course of justice. Look at how this Muslim juror passed the time during a murder trial.
“Didn’t the son of a 150-IQ Syrian rug salesman build a company that destroyed Sony?”
Given that Sony exists today as a vast corporation with a total annual revenue of about 68 billion dollars, one would have to conclude that – No, Steve Jobs did not destroy Sony.
Apple is now one of Sony's biggest potential customers, with Sony looking to get its imaging chips into Apple products.
Seems that a lot of migrants are fond of assertive mating, although that is a very sophisticated rationalization:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/06/teenage-muslim-migrants-let-off-wrist-slap-violent-gang-rape/
Is this true or are you being sarcastic?Replies: @CJ
I served on a jury, but we didn’t have twelve people of good will and reasonable intelligence.
The MOST successful countries (e.g. Japan, Singapore, etc.) have a uniformly high average IQ but there is another model that works, somewhat – the Brazil/S. Africa/Israel model. You have one small high IQ group that is smart enough to run things and then you can have a much large class of people who provide the labor and who don’t have to be all that smart. If this doesn’t go well and the dumber group ends up running the show, you have Zimbabwe or Detroit, but if you can maintain the status quo more or less you have a viable (if not ideal) society. You do tend to end up with a lot of people working as security to keep the have-nots from taking the haves’ stuff.
This is where the US is heading (and Europe t00). It won’t resemble the America or Europe of the past but the demographic die is cast and it will be what it will be. If you look at the US today, on the one hand you have places like MIT and Google which are tops in the world with people who couldn’t possibly be any smarter and then you have places like Benjamin Franklin High School in Philadelphia where 1% of the students are proficient in science.
The real issue is that we don’t have ANY use for many of the latter group. There are only so many waiters and bus drivers, etc. that you need to begin with and many of those positions are going to be automated out of existence by the MIT/Google guys in the next 20 years.
Did you notice this part? Immigration/race comments seem to be driving this:
“Research this year by University of Houston professor Arthur Santana found anonymous comments on online news sites can often bring out the vilest of views, particularly on hot topics such as immigration.
– ‘Locusts, vermin’ –
“Often the targets of the incivility are marginalized groups, including racial minorities,” Santana said in the Newspaper Research Journal.
Santana found readers referred to immigrants as “cockroaches, locusts, scumbags, rats, bums, buzzards, blood-sucking leeches, vermin, slime, dogs, brown invaders, wetbacks,” among others.”
http://news.yahoo.com/nastiness-threatens-online-reader-comments-053929979.html
Brazil’s demographics are ~48%/8%/43% white/black/mixed. South Africa is 8%/80%/9% white/black/mixed. Israel is 75%/21% Jewish/Arab.
No one thinks South Africa is going well.
Demographic trends can be changed. History has experienced many major demographic shifts and there is no reason we can’t influence the future.
Also, there is a massive demographic difference between Brazil and Israel and South Africa. They are all mixed, but their compositions are wildly different.
Israel's demographic issue is not only Arab/Jew but Ashkenazi/Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) Jews. The Mizrahi (often called Sephardic but properly this refers only to the descendants of those expelled from Spain, which is a much smaller group) range from quite talented and Europeanized (the former Syrian and Lebanese Jews) to Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews who are not much brighter than their fellow countrymen - they average out well below 100IQ and are around 1/2 the Jewish population. Even so, Israeli GDP is pushing European levels - having a population that is 1/3 Ashkenazi is enough to drive an economy.
I guess of the 3 countries I mentioned, the future of the US and Europe will most resemble that of Brazil. Again, not an ideal society but if you look at the skyline of Sao Paulo , they are not living in grass huts either.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/julioboaro/8264606991/Replies: @AP
This is where the US is heading (and Europe t00). It won't resemble the America or Europe of the past but the demographic die is cast and it will be what it will be. If you look at the US today, on the one hand you have places like MIT and Google which are tops in the world with people who couldn't possibly be any smarter and then you have places like Benjamin Franklin High School in Philadelphia where 1% of the students are proficient in science.
The real issue is that we don't have ANY use for many of the latter group. There are only so many waiters and bus drivers, etc. that you need to begin with and many of those positions are going to be automated out of existence by the MIT/Google guys in the next 20 years.Replies: @Mark2
The worrisome thing is that automation isn’t just going to render the low-IQ underclass obsolete. They’ve really been obsolete for a long time as it is. Automation is hollowing out middle-of-the-curve jobs the fastest, and even right side of the curve isn’t immune. They’re already well on their way to producing computer programs that can analyze data as well or better than humans. If (“big”) data analysis, that supposedly quintessentially 21st century occupation, is going to be a thing of the past, I don’t know what will be left for those who aren’t fortunate to have put a large sum into the right robot stock in time.
I want my children, nephews, and nieces to propagate and for them and their descendants to live in a world I would recognize.
I understand that the coming onslaught being ushered in by the MIT/Silicon Valley crowd is being driven by market forces and not ideology, but I would be willing to trade a little freedom and prosperity to get the goal of my descendants living in a world I would recognize.
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Final-Invention-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0312622376
http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/1501227742
My belief is that juries are around 1SD dimmer than the population. Brighter people, while arguably more civic minded, would have important things to do in their lives and could more easily conjure methods for being excused. This also plays into racial jury nullification which has become a major issue in criminal trials in many jurisdictions. Sailer’s VDare colleague Nicholas Stix has written extensively on this phenomenon where African juries will simply refuse to convict African defendants regardless of facts in evidence adduced.
There was a big discussion at the time about how to try very complex commercial crime cases.
But one Crown prosecutor told me the problem was overblown because the Chinese jury assumes that anyone in the dock is most likely guilty by virtue of being there.
But the hardship phase cleaned out people with real jobs, children to take care of, and those who could not do jury duty for several months. In other words, it was like a broom sweeping out prospective white jurors.
Judge Lance Ito then ruled people who read newspapers, watched TV news, etc "couldn't be fair" to poor O.J. The result was 9 of 12 black jurors.
And the prosecutors said the ones not selected were far worse (more pro-Simpson) than the ones who made the final panel.
The source for the above is Jeffrey Toobin's 1996 book, "The Run of His Life."
There are quite a few Brits large-scale farming in Sierra Leone, and doing very well out of it, although they occasionally have to leg it out of the country as Ebola spreads.
Proper farming is quite a high-IQ job when you think of all the logistics – especially when you have to construct roads and housing for the staff.
Mediocrity into not so great. Win win.
If you wanted to make a case for someone destroying Sony, the more apt culprit would be Samsung–or even LG. Both of these companies overtook Sony in televisions, computing, and mobile–pricing Sony out of market feasibility and destroying the brand strength that the company had (or could have had in the case of mobile). South Korea offered big manufacturing advantages relative to Japan, and Sony couldn’t keep up.
Apple is now one of Sony’s biggest potential customers, with Sony looking to get its imaging chips into Apple products.
Correct me if I’m wrong. Can’t education only raise IQ half a standard deviation? Education can’t turn Forrest Gump into Professor Gump.
Based on the above circumstances described, and stipulating that a jury will have a collective IQ that is the square of the smartest person in the room, it follows that the smartest person in that particular jury room had an IQ of 8.66 …… wait a minute. The stipulation must be wrong.
Terrific quote. I’ve made this point commenting on Caplan’s blog.
Open immigration folks actually want to take something–the quality of life of a nation–that’s *owned* by a particular group of people and *give it way* for free to others. They aren’t libertarians, but wild eyed redistributive socialists.
I’ll add, that i think everyone actually senses this underlying ownership. Even the Open Borders do-gooders feel that these foreigners are showing up in *their* country. Even when they welcome foreigners they essentially say welcome to *my* country…. which is why they can pat themselves on their backs, because they sense they are giving away something that’s theirs.
But, of course, like all leftist\SJW preening, it’s based on patting oneself on the back for giving away stuff–e.g. taxes, jobs, the right to retribution, residency in advanced nation–that actually belongs to *other* people. It’s theft.
Imagine if green-card holders all had to live within a mile of the boss.
There was a touch of hyperbole in the statement.
I did say reasonably intelligent and of good will. I showed up because I was a lawyer and thought I would be excused so as not to overly influence the others on the law or interpreting the instructions. Boy was I wrong.
And yes most people who are on the ball work very hard to get out of jury duty. In fact one of my duties in the firm was to get delays for highly compensated investment bankers in the hope that with enough jerking around they would get lost in the calendar of the system.
I stand by my statement. While committee meetings may not add much to business, a jury is a remarkable fact finding device.
Open immigration folks actually want to take something--the quality of life of a nation--that's *owned* by a particular group of people and *give it way* for free to others. They aren't libertarians, but wild eyed redistributive socialists.
I'll add, that i think everyone actually senses this underlying ownership. Even the Open Borders do-gooders feel that these foreigners are showing up in *their* country. Even when they welcome foreigners they essentially say welcome to *my* country.... which is why they can pat themselves on their backs, because they sense they are giving away something that's theirs.
But, of course, like all leftist\SJW preening, it's based on patting oneself on the back for giving away stuff--e.g. taxes, jobs, the right to retribution, residency in advanced nation--that actually belongs to *other* people. It's theft.Replies: @C. Van Carter, @Reg Cæsar
Another thing the Open Borders Loon does is flip-flop back and forth between premises. Most of the time he says we are all rational, self interested utility maximizers, but when the subject is immigration he claims everyone should behave in a universally altruistic manner.
Education, and nutrition, together, probably already have. It’s not that it can’t be done, it’s that it can be done only once.
Open immigration folks actually want to take something--the quality of life of a nation--that's *owned* by a particular group of people and *give it way* for free to others. They aren't libertarians, but wild eyed redistributive socialists.
I'll add, that i think everyone actually senses this underlying ownership. Even the Open Borders do-gooders feel that these foreigners are showing up in *their* country. Even when they welcome foreigners they essentially say welcome to *my* country.... which is why they can pat themselves on their backs, because they sense they are giving away something that's theirs.
But, of course, like all leftist\SJW preening, it's based on patting oneself on the back for giving away stuff--e.g. taxes, jobs, the right to retribution, residency in advanced nation--that actually belongs to *other* people. It's theft.Replies: @C. Van Carter, @Reg Cæsar
But not in their neighborhood. Funny how that works.
Imagine if green-card holders all had to live within a mile of the boss.
No one thinks South Africa is going well.Demographic trends can be changed. History has experienced many major demographic shifts and there is no reason we can't influence the future.
Also, there is a massive demographic difference between Brazil and Israel and South Africa. They are all mixed, but their compositions are wildly different.Replies: @Jack D
8% is clearly pushing the minimum needed for a long term viable society. A very talented group (e.g. Ashkenazi Jews) can punch at perhaps 10x their weight (i.e. the 2% of the US population that is Jewish can produce 20% of the Nobelists, billionaires, etc.) but for an average white population that’s too much to ask. Detroit at 10% white was not a viable city either.
Israel’s demographic issue is not only Arab/Jew but Ashkenazi/Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) Jews. The Mizrahi (often called Sephardic but properly this refers only to the descendants of those expelled from Spain, which is a much smaller group) range from quite talented and Europeanized (the former Syrian and Lebanese Jews) to Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews who are not much brighter than their fellow countrymen – they average out well below 100IQ and are around 1/2 the Jewish population. Even so, Israeli GDP is pushing European levels – having a population that is 1/3 Ashkenazi is enough to drive an economy.
I guess of the 3 countries I mentioned, the future of the US and Europe will most resemble that of Brazil. Again, not an ideal society but if you look at the skyline of Sao Paulo , they are not living in grass huts either.
Fifty years ago, this afternoon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965
What would the results prove to be, fifty years further on from this afternoon, in the Brave New America of 2065 (median IQ of ??)?
Congratulations on a masterpiece of philosemitic open borders nonsense.
“Jewish talent” is an artifact of the fact that only Jews are allowed to define their population so genetically narrowly.
For instance, if Scots Irish or Germans or Scandinavians were allowed to include only their up-to-sixth-cousins in their IQ means, all that magnificent Jewish mean IQ surplusage would dissolve like a Potemkin Village in the rain.
I suspect the nutrition pulls down IQ argument is in reality overblown. Most Asia governments at least have been extremely aware of the need for a minimally nutritious diet for brain health for decades. Many developing countries have a nutritionally good basic diet (though sure some not so good).
But I hear the “nutrition” argument a lot from I usually suspect from people who are simply not prepared to coutenance other, more awkward, reasons.
I have also heard many “wise” people say – in effect – that we should let the third world into the first because it has proven too difficult to reform the latter. David Goodhart in his book has also noted being told this many times. (If I remember correctly Caplan has suggested this.) Personally I think a nuclear bomb would do less damage but then again I am not an intellectual.
“Consequently, even though such people don’t improve their own nation’s outcomes, should they come here, they could improve our nation’s outcomes.”
Certainly.
Like your child with an IQ of 125 marrying an immigrant with an IQ of 75 so their children can have IQs higher than 125.
Dumbing down is not something to be proud of.
It’s good to hear he understands that–one less complete moron in academia.
Because the Amazon summary of his book is phrased to imply the reverse. Suggesting Jones is either clueless, or intentionally parroting the elite orthodoxy or that the summary blurb writer just didn’t grasp the implications of Jones’s writing.
These high IQ Ivy league liberal arts grads who dominate our national discourse seem to be–purposefully?–incompetent at basic mathematical reasoning, but I’d expect an economist to “see” the obvious.
Immigration from low-IQ to high-IQ countries, is not going to raise IQ, or even necessarily global IQ equality. It necessarily makes one country dumber, and can make both dumber. For instance the current H1B driven immigration from India is probably making the US very slightly smarter, but is making India dumber. The Mexican immigration is clearly making the US a lot dumber–because of scale–and probably doing little to the IQ in Mexico. But immigrants from Africa to the US, or this immivasion of Europe are almost certainly making both the sending and especially the receiving nations dumber. It’s lose-lose!
If you to lift up global IQ, you’d do exactly the reverse and send people from high-IQ countries to low IQ countries. Bringing both smarter skills and smarter genes to countries poor in both. That, at minimum, makes at least one country smarter, and could be organized to make both smarter.
So the answer to low national IQ is freer immigration? What does this really mean? Immigration _into_ failed nation-states? Or everybody in the world immigrates to the US and Europe? Or....?
All we have to do is raise global IQ? I'm glad we've got that problem solved.Replies: @Paco Wové, @Drapetomaniac
Increasing welfare to poorer countries is a non-starter so transferring poor people to wealthy countries is the way to get around it.
Great way to break down the ingroup-outgroup ethnic morality blocking the road to a world government.
Isn't that the reason there are so many of them?
There is the unsexy Edmund Burke point of course that every country in good circumstances can maximise its potential by continuously fine-tuning what demonstrably works; retaining the best ideas of the past.
Of course Burke was thinking of societal arrangements more than the design of the next iPhone but clearly the reckless modification of mass immigration into settled societies which will jam the delicate mechanisms of careful regeneration.
The (inevitably imperfect) arrangements designed to cater for all sections of the bell curve are thus broken. But the progressives promise a new global utopia so it will be worth it…
I lived in Hong Kong for a decade when it was a British colony.
There was a big discussion at the time about how to try very complex commercial crime cases.
But one Crown prosecutor told me the problem was overblown because the Chinese jury assumes that anyone in the dock is most likely guilty by virtue of being there.
Proper farming is quite a high-IQ job when you think of all the logistics - especially when you have to construct roads and housing for the staff.Replies: @Bill B.
I have suggested in the past that Arab etc migrants be directed south into sun-Saharan Africa.
Mediocrity into not so great. Win win.
Oh for God´s sake! Please don´t tell me that there are still people who believe that you can significantly raise IQ of any human population by putting them in a Head Start program or giving them Wheaties for breakfast. Barring a handful of pitiful cases of actual malnutrition or outright child abuse, nothing we can do can “raise” anybody´s IQ. IQ is inherited, full stop. It is genetic and, yes, it has a heavy racial component. If you want to raise the IQ level, import smarter people and give the stupid ones out.
in research regarding IQ and nature/nurture, people are all about the same--except for their varying levels of IQ. For decades now, there have been broad brush samplings of the "general population" toward determining to what extent "g" can be elevated, if at all.
Somehow, behavioral scientists have failed to do much "literary teaching" to the broad literate populace ( lawyers, physicians, investors, bankers, ranchers, etc.). For example, the Milwaukee Project (see wikipedia for an inadequate account ) is "known" to have been an effort to boost IQ and made false early on claims of massive gains. In reality, the Project was devoted to a focus that came to be known more generally as "cumulative deficit" prevention. The Project was badly undercut by massive civil rights impacts upon the inner city Milwaukee schools that left many teachers not wanting to have anything to do with the schools there under those circumstances. Also, there was a failure in the research design to screen out mentally retarded mothers who were also emotionally blunted or disordered. Arthur Jensen's research of relevance dealt with isolated rural environments in the South. In both the Milwaukee inner city or the rural deprived environments---the research focus had no direct relevance for most of the American population. Rick Heber, the designer and basic Director of the Milwaukee Project,
conceived of "cumulative deficit" about 1956 in his doctoral studies (Peabody/Vanderbilt) and had access via Eunice Kennedy Shriver to massive funds circa 1962 from which extensive population surveys could be made in the Milwaukee inner city. By the time of the Jensen's
"firestorm" from the 1969 HER article, the tensions in America re race and IQ were far different from anything Heber envisioned in 1956 or 1962. Upon demagogic probings and questionings from (later de frocked ) Minneapolis priest James Groppi, Heber resolved to protect the Project. Accordingly, he covertly commissioned the glitzy article "Miracle in Milwaukee" that, as Heber covertly realized, simply reported on the "pump priming" effects in the Project--not on the test of time results. It was a brilliant , if amoral, success in getting the lefties to stand back and await for what they wished to hear. By 1973 or so, it was clear to Heb er that hoped for gains had washed out, largely (not entirely, however). Heber was saliently a high dollar consultant (with great contract demands not merely in North America but all over the world ) and likely saw no relevance for himself in the Project after 1973 or so? Heber's own political views (never overtly mentioned ) likely were about those of Ronald Reagan, say. Heber was somewhat of a psychopathic person---loving money, excitement jags/and risk, and having apparently a quiet disdain for much of Academe. (?)
Heber is to be commended for trying to isolate specific populations groupings within which some elevation (prevention of erosion) of IQ might be possible. There is keen irony in the political right assuming that people are so much alike (save for varied levels of IQ) that broad brush generalizations can be made relevant to all population groupings with respect to the malleability of IQ--if not dramatic in scope.
There is also a "social science" sense of IQ that gets cookie cut out of mere behavioral science research. IF a person of limited ability is realistic about his/her level and is well dressed, well behaved and accommodative of having a sidebar presence in social groupings, then he/she likely will be "informed" by virtue of listening to useful conversations and by virtue of having some degree of interpersonal yoking to better informed people. Good manners, and good emotions, are relevant socially to the social level of intelligence one can be part of.Replies: @Bob Woodwort
Israel's demographic issue is not only Arab/Jew but Ashkenazi/Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) Jews. The Mizrahi (often called Sephardic but properly this refers only to the descendants of those expelled from Spain, which is a much smaller group) range from quite talented and Europeanized (the former Syrian and Lebanese Jews) to Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews who are not much brighter than their fellow countrymen - they average out well below 100IQ and are around 1/2 the Jewish population. Even so, Israeli GDP is pushing European levels - having a population that is 1/3 Ashkenazi is enough to drive an economy.
I guess of the 3 countries I mentioned, the future of the US and Europe will most resemble that of Brazil. Again, not an ideal society but if you look at the skyline of Sao Paulo , they are not living in grass huts either.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/julioboaro/8264606991/Replies: @AP
Correct. However a key difference is that America’s non-white plurality will be part-Native Mexicans rather than part-African Brazilians.
The original group for the O.J. Simpson jury was about 38 percent white, 28 percent black, with the rest divided among Mexicans, Asians, etc, etc.
But the hardship phase cleaned out people with real jobs, children to take care of, and those who could not do jury duty for several months. In other words, it was like a broom sweeping out prospective white jurors.
Judge Lance Ito then ruled people who read newspapers, watched TV news, etc “couldn’t be fair” to poor O.J. The result was 9 of 12 black jurors.
And the prosecutors said the ones not selected were far worse (more pro-Simpson) than the ones who made the final panel.
The source for the above is Jeffrey Toobin’s 1996 book, “The Run of His Life.”
The truth is that the left side of bell curve is seen as the problem only from the narrow perspective of the political/economic issues addressed on this blog. From the broader perspectives of biology or existential questions, the right side of the bell curve is also a problem.
I want my children, nephews, and nieces to propagate and for them and their descendants to live in a world I would recognize.
I understand that the coming onslaught being ushered in by the MIT/Silicon Valley crowd is being driven by market forces and not ideology, but I would be willing to trade a little freedom and prosperity to get the goal of my descendants living in a world I would recognize.
Has anyone read this book? I won’t, but looking at the index, table of contents, and search functions on Amazon, it appears the book basically ignores any connection between genetics and IQ.
Searching the book for “genes” returns only 1 result, and searching for “genetics” only 4. The index includes an entry for “racism” but not one for “race”.
That’s how you get from sensible empirical information about IQ and prosperity to stupid ideas like open borders–you ignore that connection.
The irony is that the book has an entire chapter on epistocracy and informed voters.
It is like living in the Soviet Union.
You will not say anything about noticing.
The Japanese are difficult to deal with from afar and require a great deal of effort to get close to, but they are not out to screw you. Amongst themselves they have fairly high trust and cohesion.
The Chinese are as a group much more challenging: many are in fact out to get you, and they appear to have lower levels of trust amongst themselves, but in bth cases many of the same rules apply.
Constant cost shaving and quality cutting are not problems with Japan, but are with China. Getting good quality out of China is a matter of having boots on the ground or buying products intended for internal use by elite internal customers.
Much has been written on this, but as I have stated before, “Poorly Made In China” is probably the best all around book for the newly curious.
(1) if your Japanese friend's role becomes to betray/screw you, he will be out to screw you. The best you can hope for will be a modern version of seppuku in which the person undermines something (like your friendship) in order to avoid the social discomfort of betrayal.
(2) if it's the company's habit to treat foreigners in a specific way that we would consider unfair, your Japanese employer/partner might conform to this standard while espousing contradictory principles.
I think it is an open question whether #2 should be considered hypocrisy or just part of "quirky Japan".
Great way to break down the ingroup-outgroup ethnic morality blocking the road to a world government.Replies: @Boris Notspasky
Don’t we already have massive welfare being sent to poor countries?
Isn’t that the reason there are so many of them?
Searching the book for "genes" returns only 1 result, and searching for "genetics" only 4. The index includes an entry for "racism" but not one for "race".
That's how you get from sensible empirical information about IQ and prosperity to stupid ideas like open borders--you ignore that connection.
The irony is that the book has an entire chapter on epistocracy and informed voters.Replies: @Boris Notspasky
Look, there is only so much you can say in the book without the enforcers knocking on your door or getting canned from your job. The author is trying to get the info out there without getting his book effectively banned. He says a lot. The rest is left as an exercise to the reader whose brain has not been so compromised that he can no longer notice things.
It is like living in the Soviet Union.
You will not say anything about noticing.
The Chinese are as a group much more challenging: many are in fact out to get you, and they appear to have lower levels of trust amongst themselves, but in bth cases many of the same rules apply.
Constant cost shaving and quality cutting are not problems with Japan, but are with China. Getting good quality out of China is a matter of having boots on the ground or buying products intended for internal use by elite internal customers.
Much has been written on this, but as I have stated before, "Poorly Made In China" is probably the best all around book for the newly curious.Replies: @Chrisnonymous
No. This is all a matter of semantics. The Japanese are about role fulfillment and have difficulty moving back and forth between general and specific. So…
(1) if your Japanese friend’s role becomes to betray/screw you, he will be out to screw you. The best you can hope for will be a modern version of seppuku in which the person undermines something (like your friendship) in order to avoid the social discomfort of betrayal.
(2) if it’s the company’s habit to treat foreigners in a specific way that we would consider unfair, your Japanese employer/partner might conform to this standard while espousing contradictory principles.
I think it is an open question whether #2 should be considered hypocrisy or just part of “quirky Japan”.
Steve,
Golf anecdote for you…
Speaking of future time orientation, one of my students is putting away money each week to buy her husband a very expensive set of golf clubs for his birthday… in ten years!
Not a house/college tuition… golf clubs!
Yeah, I was a naive believer in the jury system until I served on one.
It’s funny, but Syrian rug merchant and Scottish miser aren’t the stereotypes that spring to mind when I read about stories like this. Guess I should watch more television.
This comment seems to evade the question of just what social standards–etiquette, status deference , etc.–would potentiate the average measured IQ of individuals within the society. it seems that if the society as a whole had a clear sense of the advantages of high IQ and the limiting factors of average IQ and the truly hobbling factors of low IQ–then a sense of hierarchy and deference would make the overall society “smarter” than it would otherwise be?
There is a valid social science sense of personal “intelligence”: that is to say, if a person of limited ability is well groomed, well dressed, deferential in manner, etc, then he/she is likely to have at least a marginal place in informed groups and to be present within informative discussions, etc. The raw reality with a troubling large portion of American Black society is that its members behave in ways that subvert any acceptable place in an informed grouping and behave in ways that tend to celebrate stupidity.
There is a degree of irony in that the political “right” seems always to know, know, know, that
in research regarding IQ and nature/nurture, people are all about the same–except for their varying levels of IQ. For decades now, there have been broad brush samplings of the “general population” toward determining to what extent “g” can be elevated, if at all.
Somehow, behavioral scientists have failed to do much “literary teaching” to the broad literate populace ( lawyers, physicians, investors, bankers, ranchers, etc.). For example, the Milwaukee Project (see wikipedia for an inadequate account ) is “known” to have been an effort to boost IQ and made false early on claims of massive gains. In reality, the Project was devoted to a focus that came to be known more generally as “cumulative deficit” prevention. The Project was badly undercut by massive civil rights impacts upon the inner city Milwaukee schools that left many teachers not wanting to have anything to do with the schools there under those circumstances. Also, there was a failure in the research design to screen out mentally retarded mothers who were also emotionally blunted or disordered. Arthur Jensen’s research of relevance dealt with isolated rural environments in the South. In both the Milwaukee inner city or the rural deprived environments—the research focus had no direct relevance for most of the American population. Rick Heber, the designer and basic Director of the Milwaukee Project,
conceived of “cumulative deficit” about 1956 in his doctoral studies (Peabody/Vanderbilt) and had access via Eunice Kennedy Shriver to massive funds circa 1962 from which extensive population surveys could be made in the Milwaukee inner city. By the time of the Jensen’s
“firestorm” from the 1969 HER article, the tensions in America re race and IQ were far different from anything Heber envisioned in 1956 or 1962. Upon demagogic probings and questionings from (later de frocked ) Minneapolis priest James Groppi, Heber resolved to protect the Project. Accordingly, he covertly commissioned the glitzy article “Miracle in Milwaukee” that, as Heber covertly realized, simply reported on the “pump priming” effects in the Project–not on the test of time results. It was a brilliant , if amoral, success in getting the lefties to stand back and await for what they wished to hear. By 1973 or so, it was clear to Heb er that hoped for gains had washed out, largely (not entirely, however). Heber was saliently a high dollar consultant (with great contract demands not merely in North America but all over the world ) and likely saw no relevance for himself in the Project after 1973 or so? Heber’s own political views (never overtly mentioned ) likely were about those of Ronald Reagan, say. Heber was somewhat of a psychopathic person—loving money, excitement jags/and risk, and having apparently a quiet disdain for much of Academe. (?)
Heber is to be commended for trying to isolate specific populations groupings within which some elevation (prevention of erosion) of IQ might be possible. There is keen irony in the political right assuming that people are so much alike (save for varied levels of IQ) that broad brush generalizations can be made relevant to all population groupings with respect to the malleability of IQ–if not dramatic in scope.
There is also a “social science” sense of IQ that gets cookie cut out of mere behavioral science research. IF a person of limited ability is realistic about his/her level and is well dressed, well behaved and accommodative of having a sidebar presence in social groupings, then he/she likely will be “informed” by virtue of listening to useful conversations and by virtue of having some degree of interpersonal yoking to better informed people. Good manners, and good emotions, are relevant socially to the social level of intelligence one can be part of.
not take place. Any such focus would have found astounding the extent to which Heber during his 21 years at U. of Wisconsin Madison led a brilliantly successful life that was amazingly secretive ( the expose journalist, Rob Fixmer, reported Heber was quipped on campus to be
"the Howard Hughes of Academe"). What emerges from documents about Heber's presentence investigation (September 1981 ) before he was sentenced to serve time in federal (country club) "prison" clearly suggests that all along he aimed to resume his research and consultation career and likely even before being tried, had an open door at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. A letter of lavish praise under the letterhead of a research branch of the University of Gothenburg was written on August 18, 1981, in the hope Heber could escape serving time and could enter parole immediately. Another such letter, dated March 01, 1985, offered him a Research Director position for a privately funded (Volvo Corporation was explicitly named in this letter) international research project within the U. of Gothenburg devoted to cultural familial retardation. It is not unlikely that this covert research was the salient purpose of the 1986 so called "photo safari" out of Amarillo, Texas ( made up of people mostly linked directly or indirectly to a major university in northwest Texas ) and of the tragic 1987 "photo safari" resulting in Heber's death and that of his closely linked (then Assoc. Professor ) Mary Alice Slater, along with a dozen others. It is amazing how narrowly focused the academic interest was re Heber---it seems a matter of "his data" and is affects "our data" and our publications and our CV, etc. For example, there appears to be re the Milwaukee Project an amazing "depublishing" story that might winnow up right close to such major depublishing stories as the vanishing of Chris Brand's 1996 book, THE "g" FACTOR ( It has actually gotten back online in its full depublished and pulped form ); the complexities surrounding the depublication and republication of John R. Baker's classic RACE; the depublication and prolonged rescure mission re Audrey Shuey's classic THE TESTING OF NEGRO INTELLIGENCE", etc. Heber's dedicated, honest and very able aide, Howard Garber, had the final Milwaukee Report ready for publication by May 1980--only to discover that Heber brushed it aside under the pretext that it might be good to add some additional data . (The likely motive was that by May 1980 Heber considered himself likely to be an object of criminal investigation re mishandling of funds that were unrelated to the Project but that involved his status as Director of the research powerhouse the U. of Wisconsin Waisman Center then was ?)
Local media reported in 1982 that the Report was due to be published within an academic journal, but it didn't come to fruition. On Dec. 26, 1983, a local story regarding Heber and the Waisman Center, etc., noted that the Milwaukee Project report was scheduled to be published in full book form early in 1984. But it didn't happen. A few months after Heber's death, the Final Report was published.
It is an unavoidable investigative hypothesis that from October 1985 Heber not too unlikely was involved with the American national security apparatus in a covert study of the amazingly low intelligence of the Batwa pygmy people of Central Africa?? But as long as the focus in academe is no larger than "his data" as it affects "my data" and my CV---well, the rest of the story becomes the untold essence of it all.---knowing more and more about less and less.Replies: @Bob Woodwort, @Bob Woodwort
in research regarding IQ and nature/nurture, people are all about the same--except for their varying levels of IQ. For decades now, there have been broad brush samplings of the "general population" toward determining to what extent "g" can be elevated, if at all.
Somehow, behavioral scientists have failed to do much "literary teaching" to the broad literate populace ( lawyers, physicians, investors, bankers, ranchers, etc.). For example, the Milwaukee Project (see wikipedia for an inadequate account ) is "known" to have been an effort to boost IQ and made false early on claims of massive gains. In reality, the Project was devoted to a focus that came to be known more generally as "cumulative deficit" prevention. The Project was badly undercut by massive civil rights impacts upon the inner city Milwaukee schools that left many teachers not wanting to have anything to do with the schools there under those circumstances. Also, there was a failure in the research design to screen out mentally retarded mothers who were also emotionally blunted or disordered. Arthur Jensen's research of relevance dealt with isolated rural environments in the South. In both the Milwaukee inner city or the rural deprived environments---the research focus had no direct relevance for most of the American population. Rick Heber, the designer and basic Director of the Milwaukee Project,
conceived of "cumulative deficit" about 1956 in his doctoral studies (Peabody/Vanderbilt) and had access via Eunice Kennedy Shriver to massive funds circa 1962 from which extensive population surveys could be made in the Milwaukee inner city. By the time of the Jensen's
"firestorm" from the 1969 HER article, the tensions in America re race and IQ were far different from anything Heber envisioned in 1956 or 1962. Upon demagogic probings and questionings from (later de frocked ) Minneapolis priest James Groppi, Heber resolved to protect the Project. Accordingly, he covertly commissioned the glitzy article "Miracle in Milwaukee" that, as Heber covertly realized, simply reported on the "pump priming" effects in the Project--not on the test of time results. It was a brilliant , if amoral, success in getting the lefties to stand back and await for what they wished to hear. By 1973 or so, it was clear to Heb er that hoped for gains had washed out, largely (not entirely, however). Heber was saliently a high dollar consultant (with great contract demands not merely in North America but all over the world ) and likely saw no relevance for himself in the Project after 1973 or so? Heber's own political views (never overtly mentioned ) likely were about those of Ronald Reagan, say. Heber was somewhat of a psychopathic person---loving money, excitement jags/and risk, and having apparently a quiet disdain for much of Academe. (?)
Heber is to be commended for trying to isolate specific populations groupings within which some elevation (prevention of erosion) of IQ might be possible. There is keen irony in the political right assuming that people are so much alike (save for varied levels of IQ) that broad brush generalizations can be made relevant to all population groupings with respect to the malleability of IQ--if not dramatic in scope.
There is also a "social science" sense of IQ that gets cookie cut out of mere behavioral science research. IF a person of limited ability is realistic about his/her level and is well dressed, well behaved and accommodative of having a sidebar presence in social groupings, then he/she likely will be "informed" by virtue of listening to useful conversations and by virtue of having some degree of interpersonal yoking to better informed people. Good manners, and good emotions, are relevant socially to the social level of intelligence one can be part of.Replies: @Bob Woodwort
It is indeed a glaring omission that a broader “literary” treatment of the Milwaukee Project did
not take place. Any such focus would have found astounding the extent to which Heber during his 21 years at U. of Wisconsin Madison led a brilliantly successful life that was amazingly secretive ( the expose journalist, Rob Fixmer, reported Heber was quipped on campus to be
“the Howard Hughes of Academe”). What emerges from documents about Heber’s presentence investigation (September 1981 ) before he was sentenced to serve time in federal (country club) “prison” clearly suggests that all along he aimed to resume his research and consultation career and likely even before being tried, had an open door at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. A letter of lavish praise under the letterhead of a research branch of the University of Gothenburg was written on August 18, 1981, in the hope Heber could escape serving time and could enter parole immediately. Another such letter, dated March 01, 1985, offered him a Research Director position for a privately funded (Volvo Corporation was explicitly named in this letter) international research project within the U. of Gothenburg devoted to cultural familial retardation. It is not unlikely that this covert research was the salient purpose of the 1986 so called “photo safari” out of Amarillo, Texas ( made up of people mostly linked directly or indirectly to a major university in northwest Texas ) and of the tragic 1987 “photo safari” resulting in Heber’s death and that of his closely linked (then Assoc. Professor ) Mary Alice Slater, along with a dozen others. It is amazing how narrowly focused the academic interest was re Heber—it seems a matter of “his data” and is affects “our data” and our publications and our CV, etc. For example, there appears to be re the Milwaukee Project an amazing “depublishing” story that might winnow up right close to such major depublishing stories as the vanishing of Chris Brand’s 1996 book, THE “g” FACTOR ( It has actually gotten back online in its full depublished and pulped form ); the complexities surrounding the depublication and republication of John R. Baker’s classic RACE; the depublication and prolonged rescure mission re Audrey Shuey’s classic THE TESTING OF NEGRO INTELLIGENCE”, etc. Heber’s dedicated, honest and very able aide, Howard Garber, had the final Milwaukee Report ready for publication by May 1980–only to discover that Heber brushed it aside under the pretext that it might be good to add some additional data . (The likely motive was that by May 1980 Heber considered himself likely to be an object of criminal investigation re mishandling of funds that were unrelated to the Project but that involved his status as Director of the research powerhouse the U. of Wisconsin Waisman Center then was ?)
Local media reported in 1982 that the Report was due to be published within an academic journal, but it didn’t come to fruition. On Dec. 26, 1983, a local story regarding Heber and the Waisman Center, etc., noted that the Milwaukee Project report was scheduled to be published in full book form early in 1984. But it didn’t happen. A few months after Heber’s death, the Final Report was published.
It is an unavoidable investigative hypothesis that from October 1985 Heber not too unlikely was involved with the American national security apparatus in a covert study of the amazingly low intelligence of the Batwa pygmy people of Central Africa?? But as long as the focus in academe is no larger than “his data” as it affects “my data” and my CV—well, the rest of the story becomes the untold essence of it all.—knowing more and more about less and less.
Heber but by the early 60's, if not somewhat before, he was cultivating variations such as Rick Franz Heber, Richard F. Heber, Franz R. Heber, etc. His Colorado DL (he has residence in both Colorado and Wisconsin and perhaps elsewhere ?! ) circa 1982 is given in the name Richard Franz Heber with a Dob of Dec. 01, 1932. While serving as Research Director for JFK's
Panel on Mental Retardation Policy, Heber began to go to extremes cultivating privacy. He ceased to register to vote, not wishing to disclose publicly the meagre information required for voter registration. He ceased allowing himself to be photographed socially. He started using various unlisted phone numbers, each number serving a specific interest area of his--e.g., Arabian horses, academic research, private consultation, real estate investments, and so on.
It seems oddly arbitrary to be concerned about his refusal to release data re the Milwaukee Project in a full and timely way when, in fact, being close to the vest characterized all his acts and omissions from at least 1962 onward.
In this context, it becomes even more spooky as to how meagre the information in Archives at the U. of Wisconsin, Madison is re Heber. In fact, while there are news items about the prosecution of Howard Garber (exonerated entirely and commended by the sentencing judge ),
a Heber associate, and about Pat J.Flanigan, another associate (not exonerated ! ), the expose newspaper reports about Heber are not in Archives. The University spent a huge amount of time (and taxpayer money ) in investigating Heber covertly in the late 70's, and the FBI contributed information (questioning of Pat Flanigan, e.g. ) to the University efforts---yet no even redacted versions of all this taxpayer supported investigations are publicly accessible even after the elapse of 35 years! The brilliant trial judge did remark in sentencing comments that in an important way, the University was metaphorically and politically 'on trial' also....but that
"trial" seems never to have come before a jury!! For example, Heber had a high fee, brilliant and effective, private consultation business all over the world re mental retardation policies and programs and research designs, etc. Yet he never was required to comply with University regulations requiring reporting of such involvements. He was absent so much from campus for such prolonged times that the moniker "the Howard Hughes of Academe" was applied to him (in whispers ). The truth is that behavioral science seems to have persisted in a tunnel vision narrowness that focused only on the release of data and tended, if at all, to move outward from that fixation. There is a keen sense of contemporary irony in that attention to
"psyche" and "motive" etc. would have been more ably afforded by even pedestrian rural lawyers than seemed to be forthcoming from the academic community within American behavioral science. In the pre-sentencing investigation (which Heber cooperated with ), there
is in the final 23 page summary report simply expressed puzzlement about Heber's motivation.
It seems clear that Heber had always been a fiercely competitive person and a brilliant manipulator who had less fear than most people are far more need for risk taking and excitement jags. But it is not clear that in his central and salient focus on money making consultation, he would ever had peddled fake data or sought to generate from his own research/ers/ any fake data.
It may be overdrawn to make a comparison between the poverty of information about Heber and the terrible vacuum of information resulting from massive destruction of documents etc.
connected to Anton Mesmer. But there is some degree of comparison.
R.J. Herrnstein, Cecil Reynolds, et al )/ about the information gaps and delays regarding the Milwaukee Infant Stimulation Project (see "Milwaukee Project" in Wikipedia for an inadequate and misleading account ). And Heber's absences from campus were legenday--huge gaps of time for which he appears to have made little or no accounting to UW Madison. Associates were aware of various mysteries--e.g., from the mid 60's or so, Heber made numerous trips into Kenya (a regional entry point for Central African undertakings ) that had no evident relevance to the known research taking place in the Waisman Center at UWM that Heber headed. Heber was a very "private" person, never wishing to discuss Waisman matters beyond the immediately relevant parameters relevant to whichever employee he was in conversation with. Even the 1989 meticulously written review of the Milwaukee Project by Arthur Jensen, failed to have awareness that indeed Heber had resumed an academic career after being early released from parole. In October 1985, Heber became Research Director of an entity within the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) devoted to "international" research in mental retardation. This entity was privately funded and Court documents filed into the hearing (federal district court in Madison, WI ) for early release from parole that was held on September 30, 1985, reveal that this University of Gothenburg research effort was financed by private corporate donations that included (explicitly mentioned ) the Volvo Corporation. Yet there seems to be no publicly accessible record anywhere of what Heber did from October 1985 until his death on December 03, 1987, in a yet mysterious plane wreck in Rwanda. He was, as a condition of early release, working half time for (ostensibly) a business undertaking set up with regard to Heber's expertise areas--that is, Askelson Associates, headed by one Thomas Allen Askelson of Syracuse, Illinois. The undertaking was based on selling inlaid carpet designs that were cognitively stimulating to young children and thus were aimed to be sold to day care centers, children's health care centers, etc. Askelson was killed in the plane wreck along with long-time Heber associate and underlying, then Assoc. Prof. Mary Alice Slater, at
that time herself an academic researcher of childhood cognitive development within a Texas university. It is not self evident what the market for inlaid carpeting was supposed to be within the borderlands of (then) Zaire and Rwanda. A major outcropping is an obit and a eulogy offered for Mary Slater right after the deaths and inserted ( seemingly at the initiative of her
brother in law, Professor John R. Johannes ? and by way of a North Dakota Senator) into the
Congressional Record--Senate, Dec. 11, 1987. The informed obit makes clear that academic research was (a central?) part of the tragic trip that was characterized in press reports only as a
"photo safari". Moreover, the eulogy pledges to bring to fruition four almost completed research papers Slater was readying for publication and to seem them printed in her honor. In fact, it appears none of the papers was ever published anywhere. Two elements of contemporary life seem obviously involved in the cultivation of all the cloud cover and mist that covers Heber's career relevant acts and omissions: (1) Anything even remotely linked to race, IQ, nature/nurture will tend to repel any overt regard or overt mention; (2) the publish-or-perish world of academic research seems devoted to data and publishing with an intensity that seems to preclude regard to the wider context--i.e, knowing more and more about less and less.
Heber's use of name variants (he had about six variants to his name ) and his morphing his actual Canadian birthdate of Jan. 12, 1932, into Dec. 01, 1932, and his use in any locale of three or four varied addresses, etc. etc. all serves to suggest that if the Milwaukee Project seemed to have too much cloud cover and too little sunshine, it was merely part of Heber's larger modus operandi. A fuller "literary" consideration of Heber and his career is long, long overdue.
not take place. Any such focus would have found astounding the extent to which Heber during his 21 years at U. of Wisconsin Madison led a brilliantly successful life that was amazingly secretive ( the expose journalist, Rob Fixmer, reported Heber was quipped on campus to be
"the Howard Hughes of Academe"). What emerges from documents about Heber's presentence investigation (September 1981 ) before he was sentenced to serve time in federal (country club) "prison" clearly suggests that all along he aimed to resume his research and consultation career and likely even before being tried, had an open door at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. A letter of lavish praise under the letterhead of a research branch of the University of Gothenburg was written on August 18, 1981, in the hope Heber could escape serving time and could enter parole immediately. Another such letter, dated March 01, 1985, offered him a Research Director position for a privately funded (Volvo Corporation was explicitly named in this letter) international research project within the U. of Gothenburg devoted to cultural familial retardation. It is not unlikely that this covert research was the salient purpose of the 1986 so called "photo safari" out of Amarillo, Texas ( made up of people mostly linked directly or indirectly to a major university in northwest Texas ) and of the tragic 1987 "photo safari" resulting in Heber's death and that of his closely linked (then Assoc. Professor ) Mary Alice Slater, along with a dozen others. It is amazing how narrowly focused the academic interest was re Heber---it seems a matter of "his data" and is affects "our data" and our publications and our CV, etc. For example, there appears to be re the Milwaukee Project an amazing "depublishing" story that might winnow up right close to such major depublishing stories as the vanishing of Chris Brand's 1996 book, THE "g" FACTOR ( It has actually gotten back online in its full depublished and pulped form ); the complexities surrounding the depublication and republication of John R. Baker's classic RACE; the depublication and prolonged rescure mission re Audrey Shuey's classic THE TESTING OF NEGRO INTELLIGENCE", etc. Heber's dedicated, honest and very able aide, Howard Garber, had the final Milwaukee Report ready for publication by May 1980--only to discover that Heber brushed it aside under the pretext that it might be good to add some additional data . (The likely motive was that by May 1980 Heber considered himself likely to be an object of criminal investigation re mishandling of funds that were unrelated to the Project but that involved his status as Director of the research powerhouse the U. of Wisconsin Waisman Center then was ?)
Local media reported in 1982 that the Report was due to be published within an academic journal, but it didn't come to fruition. On Dec. 26, 1983, a local story regarding Heber and the Waisman Center, etc., noted that the Milwaukee Project report was scheduled to be published in full book form early in 1984. But it didn't happen. A few months after Heber's death, the Final Report was published.
It is an unavoidable investigative hypothesis that from October 1985 Heber not too unlikely was involved with the American national security apparatus in a covert study of the amazingly low intelligence of the Batwa pygmy people of Central Africa?? But as long as the focus in academe is no larger than "his data" as it affects "my data" and my CV---well, the rest of the story becomes the untold essence of it all.---knowing more and more about less and less.Replies: @Bob Woodwort, @Bob Woodwort
Documents obtained by a friend of a colleague here by using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), pertain to Heber’s prison time. What emerges is how pervasively he cultivated privacy and how difficult it would have been generally to investigate about anything he was connected with. His Canadian birthdate was Jan. 12, 1932, but he managed to “morph” this on many, many documents into “12-01-1932”. His birth name (Winnipeg, Manitoba ) was Richard Frank
Heber but by the early 60’s, if not somewhat before, he was cultivating variations such as Rick Franz Heber, Richard F. Heber, Franz R. Heber, etc. His Colorado DL (he has residence in both Colorado and Wisconsin and perhaps elsewhere ?! ) circa 1982 is given in the name Richard Franz Heber with a Dob of Dec. 01, 1932. While serving as Research Director for JFK’s
Panel on Mental Retardation Policy, Heber began to go to extremes cultivating privacy. He ceased to register to vote, not wishing to disclose publicly the meagre information required for voter registration. He ceased allowing himself to be photographed socially. He started using various unlisted phone numbers, each number serving a specific interest area of his–e.g., Arabian horses, academic research, private consultation, real estate investments, and so on.
It seems oddly arbitrary to be concerned about his refusal to release data re the Milwaukee Project in a full and timely way when, in fact, being close to the vest characterized all his acts and omissions from at least 1962 onward.
In this context, it becomes even more spooky as to how meagre the information in Archives at the U. of Wisconsin, Madison is re Heber. In fact, while there are news items about the prosecution of Howard Garber (exonerated entirely and commended by the sentencing judge ),
a Heber associate, and about Pat J.Flanigan, another associate (not exonerated ! ), the expose newspaper reports about Heber are not in Archives. The University spent a huge amount of time (and taxpayer money ) in investigating Heber covertly in the late 70’s, and the FBI contributed information (questioning of Pat Flanigan, e.g. ) to the University efforts—yet no even redacted versions of all this taxpayer supported investigations are publicly accessible even after the elapse of 35 years! The brilliant trial judge did remark in sentencing comments that in an important way, the University was metaphorically and politically ‘on trial’ also….but that
“trial” seems never to have come before a jury!! For example, Heber had a high fee, brilliant and effective, private consultation business all over the world re mental retardation policies and programs and research designs, etc. Yet he never was required to comply with University regulations requiring reporting of such involvements. He was absent so much from campus for such prolonged times that the moniker “the Howard Hughes of Academe” was applied to him (in whispers ). The truth is that behavioral science seems to have persisted in a tunnel vision narrowness that focused only on the release of data and tended, if at all, to move outward from that fixation. There is a keen sense of contemporary irony in that attention to
“psyche” and “motive” etc. would have been more ably afforded by even pedestrian rural lawyers than seemed to be forthcoming from the academic community within American behavioral science. In the pre-sentencing investigation (which Heber cooperated with ), there
is in the final 23 page summary report simply expressed puzzlement about Heber’s motivation.
It seems clear that Heber had always been a fiercely competitive person and a brilliant manipulator who had less fear than most people are far more need for risk taking and excitement jags. But it is not clear that in his central and salient focus on money making consultation, he would ever had peddled fake data or sought to generate from his own research/ers/ any fake data.
It may be overdrawn to make a comparison between the poverty of information about Heber and the terrible vacuum of information resulting from massive destruction of documents etc.
connected to Anton Mesmer. But there is some degree of comparison.
not take place. Any such focus would have found astounding the extent to which Heber during his 21 years at U. of Wisconsin Madison led a brilliantly successful life that was amazingly secretive ( the expose journalist, Rob Fixmer, reported Heber was quipped on campus to be
"the Howard Hughes of Academe"). What emerges from documents about Heber's presentence investigation (September 1981 ) before he was sentenced to serve time in federal (country club) "prison" clearly suggests that all along he aimed to resume his research and consultation career and likely even before being tried, had an open door at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. A letter of lavish praise under the letterhead of a research branch of the University of Gothenburg was written on August 18, 1981, in the hope Heber could escape serving time and could enter parole immediately. Another such letter, dated March 01, 1985, offered him a Research Director position for a privately funded (Volvo Corporation was explicitly named in this letter) international research project within the U. of Gothenburg devoted to cultural familial retardation. It is not unlikely that this covert research was the salient purpose of the 1986 so called "photo safari" out of Amarillo, Texas ( made up of people mostly linked directly or indirectly to a major university in northwest Texas ) and of the tragic 1987 "photo safari" resulting in Heber's death and that of his closely linked (then Assoc. Professor ) Mary Alice Slater, along with a dozen others. It is amazing how narrowly focused the academic interest was re Heber---it seems a matter of "his data" and is affects "our data" and our publications and our CV, etc. For example, there appears to be re the Milwaukee Project an amazing "depublishing" story that might winnow up right close to such major depublishing stories as the vanishing of Chris Brand's 1996 book, THE "g" FACTOR ( It has actually gotten back online in its full depublished and pulped form ); the complexities surrounding the depublication and republication of John R. Baker's classic RACE; the depublication and prolonged rescure mission re Audrey Shuey's classic THE TESTING OF NEGRO INTELLIGENCE", etc. Heber's dedicated, honest and very able aide, Howard Garber, had the final Milwaukee Report ready for publication by May 1980--only to discover that Heber brushed it aside under the pretext that it might be good to add some additional data . (The likely motive was that by May 1980 Heber considered himself likely to be an object of criminal investigation re mishandling of funds that were unrelated to the Project but that involved his status as Director of the research powerhouse the U. of Wisconsin Waisman Center then was ?)
Local media reported in 1982 that the Report was due to be published within an academic journal, but it didn't come to fruition. On Dec. 26, 1983, a local story regarding Heber and the Waisman Center, etc., noted that the Milwaukee Project report was scheduled to be published in full book form early in 1984. But it didn't happen. A few months after Heber's death, the Final Report was published.
It is an unavoidable investigative hypothesis that from October 1985 Heber not too unlikely was involved with the American national security apparatus in a covert study of the amazingly low intelligence of the Batwa pygmy people of Central Africa?? But as long as the focus in academe is no larger than "his data" as it affects "my data" and my CV---well, the rest of the story becomes the untold essence of it all.---knowing more and more about less and less.Replies: @Bob Woodwort, @Bob Woodwort
Re the “investigative hypothesis” that Heber was early on closely linked to the U.S. national security apparatus and perhaps, in particular, to the CIA: An hypothesis is not a “conspiracy theory” (the essence of which is discussion far beyond the evidence). But there is a big and bold question mark about what could be permitted by the odd licentiousness granted Heber by the U. of Wisconsin, Madison. That he never reported his outside consultation income to the University is but one of the odd features. The University seems to have had a stand back and hands off posture re all the data delays by Heber / and all the academic questioning (Ellis Page,
R.J. Herrnstein, Cecil Reynolds, et al )/ about the information gaps and delays regarding the Milwaukee Infant Stimulation Project (see “Milwaukee Project” in Wikipedia for an inadequate and misleading account ). And Heber’s absences from campus were legenday–huge gaps of time for which he appears to have made little or no accounting to UW Madison. Associates were aware of various mysteries–e.g., from the mid 60’s or so, Heber made numerous trips into Kenya (a regional entry point for Central African undertakings ) that had no evident relevance to the known research taking place in the Waisman Center at UWM that Heber headed. Heber was a very “private” person, never wishing to discuss Waisman matters beyond the immediately relevant parameters relevant to whichever employee he was in conversation with. Even the 1989 meticulously written review of the Milwaukee Project by Arthur Jensen, failed to have awareness that indeed Heber had resumed an academic career after being early released from parole. In October 1985, Heber became Research Director of an entity within the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) devoted to “international” research in mental retardation. This entity was privately funded and Court documents filed into the hearing (federal district court in Madison, WI ) for early release from parole that was held on September 30, 1985, reveal that this University of Gothenburg research effort was financed by private corporate donations that included (explicitly mentioned ) the Volvo Corporation. Yet there seems to be no publicly accessible record anywhere of what Heber did from October 1985 until his death on December 03, 1987, in a yet mysterious plane wreck in Rwanda. He was, as a condition of early release, working half time for (ostensibly) a business undertaking set up with regard to Heber’s expertise areas–that is, Askelson Associates, headed by one Thomas Allen Askelson of Syracuse, Illinois. The undertaking was based on selling inlaid carpet designs that were cognitively stimulating to young children and thus were aimed to be sold to day care centers, children’s health care centers, etc. Askelson was killed in the plane wreck along with long-time Heber associate and underlying, then Assoc. Prof. Mary Alice Slater, at
that time herself an academic researcher of childhood cognitive development within a Texas university. It is not self evident what the market for inlaid carpeting was supposed to be within the borderlands of (then) Zaire and Rwanda. A major outcropping is an obit and a eulogy offered for Mary Slater right after the deaths and inserted ( seemingly at the initiative of her
brother in law, Professor John R. Johannes ? and by way of a North Dakota Senator) into the
Congressional Record–Senate, Dec. 11, 1987. The informed obit makes clear that academic research was (a central?) part of the tragic trip that was characterized in press reports only as a
“photo safari”. Moreover, the eulogy pledges to bring to fruition four almost completed research papers Slater was readying for publication and to seem them printed in her honor. In fact, it appears none of the papers was ever published anywhere. Two elements of contemporary life seem obviously involved in the cultivation of all the cloud cover and mist that covers Heber’s career relevant acts and omissions: (1) Anything even remotely linked to race, IQ, nature/nurture will tend to repel any overt regard or overt mention; (2) the publish-or-perish world of academic research seems devoted to data and publishing with an intensity that seems to preclude regard to the wider context–i.e, knowing more and more about less and less.
Heber’s use of name variants (he had about six variants to his name ) and his morphing his actual Canadian birthdate of Jan. 12, 1932, into Dec. 01, 1932, and his use in any locale of three or four varied addresses, etc. etc. all serves to suggest that if the Milwaukee Project seemed to have too much cloud cover and too little sunshine, it was merely part of Heber’s larger modus operandi. A fuller “literary” consideration of Heber and his career is long, long overdue.