July 22, 2006

Please remind me again: Which ones are the Good Muslims: Shunnis or Si'ites?

For many years after the Irainian hostage crisis of 1979-1981, the American press would authoritatively inform us that there were two kinds of Muslims, the crazy radical bad Shi'ites and the calm traditional good Sunnis. Then some Sunnis blew up the WTC and so we invaded Iraq and the Sunni insurgents kept trying to kill us and the Shi'ites kept winning all the elections that we set up in Iraq, so that meant the Shi'ites were democratic and thus good, because we wouldn't have invaded Iraq just to let the bad kind of Muslims take power, right? But now some Sunnis in Iraq are asking us to stay around to keep the Shi'ite government from killing them and the Shi'ites in Iran elected Amenisaidagain and now the Shi'ites in Lebanon are at war with Israel, while the Sunni dictatorships that we were supposed to be against in 2005 are hinting that it's more or less okay with them if the Israelis whomp on the Shi'ites for a little while, so now I guess the Sunnis are good and the Shi'ites are bad. Or did I get that backwards?

Do we really know what we are doing over there?


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

An economist takes IQ seriously

Here's an op-ed economist Garett Jones of Southern Illinois wrote summarizing his 2005 paper on the usefulness of Lynn & Vanhanen's 2002 book IQ and the Wealth of Nations. (No mention if any newspaper dared publish it.)


“Test Scores”: the blue-state term for “IQ.”
By Garett Jones

Ten years after the firestorm over Murray and Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve--which showed conclusively that, for better or worse, IQ is a major factor in determining a person’s chances in life--the mainstream media has finally found a politically correct euphemism for IQ: “Test Scores.” The Wall Street Journal noted last Tuesday that U.S. “math scores” are among the lowest of any industrialized nation--below Korea, Japan, and Germany, just to name a few. It turns out that these three countries also happen to have higher average IQ’s than Americans, too--106,105, and 102, compared to the US average of 98. And that pattern isn’t just a coincidence--overall, about 2/3 of the difference in math scores around the world can be explained by differences in a nation’s average IQ.

How can I make such a bold claim? Because I’m using data from the new book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, written by leading psychologist Richard Lynn and political scientist Tatu Vanhanen (who, for what its worth, is the father of Finland’s prime minister). They assemble 186 IQ studies from 81 different countries, and find a very strong link between a nation’s average IQ and the productivity of that nation’s workers.

This is no surprise: Nobel Laureate economists like Gary Becker and Robert Lucas have written about the importance of “human capital,” the combination of problem-solving skills and practical knowledge that help workers to earn more and help countries to produce more. IQ is one decent measure of the problem-solving side of human capital. Though IQ is politically charged, it is still the single best predictor of a worker’s productivity you can find.

While Lynn and Vanhanen show that a nation’s average “test score”--excuse me, average IQ--has a strong statistical link to economic growth, their results raise a lot of reasonable questions. Had they controlled for all of the other factors that really matter for economic performance? What about the importance of the rule of law, capital investment, wars and coups, and free trade? Shouldn’t they have controlled for all of those factors? Maybe the link between a nation’s IQ and a nation’s productivity is just a side effect of these other factors.

The IQ-productivity link is not just a side effect. Working with psychologist W. Joel Schneider of Illinois State University, I tried out 1330 different statistical tests, controlling for 21 key factors that explain economic growth, including all the ones I just mentioned. IQ passed 99.8% of the tests--so it’s better than Ivory Soap.

What’s the take-away? First, when people run these “international student tests,” they’re mostly measuring differences in cross-country IQ. And IQ has a tremendously strong link to economic growth: ten extra IQ points--the difference between Argentina and South Korea--adds an extra 1.2% to the economy’s long-run annual growth rate.

Second, if you want to really raise living standards in poor countries, you need to focus on brain health. The World Bank’s initiative to raise the birth weight of children in poor countries is a great example. The brain is, in many ways, just another organ, and a healthy baby is much more likely to have a healthy brain and to achieve his or her full potential. Policies that promote good childhood nutrition, vitamin supplements, and a lead-free environment are examples of policies that can improve brain health, and with it, raise a nation’s IQ and its economic performance.

But finally, there’s a message here about how to talk about IQ in politically correct, blue-state America: Just say those magic words…..“test scores.”


Garett Jones, a former economic policy adviser to Senator Orrin Hatch, is assistant professor of economics and finance at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.


And here's the earlier paper by Jones & Schneider that was the basis for the op-ed.

And here's the abstract of Jones's new paper that makes good use of the table I created in 2004 that lists the details of each of the 183 studies of IQ in 81 countries included in IQ and the Wealth of Nations.


IQ in the Ramsey Model: A Naïve Calibration
Garett Jones *
February 2006


Abstract: I show that in a conventional Ramsey model, between one-fourth and one-half of the global income distribution can be explained by a single factor: the effect of large, persistent differences in national average IQ on the private marginal product of labor. Thus, differences in national average IQ may be a driving force behind global income inequality. These persistent differences in cognitive ability--which are well-supported in the psychology literature--are likely to be somewhat malleable through better health care, better education, and especially better nutrition in the world’s poorest countries. A simple calibration exercise in the spirit of Bils and Klenow (2000) and Castro (2005) is conducted. I show that an IQ-augmented Ramsey model can explain more than half of the empirical relationship between national average IQ and GDP per worker. I provide evidence that little of the IQ-productivity relationship is likely to be due to reverse causality.

*Department of Economics and Finance, Southern Illinois


I'm glad to see my table has proven useful.

Now, over at GNXP, the boys have now put together a table of 544 IQ studies summarized in Lynn's latest book, Racial Differences in Intelligence. You have to join the YahooGroup GNXPforum to have access to it, but that's free and you can just choose "web access only" if you don't want to get emails of GNXP postings.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Why Google is worth 100 gazillion gigabux:

A reader points out:


Your blog is currently displaying a Google ad for Beirut hotels:


Beirut Hotels Last minute, discounted hotels in Beirut. Rates up to 70% off! www.hotelbrowser.biz


I'm glad to see that they're discounting the rates. Though I think they may have to throw in free wireless internet if they want me to come to visit just now. (Maybe I can book passage on one of those ships we're using to evacuate our citizens--I'll bet there's plenty of room available heading into Beirut.) Do I get a bigger discount if the IDF drops a bomb in the courtyard?


A reader points out:


You've now got an ad up for "Drinking Game Products." This is because "beirut" is an alternate name for the drinking game perhaps better known as "beer pong."


Well, if I'd rented one of those Beirut hotel rooms, I'd probably be down in the (hopefully sandbagged) bar playing "beirut" right now.

In general, the problem with Google ads is that the assignment of ads doesn't seem to reflect past learning about what sells on iSteve.com to my regular readership. For example, I made triple my usual meager take one weekend when a documentary on evolution was advertised, which is hardly surprising considering the interests of my readers, but I've seldom seen any follow-up in my ads. Instead, ads are just assigned based on keywords in the latest blog postings. For instance, if I write about the need to restrict immigration, I often get an ad for a company that arranges phony marriages between U.S. citizens and foreigners wanting to get Green Cards.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

July 19, 2006

Lebablogging

Life is always full of interest in Lebanon. A reader who was in Beirut when the Civil War started in 1975 writes:

Tony Franjieh [son of the Christian President of Lebanon from 1970-1976] and his family stayed as house guests in Maine long ago with a senior pair of State officials, and they all went out to see the movie "The Godfather" at a local cinema in the Maine woods. Tony came out of the movie almost shaking and told the State Dept pair that "this movie is all about my country and my family."...

In 1978, Franjieh was bumped off Sonny Corleone-style, apparently by the rival Christian warlord family, the Gemayels.

A few more distinguished or notorious Lebanese-Americans to add to your roster: Vince Vaughn has some Lebanese ancestry, which fits with Jennifer Anniston’s Greek forebears. Reporter Helen Thomas, a dinner guest at our DC house two decades ago ... descends from Greek Orthodox Lebanese. Danny Thomas is from Maronite stock in Bcherri, where the only Cedars left in Lebanon still stand. Fmr Senator George Mitchell from Maine is half Lebanese, which helped him decipher the endless grievances in Northern Ireland. Don’t forget new arrivals to the US like Selma Hayek and Shakira, both of Lebanese descent. Finally, long ago my Greek-descended wife went out with [prominent Arab-American politician X], who told her that Lebanese and Greeks had a natural affinity. Ask Vince and Jennifer, perhaps! ...

The notorious April 1975 events were interpreted by the US Embassy Political Section as a Maronite attempt to prevent the eventual takeover of Lebanese politics by the demographically more numerous Muslims, Sunni and Shi’ite, whom everyone believed at that time comprised the majority of the population. It was strongly believed that the Maronites had received military, political and covert assurances from “Dixie,” the code for Israel in Beirut. Israel, according to the US consensus in-country, had no desire to see Lebanon succeed as a multi-confessional democracy, which was what the PLO charter outlined for a “Palestinian State”--- comprising Muslims, Christians, Druzi, and Jews all singing "Kumbayah" --- that would replace Israel and the Occupied Territories after a negotiated settlement based on UNSC Res. 242 & 338.

I liked singing "Kumbayah" at summer camp, but, then, I was an especially sappy child.

That was the Arabist view and Lebanon did collapse and the multi-confessional democratic model went up in smoke...

... Michael Ledeen and his Israeli contacts concocted a scheme to get the massive PLO arms caches captured by the IDF in South Lebanon into the hands of the Iranians, then in the middle of an endless war with Iraq, which Israel considered its chief foe in the Arab world. Iran Contra ensued as Iran received large numbers of Kalashnikovs & ammo [through Israeli channels] and a thousand TOWs from the US, who sluiced the proceeds to the Contras fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The Israeli sale of PLO munitions has never been documented...

Here's the perspective of the Jewish Virtual Library on Ledeen's role in Iran-Contra.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

July 18, 2006

George Will is sick of Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard:

Will writes in "Transformation's Toll:"

The administration, justly criticized for its Iraq premises and their execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy caricature. The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but to the Weekly Standard -- voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism, "neoconservatism" -- everything is crystal clear: Iran is the key to everything.

"No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria . . ." You get the drift. So, the Weekly Standard says:

"We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions -- and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

"Why wait?" Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq. And if Bashar Assad's regime does not fall after the Weekly Standard's hoped-for third war, with Iran, does the magazine hope for a fourth?

As for the "healthy" repercussions that the Weekly Standard is so eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication's powers of prophecy but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's behalf before all of the surprises -- all of them unpleasant -- that Iraq has inflicted.

The only thing that matters to the Weekly Standard, though, is whether Rupert Murdoch gets sick of Bill Kristol. Murdoch pays something like $3 million per year to subsidize the Weekly Standard's loss. (Just about all political magazines lose money, although the leftist Nation, which is stuffed with adds, has been profitable lately.) I suspect that Murdoch, who is a level-headed businessman, must be wondering when exactly to dump the neocons. Murdoch made a lot of money off the Iraq War in 2002-2004 by promoting war fever on Fox News, and the Weekly Standard boys generate a lot of the talking points for Fox News, but I imagine Murdoch can sense that this business strategy is headed downhill. Fox News ratings have been down.

And while Murdoch's personal views are no doubt broadly conservative, I've never seen much evidence that they are particularly neoconservative. My impression is that Kristol just seemed like the Bright Young Thing of 1995 when Murdoch was looking for an editor. Murdoch told Scott McConnell, "“Well, it might not have been a good idea to create it [Israel], but now that it’s there, it has to be supported.” As Scott commented, "A splendidly ambiguous statement—perfectly consistent with a strong pro-Israel position, but not the sort of thing an American neoconservative would ever say."

Murdoch's Sun tabloid famously switched from Tory to Labour for the 1997 election (as Martin Kelly notes), so it's hardly impossible that Murdoch will shift with the wind.

By the way, I finally read how much Iran is believed to give Hezbollah annually: $100 million, which, while it would buy Iran just about every political magazine in America, really isn't very much on the scale of global geopolitics. If Hezbollah is really a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran, couldn't somebody just outbid Iran? On the other hand, maybe Hezbollah isn't so much being used by Iran as it's using Iran's money for its own purposes?


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

July 17, 2006

War Fever

A friend writes:

2002-2003 is happening again in the blogosphere. I can feel it. Are there enough people to say "NO!" this time?

If, after all the hard lessons we've learned over the last three years, the United States still lets itself get dragged into a war in Lebanon or with Syria or Iran, it will be the stupidest conflict since the War of Jenkin's Ear.

If the Israelis decide to turn a border skirmish into a major war of their own choosing, that's their business, not ours. Israel stomping on Hezbollah might actually improve things in Lebanon -- certainly the Israeli leadership's understanding of the situation in Lebanon is far greater than our leadership's understanding of anywhere in the Middle East. Then again, the Law of Unintended Consequences could come into play for the one millionth time in the Middle East, as happened in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon to throw out the PLO only to unintentionally midwife the birth of Hezbollah.

But to allow the Israeli tail -- or, more likely, the armchair hysteria of American pseudo-Sabras -- to wag the American dog would be lunacy.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

July 16, 2006

Cochran: A lot of apparent racial similarities are only skin deep:

Was headbutting Algerian Berber soccer star Zinedine Zidane provoked by a "racist" comment? Not being a lipreader, I'll merely point out that Zidane is slightly fairer-skinned that the Italian he flattened.

Zidane looks strikingly Teutonic because the Berbers and the Germans can reasonably be grouped in a vast Caucasian racial group with common ancestors. Similarly, East Asians and American Indians display certain similarities because they shared common ancestors back before the end of the last Ice Age.

But there are also lots of other visual or functional similarities among various groups spread far apart across the globe that are more likely caused by separate convergent evolution than by unchanging descent or by acquisition of genes through intermarriage.

Greg Cochran points out that many similarities among widely dispersed peoples are not caused by them having the same genes, but instead by having different genes that evolved to do similar things. For example, some of the sub-Saharan tribes that have high degrees of lactose tolerance have mutations giving them that capability than are different than the mutations found in the lactose tolerant northern Europeans. Or, as Cynthia M. Beall of Case Western has determined, three high altitude groups -- Andean Indians, Tibetans, and Ethiopian highlanders -- have three different adaptations that allow them to thrive at 10,000 feet or more.

Unfortunately, at present we only know what a fraction of all genes actually do, although we're learning fast.

There are a lot of other candidates for this tendency that apparent racial similarities are often only skin deep.

- For example, blonde hair is found among Caucasians and a few Australian aborigines in the center of the Outback.

- The Ainu aborigines of Japan, who have as much body hair as Robin Williams and beards like ZZ Top, were long thought by physical anthropologists to be displaced Caucasians, but genetic research has rendered that idea unlikely. They're apparently just really hairy East Asians.

- A yellowish cast to skin color is found in East Asia and among the Bushmen of Southwest Africa.

- Melanesians are often black-skinned and wooly-haired, but their neutral genes are as unlike sub-Saharan Africans as just about anybody on Earth.

- The pygmies of Central Africa and the pygmy negritos of the Andaman Islands and points East are probably not racially related.
The steatopygia of the Andamanese and the Bushmen / Hottentots women is likely convergent evolution.

On the other hand, some of these similarities could be left over from the original out-of-Africa group. Perhaps, originally all human women were fully steatopygous, and the Bushmen, some Pygmies, and the Andamanese are the only ones who didn't evolve away from that template.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Cochran: A lot of apparent racial similarities are only skin deep:

Was headbutting Algerian Berber soccer star Zinedine Zidane provoked by a "racist" comment? Not being a lipreader, I'll merely point out that Zidane is slightly fairer-skinned that the Italian he flattened.

Zidane looks strikingly Teutonic because the Berbers and the Germans can reasonably be grouped in a vast Caucasian racial group with common ancestors. Similarly, East Asians and American Indians display certain similarities because they shared common ancestors back before the end of the last Ice Age.

But there are also lots of other visual or functional similarities among various groups spread far apart across the globe that are more likely caused by separate convergent evolution than by unchanging descent or by acquisition of genes through intermarriage.

Greg Cochran points out that many similarities among widely dispersed peoples are not caused by them having the same genes, but instead by having different genes that evolved to do similar things. For example, some of the sub-Saharan tribes that have high degrees of lactose tolerance have mutations giving them that capability than are different than the mutations found in the lactose tolerant northern Europeans. Or, as Cynthia M. Beall of Case Western has determined, three high altitude groups -- Andean Indians, Tibetans, and Ethiopian highlanders -- have three different adaptations that allow them to thrive at 10,000 feet or more.

Unfortunately, at present we only know what a fraction of all genes actually do, although we're learning fast.

There are a lot of other candidates for this tendency that apparent racial similarities are often only skin deep.

- For example, blonde hair is found among Caucasians and a few Australian aborigines in the center of the Outback.

- The Ainu aborigines of Japan, who have as much body hair as Robin Williams and beards like ZZ Top, were long thought by physical anthropologists to be displaced Caucasians, but genetic research has rendered that idea unlikely. They're apparently just really hairy East Asians.

- A yellowish cast to skin color is found in East Asia and among the Bushmen of Southwest Africa.

- Melanesians are often black-skinned and wooly-haired, but their neutral genes are as unlike sub-Saharan Africans as just about anybody on Earth.

- The pygmies of Central Africa and the pygmy negritos of the Andaman Islands and points East are probably not racially related.
The steatopygia of the Andamanese and the Bushmen / Hottentots women is likely convergent evolution.

On the other hand, some of these similarities could be left over from the original out-of-Africa group. Perhaps, originally all human women were fully steatopygous, and the Bushmen, some Pygmies, and the Andamanese are the only ones who didn't evolve away from that template.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer