[Taraz]

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A very nice post. Really the mere fact that intelligence scores have risen continuously since the tests were made less than 100 years ago should alone be proof enough that culture is a very significant contributer to the intelligence measure.

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I disagree. The case in the OP is quite overstated - they've risen in some areas and on some tests and not in others. Further, heights have also risen - can I conclude from that fact that:

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Really the mere fact that heights have risen continuously in the last hundred years should alone be proof enough that culture is a very significant contributer to height.

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I agree with you that the simple increase in test scores doesn't prove that culture is a determining factor, but it does raise an interesting question that needs to bee looked at. If you look at it another way, many people from the 50s and 60s would be classified as mentally retarded today even though that is clearly not the case. Flynn gave an interesting account of what could be going on. If they ask what dogs and rabbits have in common, you get full points if you say they are both mammals but no points if you say that you use dogs to hunt rabbits. The "correct" answer depends on your environment/culture/society. In many areas (and more often than not in the past in general) utility is more important than classification. Knowing that dogs and rabbits are in the same family doesn't help you much, but knowing how to use dogs to hunt helps you get food. Our society is getting more and more scientific and classification is becoming a more important tool. He suggests that the makers of these tests were looking for the scientific answers before they were the normal way of approaching life in the general population.

I think I also mentioned that the disparate increases in scores across different tests in problematic for those that are big believers in g. The increase in scores should be roughly equivalent if the tests both have high g-loadings. If scores increase on one measure by 15 points and only 4 points on another, the tests probably aren't measuring a biological shift in intellectual capacity. It is much more likely that they are testing methods of solving particular classes of problems.

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This is what I mean about hard sciences vs soft.

There are a number of suggested reasons for these scores that don't involve environment being key. The effects of two massive world wars and a worldwide depression are a possible answer - most of these tests compare the period around the 50s and 60s with today. Such events may have depressed the scores of entire generations. We simply don't have much data from before then.

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I don't think I understand your point here. Why are the scores depressed? If they are measuring genetically based aptitude why would they fluctuate so much? It's also untrue that the tests only measure back 40 or 50 years. The Raven's test is supposed to be the least culturally sensitive test, we have scores dating back 100 years, and this measure has the highest increase in scores from generation to generation! Someone scoring in the highest 10% a century ago would be in the bottom 5th percentile today.

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Furthermore, those using this to explain away the race gap are missing some important points. The first is that, from what I've read, the improvements in score are occurring almost entirely in the bottom half. This suggests that a number of people - the poorest whites - weren't fulfilling their intelligence potential. My claim has always been that intelligence potential is capped by genes and varies highly between individuals and between races, not that something like poor nutrition isn't important in depressing a score.

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You are correct that the increase in scores is primarily in the lower half of the distribution. Clearly this group was not "fulfilling their potential". But what does this mean? One could easily make the case that those in the bottom half were not immersed in an environment which valued the type of judgments that are necessary in an IQ test. I also don't see how you are interpreting this so that this refers to the poorest whites.

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Secondly, I'd need to know how widespread the data actually is. It's claimed to be global but I'd say the actual data available is far worse than that available to Intelligence and the Wealth of Nations, for example.

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Flynn claims to have data from over 30 countries presently. All I know is that his 1994 paper has data from the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Denmark, East Germany, France, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United States of America, and West Germany.

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Thirdly, other groups have benefited from many of the proposed reasons for the increase, yet the differential remains large and not that dissimilar to what it was prior to massive improvements in living and educational conditions for one particular group.

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I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this point. Are you saying that the gap between groups hasn't lessened even though the lagging group has received disproportionate improvements in environment? Could you be a bit more specific?