rms,

Yes, I agree with you there. It's just there are constantly pronouncements that something or another has been found, and the true story always seems to be that it makes no real difference. Certainly there must be a genetic basis, I just have real doubts that the standard explanations of genetic variation can actually account for it. I mean, say, hypothetically, that it took 15 genes to produce genius. Then the lack of redundancy and higher variability on the male genotype would be a hindrance, not an advantage.

"...see the disproportionate number of Chess Grandmasters and Science Nobel Prize winners among Eastern European Jews."

If you plot said statistic over time, even taking the Jewish population versus the rest of the world into account, you'll notice massive fluctuations. Anand just took #1, for example. I bet you'll see a lot more young Indian chess players. In different times you could say that the world's intellectual leaders were Sumerian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Roman, Mayan, Arab, Milanese, Viking, Khmer, Maori, Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran, Jewish, Russian, or American. Don't forget that the Nobel prize committee are themselves Nobel prize winners, and they have not shown themselves to be free of bias (They didn't award Rosalind Franklin, nor Emmy Noether, nor Freeman Dyson, and I'm sure, many, many others). I also think that the selection of Chess and Scientific Nobel prizes is clearly occidental. Why not Go (Japanese/Korean) and Tang (Chinese) era scientific achievements? Why not programming competition performance (Poland and Russia seem to be leading) or memorization of oral history (The Tibetans seem to be quite remarkable in this respect).

Or for that matter, the first masters of Astronomy (Babylon, Mayan) or masters of the Mesoamerican ballgame (Mayan, Aztec)?

"I mean, say, hypothetically, that it took 15 genes to produce genius. Then the lack of redundancy and higher variability on the male genotype would be a hindrance, not an advantage."

Not exactly. It would be more random, but depending on how mating worked out, you might just expect the genius to have more kids. In a monogamous society with a strong welfare system, that's not how things would work -- but if your genius 1) doesn't have to pay taxes, and 2) can have as many wives as he wants, he's probably going to be very rich and have an absurd number of kids, some of whom will have the magic 15 genes.

"I bet you'll see a lot more young Indian chess players."

Out of a much, much bigger sample? As a percentage of population, Ashkenazim dominate.

"memorization of oral history (The Tibetans seem to be quite remarkable in this respect)."

Are they as good as people in the Balkans? Or Aborigines? Or North Indian bards? Oral history is a different game -- as long as you don't teach someone how to read, they can remember phenomenal amounts (Robert Fagles wrote a bit about this in his intro to The Oddyssey. I don't know that anyone has done research on which groups are best at it).

"Or for that matter, the first masters of Astronomy (Babylon, Mayan) "

It's known, among people who study this, that Ashkenazim are average in astronomy. It's also known that astronomy requires disproportionately high visiospatial IQ, and that Ashkenazim are average.

"It's just there are constantly pronouncements that something or another has been found, and the true story always seems to be that it makes no real difference."

I wish there was more research, too! It's a little unfortunate that the most open-minded people in this field are the bigots. In economics, or math, or physics, people say "That's wrong! Check your data! Your reasoning is flawed!" In psychometrics, people say "You can't say that!"

"Not exactly..."

Depending on the amount of gene expression you actually need, you might get an absolutely higher percentage of females at the highest level of ability, or vice versa. It is model dependent. That was my point.

"...Indian chess players"

The population size doesn't matter nearly so much. What might matter is the population size of interested players. The point is that this is highly culture specific. On TopCoder, per capita, Norway, Croatia, Slovakia, and Poland seem to lead the way in terms of top competitors, and, as we know, tragically, the Jewish population there had been reduced to near non-existence. I don't know why programming competitions are a big deal there, but they are.

In most of the united states, African Americans perform worse than average in most tests of academic achievement. Yet, in New Jersey, Joyce Kilmer middle school in Trenton, has continually fielded one of the top teams. I saw them when they won in 2006, and they were incredible. Say what you want about sample size, but what I've taken from this is that with a good teacher, and inspiration, a team can rise to the occasion and even beat the kids of Princeton professors, despite otherwise being handed a second class public education.

"...oral history."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_King_Gesar

That's pretty darned incredible, to me.

"...it's known..."

Are average? Huh? What a crazy pronouncement. It's not 'known' that astronomy requires any kind of extreme visual ability -- for most of it's history it's involved more bookkeeping than looking at pretty pictures. I don't know what the historical precident was to make Mayans and Babylonians look up in the sky, and eventually develop mathematics to predict solar phenomena, but they did. I think it's a heck of a lot more random than you seem to be implying.

If you were born 300 years ago would you still be a hacker?

"...I wish..."

I wish there was less wasted effort going into measuring something we don't understand, and more energy put into an actual understanding of intelligence. We are further back here than we are in AI. We don't merely have a theory that's incorrect. We don't even have a theory. We're stuck in the local maximum, and I really don't think there's any way to move forward if people keep approaching it in the same way, over and over.

People make these unqualified, absurd statements and they really have no idea what kind of damage they do. I've been studying these things for years, and so I'm in a much stronger place than most. But I know for a fact that if I was told that I couldn't do something because of my genetic makeup, it would have taken a lot of work to get over that. You know what the worst thing is? Most of, if not all of it, is complete baloney.

People see to think that as long as they can measure something in the social sciences, they can publish it, and draw conclusions. Well, the bar is way, way higher in physics, and as far as we're aware, particles don't base life decisions on whether or not our model represents them as different from what they are. Scientists should, and do, take extreme caution when they start to say anything about race, and the few that do not should be called out on it.

(That said, having actually read them, I'd be totally okay with Lawrence Summer's comments were he not the president of Harvard. He should have known people would blow things out of proportion. But "The Bell Curve" is totally fraudulent).

:) got me