The Myth of an Asian IQ Advantage: The Truth is Somehow More Offensive

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they challenge popular misconceptions about race, IQ, and success. This thought-provoking discussion dives deep into the complex relationship between genetics, culture, and achievement, offering surprising insights that challenge both progressive and conservative narratives. Key topics include:

* The truth about Asian-American academic success

* Debunking the myth of significant racial IQ differences

* The impact of immigration and cultural factors on group success

* How class, rather than race, influences genetic advantages

* The role of Confucianism in creativity and innovation

* Why some immigrant groups outperform others

* The fallacy of attributing success solely to individual effort

Whether you're interested in genetics, sociology, or the complex factors behind group achievement, this video offers a nuanced and data-driven perspective that will challenge your assumptions and broaden your understanding of human potential.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Flynn was comparing American IQ estimates Based on a representative sample with Japanese estimates based on upper income, heavily urban samples.

Recalculated, the Japanese average came in not at 106. 6, but 99. 2. When the Chinese American scores were reassessed using up to date intelligence metrics, Flynn found they came in at a 97 verbal and a 100 nonverbal. The numbers now suggested Flynn said that they had succeeded not because of their higher IQs, but despite their lower IQs People are cherry picking studies to get these big differences. It's not that you don't get any difference between ethnic groups, but the difference is typically like. two to three IQ points, just not a really significant number.

Malcolm Collins: East Asian students spend approximately 13 more hours per week on academic activities compared to their non academic counterparts.

Holy!

Malcolm Collins: Thirteen more hours. it is not some Asians are smarter than white people thing. [00:01:00] It's Asians work harder than white people. Is that an offensive thing to say?

Like, I know it's it's

so I think it's so commonly understood,

Malcolm Collins: When you remove all of the DEI nonsense, 72 percent of the top academic performers become Asian, like that's wild. But it gets more surprising because Asian Americans are actually way less successful than you would expect them to be. Less than 1 percent of corporate officers and corporate board members in America are Asians and only 2 percent of college presidents. Only nine of the fortune 500 CEOs are Asians. Now we're going to get to the final part where I'm gonna get really offensive here. Yay. Really offensive. I love these parts.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! I'm excited to be talking to you. We did an episode that was actually a long quote from our book, that went over the myth of a high Jewish Ashkenazi IQ. This episode has gone viral, so that's fun.

And I was like, Let's double [00:02:00] down because people said this episode is going to get you guys canceled. It's going to get Simone's campaign ruined. And I was like, how could he, like, what are they going to accuse us of saying that Jews aren't genetically superior? And somebody was like, like unironically, yes, they may cancel you for even asking these questions.

Like, but, but I don't, I don't think so. I, I genuinely just like, There's these areas that people are not used to engaging with, but I think that we as a society have moved past sort of reactive cancellations in regards to just engaging with like honest scientific information. Well, yeah,

just the fact that even they're being commonly held group level traits is an extremely controversial thing to say.

And then also admitting that intelligence has a genetic component is extremely controversial. And then of course, talking about Jews. At all is extremely controversial. So we were just, we weren't just stepping on third rails. We were like playing twister just to try to touch as many third rails [00:03:00] as possible with that.

Okay. Well, I decided, I decided I'm going back. Round two of third rail twister begins in three, two.

Malcolm Collins: At the end of the episode, I, I set up this point where I was like, actually the, the, while there are specific cognitive traits that seem to have some ethnic correlation, broad IQ, Doesn't seem to be broadly correlated when you actually dig into the nitty gritty of what's going on in these studies.

But the problem is, is we know that if it was highly correlated with ethnicity, we wouldn't be allowed to say that it was highly correlated with ethnicity. So whenever somebody comes along and says, here are some stats proving that it is, everybody just, Immediately jumps on it because they're like, well, at least somebody is giving me some information here.

But unfortunately, a lot of the people who are doing this often have like alternative [00:04:00] motivations. And so if you actually dig into the stats, which you then find, what we found was the Jewish situation is. It's, it's not clear, it's not it, it appears that Jews have some areas where they're a little different cognitively but there isn't this huge IQ gap that, that is purported by the people who are, the biodiversity bros even, H H and it's actually very similar when you go into the Asian IQ differential.

So that's what we'll be going into in this. I am going to start because I don't want to get in trouble for anything I'm about to say here. So I am going to be quoting from Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote an article in New Yorker on this subject. Which I paid for it to get access to this article, just so I could be quoting Malcolm Gladwell, so no one could say that I had said this stuff, okay?

Alright, so Malcolm says, now hold on, when you're quoting this, you don't get to say, evil Malcolm says, that's what I'll say, evil Malcolm, so nobody thinks this is coming from my mouth, okay? Okay, so, [00:05:00] Malcolm says Uh, Flynn, and he's talking about Flynn from the Flynn effect, a really well observed phenomenon that we now have the reverse Flynn effect and blah, blah, blah, but historically it was the effect that showed that IQ was rising over time as people were getting access to more nutrition and then this effect saturated, blah, blah, blah.

Flynn brings a similar precision to the question of whether Asians have a genetic advantage in IQ, a possibility that has led to great excitement among IQ fundamentalists in recent years. Data showing that the Japanese had higher IQs than people from European descent,

for example, prompted the British psychometrician and eugenicist Richard Lin to concoct an elaborate evolutionary explanation involving the Himalayas, really

cold weather, pre modern hunting practices, brain size, and specialized vowel sounds. The fact that the IQs of Chinese Americans also seem to be elevated has led IQ fundamentalists to posit the existence of an international IQ pyramid with Asians at the top, European whites next, and Hispanics and Blacks at the [00:06:00] bottom.

Here was a question Taylor made for James Flynn's accounting skills. He looked first at Flynn's data and realized that the comparison was skewed. Flynn was comparing American IQ estimates Based on a representative sample of school children with Japanese estimates based on upper income, heavily urban samples.

Recalculated, the Japanese average came in not at 106. 6, but 99. 2. Then Flynn turned his attention to the Chinese American estimates. They turned out to be based on a 1975 study in San Francisco's Chinatown using something called the Lord Thorndike Intelligence Test.

But the Lord Thorndike Test was normed i