zenpundit.com

To all the first time visitors coming over from Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish, feel free to stay a while and look around. Secondly, thank you to Andrew Sullivan for the link – much appreciated !

One of the well-documented aspects regarding IQ testing on which you can safely make broad generalizations, is that aggregate mean IQ scores  have been rising. Not just here in America or in advanced countries but everywhere (though at different rates), rich or poor, free or unfree, north or south. Moreover, to the extent to which we can assemble reliable and valid psychometric records, this societal increase in mean IQ, known as “The Flynn Effect” after researcher James Flynn, has been going on for about a century.

At the same time that mean IQ has increased, the results of standardized testing of k-12 students at the national level has not reflected this improvement, at least not proportionately; seniors and some parents are also prone to make the anecdotal observation that children today simply aren’t as proficient at many practical kinds of problem solving as they were many decades ago. How can these  phenomena be reconciled ?

Flynn now argues the change is due to the increasing complexity and stimulation of the modern social evironment – children are getting better at certain kinds of thinking (which impacts IQ scores) demanded by their environment but other kinds of cognitive skills are falling into disuse:

“By reverse-engineering the pattern of improvement in IQ tests, you can tell how mental priorities have changed over the century. It turns out that we, far more than our recent ancestors, take seriously the ability to find abstract similarities between objects (Question: how are dogs and rabbits alike? Answer: they are both mammals). And we are better at applying logic to finding abstract patterns, as in Raven’s Progressive Matrices.

“At that point I began to get excited”, says Flynn, “because I began to feel that I was bridging the gulf between our minds and the minds of our ancestors. We weren’t more intelligent than they, but we had learnt to apply our intelligence to a new set of problems. We had detached logic from the concrete, we were willing to deal with the hypothetical, and we thought the world was a place to be classified and understood scientifically rather than to be manipulated.

….There is still the puzzle of how environmental differences can be so weak when we compare individuals born at the same time, but so strong over time. The key, which Flynn attributes to fruitful discussions with his collaborator, William Dickens, an economist at the Brookings Institution in Flynn’s home town of Washington, DC, lies in the observation that superior genes cause superior performance by co-opting superior environments.

….Everything falls into place with the observation that, for the first time in human history, some people’s superior mental abilities are making superior mental environments available to everyone. Humans are social animals. The most important part of the environment that created your mind is other people’s minds. Before the 20th century, only the privileged had easy access to ideas. Now, when one person thinks something worthwhile, we can all think it and that thought changes all of us.

….The Flynn effect is not a story of pure gains. There are signs that children are missing concrete experiences that help develop some mental abilities. Michael Shayer, a psychologist at King’s College, London, has spent most of his working life studying the foundations of mathematical ability. In 1976 he tested children on their understanding of volume and shape, an understanding thought by many to underlie all future mathematical ability. When he repeated the tests in 2003, 11-year-olds performed only as well as eight-year-olds had done 30 years earlier. “

In the words of Aristotle – ” We are what we frequently do”. Or more practically, students, on average, will get better at what they spend time doing, including cognitive behaviors.

I’m not sure this hypothesis decisively knocks a hole in the important role of heritability on IQ, given the mounds of evidence in it’s favor, but Flynn is certainly proposing a reasonable explanation for the scattershot outcomes of “the Flynn Effect”. Nor is it true that ” this is the first time in history” everyone is benefiting from superior environments created by a few. That has always been the case and there is a proper name for it – ” civilization”. What is different today is the greater magnitude of scale, accelerated velocity and connectivity of such superior environments due to globalization and the information revolution.

I’d like to hear Dan of tdaxp  weigh in here.

ADDENDUM:

Herrick of Gene Expression already has with “10 Questions for James Flynn“

A Sunday tradition.

SEED – The downloadable “Genetics Cribsheet“

Kent’s Imperative -“Systema”

If you think Crossfit training is hard, the video clip that KI links, which also appeared on the Chicago Boyz “Physical Fitness Series“, to is not to  be believed.

Complexity and Social Networks Blog -“A different kind of network: United Transnational Republics”

Another example of the relative decline of the legitimacy of the nation-states; at this point, one more theoretical than real but NGO activist types are running it up the flagpole.

Sic Semper Tyrannis – “Sale on Pakistan’s Weapons”

The Richard Sale in Col. Lang’s post is presumably the journalist. I cannot vouch for his information but if true, it certainly represents good news.

Haft of the Spear – “Failure Fosters Facile Fabrication of Facts”

Tanji gets bonus points for his further elucidation in the comments section :

“It’s more this arrogant idea that we have to treat them like some kind of retard. You bring them this embarrassment of a product, they stop you half-way through, then explain what they think of the whole situation – in way more detail that you’ve just presented – and show you the door. They don’t say it but the message is clear: “I don’t have a lot of use for your ‘intelligence’.”

That’s it !

Fellow member of  The Small Wars Council  , Dr. Steven Metz, visted here the other day and left a comment on an old post where his most recent SSI monograph, Rethinking Insurgency, had appeared with some critical commentary from me. Here was Dr. Metz’s response, since the sidebar plug in for comments did not let readers hop into the archives (possibly because the post was at my old site and archived here in a category):

“I’m not sure the distinction between my position and Tom Barnett’s is as stark as you suggest.  AFRICOM will mostly be focused on preventative measures.  I’m greatly in favor of that.  I was, for instance, an early supporter of the African Crisis Response Initiative. 

I would only warn that we resist any urge to unilaterally undertake major counterinsurgency support from any African government unwilling to address its systemic problems. 

I did, on the other hand, advocate military disengagement from the Arab world.  Having spent time in both places, my impression is that American security assistance provokes hostility in the Arab world and does not, at least to the same extent, in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Nice blog, by the way!”

Thanks, and a fair criticism of my post . As a result of Steve’s comment I decided to give Rethinking Insurgency another read without the AFRICOM context being the foremost concept  in my mind as it was at the time when I wrote that post. Here’s my second take.

There’s a lot to like in Rethinking Insurgency. I was particularly impressed with how Metz dealt with militias ( loyalist paramilitaries) and their permutations in terms of sophistication, their origin and relationship to states and/or criminal organizations and the risks such forces present. Metz presents an extensive analysis of the interrelationships of non-state actors (militias, insurgents, OC, PMC’s) in a conflict zone with one another, the state and foreign entities that readers here will find quite engaging.

Another twist that readers here will like is Metz’s take on ” fourth forces” – media, IGO’s, NGO’s and transnational corporations – and how they impact what Boyd termed the “mental” and “moral” levels of warfare, usually to the disadvantage of the state and complicating the already delicate dynamics of counterinsurgency operations. Even the most benevolent intervention by fourth forces can be an unsettling variable. According to Metz:

“….External humanitarian efforts, while exceptionally valuable to alleviate suffering, may leave a state unprepared to take over the provision of services when the conflict ends or subsides. Hence the widespread involvement of international or nongovernmental organizations in an insurgency increases the chances that conflict will reemerge once the shortcomings and weaknesses of the state provide political space for insurgents or other violent actors….what seems best -the alleviation of suffering- may increase the chances of renewed suffering at a later date”

With insurgency often being a contest of will and popular perceptions of political legitimacy, having conflicts “burn out” naturally with higher intensity will often be preferred by states to letting them drag on for decades. It may be, to use SEA as an example, that the Indonesian military’s attempt to block relief to hurricaine victims in rebellious Aceh or Thailand’s more recent appointment of the admired and feared General Pallop Pinmanee, run to this line of thinking argued by Metz. Countervailing pressures of a globalized environment and communally-oriented actors though will, according to Metz, force most regimes to settle for ” sustaining a controllable conflict” rather than inflicting a decisive military defeat on their enemies. Insurgency, in a certain light, becomes one of the costs of doing business as a state.

I recommend that you read Dr. Metz’s paper in full, which can be downloaded here at SSI.

Defense & The National Interest has a/is becoming a blog !

Zounds! But I’m honored to make the short blogroll – Hoo-HA!