Objectivity writes:
A few points:
1) How do you know the Nigerian con artists would score lower than the whites they tricked? Just because the average Nigerian has an IQ of 67 doesn’t mean these con artists do. They are presumably part of the educated elite with Internet access and probably have IQ’s around 86 (the average for university Africans )
2) The Nigerian con artists probably had thousands of hours of practice perfecting their con, so it’s hardly surprising that they can beat smarter inexperienced people at the game they’ve been practicing their whole lives.
3) IQ is a measure of overall intelligence, but each race has their own strengths and weaknesses. Blacks probably have a higher social IQ than whites and especially East Asians of equivalent g because blacks evolved to have numerous sexual partners, while whites and East Asians needed technological IQ to adapt to challenging environments so there was an evolutionary tradeoff between people smarts vs technology smarts. That’s why high tech types are known for their socially awkward nerdiness.
I worked with these scammers for a very long time as part of a group who was fighting them. I know them up and down, forwards and backwards, east to west, north to south. I could write a book on them.
First of all, many to most Southern Nigerians are basically criminals anyway if you ask me, so it doesn’t make sense to differentiate between the “non-criminals” and criminals. I figure half the population of Lagos wakes up every morning and thinks, “Who can I rip off today?”
The scammers operate out of Internet cafes. They make enough money from scamming to afford the cafes. Many work for organized scamming gangs who take over the cafes or they work for these gangs in the gang’s homes. Most scammers do not have their own computers. If a Nigerian has his own computer, he is probably not scamming.
These guys are quite literally as dumb as fuckin rocks. Some of the stupidest humans I have ever dealt with in my life. However, they are absolutely brilliant when it comes to being criminals. They have excellent, masterful criminal minds. Many appear sociopathic. Con artists are smarter than you think in some ways.
There is:
1. Criminal intelligence.
2. IQ
The two don’t have that much to do with each other. Quite a few excellent ingenious criminals are literally dumb as rocks on IQ tests.
Over time, we had a number of Nigerians come into our group to “help us fight the scammers.” After a while, they all had to be removed due to general scummy, scammy behaviors. Many of them were scammers to one degree or another. We eventually had to institute a blanket “no Africans” policy which was blatantly racist and discriminatory, but it was the only way the group could survive. Even these “honest Nigerians” were dumb as rocks too. The honest ones and crooks were about as stupid as each other.
The scammers in general don’t go to college. They’re fucking criminals. They are almost all high school dropouts, typical criminals. They waste all of the considerable money they make as it hits their palms, like typical criminals.
We did hear about some of the “master scammers.” These were older men, and some of them were actually quite intelligent. They were nearly “pros” or even “kingpins.”
“1. Criminal intelligence.”
Scamming, like hacking, is mostly social networking and creativity. Or in other words street smarts. It doesn’t require that much intelligence in the traditional sense of the word. Given that Nigerian scammers are largely targeting middle aged working people who are set thinking in a complete linear and literal fashion…it isn’t something a 12 year old kid with a lot of time and a computer couldn’t pull off. Anyone heard of script Script Kiddies?
I am deeply amused at the generalizing statements you make about Lagosians etc. Y’know commenting about the moral character and intelligence of an entire people comes with a smug presumption that you are sort of inherently superior, like the biologist presumes his overall superiority to the phytoplankton he writes about in his field study, but I am deeply amused reading you, you don’t cut across as intelligent only very deeply conceited.
Let me give you may take, the Nigerians you are trying to analyze in a few words are far more complex human beings than you understand. Your generalizing oversimplification of their complexity reveals you naivete to anyone with sufficient insight to see through the thin facade of your laughable pseudo-intellectual “objectivity.”
I called several of my friends to read your post, and parts of your blogging tomfoolery: it strikes as comedy, superior white subjects analyzing inferior black objects. The joke is spreading among the staff in my department—LOL! Anyway if it makes you feel good, if it boosts your sense of self-esteem keep up the charade! (thigh slapping LOLLL!!!)
All right, you are banned. We had years of experience with these people, and that was more than enough. I have a pretty low opinion of West Africans in general, but in particular of Nigerians. There is a criminal culture in that country that must be seen to be believe. You might be interested to know that Nigerians are hated and distrusted all over Africa as liars, cheaters, thieves and criminals. Even other Africans hate their guts.
Nice try attempting to boil this down to Whites versus Blacks. Our experience in our group was with Africans, primarily West Africans, of whom the Nigerians were the worst. We continued to open up the group to Black Americans, and we had few problems. In particular, we had good luck with female US Blacks, they were a good segment of our group, and many had been badly scammed by Nigerian criminals.
I take it you do not know Nigeria or Nigerians very well. You best read up.
Fun fact to know!
I don’t know how many johnthomas didymuses there are, but I suspect that this work was written by your critic:
http://books.google.se/books?id=7lNEBCjiDksC&pg=PA162&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
i would’ve loved to have worked in Robert’s group, I hate those sociopathic scumbags.
Not for anything they’ve done to me, but what they do to others.
They aren’t that bright, because the scams are glaringly obvious and ham-handed. Really remedial stuff, but people with little exposure to the street might get fooled.
There used to be this guy that would play along with them and set up meets, sucking them in with promises of way more money than the scammers expected. he’d get them to send someone to various locations and spend money and time on phone calls…then he’d toy with them and mock them. His reverse-scams were then posted for everyones’ entertainment.
The truth is those scams are dangerous, some Americans have been lured to Nigeria and mugged or killed. The Nigerian govt and cops don’t do anything, they may even be on the take.
Yes, an entire country’s culture can be tolerant and even approving of larceny and petty crime. I experienced it in Southern Italy back in the 70′s, but I doubt it was close to Nigeria..
On Ebay, many sellers put a note in their listings saying they will NOT do business with Nigerians.
If it were up to me (and even possible), I’d block all internet traffic into the U.S. originating from Nigeria.
It’s a big nest of dirtbags. I doubt the Roma could hold a candle to them.
You are right about all of this, but we worked on the romance scams. The romance scams are a great advancement on the advance fee scam, and they have fooled a tremendous number of people. The romance scams have now migrated all over the world. There are a lot of romance scams coming out of Russia and also the Philippines. There are also quite a few of them coming out of Vietnam, Hong Kong and China. The romance scams coming out of Europe, Singapore and Indonesia are usually run by Nigerian expats.
All of the Nigerian police are in on the scams. 100%.
IQ is a measure of g, a g by definition influences all mental abilities including criminal cunning, however high IQ people are less practiced at crime because they’re smart enough to get rich without compromising their ethics and their superior moral reasoning and sensitivity keeps them scrupulous. However among criminals, the smarter ones are more successful at their crimes because intelligence is the ability to adapt and problem solve. The average criminal (in the U.S.) has an IQ around 90, but elite criminal Jon Gotti clocked in at 110.
Just the fact that these Nigerian con artists have the technological talent to access the Internet tells me they’re well above the African mean of 67.
You need to define the type of criminal. I don’t know where you got the 90 IQ number from, but I assume most ghetto crimes are committed by people in the 70-85 range, if not lower. A guy like ol’ Madoff could easily be 120+.
He refers to White folks. With White folks, the average IQ is 100, and the average White criminal has an IQ of 90. So criminals have IQ’s about 10 pts below the rest.
With Blacks, it may well be the same. Black IQ is ~87, and the average Black criminal may well have an IQ of ~77.
LOL.
So if you are only smart enough, then you will able to get rich without resorting to crime? How then can you explain all of the genius IQ folks I know who are poor to low income. Some of these folks are in their 40′s and 50′s now.
Even if Nigerian scammers have IQ’s above 67, they are still dumb as rocks. Most Nigerians can figure out how to use the Internet. These guys are smarter than you think, whatever their IQ numbers.
What’s the surest way to measure IQ without actually taking the test?
Math? Critical thinking? Business?
I worked with many Nigerians when I graduated from college, and they could hold their own in advanced calculus/physics classes. They worked much harder and longer than I did – they were serious students that studied for hours and hours. Maybe it was the language barrier? But in math, that doesn’t really matter. However, we got similar marks on our tests (I’m white with 115 IQ) despite me putting in less than 20hrs a week studying. I’m hesitant to link our study hours difference with IQ.
Robert, I’m sure if you had any interest in the subject, your 140ish IQ would make mincemeat out of higher level maths. And why are high IQ types not so prevalent in business? The leaders of industry (not counting overly specialized fields, like computers) seem to have between 95-120 IQ, while hiring more intellectually gifted employees that lack the leader’s social intelligence.
Observations. I want to hear other stories as well.
Hi, there are many bright Nigerians for some reason. Also in Nigeria, if you have a day job, you’re generally not a scammer. Scammers don’t work. Day job folks work all day and then go to the cafes in the evening after work. The scammers fill the cafes in the days and nights, but they leave in the evenings when the regulars come in.
The Nigerians you meet in the US are generally very bright and they are not criminals. They have a profoundly low opinion of their countrymen. Even in Nigeria, very bright folks at university or with good jobs are generally not scammers.
It does seem to be true that higher IQ types have poor social IQ. My social IQ used to be excellent, but now that I have OCD pretty bad, I guess it’s pretty low. Most of my social interactions don’t end up very well, and they used to do fine. It’s not that I don’t know how to do it right. I do, but my brain gets in the way of all of that. If there’s any OCD stuff showing up when I am out socializing, pretty much everything gets ruined AFAICT. People can see that OCD stuff somehow and it gets in the way, and they think there is something weird going on, so social stuff doesn’t go well. Socializing only works if people think you’re ok. If they think you’re off, it doesn’t work right.
Verbal IQ is at work here. Verbal IQ is manipulation of others brain. It has little to do with truth finding.
Verbal IQ is important for salesmanship which give you more profit (for the same product), more recognition, more award (including nobel prize), better legal outcome (regardless of true responsibility). At end, it is about brainwashing other people.
Scientific discovery, engineer skill, physician performance on the other hand are heavily depending on visual-spacial IQ which is about finding the truth. A cancer is a cancer. You can not talk out of it. Pretending know something here only make fool yourself at end when brutal truth reveal itself one way or another.
Low society or poor people tend to live in group, social skill (verbal IQ) is critical for survival. Rich people or wealthy society can afford to live with more personal space, more or less you can success with other help (like advanced farming). In this situation, social skill is less important than visual-spacial skill. This might explain least social interaction among Finns since they live in low density. Dealing with natural truth is more important for Finns.
At end, social skill or verbal IQ is critial for poor people since they need each other for survival. In poor people game, it is about how to get more out of other fellow poor guys. Manipulation of other brain. Naturally, they are good scams and also develop high scam alarm.
This is true. The low IQ types around me are social masters, and they are dumb as Hell. They made it clear that my social skills were shit, and my IQ is orders of magnitude above theirs. Most poor people have good social skills for whatever reason.
“An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.”
― Victor Hugo
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts.”
― Bertrand Russell
“Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it’s tuna, but it says ‘Chicken by the Sea.”
― Jessica Simpson
“I’ve never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don’t like eating fish. And I know that’s very popular out there in Africa.”
― Britney Spears
I figure half the population of Lagos wakes up every morning and thinks, “Who can I rip off today?”
Too true. I worked on an IT consultancy project there and everything of value was stolen unless it had to be surgically removed. Even that was no guarantee!
And…..most were dumb as rocks. Apart from this genius.
http://irishsavant.blogspot.ie/2010/07/msm-sinks-ever-lower.html?showComment=1308106294569