I have always suspected approximately this was the case (I would have been open to the possibility of a small, absolutely non-large effect such as a lowered IQ of perhaps of 1/6 of a SD at adulthood at the very most, but what you have found I would call no significant effect) although admittedly based on rather weak arguments.
My skepticism on the effect of lead on IQ and criminality has come from low level lead posioning being a much hyped explanation, together with legalized abortion, for the shrinking crime in 1990s US, while the explanation that the harsher punishments of criminality that started to become mainstream in the late 80s and were adopted in many states in the early 90s (After the long period of 60s-induced insanity of lowering punishment to near Scandinavian levels all the while having a large population of highly criminal black people) were a much more common sense explanation that better satisfied the premises of Occam's razor.
Add to that that the left has hated common sense since at least the 60s - which as all phenomena the left was first to denounce has since long become anathema to the center-right as well (As Steve Sailer says, political correctness is a war on noticing - ie common sense).
Common sense was/is responsible for such phenomena such as non-scientific racism as regards white racism (Ie noticing that other races except East Asians behaves in a way oppositional to the core of western civilization as it has existed for centuries), stereotyping (accurately), using ethnic/cultural/religous profiling, using appearance-based profiling (That started to intersect with class-based profiling since in the 60s the working class gave up their earlier norms of putting on their costumes when out int their free time on sundays - a behaviour first partly induced by the benevolent paternalism of the nordic early social democratic parties who were adamant about educating the working classes, to make the working class appreciate high-brow culture and in general better themselves intellectually and mentally) and other such things that are a natural part of our evolved tribal collectivist danger-avoiding brains but very much in opposition to the radical individualist liberatory project that the left has been committed to since the 60s.
Since the harsher punishment in the US especially targeted repeat offenders, who it is well known is reponsible for the overwhelming amount of crime in almost all western societies (At least all western societies I have checked the data for, roughly ten countries) with the incapative effects of putting especially violent criminals of the anti-social type (Ie those that are the repeat offenders) in prison for long times being the obvious explanation for the shrinking crime in the US during the 90s, leaving the lead-level and legalized abortion arguments as a quite obvious expression of ideology to avoid the even broader applications of laws such as "three strikes and you're out" and so on.
Anyway, thanks for the interesting post. I find your blog almost always interesting and illuminating.
/Rationalist pro white-ethnocentism nationalist
PS. As I heard somebody say sometime:
"It takes a criminologist to come to the conclusion that harsher punishments do obviously not affect the level of crime in a society".
At least in Sweden (My home country - which I will leave for either Denmark, Finland, Hungary or Poland in a few years) that statement seems to hold up quite well.
The last poll I saw on this in Sweden indicated that among voters of all parties in the parliament there was an overwhelming majority for harsher punishment - the lowest majority was 62 % found among the Left party (Former Communist party). This poll was done and I saw it at least 10-15 years ago when the current explosion of what i believe in Denmark is called dominance crime plus gang-related crime, shootings and bombings and violent crime hadn't even begun to become an issue existing in any significant amount of people's consciousness (although there has been a steady rise of this type of crime ever since the 80s, which has risen exponentially as totally non-selective high-level legal as well as illegal migration of non-europeans to the country started to become official policy in 90s and turned into maximum level migration in the 00s).
I have always suspected approximately this was the case (I would have been open to the possibility of a small, absolutely non-large effect such as a lowered IQ of perhaps of 1/6 of a SD at adulthood at the very most, but what you have found I would call no significant effect) although admittedly based on rather weak arguments.
My skepticism on the effect of lead on IQ and criminality has come from low level lead posioning being a much hyped explanation, together with legalized abortion, for the shrinking crime in 1990s US, while the explanation that the harsher punishments of criminality that started to become mainstream in the late 80s and were adopted in many states in the early 90s (After the long period of 60s-induced insanity of lowering punishment to near Scandinavian levels all the while having a large population of highly criminal black people) were a much more common sense explanation that better satisfied the premises of Occam's razor.
Add to that that the left has hated common sense since at least the 60s - which as all phenomena the left was first to denounce has since long become anathema to the center-right as well (As Steve Sailer says, political correctness is a war on noticing - ie common sense).
Common sense was/is responsible for such phenomena such as non-scientific racism as regards white racism (Ie noticing that other races except East Asians behaves in a way oppositional to the core of western civilization as it has existed for centuries), stereotyping (accurately), using ethnic/cultural/religous profiling, using appearance-based profiling (That started to intersect with class-based profiling since in the 60s the working class gave up their earlier norms of putting on their costumes when out int their free time on sundays - a behaviour first partly induced by the benevolent paternalism of the nordic early social democratic parties who were adamant about educating the working classes, to make the working class appreciate high-brow culture and in general better themselves intellectually and mentally) and other such things that are a natural part of our evolved tribal collectivist danger-avoiding brains but very much in opposition to the radical individualist liberatory project that the left has been committed to since the 60s.
Since the harsher punishment in the US especially targeted repeat offenders, who it is well known is reponsible for the overwhelming amount of crime in almost all western societies (At least all western societies I have checked the data for, roughly ten countries) with the incapative effects of putting especially violent criminals of the anti-social type (Ie those that are the repeat offenders) in prison for long times being the obvious explanation for the shrinking crime in the US during the 90s, leaving the lead-level and legalized abortion arguments as a quite obvious expression of ideology to avoid the even broader applications of laws such as "three strikes and you're out" and so on.
Anyway, thanks for the interesting post. I find your blog almost always interesting and illuminating.
/Rationalist pro white-ethnocentism nationalist
PS. As I heard somebody say sometime:
"It takes a criminologist to come to the conclusion that harsher punishments do obviously not affect the level of crime in a society".
At least in Sweden (My home country - which I will leave for either Denmark, Finland, Hungary or Poland in a few years) that statement seems to hold up quite well.
The last poll I saw on this in Sweden indicated that among voters of all parties in the parliament there was an overwhelming majority for harsher punishment - the lowest majority was 62 % found among the Left party (Former Communist party). This poll was done and I saw it at least 10-15 years ago when the current explosion of what i believe in Denmark is called dominance crime plus gang-related crime, shootings and bombings and violent crime hadn't even begun to become an issue existing in any significant amount of people's consciousness (although there has been a steady rise of this type of crime ever since the 80s, which has risen exponentially as totally non-selective high-level legal as well as illegal migration of non-europeans to the country started to become official policy in 90s and turned into maximum level migration in the 00s).
https://www.hoplofobia.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-Estimated-IQ-points-lost-to-early-childhood-blood-lead-levels-in-the-US.pdf
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/119/6/e2110694119.full.pdf ?