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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-they-only-surveyed-the-nimnobs dept.

Why can we talk about PISA results, comparing the performance of students in school, but we are not allowed to talk about differences in IQ? Bring this subject up, and you are immediately accused of racism. And yet. And yet, if there are substantial differences in intellectual capability, might this not explain some of the world's problems?

An update of a massive "study of studies" is underway; this article summarizes the work to date, and provides links to the work in progress. A quick summary of the answers to the questions no one dares ask:

  • Eastern Asia (Japan, China): IQ around 105
  • Europe/North America: IQ around 98
  • Middle East: IQ around 85
  • Africa: IQ around 70

In the first instance, it doesn't even matter why there are differences. They may be genetic, or disease related, or nutrition related, or something else. If these differences are real (and the evidence is pretty strong that they are), then we need to deal with them. Imagine if the low IQs in Africa turn out to be fixable - what would the impact be, if we could raise the IQ of an entire continent by 30 points?!

Sticking our collective heads in the sand, because the topic is not PC, is not going to solve any problems.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by TheReaperD on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:13PM (6 children)

    by TheReaperD (5556) on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:13PM (#591210)

    Let's say, for argument, that this is correct and IQ isn't bullshit, as said above, this could easily lead down the "we know what's best for you" approach that has been done in the past with disastrous results. The treatment and indoctrination of Aboriginal people in Australia are one of the better examples of where this mentality has led. Now, if there is something environmental that we can fix, that may be another matter.

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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday November 03 2017, @12:55AM (1 child)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Friday November 03 2017, @12:55AM (#591447) Homepage Journal

    It hasn't always been such a forward-thinking nation:

    First nation's children were taken from their families then sent to boarding school so they could learn all about white society without having any influence from the culture they were born into.

    The Inuit used to live off the seals they hunted. Now they live in comfortable homes that were provided by the government. The result of no longer having satisfying work led to the problem of their children inhaling gasoline vapor from Hefty bags.

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    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by quacking duck on Friday November 03 2017, @04:37PM

      by quacking duck (1395) on Friday November 03 2017, @04:37PM (#591725)

      The Inuit used to live off the seals they hunted. Now they live in comfortable homes that were provided by the government. The result of no longer having satisfying work led to the problem of their children inhaling gasoline vapor from Hefty bags.

      And the "result of no longer having satisfying work" can be laid at the feet of (mostly-)white, first-world privileged people in organizations like PETA that conflated clubbing of cute baby seals with sustainable seal hunting, leading to the near-total collapse of the industry that allowed Inuit to stay on their ancestral lands while still living a modern lifestyle. And PETA are still at it, trying to force indigenous peoples restaurants to close because they serve seal, and naively claiming those living in the north can just change jobs [theguardian.com].

      It's not a stretch to say PETA and similar organizations are attempting cultural genocide.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @04:19AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @04:19AM (#591530)

    Sigh, IQ isn't bullshit, it's just that it's a narrow measure of intelligence and there isn't usually any extra resources given to people who exhibit higher scores on the test. Around here the extra resources were given based on even less reliable testing done at an extremely young age. Any attempts to identify the gifted from the normal children before about age 10 are subject to huge problems where children with normal or below normal intelligence, but larger working memory get selected over the children that grow up to be the geniuses that create most of the interesting innovations.

    IQ itself is mainly a measure of suitability to a particular academic system that was in place when the tests were first being developed. It doesn't mean that people with a lower score are necessarily unintelligent, it means that whatever cognitive abilities they have aren't necessarily ones that match with the test as designed and administered.

    Because of that, people with lower scores tend to rail against the test as a horrible measure of intelligence when the real problem is that it's measuring something that's of less importance now than it was in the past when academic settings were more closely aligned to the traits covered by the test.

    It's also a test that cannot be used across cultures in a meaningful way. It has to be normed for the population taking the test, hence these apparent discrepancies even in cases where they don't make sense. Asians are not statistically smarter than other groups. I've met many of them and they really aren't any smarter or dumber than other groups.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:08PM (#591739)

      there's a chance that doing A.I. .. errr ... IQ test alot will make you better at it.
      a curious fact, for me anyways, i cannot "unhear" a language that i learned to understand.
      thus, maybe a IQ test is a test that programs your mind and you cannot unlearn it.
      if it is for a sinister purpose, just say: do this test and it will tell you how smart you are?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Wootery on Friday November 03 2017, @09:37AM (1 child)

    by Wootery (2341) on Friday November 03 2017, @09:37AM (#591605)

    Let's say, for argument, that this is correct and IQ isn't bullshit, as said above, this could easily lead

    And your fallacies are:

    • Wishful thinking. That you don't like the consequences of a fact, does not disprove that fact.
    • Slippery-slope fallacy. 'Could easily lead' is merely fearful speculation. Plenty of us already know that IQ is, in fact, not bullshit, but eugenics remains a terrible idea for plenty of reasons.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:45PM (#591767)

      IQ isn't 100% bullshit, but it isn't 100% solid either. It is somewhere in between, but history has shown us that categorizing humans in that manner is a bad idea that doesn't help much of anything.