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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: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:21PM (#591266)

    John Horn and John McArdle have argued that the modern g theory, as espoused by, for example, Arthur Jensen, is unfalsifiable, because the existence of a common factor like g follows tautologically from positive correlations among tests. They contrasted the modern hierarchical theory of g with Spearman's original two-factor theory which was readily falsifiable (and indeed was falsified)

    Seems not everyone in the field agrees, and reducing something as complex as human intelligence down to a single number is just stupid. Just cop to the fact that you're a bigot looking for an excuse to hate other groups already. Why does racism enter into this "science"? Because this "science" has a history steeped in bigotry, but some sad brains keep grasping for some objective way of determining human value. Such people are not rightly called human and should be referred to as homo sapiens at best since they've apparently lost or never had their own humanity.

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