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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.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:33PM
Yeah, I realize all this; everyone here has probably heard the saying "success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration". I'm just pointing out that my beef with MENSA is that these people basically have this group for themselves and go to meetings together and basically sit around and congratulate themselves for being so intelligent, yet collectively what have they really accomplished, compared to any group of people picked at random? They're not famous for anything; they're not fabulously wealthy, they're not highly accomplished academically, they just don't have any actual accomplishments to speak of, beyond what many other people of allegedly lesser intelligence have done. It just seems like a group of people who want to stroke theirs and each others' egos for scoring high on a silly test, instead of doing something useful. The truly gifted people are likely too busy actually doing things to be bothered with such stuff.