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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @08:12PM
Speaking very generally (averages, not individuals or outliers), IQ scores correlates with jobs that require more intelligence (e.g. what makes "smart people" smart). Speaking generally, it is not very controversial that people consider medical doctors, engineers, and scientists to be smart or that smart people will have an advantage in pursuing those occupations compared to those who are not considered smart.
IQ tests are measuring some combination of variables, "something", and that "something" is measured by employing an assessment of questions involving spacial reasoning and pattern recognition. Higher scores on these tests also correlate with tests of verbal and quantitative reasoning (such as the GRE and SAT) as well as short term memory capacity (e.g. being able to remember a set of numbers or words).
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/occupations.aspx [iqcomparisonsite.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Other_accomplishments [wikipedia.org]
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/greiq.aspx [iqcomparisonsite.com]