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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, @08:45PM
Don't forget the selection and survival biases of the people who actually did successfully leave the 'continent.' Think of all the people you know from your high school days. How many stayed more or less where they were born? How many moved, especially to distant places? How would you generally relate the intelligence of the two groups? The fact that this is so evident today with minimal noise, even in microsamples -- as any given individual's experience, is something that I think is quite telling. Anyhow, the anthropological reasons are really not that relevant. What is relevant is that such differences do exist and can be readily measured.
I don't entirely know what this means, but I do find it somewhat cruel to continually try to encourage somebody to do something when they might simply not have the facilities to achieve what you're telling them they can. How would you feel if society as a whole kept telling you that you can do it, you just need to try a little bit harder, here we'll even give you a little help, come on I know you can do it! And know matter how hard you tried, no matter how much you worked at it, you just couldn't manage to achieve what everybody said you could and by implication should be able to do. Self doubt, insecurity, frustration, irritation, anger would just be scratching the surface. What a lovely set of emotions we inflict on massive groups of people all to let us imagine our world is a more pleasant and fair place than it truly is.
Perhaps the most desirable alternative is to simply start treating people as people instead of skin colors and genders. I mean we live in a world where most of every American would love to have dinner with a Neil deGrasse Tyson or a Michael Jordan. Set skin color aside and start trying people like people. Let everybody rise or fall on their merit and achievements alone. I think Morgan Freeman put it very well in this [youtube.com] interview asking him about his opinion of black history month. By focusing on race and gender, even when trying to make things better, we are tautologically perpetuating a focus on race and gender!