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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 bzipitidoo on Friday November 03 2017, @03:29AM (1 child)
There's good answers to these issues in Guns, Germs, and Steel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel [wikipedia.org]
In a word, location. Location, location, location. Europeans came out on top by virtue of their ancestors starting in a better location thousands of years before. Asians also benefited from that. A further feature that turned out to be an advantage was Europe's difficult terrain that made empire building much harder than in Asia, keeping Europe fragmented into smaller states constantly competing with each other.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday November 03 2017, @10:17AM
What a bunch of plausible half-truths concealing deeply flawed assumptions.
"Europeans came out on top"
This is a huge and glaring one, and I particularly like to pick on it because both left and right seem to be about equally suckers for it.
This is the end of history meme. Like, ok, we did the race, now for the results!
Yeah, no. Whatever 'race' we're dealing with here it isn't over. This is the outlook of a historical illiterate.
Civilizations have risen and fallen and they continue to do so. Europeans are 'on top' in a few senses, at the moment, and were 'on top' in many more senses two or three hundred years ago, but there is certainly no 'came out' in perfect aspect, there is no final score. We have not come to the end of history, it's a defective concept not a real thing.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?