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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, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @08:17AM
To become a highly successful person in a financial / career sense, you need to be a psychopath. Being intelligent is not enough 99% of the time. On the other hand, being a psychopath and of average intelligence does not stop people, all you need to do is convince intelligent people to do the hard work for you, then screw them over.
A psychopath with high IQ may do better than one with average IQ, but there isn't a lot of correlation between high IQ and being a psychopath, so you won't see a lot of high IQ people among the highly successful. If one percent of people are psychopaths and 10% are considered high IQ (depends on where you put the line for "high"), only 0.1 percent of people are likely to be high IQ psychopaths.