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IQ of Nations

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-they-only-surveyed-the-nimnobs dept.

bradley13 writes:

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.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Wootery on Friday November 03 2017, @09:37AM (1 child)

    by Wootery (2341) on Friday November 03 2017, @09:37AM (#591605)

    Let's say, for argument, that this is correct and IQ isn't bullshit, as said above, this could easily lead

    And your fallacies are:

    • Wishful thinking. That you don't like the consequences of a fact, does not disprove that fact.
    • Slippery-slope fallacy. 'Could easily lead' is merely fearful speculation. Plenty of us already know that IQ is, in fact, not bullshit, but eugenics remains a terrible idea for plenty of reasons.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:45PM (#591767)

    IQ isn't 100% bullshit, but it isn't 100% solid either. It is somewhere in between, but history has shown us that categorizing humans in that manner is a bad idea that doesn't help much of anything.