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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: 5, Informative) by Lester on Friday November 03 2017, @10:42AM (2 children)
IQ measures the performance in certain tests. How much are the results in such tests correlated to intelligence? To compare two persons' IQ they should be in the same environment. You know, ceteris paribus [wikipedia.org]. Illiterate people perform very bad. The same brain having gone to school would have higher IQ
So, what you are measuring is not intelligence, but education level. Particularly, in low developed countries, where the access to education depends on intelligence 0.05% and economic environment 99.95%, IQ tests make no sense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @01:57PM (1 child)
Not really. You can have two individuals in the same environment with the same educational level with wildly varying IQs.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Lester on Friday November 03 2017, @03:14PM
Of course, just what I said :
You could compare college students from USA with college students from Angola; or high school students from USA and school students from Angola. Even in such cases it is difficult because education systems are not always comparable, so except for genius and dumps, differences will be non-significative.
Pretending to get the average IQ of a country messing people of different education levels makes no sense. Let alone in countries with a lot of illiterate people. Comparing two different nations, you get mostly education level differences.