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| bhedo |
Posted
on 30-Nov-02 08:06 PM
Please notice Nepal's IQ of 78. India's IQ is 81. China's IQ is 100. Is IQ inherited, or does it depend on the environment one is reared in???
Hong Kong 107
Korea, South 106
Japan 105
Taiwan 104
Singapore 103
Austria 102
Germany 102
Italy 102
Netherlands 102
Sweden 101
Switzerland 101
Belgium 100
China 100
NewZealand 100
U. Kingdom 100
Hungary 99
Poland 99
Australia 98
Denmark 98
France 98
Norway 98
United States 98
Canada 97
Czech Republic 97
Finland 97
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Cuba 85
Morocco 85
Iran 84
India 81
Ecuador 80
Guatemala 79
Barbados 78
Nepal 78
Qatar 78
Zambia 77
Congo (Brazz) 73
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Nigeria 67
Guinea 66
Zimbabwe 66
Congo (Zaire) 65
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Equatorial Guinea 59
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| rabi |
Posted
on 30-Nov-02 08:19 PM
Bhedo:
Interesting...but suspicious. How can anybody measure every country's IQ?
Source??
Just being a "Bhedo"...it's in my nature. ;)
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| bhedo |
Posted
on 30-Nov-02 08:24 PM
My bad rabi, here's the source:
Eugenics: A Reassessment by Richard Lynn, 2001. Published by Praeger Press.
Well, I think they can't really get rid of all ethnic biases.
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| rabi |
Posted
on 30-Nov-02 09:39 PM
Eugenics...my god!
They are still working at "improving the human gene pool"??
I still can't take this table at its face value. How did they measure the IQ of Nepal, for instance? They had a few in Kathmdnu take IQ tests?? Sorry Bhedo...just my personal reaction, but I ain't buying this ranking.
The kind of "genetically desirable" intelligence this book (and this table) seems to be measuring is not represented by IQ numbers. Measuring intelligence through IQ tests is a 19th century myth. Traditional IQ tests measure only certain kind of intelligence that is not indicative of the overall intelligence of a person, as we understand the term "intelligence" today. Some recent studies have identified upto 12 different intelligence traits. See http://www.infotoday.org/business/ob/team4.pdf
Even if the book you mention says that they were measuring only the kind of intelligence measurable by IQ tests, just thinking about Nepal I am very suspicious about their statistical methods. They could not have taken large and reliable enough samples to make such minute comparisions in a table.
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| sally |
Posted
on 30-Nov-02 10:20 PM
Exactly.
And in Equatorial Guinea they did what? Test the pygmies? I'd love to see the questions.
"If Monkey A jumps from palm tree to palm tree at half the speed of Monkey B, but Monkey B jumps as soon as you shoot the blow dart, which monkey should you aim at if you want a good dinner?"
IQ tests are very, very good at measuring who will perform well on future IQ tests. They're even pretty good at measuring who will do well in a test-based educational system. But at measuring "intelligence"? In a village, or a pygmy hunting camp?
I'd like to see the pygmies or the gaonles design an IQ test, and see how well Richard Lynn would do.
"Go to the jungle. Find the right type of grass to make a rope. Then make it."
BZZZZ! It's off to Special Ed classes for Dr. Lynn.
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| bhedo |
Posted
on 01-Dec-02 08:54 AM
I actually agree with you, Sally. But the sad part is, this Lynn guy, who is very widely quoted by eugenists and neo-nazis, is pretty respected in his field. Lynn has also correlated IQ with GDP; according to him, a country which has high average IQ will have higher GDP than a country with low average IQ. China and Russia have skewed GDP because of another factor, communism.
I failed to mention that Lynn believes that Indians who are reared in economically stable environment,UK and USA, for example, score as high as European caucasoids(96). Verbal IQ is lower (89), according to him, because Indians are recent immigrants. I presume he is encompassing the entire Indian subcontinent by the term "Indian". So I guess that would include us.
Also, Israeli Ashkenazi Jews have average IQ of 94, but American Ashkenazi Jews have IQ of 115. How can you explain this? To me, it seems that there's definitely something else at work here besides heredity because Israel isn't a third world country.
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| sally |
Posted
on 01-Dec-02 09:59 AM
Or, put another way, a country with high GDP is a country whose people generally have the money to eat well. Good nutrition, from the womb on, probably does correlate to higher intelligence. Though how to measure that in an unbiased way is a real challenge, particularly when you're IQ-testing people who've never experienced an IQ test before.
If there WAS a way to give IQ tests to people who haven't experienced them, I do suspect that those who've had poor nutrition at critical periods in life would do less well--though that DOESN'T necessarily mean that whole countries would go down the tubes, IQ-wise, since traditional diets tend to be well-balanced nutritionally, but there's a lot of variety in how well people really eat, even within a village. Could depend on anything from who has a baisi that gives good milk, to whether mom ate saag during pregnancy (lots of iron), to crop conditions, to whether the tested child was firstborn male or seventh female, yadayada. But I'd guess there'd be a wider gap in low-GDP countries, which might lower the average.
I glanced at the table charts in Lynn's article on the Web, and what's comical is that some countries in East Asia, like Laos and Vietnam, don't have data, so he's helpfully averaged their supposed IQs from neighboring countries that do (supposedly) have data, like Thailand and China. So his thesis that East Asians have higher IQs than Caucasoids and way higher IQs than Africans will, naturally, be supported--because he's made up the answers. Ditto Africa. All those countries that don't have data end up getting their data averaged, so loads and loads of African nations (without data) end up with made-up "low IQs."
Of course, what do I know. He also says that women are, on average, four IQ points lower than men. So I guess maybe I just don't understand ...
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| khaja biscuit |
Posted
on 01-Dec-02 10:06 AM
Sally IQ 195
Rabi IQ 180
Bhedo IQ only 20
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| bhedo |
Posted
on 01-Dec-02 10:55 AM
Yes, nutrition plays a vital role in one's mental development. Lynn believes that Eastern Europeans would have higher IQ -- Eastern European IQ is depressed by a few points, he says -- if it weren't for poverty, and as I mentioned before, he believes that communism held these countries from reaching their true potential.
When he's talking about "East Asians", he's only including Northeastern Asians; South East Asians (Vietnamese, Thais, Indonesians,Philippinos, etc), according to him have lower IQ than Northeastern Asians(Chinese, Japanese, Koreans). Some eugenic sites I have run into claim that it's because they are purer.
One anomaly I have noted is that ( have mentioned this before) Israeli Jews have lower IQ than American Jews, even though their ancestry is the same. Israel isn't a poor country. Could it only be because of nutrition? I think there are some other factors.
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| sally |
Posted
on 01-Dec-02 12:32 PM
Sure, Israel isn't a poor country and Ashkenazi are the top of the socioeconomic rung. So of course a lot goes into IQ scores--including (in my humble opinion) how well you're prepared to take an IQ test. My son is in first grade and, along with his various Chinese-American and Ashkenazi Jewish American and for all I know pygmy-American classmates, is ALREADY being given homework that requires him to fill in a bubble. Like on an SAT test, or an IQ test. Guess who'd probably ALL do better on IQ tests than their genetic doubles in other countries???
That being said, I think any individual has about a 20-point range within which they can score on IQ tests. Given that 100 is average and 140 is genius, that's a pretty darned broad range. I was actually IQ-tested at age 13 or 14, twice, along with everyone else in my class, and my two scores are about 12 points apart. Same kid, same year. Why the difference? Who knows ... but it certainly casts doubt on the meaningfulness of IQ tests, in my mind.
But I'm afraid that even taking a potential 20-point spread into account, it wouldn't go up to 195 :-) Thanks, though. Think if I ever want to go grad school, the committee would accept a reference from someone called Khaja Biscuit?
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| rabi |
Posted
on 01-Dec-02 12:45 PM
Both genes and environment paly a role in intelligence. Genes predispose you, or give you the potential. Environment boosts or blunts. And yes, nutrition is probably the strongest environmental factor.
Talking about Eugenics:
Diseases, more than intelligence, have been more conclusively linked to genes and environment though. When they start talking Eugenics to improve the "desirable" human traits by screening the right genes, I am very suspicious.
Unlike diseases, other human traits are neither easily measured, nor easily linked to specific genes or environmental factors. Nor can we all always agree what is desirable with respect to these other traits. Violent behavior, immorality, disobedience, incompetence, and finally beauty, intelligence. Eugenics will target these traits. Who is going to set the standards? How are they going to measure these traits?
It's far more easier for me to see how these people will open up systematic ethnic and racial clinsing throug their breeding techniques, than how they will lead us to a better crop of humans.
As far as I am concerned, the best breeding technique was discovered by Kurt Vonnegut long ago, when he was talking about racial and ethnic tensions in the world (quote is from memory, so may not be exact):
"If everybody in the world f___ed everybody else, the world would be a much better place."
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