I have no idea about which source you’re talking about… The most idiotic racist source I can think of is the Daily Stormer, sometimes they can be “trolly” but sometimes they’re dead serious about their racist claims. If they published an article about racial differences of course I’d be very skeptical about the validity of their claims, but if the article is correct and based on solid data then there’s not much to say about it.
And I’m not German, [deleted by moderator, not appropriate]
Edit: oh come on, I always make jokes about rodents when chatting with Rocket, there was no need to edit that, ffs -_-
Modern IQ tests can’t avoid the fact that the educational resources vary significantly amongst countries. Why do you think African countries tend to score extremely poorly? Because the idea of schooling could be a luxury over there. Same goes for PISA. Scoring well doesn’t mean the primary education is better, it just means that kids stay in school till later on weekdays (except for a couple of exceptions like Canada and Finland).
a) IQ is mostly ereditary
b) If IQ was mostly based on schooling, environment etc, then there would be no way to explain the IQ differences between people who live in similar areas and have access to same schooling.
As it turns out, if you take an Australian aboriginal and give him/her modern education, the results of any IQ test will still be lagging far, FAR behind others.
Huh? A test that’s dependent on the subject being educated would be measuring level of education, not inherent ability. While there are (very old) IQ tests that have a mathematical-ability section, which would depend on the subject having some skill in arithmetic, most modern tests deliberately avoid such things.
The purpose of an IQ test is to measure cognitive skills, not learned skills. If this were not so, any given individual’s IQ score would increase over time, and this emphatically does not happen (at least, not to any appreciable degree).
You’ve got to be kidding, right?
Consider two violinists of equal (inherent) ability. One of them practices once a week. One of them practices for an hour every single day.
Which one do you think would be objectively better at playing violin?
Hypothetically speaking, I reckon he would still be worse than the second. Probably much worse, because the third appendage would require 50% more practice to master.
Ergo those schools would be the cheapest, ergo they would be the only affordable ones for parents at the lowest economic level, ergo the education of each child would depend on its parents’ financial situation – which it already does, but in your scenario the phenomenon would be amplified.
So you’re basically saying that black people are inherently stupid? How very Scarlett O’Hara of you.
Family, health, childhood, the tv shows they watch, the books they read, the games they play etc. There are plenty of different possibilities that have nothing to do with race and skin color.
You should take the overall environment and family situation into account. Stress has a terrible impact on one’s spirit, and when a kid is from a middle class family in a developed country, chances are they would be free of stress (in most cases). The same cannot be said about kids from dirt poor messes like say, Rwanda or Uganda.
And? Taiwan’s schools keep the kids at school for as long as they can (and then there are the cram schools), isn’t “Taiwan’s education = garbage” the consensus here? Or are you guys starting to appreciate the children-ruining rote education all of a sudden?
Racist? Probably not (except that it does enhance the stereotype of Asians being geeks). A load of crap? Yes. For one, I don’t think Taiwanese people have a higher IQ at all.
Gain: you’re conflating the outcome with the means of achieving that outcome. The IQ test does not attempt to measure social fairness. Its purpose is to reveal what is. What ought to be is a question for others.
It does not matter one jot if the kid in the Central African republic has a low IQ because of this, that and the other. The fact remains that he still has a low IQ, and that will hinder him for the rest of his life. The correct solution is not to pat the coons on the head and say, there, there, it’s not your fault you’re all backward, the white people will just fudge the measurements so you appear to be like us, even though you’re not really and never will be. [note to mods: I’m using the epithet to illustrate a particular viewpoint, not as a direct insult]
You don’t even seem to grasp how condescending your views are. When you know something is wrong, you can fix it. Or at least you might have half a chance. If we know that the CAR kid is dumb because of rampant malnutrition, people might be able to address that. When you sweep it all under the rug and pretend it’s normal, it NEVER gets fixed.
Incidentally, you appear not to have considered why certain countries might have a low-quality social environment, and poor or nonexistent education.
Higher than what? You don’t even seem to have a handle on the concept of ordinal rankings.
Remember first that IQ scores do not measure “intelligence”. Intelligence as a concept has never been satisfactorily defined. An IQ test is a multivariate measurement of one’s inherent cognitive capabilities; you might consider that a subset of what we colloquially call ‘intelligence’.
Now: visit any country with a low rating on the IQ table and you will be appalled by the general low level of cognitive ability. You will meet a large number of people unable to cope with (for example) simple if-then logic. While you might split hairs over whether Taiwanese people are more or less intelligent than, say, Americans or Japanese, it’s possible to experience first-hand that they are more intelligent that, say, Haitians. I realise you will instantly reach for you bag of excuses ‘explaining’ why this is so, but I think even you would have to acknowledge the reality of the difference.
I gave you a fact. You’re the one making assumptions.
Using the words of a wise man:“Facts don’t care about your feelings”.
The difference between people like you and me is that just because I cannot jump as high as a black athlete due to genetical differences I wouldn’t blame basket for being a racist, biased sport.
Facts are facts, sad as it is. Like others said, it’s best to confront reality so we can try to solve or avoid problems. We’re in a new era and these previously taboo topics are becoming part of the conversation again, in no small part thanks to Trump.
Yes, that could happen. Student-funded universities are a disaster. The devil is in the details, as usual. But what I’m suggesting has a lot of scope for variation. You’re considering the worst possible outcome - which is a sensible thing to do inasmuch as we can then avoid that outcome. You could, for example, award scholarships, which is actually the way British grants used to work in practice: you could not go to university on the taxpayer’s dime unless you were smart enough to guarantee a return on investment, via your future taxes. There might be mechanisms allowing businesses or individuals to offer such scholarships in exchange for a tax break.
I suppose one important question is this: what is the minimum amount of investment required to provide basic education for a kid whose parents want him to be educated, but cannot afford it? A related question might be: if you have a bunch of kids whose parents hate them and wish them to have a miserable life (trust me, such people do exist) how do we avoid the worst impact of that for the least possible cost?
I’m not going to write a long essay about that, but there are theoretically ways that society could provide free, effective schooling for the vulnerable (or the stingy). Bear in mind that as long as a kid can read and write and do arithmetic, much of the rest of his education can be self-directed (or minimally directed) thanks to the internet and other forms of multimedia. The main purpose of school, as I suggested earlier, is merely to teach the kid to get along with others. That really shouldn’t cost a shitload of money.
To keep costs low, teachers might donate some fraction of their time; working professionals might do the same (of course you’d need to provide some kind of training and screening for them). Businesses might donate office buildings after-hours as classrooms, which would be a very effective use of unused capital and would help working parents (who might be happy to get their kids out of their hair from, say, 6 til 9pm). Night school was a common way to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps in the postwar years, and there’s no reason kids couldn’t do the same thing. I’m just throwing out ideas here, not suggesting a blueprint for a Brave New World.
Are you saying that, in order to understand statistics, one must have no brains?
Unfortunately, the full paper you quote is behind a paywall so we can’t really comment on it. There might be something in it, but you do realise we’re simply discussing IQ variation between groups?
