It is surprisingly difficult to find much commentary on these topics - especially the latter one about IQ variance - on the internet. It’s even harder to find a serious article that addresses it (and i’d be much obliged if someone could help me out in this respect).
There is this conundrum of the relative underachievement (as par inventions and scientific innovations) of East Asian countries compared to the West even in recent times despite their superior IQ average. I have come across a number of reasons on blogs where the question is briefly raised. Communism in China has been cited as the culprit. But this obviously does not explain for Japan, South Korea and other East Asian countries. Some have suggested that it is a cultural problem: East Asians tend to be more communal and less individualistic. I’ve never quite found this very convincing or even comprehensible. Personally, I tend to suspect that it has to do with accumulation of capital and the fact that the West has monopolized it over the centuries. In other words, one could as well ask why the UK has far more Nobel Prizes per capita than other European countries and more elite universities, and why the US now has the number one spot in these things. Obviously it’s not because they are different from the other western countries in terms of intelligence.
But the reason I am posting this question is because of a much more interesting (though dubious) explanation that I have seen raised a couple of times but for which there is surprisingly little data by which to ascertain it. It is sometimes claimed that East Asians have a lower IQ distribution than whites and thus they tend to have less geniuses (as in the case of males vs females). I also came across a blogger who claimed that blacks too have lower IQ distribution than whites though he didn’t provide a cite for it. What surprises me is the fact that there is no conclusive data on this. Given all the multitudes of IQ testing that has been done on the various races, why don’t they just map the scores of each race in each study and see if there is any significant difference in the curves? What exactly stops IQ researchers from doing that? I just don’t see it as a difficult question to settle. Yet there seems to be no actual data on it and it is rarely talked about.
Question
So my question is: is the shape of the Bell curve similar for all races or are there really significant differences as some people claim? In particular, do you think there is any truth to the claim that greater standard deviation among whites explains why the West tends to produce more achievements than the East?
Can we please not? We’ve already got one phenomenally dumb thread by this racist based on a faulty premise and an absolute failure to understand the evidence. Do we really need another? Bita, you are ignorant. You have no understanding of race, how genetics influences intelligence, or even why it’s a bad idea to talk about IQ tests in such high regards. Just… Stop.
Go get a remedial course in population genetics then. Don’t get your answers on a difficult scientific topic that many people willingly misrepresent from an internet forum. And especially don’t do it bringing your own assertions to the table when you admit you don’t know very much about the subject. Did you ever concede just how incredibly ridiculous the idea that the average IQ of sub-saharan africa could be 70 is, the one you posited in your last thread? :rolleyes:
My understanding is not complete (we don’t understand it fully) but the information there is more than enough to completely debunk the claim of classical racists.
The other thread was derailed by people arguing over a question that I did not ask. However, I don’t see why this one should go the same way given the nature of the topic. Shutting down both threads (instead of just the first one) seems rather drastic and unwarranted.
In case you missed it, I prefixed that figure with the word ‘purported’. But I wish you wouldn’t mention that issue here in this thread. It has nothing to do with the topic.
Honestly, I’d say that if you’re going to talk about IQ, it’s entirely relevant that you have even a basic understanding of what you’re talking about. So answer the question. Do you get what’s wrong with the claim that the average in sub-saharan africa is 70? Because most people understand immediately why that claim is not just wrong, but insane, and worth discarding without even looking at the evidence. And if you want to talk about IQ, then I think that’s a good place to start.
The problem is simply that there’s no rational discussion to be had here. It’s like a debate over the shape or age of the earth, or over vaccination. The debate is over, scientifically, but there are still die-hard fanatics with ideas they purport to be scientific (and which will fool the occasional person who doesn’t know any better) willing to muddy the waters with vacuous crap.
I’ve heard of the theory but I don’t know if the standard deviation for IQ among east asians is 15 like it is with caucasian, or if it is lower. I can’t find any research on the subject. I’m sure its out there, but I don’t know where.
As far as east asians and innovation, they do contribute to social progress in that front. South Korea and Japan are both hubs of innovation. China only has a per capita income on par with Thailand and half that of Mexico, despite that they spend more than Japan on R&D. China is also growing rapidly in patents and scientific papers, but I have no idea about the quality of research.
South Korea, Japan & Taiwan are among the top 20 nations for number of scientific publications. Taiwan had as many as Brazil despite having an economy about 1/5 the size.
Come to think of it, it’s no wonder that so little discussion of this topic can be found anywhere. I’ve noticed that people seem to avoid it for some reason (perhaps out of political correctness). It’s weird…almost spooky.
The fact that research on the topic is so scarce - especially when so much cold data has been taken on IQ scores and it becomes just a simple matter of meta-analysis - is what strikes me as odd. Even a leading IQ research psychologist, whose name i won’t mention, once answered a question concerning it from an audience member by saying he doesn’t know!
No one is disputing that East Asia contributes to innovation and technology. It’s just not anywhere near as much what comes out of the West.
Didn’t you make this claim in another thread already? The subject has been discussed tons and tons and tons of times on this forum, and a lot of sites are less moderated than this one.
What subject? Did you even read my OP? You guys seem to think that all questions involving IQ are the same. This is a completely different question from the previous one. And NO this particular topic (about IQ standard deviations and whether or not they explain the asia-west difference) is very rarely discussed. If that were not the case, i would not have asked this question. But you’re free not to answer it if you wish.
Quite apart from serious questions about the heritability of IQ, “genius” is really an accolade we bestow after the fact on people who come up with particularly original and effective ideas. It really has nothing at all to do with IQ, even if it were true that IQ measured what we really mean by intelligence. Geniuses do not necessarily have particularly high IQs and might not seem especially intelligent if you talked to them without knowing what they had achieved. Certainly many people with high IQs never do anything useful, or particularly original or creative in their lives. The notion that if you have a very high IQ you are ipso facto a genius is, basically, bullshit based on a misunderstanding of the words.
It’s not political correctness, it’s the fact that the actual science behind the discussion is:
Pre-internet
settled, and
extremely complex.
This makes it exceedingly hard to research the subject. It’s not like AGW, where there’s an exceedingly large amount of current research going on that actually has some relevance. It also means that most people don’t know enough to comment on the subject intelligently, or to counter the false claims of the racists who make them. Because the science is so complex, it’s incredibly easy to paint a totally false picture which seems to make sense, but then doesn’t once you consider confounding evidence. And even if you do know what you’re talking about, actually citing it is also hard because so much of the research is not online. You don’t have sites like SkepticalScience or IronChariots for race. So not too many people are really comfortable commenting on something they know little about beyond “it’s totally bullshit”.
For anyone who wants to discuss the issue, please define your races before the discussion starts, and make it clear why you took these particular distinctions.
What? What’s he’s saying makes total sense. You don’t have to have an IQ of 150 to make your mark on the world. IQ doesn’t really indicate as much as you seem to think it does.
Also, a quick follow-up to this, one more reason I found:
And to what end? What’s the point of this discussion? From the side of the real racists (or was it race realists?) all they could do is convince people that certain “races” (which couldn’t be identified without a genetic check) are worse, or, if they’re going for the stupid route, that we should just stop helping black people. From the side of the people who understand why this discussion is over, it’s simply debating with a few dishonest pedants who have no interest in the truth and are unlikely to ever change their viewpoints, and who are in a tiny enough minority and considered socially unappealing enough that just saying “You’re wrong, shut up” is perfectly acceptable. There’s nothing to learn from this debate other than how terrible people are. We get enough of that lesson without it.
Based on what metrics though (patents, R&D spending, scientific publications, etc)? R&D spending is about the same at 2-3% of GDP. Per capita scientific publications are about the same too in wealthy east asian nations I believe. Also that could be due to immigration, places like the US tend to attract the best and brightest. So the best/brightest people from Taiwan, China, Japan, etc. may end up moving to the US and staying here which would lower the productivity of their host nations. When I was in college many (arguably the majority) of my professors in science courses were foreign born. The US has the best tertiary educational system on earth, a talented person from China may come here to get their PhD or postdoc, and end up staying.
East asian nations are innovating and have innovated a lot in communications, personal electronics, robotics, auto reliability, etc.
Any argument that different races/geographies have differences in IQ brings up memories of people in history using that argument to try to justify racism so it is a touchy subject.