If you're so clever and rich, why aren't you happy?

[imomus]

Well, IQ has been largely discredited. Eysenck and the others who championed the system of measuring intelligence are out of fashion. These days we tend to say "IQ tests merely measure one's ability to take IQ tests". Well, those of us on the left, anyway. Of course, it's true that Wikipedia's entry on Intelligence Quotient does say that IQ "is taken by psychologists to be an excellent proxy for intelligence, and possibly the best measurable definition of intellectual ability", but they add that it's "generally not taken to represent intelligence perfectly".

Caveats like that are important when we come to the fraught, hot-button-scattered area of the correlations between race and intelligence. Wikipedia says:

"While the distributions of IQ scores among different racial-ethnic groups overlap considerably, groups differ in where their members cluster along the IQ scale. Some groups (e.g. East Asians and Jews) cluster higher than whites, while other groups (e.g. Blacks and Hispanics) cluster lower than whites."

This is borne out by stuff we're seeing in the news. "Europe's skills fall behind Asia", the BBC reported recently, citing a report published in Brussels by the Lisbon Council which says that Europe's 11.6 trillion euro economy is threatened by the fact that France and Germany "are no longer among the world's leaders in developing knowledge and skills" and are being overtaken by countries like South Korea.

Wikipedia's article on Race and Intelligence admits the controversy of such correlations, but doesn't deny they exist, and also makes clear another correlation: there are strong links between average intelligence and national wealth. "For example, a randomly selected group of Americans with an average IQ of 103 had a poverty rate 25% lower than a group with an average IQ of 100."

And, while it would be a mistake to equate education with IQ, it seems clear that where they're in sync, as in South Korea, they have a dramatic effect on the wealth of a nation. The graph on the right shows the "earnings dividend" produced by different levels of education in different countries. As you can see, getting a higher education more or less doubles your earnings in almost every country.

Again, it's South Korea which is the education star: 97% of South Korea's 25 to 34-year-olds today have high school education. That's the highest rate among the main industrialised countries.

This brings us to a book published in 2002 by Dr. Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and Dr. Tatu Vanhanen, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland. Incidentally, Finland is Europe's one success story in terms of educational investment and achievement, and it's showing in the nation's booming economy. And that's pretty much the message of the book these men wrote, IQ and the Wealth of Nations: that the average IQ of a nation correlates with its GDP.

The Wikipedia's article on the book gives us a handy Top 100 run-down of nations by their (estimated) average IQs. Here's the hot Top 25:

Hong Kong (PRC) 107
South Korea 106
Japan 105
Taiwan 104
Singapore 103
Austria 102
Germany 102
Italy 102
Netherlands 102
Sweden 101
Switzerland 101
Belgium 100
China 100
New Zealand 100
United Kingdom 100
Hungary 99
Poland 99
Australia 98
Denmark 98
France 98
Norway 98
United States 98
Canada 97
Czech Republic 97
Finland 97

At the bottom of the list we find a sad cluster of African countries: Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Congo-Kinshasa, Zimbabwe, Guinea, Nigeria, Ghana... But wait, I say "sad" assuming that being rich and good at IQ tests makes you happy. But it isn't so. Not only have we been adamant in the past on Click Opera that richer isn't happier, we've also read the research that says that the world's happiest people live in Africa. In a survey of happiness published in New Scientist magazine in 2003 the country with the highest percentage of happy people was... Nigeria.

Comments

Re: A typically confused journey through the IQ wonderland

[subtechnique.livejournal.com]

"Let's presume for a moment that your hypothesis is correct, and that collective expressions of this "intelligence" quality are quantifiable. Now then: applying the search for this quality equally to all indigenous ethnic groups, can you rank them by their "dynamic problem-solving"? One might look for evidence through patent lists, artifacts of the development of basic technologies and infrastructures, written and numeric representation, etc."


==========

No, you could not reliably rank them using the indicators you describe.

These would not be neutral measures, but reflections of what's important to you and me.

For example, a sonic dental drill is, we might agree, more advanced than earlier iterations of dental tech. If US bioengineers developed this but it didn't occur to anyone in Myanmar, this surely doesn't mean the citizens of that nation are less intelligent than Americans only that the conditions leading to the creation of a sonic drill (including research capital) were not in place.


Also, comparing “written and numeric representations” and so on as a way of tracking relative levels of intelligence (and I insist this urge to compare and contrast is a result of the age of pseudo-scientific racism - such as phrenology – along with the industrial era's mania for facts and figures indicating 'progress') would be an unwise pastime.


When I wrote "Intelligence is an expression of our capacity to dynamically solve problems" I was referring to the everyday problem solving all organisms engage in. Our cognitive equipment appears to make us - as a species - more adaptable to new conditions in a shorter period of time than other animals.

All else - computers, rockets, the language used to debate whether or not the average inhabitant of Tokyo is cleverer than the average resident of Nairobi - is built upon the basic, problem solving superstructure.

This superstructure exists quite independently of patents, circuit boards and all the other things we think of when "intelligence" is tossed around like a club.

Re: A typically confused journey through the IQ wonderland

[bricology.livejournal.com]

I think you're casting the net wider than necessary, and wider than I intended.

You wrote "All else - computers, rockets, the language used to debate whether or not the average inhabitant of Tokyo is cleverer than the average resident of Nairobi - is built upon the basic, problem solving superstructure." If that is true, it supports my thesis more than yours, for if "the basic, problem-solving superstructure" evinces intelligence, then the "all else" you refer to are artifacts of that intelligence, and yet those artifacts are not distributed equally across the globe.

But my point is even more true when it comes to the most fundamental problem-solving issues that all primates--and most other organisms--face: shelter from the elements and predators, food acquisition and storage, defense, mating, public health, communication and co-operation. Would you suggest that these basic problems are solved with equal success in all places? Anthropology suggests otherwise. Indeed, there are areas on earth where there is no significant historical evidence of many of these problems being solved. Places where food availability at the traditional rate of production has consistently been insufficieisnt, where basic problem-solving would've led to the development of new agricultural techniques (or some other solution) that would've provided for people's needs. Where co-operation is rare, and where communication is still exclusively oral, leading to disputes over ownership. Where superstition trumps science, resulting in runaway AIDS rates. These are issues of "everyday problem-solving" that have life-and-death consequences, and yet millions are failing miserably at that task. What's your take on that?

You wrote "Also, comparing 'written and numeric representations' and so on as a way of tracking relative levels of intelligence (and I insist this urge to compare and contrast is a result of the age of pseudo-scientific racism - such as phrenology – along with the industrial era's mania for facts and figures indicating 'progress') would be an unwise pastime."

Either you misunderstood me or I didn't express my views clearly. Written and numeric representations have nothing in common with phrenology, and everything to do with problem-solving. If you know anything about the history of written language, you know that it began in response to a specific problem: needing to keep records of ownership and transactions (trade). Very few cultures have neither private ownership nor trade, so I think that written and numeric representations for record-keeping can legitimately be considered solutions to one of the most basic human problems.

Re: A typically confused journey through the IQ wonderland

[subtechnique.livejournal.com]

"But my point is even more true when it comes to the most fundamental problem-solving issues that all primates--and most other organisms--face: shelter from the elements and predators, food acquisition and storage, defense, mating, public health, communication and co-operation. Would you suggest that these basic problems are solved with equal success in all places?"

===================


Clearly, the answer is no.


The question is why?


Leaning upon "intelligence" as an explanation (and worse, using IQ testing as a measure of this slippery concept) only adds further obscurity.

And it's unnecessary when there are materialist explanations available such as the one offered by Jared Diamond in "Guns, Germs and Steel".

At one point in his discussion of the African situation, he recounts the ways time tested West African solutions to the problem of malaria - for example, locating habitations well away from wetlands where mosquitoes breed among other successful adaptations - were undone by colonialism which re-arranged entire societies according to the needs of colonialist enterprises.

If labor was required near waterways for easy access to docks population centers would be moved to accommodate that need. The resulting problem of rising malaria rates was later blamed on "native" incompetence.

There are many other such examples of apparent failure caused by a matrix of factors most of us are either unaware of or comfortably dismiss as irrelevant.


...


Either you misunderstood me or I didn't express my views clearly. Written and numeric representations have nothing in common with phrenology, and everything to do with problem-solving. If you know anything about the history of written language, you know that it began in response to a specific problem: needing to keep records of ownership and transactions (trade). Very few cultures have neither private ownership nor trade, so I think that written and numeric representations for record-keeping can legitimately be considered solutions to one of the most basic human problems.

===================


Yes, of course.

But the context of your use of the phrase "written and numeric representations" implied we could perform some sort of comparative study of the languages and number systems of various peoples to uncover their comparative intellectual capacity.

I (indirectly) compared this assertion to phrenology because I consider it to be a dead-end and easily steered into the usual, bad old grooves of searching for the "good, better, best, worst" humans.


And I think the world's had quite enough of that thank you.

Indeed, the fact I'm even needing to have this discussion puts me in an extraordinarily bad humor bringing back, as it does, arguments I've had with "honest" White folk who insisted, in so many words, they were quite terribly clever turning to a cursory review of comparative levels of poverty in the US between groups as evidence of their (humbly worn) Olympian superiority - conveniently forgetting, as their arguments trundled along, the slave labor part of the tale along with other buried elements.


In the end, this reliance on "intelligence" to explain things that are surely the consequence of geopolitical and historical factors (among other elements) is a form of languidly self inflating hand waving.


Feh.

Re: A typically confused journey through the IQ wonderland

[bricology.livejournal.com]

OK; it appears that we don't entirely misunderstand each other. Thank you for not suggesting that I was suggesting that some ethnicities or cultures are inherently inferior/superior to others. My objection was primarily to the notion that "Intelligence is an expression of our capacity to dynamically solve problems" is somehow an agreed definition. I suggest that--using dynamic problem-solving as the single standard--raises some disturbing questions. But I think it's a bit silly to dismiss all attempts to measure intelligence; that looks to me like a ostrich trying to find a hole in the sand. Science is science. Sometimes we have to be willing to risk offending people in order to learn.

FWIW, I also read "The Mismeasure of Man" (as well as "The Bell Curve" and "The Bell Curve Wars"), but I drew quite a different conclusion. While I'm with Gould on the matters of evolutionary theory, his side-projects were considerably less successful, in my estimation--particularly his attempts to reconcile science and "spirituality" in "Rock of Ages". Gould's lefty ideology is well known, and in those two works I often sensed a conflict between his desire to be altruistic (or at least PC) and the science, and I'm afraid I lost considerable respect for him as a scientist, as a result.

"The Bell Curve" was soundly savaged--mostly by laymen who never read it--but its theses have been largely been exonerated. The American Psychological Association--with 150,000 members, by far the largest and most highly respected psychological organization in the world--established a blue-ribbon task force to examine the assertions in "The Bell Curve". After almost 2 years of research and debate, they concluded that "The Bell Curve" was essentially correct,and that Gould (one of its most vocal critics) was often mistaken, and distorted some of the basic claims of the book. You can read a summary of their findings here: http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/apa_01.html Likewise, "The Mismeasure of Man" received considerable scientific criticism from Gould's peers. Make of that what you will.

Re: A typically confused journey through the IQ wonderland

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

Middle Eastern countries feature mud huts, unclean water, poor health care and a medival religious sytem that rewards murderous intent and deed...



But they're still no less intelligent than we are!