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Fallacy.
IQ tests etc. only measure what is being tested. This is akin to a software developer claiming that his application is flawless because it passes all the unit tests he wrote for it. Preposterous.
Specifically, the author begs the question. The far more interesting questions are:
- what is intelligence?
- why are we interested in intelligence?
- how can intelligence be measured and quantified?
-Let's call what is measured by IQ tests "Intelligence" with a capital "I".
-Let's abstract from the concept of intelligence, to virtue. By virtue, I mean what Machiavelli describes as the inherent qualities which beget advantage for "achieving great things".
Therefore, intelligence is but a component of virtue, as most would agree. Most would agree that charisma, physical ability, are also components of virtue. But Machievelli's The Prince implied that virtue is relative to one's role, and (controversially) argued that flexible morality was a virtue of the politician. But let's not digress into Machievellian philosophy, let's just borrow this notion of virtue that he refers to.
Now let's look at the context of this study. The samplings imply a measurement of some hereditary characteristic; the subjects are statistically grouped by nationality. That's really the only interesting thing about this study.
So my beef is: WHY does it seem that EVERY study pertaining to measurement of inherent virtue focuses ONLY on INTELLIGENCE? What about the nationality with the best oratory skills? What about those people with the best sense of humor? The best lovers? These virtues are readily recognizable to laymen, being not only easier to measure in population samples, but also resulting in a stronger consensus.
"Intelligence" is not even intelligence; it's just that narrow slice thought up by the creators of the tests. The nationalities that exist today and the virtues they embody, are a product of time and selection, and cannot be so easily modeled. By only measuring "Intelligence", these so-called scientists are monopolizing the knowledge hierarchy. If they measured something we could all readily recognize, we could easily see when they are wrong, and they'd lose their tenure. This is a CONFLICT OF INTEREST, people!
Good humor, physical abilities, honesty, fidelity, courage: all virtues, being advantageous to achieving great things, and thus, standing to reason, are influential upon the evolutionary process, and therefore being stratified amongst the discrete nationalities of the world! Let's measure them too, you pussy-ass scientists!
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rofl such a bogus article, the ivory coast has an average IQ of 69??? LMAO HOW RACIST IS THAT HAHAHA
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Makes sense.
If you maturbate alot, you gain diseases... diseases lowers your IQ.. Vampires likes diseases alot, vampire is a 7 letter word..
seven is a movie.. We can now conclude you shouldn't masturbate while watching vampires get low IQ with diseases.
I love random "New article on why X is connected to Y".  Please go and read research articles (from universities), if you wonna be smart.
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On July 10 2010 20:30 Qzy wrote:
Makes sense.
U MAD?
.
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All I care is China is smart
FUCK YEAH
yet it's still has a long way to go, too smart individually, shitty team players.
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United States44408 Posts
On July 10 2010 19:58 Ossian wrote:
rofl such a bogus article, the ivory coast has an average IQ of 69??? LMAO HOW RACIST IS THAT HAHAHA
Not at all racist unless it says they're not as good because they're black. If it instead suggests they don't do so well on the tests because of cultural barriers or malnutrition or poor education then race is nothing to do with it. You can't dismiss studies out of hand because your failure to understand the outcome creates a conflict with your immutable world view.
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Singapore is basically a city, not a country with rural areas etc. like many of the others on that list are. It's not really comparable.
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oh god another race = intelligent spiral thread.
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highest average IQ?
it doesnt matter how high your IQ is if you don't apply it in an academic environment
vs S.Korea who has a lower avg IQ yet.. the competition is more
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I'm honestly ashamed as a Singaporean to read this thread and to see that some scientist decided to claim that we have the highest average IQ.
As 'smart' as we can be with academia and scoring in exams, I find the average Singaporean to be absolute dimwits and brain-dead in intellectual curiosity, and am disgusted with how the whole nation is basically a Yes-man State. Case in point on how high IQ doesn't matter at all, I can always cite my personal history/experience. My parents both hail from famous schools (The Chinese High & Cedar Girls' if the Singaporeans need to know), and somehow I become proof of Lee Kuan Yew's dubious opinions on eugenics because I got myself into ACS (Independent), yet another one of those famous schools. But I was taught all of the wrong things and subsequently got mocked in my childhood for it, because despite my parents' high IQ, they had the misfortune of being religious - especially the Baptist, Christian sort.
I was taught by my parents that Israel always deserved to win, that all Muslims and Palestinians were bad. Anyone who practiced a religion other than Christianity was inferior and deserved to have their false idols destroyed, et al. Because I was Chinese, I was automatically better than anyone else because the white man is lazy, Malays are horrendously lazy and Indians are stupid.
Those things wouldn't have been taught by truly intelligent, or truly educated parents. Thank goodness I know better now.
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On July 11 2010 12:40 NEWater wrote:
As 'smart' as we can be with academia and scoring in exams, I find the average Singaporean to be absolute dimwits and brain-dead in intellectual curiosity, and am disgusted with how the whole nation is basically a Yes-man State.
You might need to meet more people, from both Singapore and other countries, to gain some perspective. The fabled "West" is not as great and free and creative as it is fashionable to think, and bureacracies all over the world are stuffed with yes-men. I find the average person from all countries I've visited to be pretty lacking in intellectual curiosity, with only a small group truly interested in learning new things.
Try talking politics with your average chap from Birmingham, UK and see how far you get. Not much further than with your average Singaporean, I can guarantee.
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On July 10 2010 20:59 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2010 19:58 Ossian wrote:
rofl such a bogus article, the ivory coast has an average IQ of 69??? LMAO HOW RACIST IS THAT HAHAHA Not at all racist unless it says they're not as good because they're black. If it instead suggests they don't do so well on the tests because of cultural barriers or malnutrition or poor education then race is nothing to do with it. You can't dismiss studies out of hand because your failure to understand the outcome creates a conflict with your immutable world view.
yeah sure those environmental circumstances will have an effect but 69 IQ barely even registers as human-level brain activity there's no way that that number is accurate first of all;
how do you go about obtaining that data? it's not like they run standardized tests in the starving parts of africa
and second
how come all the asian countries on that list magically has so much higher IQ than any other, if the tests in china were representative of the whole population for example I can bet you any amount of money they would not end up that high
I can accept S.korea, Japan and singapore having high average IQ scores because those population basically only exists in inner cities and they don't have much poverty but the chinese data is clearly subject to state propaganda and passed off as reliable just as the data from many of the african countries is most likely not statistically secured and yet passed off as reliable data because he (the 'researcher') only makes the comparison between europe/usa and the well off asian countries, ignoring the data that he himself knows is unreliable but he presents it anyway to add credibility to a bogus conclusion
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On July 08 2010 22:47 k!llua wrote:Show nested quote +reveals what some have always suspected - New Zealand has a higher average intelligence than Australia (99 vs 98) Australia's IQ would be higher if all the Kiwis didn't keep coming onto the mainland for a job. *runs*
New Zealanders moving to Australia raises the average IQ of both countries.
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Richard Lynn, a British psychologist, and Tatu Vanhanen, a Finnish political scientist, who analysed IQ studies from 113 countries, and from subsequent work by Jelte Wicherts, a Dutch psychologist.
I'd like to know the methods that these people used to measure intelligence. Otherwise for me, any subsequent findings are meaningless and not worth discussion.
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On July 11 2010 19:52 Subversive wrote:Show nested quote +Richard Lynn, a British psychologist, and Tatu Vanhanen, a Finnish political scientist, who analysed IQ studies from 113 countries, and from subsequent work by Jelte Wicherts, a Dutch psychologist. I'd like to know the methods that these people used to measure intelligence. Otherwise for me, any subsequent findings are meaningless and not worth discussion.
Read the thread maybe?
Here:
On July 10 2010 02:08 Maenander wrote:They sell this as science ? As a physicist, I am not amused. IQ tests have problems in itself, but comparing IQ tests on a global scale? Give me a break. Let me quote wikipedia on their IQ data set: sourceShow nested quote +The figures were obtained by taking equally-weighted averages of different IQ tests. The number of studies is very limited; the IQ figure is based on one study in 34 nations, two studies in 30 nations. There were actual tests for IQ in 81 nations. In 104 of the world's nations there were no IQ studies at all and IQ was estimated based on IQ in surrounding nations. The number of participants in each study was usually limited, often numbering under a few hundred. The exceptions to this were the United States and Japan, for which studies using more than several thousand participants are available
Studies that were averaged together often used different methods of IQ testing, different scales for IQ values and/or were done decades apart. IQ in children is different although correlated with IQ later in life and many of the studies tested only young children.
A test of 108 9-15-year olds in Barbados, of 50 13–16-year olds in Colombia, of 104 5–17-year olds in Ecuador, of 129 6–12-year olds in Egypt, of 48 10–14-year olds in Equatorial Guinea, and so on, all were taken as measures of 'national IQ'.
The notion that there is such a thing as a culturally neutral intelligence test is disputed..There are many difficulties when one is measuring IQ scores across cultures, and in multiple languages. Use of the same set of exams requires translation, with all its attendant difficulties and possible misunderstandings in other cultures.
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For various claims I keep seeing the same IQ list (source is in the post above). It was a very limited sampling and now out of date (from 2002).
Although there have been many better flaws with IQ tests in general already pointed out in this thread, particularly that it is pseudo-science, I find it odd that this one time 2002 test keeps getting accepted as a valid IQ measurement over and over. I am pretty sure that if you used a different IQ test and different sampling you could make huge contradictions with the last measurements. -_- Not that I doubt Singaporean IQ will stay above the US IQ ^_^
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Fact: IQ is predominately a measurement of learned knowledge, not innate ability.
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HnR)hT
United States3468 Posts
On July 11 2010 12:40 NEWater wrote:
I'm honestly ashamed as a Singaporean to read this thread and to see that some scientist decided to claim that we have the highest average IQ.
As 'smart' as we can be with academia and scoring in exams, I find the average Singaporean to be absolute dimwits and brain-dead in intellectual curiosity, and am disgusted with how the whole nation is basically a Yes-man State. Case in point on how high IQ doesn't matter at all, I can always cite my personal history/experience. My parents both hail from famous schools (The Chinese High & Cedar Girls' if the Singaporeans need to know), and somehow I become proof of Lee Kuan Yew's dubious opinions on eugenics because I got myself into ACS (Independent), yet another one of those famous schools. But I was taught all of the wrong things and subsequently got mocked in my childhood for it, because despite my parents' high IQ, they had the misfortune of being religious - especially the Baptist, Christian sort.
I was taught by my parents that Israel always deserved to win, that all Muslims and Palestinians were bad. Anyone who practiced a religion other than Christianity was inferior and deserved to have their false idols destroyed, et al. Because I was Chinese, I was automatically better than anyone else because the white man is lazy, Malays are horrendously lazy and Indians are stupid.
Those things wouldn't have been taught by truly intelligent, or truly educated parents. Thank goodness I know better now.
In other words, your parents' belief that Israel deserves to survive the relentless Jihad against it (because Israel does not have and has never had expansionist ambitions, and on the contrary has consented to endless withdrawals and partitions of the original Mandate Palestine, set up by the Leage of Nations for the "reconstitution of the Jewish National Home"; because the Jihad against Israel has not changed in its fundamental objective since the Nazi-Muslim cooperation to exterminate the Jews in the Middle East during the war, which was only foiled by Rommel's defeat at El Alamain and by the German catastrophe at Stalingrad; because Muslims, whose religion fosters hatred of non-Muslims and of Jews especially, and who are subject to incessant, murderously racist incitement in mosques and in mass media and will not relent in their genocidal designs against Israel unless Israel is overwhelmingly more powerful; one could go on forever), is supposed to prove something bad about your parents? You don't know better. You are just an arrogant and ignorant fool who has been thoroughly deceived.
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On July 11 2010 16:57 The Storyteller wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2010 12:40 NEWater wrote:
As 'smart' as we can be with academia and scoring in exams, I find the average Singaporean to be absolute dimwits and brain-dead in intellectual curiosity, and am disgusted with how the whole nation is basically a Yes-man State. You might need to meet more people, from both Singapore and other countries, to gain some perspective. The fabled "West" is not as great and free and creative as it is fashionable to think, and bureacracies all over the world are stuffed with yes-men. I find the average person from all countries I've visited to be pretty lacking in intellectual curiosity, with only a small group truly interested in learning new things. Try talking politics with your average chap from Birmingham, UK and see how far you get. Not much further than with your average Singaporean, I can guarantee.
Sad to say, I've already met my fair share of people at where I work, and my opinion is still the same. The working-class chap from Birmingham might still have a thing or two to say about the Tories, about Thatcher and remark how odd it is that Cameron/Clegg isn't being a huge dick. A mentally-ill dependent I know also expressed this same surprise with me as she put it in her own words:
Our shiny new government has gone round to the local councils and said "Oi! If we pay the mentally ill extra money to cope with life, that does NOT mean you can immediately deduct it from what you give them to pay rent!"
Try talking politics with your average drone in Singapore, and you'd earn a wild-eyed glare of ignorance and fear of discussing such a thing, Maybe an apathetic shrug, or to make things worse, a bleating desperation to change the topic to something vapid like Korean non-culture.
Or indeed, I could try talking politics, or matters of ethics and philosophy with someone educated in a local university, and I'd receive dry-cut General Paper answers and replies.
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EPT
