IQ and Global Inequality

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by Michael, Jul 13, 2009.

  1. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    Just something I thought was interesting.

    IQ and Global Inequality

    Top few nations:

    Hong Kong 107
    Singapore 103
    North Korea 105*
    South Korea 106
    Japan 105
    Taiwan 104
    * estimate.

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  3. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    Inequality?
    Is there any functional difference between 103 (lowest figure given) and 107 (highest)?
     
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  5. Dub_ Strange loop Registered Senior Member

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    Malcolm Gladwell, in his newest book Outliers, spends some time discussing the Asian IQ gap. He considers several potential facilitating factors for the phenomenon, but one of the ones that I found most interesting was his discussion of how many Asian languages (Chinese in particular) facilitate numeracy. Here's an excerpt from Outliers, most of which is available on Mr. Gladwell's website, gladwell.com. (That means it's okay, right?

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    )

    Like I said, this passage only speaks to mathematical ability, but it's still pretty illuminating. Things get pretty interesting when you stop reifying intelligence as a concrete mental capacity one has either more or less of depending on one's genes, and start looking at it from a deeper perspective.

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    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 13, 2009
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  7. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    I smell a trip to my library coming on. Thanks.

    Meh, the rule about not being able to post links until you've reached a certain count (you're close to that value now I think) is to stop spammers mainly. I think you're a stayer. Commiserations

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    And I must read my copy of Dehaene again, it's been too long.

    In the context of that quote, that's nearly always how I remember a string of numbers - as separate digits (or rarely as pairs). e.g. 324567 would be 32 45 67 (but three-two four-five six-seven, not thirty two, forty five, sixty seven) or 3 2 4 5 6 7 to me (and helped when I was sysadmin and had 20 or so separate passwords which were changed once a month!).

    Back on-topic: I'm not quite sure what you mean by "deeper perspective", but my last IQ test looked at (and scored) around 13 different "aspects"* - rather than a "block" value.
    Is that what you mean?

    * the following categories.
    OVERALL IQ consisting of -
    ARITHMETIC
    ALGEBRAIC
    ROTE UTILISATION
    LOGICAL
    VISUAL APPREHENSION
    SPATIAL SKILL
    INTUITION
    GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
    VOCABULARY
    SHORT TERM MEMORY
    SPELLING
    GEOMETRIC
    COMPUTATIONAL SPEED


    [Edit] Just took a glance at Gladwell's site and saw this
    Now it's a definite read - I've been trying to find something for a long time on "unfulfilled (failed?) genius", i.e. the really smart guys that AREN'T worth $60m - why and what "happens" to them... Thanks again [EndEdit]
     
    Last edited: Jul 13, 2009
  8. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    No no, those were just the top scoring countries. The yellow and dark brown areas are in the 60-70s.

    I read a small bit of outliers, I wish I had time to read more - thanks

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  9. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    Ouch, yeah.
    I'd imagine that there's a noticeable functional difference between 107 and 59.
    Er, notwithstanding Dub's comment/ reference, above.
     
  10. Dub_ Strange loop Registered Senior Member

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    All of Mr. Gladwell's books are brilliantly composed and cover profoundly interesting topics, IMHO. I highly recommend all three of them.

    Yeah, that's a very useful technique called chunking. There's a quite famous book by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas, The Memory Book, that discusses many such memory techniques, including peg words, the method of loci, etc. I worked through the book about a year ago and am happy to find myself spontaneously using some of the tricks it advocated.

    That's not precisely what I was referring to, although incidentally I do think that breaking intelligence tests down into several factors is a big step in the right direction toward a useful conceptualization of intelligence. Certainly it's a huge improvement over the classical g-factor approach (g standing for 'general intelligence').

    But what I was actually referring to was the ways that we think about the roots or causes of intelligence. It's extremely common for people to take an overattributional approach to intelligence, where we either implicity or explicitly view it as a fixed, genetically determined trait -- as if intelligence was some sort of holy substance poured into the measuring cup that is your brain upon birth. I find this to be an incredibly limited and limiting view of human ability.

    These two issues -- intelligence testing and our lay intuitions about intelligence -- are intricately connected. This is perhaps most evident in the current state of intelligence testing, where the two form a vicious logical circle.
    What does it mean that Jack got a high score on the intelligence test?
    That he is smart.
    What does it mean that Jack is smart?
    That he gets high scores on intelligence tests.
    Most psychometricians, of course, would deny this portrayal. They would point out that intelligence tests are indicative of abstract reasoning abilities, capacities for logical manipulation, etc. -- aren't they? In theory, sure. But it's no secret that scores on most intelligence tests rarely account for more than 10% of the variation when cross validated with more worldly measures of what people would consider intelligent behaviors. Intelligence tests don't measure intelligence so much as they measure... your ability to take intelligence tests!

    It's my strong contention that this poor fit between intelligence test scores and more practical conceptions of intelligence is due to the majority of our intelligence tests being contaminated by the predominant oversimplistic view of intelligence. A test which spits out a number or set of numbers fits well with the lay intuition about what intelligence "is" -- and indeed the output of these tests serves to reinforce the illusion that this is a sound view of intelligence -- but how well does it fit with how intelligence really works? In my estimation, very poorly.

    To be clear, I don't think that the entire enterprise of intelligence assessment is flawed in principle. I only think that the way we've been going about it so far leaves much to be desired. Fortunately this view has been gaining support in academic circles for a couple decades now and there are many people more knowledgeable than myself who are setting out to fix the problem. But it's not going to be easy -- the idea of an intelligence quotient has become deeply ingrained in our culture, and it's going to take much time and effort to replace this concept with one that is descriptively and prescriptively accurate.
     
    Last edited: Jul 13, 2009
  11. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Comon...most of central Africa is functionally retarded?
     
  12. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    Excellent: I foresee additions to my personal library.

    Bugger, you mean somebody thought of it before I did?

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    Ah, okay. I think we're on the same page.
    My usual "excuse" is that I may be smart, but I have no ambition* and little application

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    Hence my "lack of advancement".

    Agreed, in and of itself IQ doesn't say much about the "real world", or IQ's utility (if that's the word) in life.
    It looks good on a CV, etc. but there's more to "getting on" in life.

    *Meh, slight fib: I always tell my bosses that I have nothing that they would recognise as ambition.
     
  13. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    That map sucks, where's the scale? As to the difference between an IQ of 107 and 59; one of my children has Down's syndrome and his IQ is 77. Hard to believe there are entire countries with an average IQ below that of someone with Down's syndrome.
     
  14. kurros Registered Senior Member

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    There will be a huge correlation between the quality of the education systems in a country and those measured IQ scores. A lot of the things in a standard test can be and are trained during the course of ones education, so in the countries with crap education systems you will naturally get much lower IQ scores.
     
  15. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    I thought that was questionable myself..
    If the measurements according to the IQ-tests are correct they must be heavily biased.
     
  16. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    And that shouldn't happen.
     
  17. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    In the article it is noted that there is a cultural bias in IQ tests.
     
  18. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Ugh.. you and your reading!

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  19. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    Quoted from the "Criticisms" section of the article:
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    When Reader's Digest magazine left cell phones lying around in major cities of the world, and then called the phone to see if the finder would answer and return it, they found that almost everywhere most people would do that - even, in Africa, very poor people.

    The two cities with the lowest return rates were Hong Kong and Singapore.

    And those were average or median (?) scores. Half of all Africans cannot operate a telephone or tie their own shoes, apparently.
     
  21. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    I just ran across it online and thought it was interesting. But, it begs the question of the validity of IQ tests. That said, I have read that IQ tests often test complex thought. It may be that an adult with trisomy21 has a greater ability to think in abstract complex ways when compared with an African living in a poor village - simply by growing up surrounded by a modern environment and with parents who have seen to their education. As I understand it, Islanders had really low IQs a couple generations ago and their children have like a 15-20 gap - simply because the world they live in is much more modern and complex compared to their parents world (which was simple and relatively easy [kind of makes one wonder if the modern world is all that great?]).
     
  22. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    Penis size and global inequality:

    Top "smallest" nations:

    1) Hong Kong
    2) Singapore
    3) North Korea
    4) South Korea
    5) Japan
    6) Taiwan

    I mean while we're dealing with the subject of asian stereotypes and patterns.

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  23. bluesea50 Registered Member

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    sorry but what is meaning of colors in the map
     

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