Makes me think the USA IQ measures have been falling over the years due to more immigrants being tested than before. Sheer number based on % of population
Can't say much about the IQ estimates from India proper but those seem like unusually low estimates for Indian Americans (and incongruent with academic achievement/income/etc) - this article suggested an IQ around 110 based on SAT score:
I forgot about the SAT one, but did include the other 2 studies I could find. There's also that study based on digit span with a small sample. All of these studies produce results in 101-110 range.
As an ethnic Indian born and raised in the UK, this is disappointing news! It makes me wonder what intelligence is, how we measure it, and what IQ results mean in practice.
One thing that strikes me is that, assuming you get roughly the same spread of scores in different groups, the Indian results are shifted almost 2 standard deviations to the left. This would mean almost half the population might qualify as having an intellectual disability (IQ<70).
In terms of daily functioning, this would have huge consequences in terms of the numbers of people who would likely need some level support with activities such as budgeting / planning / social interaction etc. A problem on this scale would be visible from space! That said, there is clearly something going on, because the IQ difference is so stark and also shows up in gaming ability.
However, although the headline implication might be to suggest a genetic difference, I suspect factors such as nutrition and culture (particularly during childhood) may be more important. This would also be consistent with the apparent observation that a nation's intelligence tends to be positively correlated with its level of development, as I believe is thought to have happened in Western countries (and perhaps also in the opposite direction in some former colonies).
I know you're an expert on these things Emil and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. Thanks.
Yes, disappointing, but not surprising given how bad India is by western standards. Note that as Russell Warne has also elaborated on, mental retardation is not generally diagnosed simply in terms of intelligence, but also in behavioral problems. It was in fact an important realization by Arthur Jensen in the early days. While hundreds of millions of humans around the globe have intelligence about 2 standard deviations below the northwest Europeans, the vast majority of these are not retarded in the clinical sense. When we think of the retarded as a clinical group, we generally mean those with some kind of severe genetic defect or birth trauma that resulted in this, typically Down syndrome (mean IQ about 50), fragile X syndrome, or the like. People with such major trauma do not develop normally in behavior, intelligence aside, and their behavior is severely affected. Thus, a large % of Europeans with IQs below 60 or so are rather abnormal looking and poorly behaved due to these major defects. This is not true for lower scoring populations where such people are the regular left-side of the bell curve. Their behavior is relatively unaffected, but they are poor in intelligence.
Thanks for getting back. Yes another commenter linked to that article and it was very helpful. It sort of suggests there are two tests of ability - the cognitive and the functional - and that the majority of people with a low IQ from developing countries do poorly in cognitive tests, whereas those in developed countries do poorly in both (because of a wider syndromic / brain problem). I'm not sure what the apparent implication that these tests aren't necessarily as closely associated as we might expect means, but it probably tells us something.
On the point about development standards as a proxy for national intelligence, this is exactly what I was wondering with regards to whether / what we can learn from history. There was a time - in the middle of the so-called 'dark ages' (a term which I think is only applied to Western Europe) - when the middle and far East were significantly ahead in many aspects. To my mind, this is clearly not consistent with the idea that people from those parts of the world are genetically - perhaps even evolutionarily as some have suggested - intellectually inferior. Equally, I don't think anyone would suggest Europe experienced the dark ages due to a mysterious dip in genetic intelligence.
While there is clearly something troubling going on with international cognitive tests over the last few decades, I am sceptical to what extent the difference in scores should be mostly attributed to an inherent ethnic advantage / disadvantage. No doubt I'm biased, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some who perhaps accept an ethnic explanation a little too readily. That's not to say genetics doesn't play any role, as there has been growing evidence about how genes and environment interact and that epigenetics can sometimes have an important influence within just 1 or 2 generations. But the important point here would be that it is not some inescapable fact of ethnicity that results in adverse genetic intelligence but the ancestral environment, which history shows can change for the better or the worse.
There are no tests of this kind of functioning. It is more of a rating scale used by clinicians when they are trying to establish a diagnosis, typically for a child. They look at developmental delays, learning to speak, walking, following a gaze, social interaction, and so on. Persons with syndromic retardation are sorely behind on these metrics, but persons of merely low intelligence are usually not so far behind. Due to the race differences in average intelligence, the behavior of those with <70 IQ can be quite different. In the case of US blacks, it's about 15% of them, almost none of them with syndromic retardation. Among US whites, perhaps 50% will be syndromic cases.
It's possible that in the year 1000 (or -1000), the worldwide intelligence ranking between races was much different. Our work on ancient Rome suggests they were quite bright genetically, but lost this advantage.
It is easy to make these historical arguments, however. There can be other reasons why some areas and people was falling behind at some point historically. Persia was once great, on multiple occasions, but nothing of global interest has happened there for 100s of years. China was also very backward until recently (communism was and is bad, but before that, it was easily conquered by Europeans too), but their genetic intelligence was in place. I think the world has become increasingly meritocratic and less contingent, such that genetic intelligence is more clearly reflected in socioeconomic development. Again, I don't think this kind of reasoning is very useful without harder data backing it up. We don't know the extent to which intelligence scores went up and down in human history. Perhaps they did so together with civilizations in those places, perhaps not.
Yes there are no functional tests as such, I was thinking more of the assessments of basic living skills that are done to determine what level of support someone might need. I was wondering what the apparent dissociation between these assessments and cognitive tests might mean, and how far down the IQ scale this can be reasonably extrapolated.
So for instance, while it might be plausible to suggest that those in the 60 to 70 range can still be functionally independent, can this still be said of those who are below 60 / 50 / 40 etc.? In a population with an average IQ of 70 the numbers of people with these profoundly low scores would be huge, which doesn’t seem consistent with common sense.
I agree it’s difficult – probably impossible – to do a robust analysis of ethnic IQs through history and how this might relate to societal development. Nevertheless, some contemporary commentators do make these sorts of comparisons, though typically only in regards to the current context. While it might be easy to claim Western civilization is more developed because tests show the people are smarter (and vice versa), as you point out it's not as simplistic as that and there are various reasons nations rise and fall over time. Nobody seriously suggests other parts of the world must have been ‘ethnically smarter’ at various points in history because they were more developed.
It's also interesting that your work shows genetic intelligence can vary over time, which again suggests ethnicity cannot in itself be the key determinant. Instead, there are likely to be other more malleable issues at play, such as environmental factors (both social and physical) that can influence gene expression, and selective pressures that either by accident or design end up segregating groups by knowledge / performance. These sorts of processes would lead to group-differences in IQ much more quickly than an evolutionary process tied to ethnicity, and are therefore potentially more consistent with the sweep of human history if IQ is indeed closely linked with development.
I’ve never really looked into all this before but it’s clearly a complex issue and certainly not as straightforward as some seem to suggest! Thanks for your help.
I don't know. In western countries, it is almost impossible to find someone with an IQ of 40 who doesn't have some large genetic issue. There are a number of studies of the living conditions of the mentally retarded, but these studies usually mix the left-tail people with Down's syndrome and other syndromic cases, making the results uninterpretable for this discussion.
When Lynn was asked this question once in an interview for the Hjernevask documentary, he replied that persons of IQ 70 or so can make fine workers in certain simple jobs, say, farmhand or garbage collector (that we have mostly automated now).
Ethnicity/race is just a proxy for the polygenic score suite that goes with that group at that time. By itself race isn't very interesting and doesn't cause anything.
Infact , Saudi Arabia has spent nearly 8 % gdp on education for last 40 years . Students competing in PISA from poorest deprived 20 quintile in Japan score higher than Saudi multi millionaire kids .
Saudi Spends per capita 8 times than Jordan and score similar on PISA test .
Vietnam spends one fifth on student per capita as compared to Saudi Arabia and scores closer to UK .
Vietnam economy will beat Southeast Asian ones in fews years.
Malaysia is nearly apartheid state massively favouring malays in every sphere of life, even then Chinese rule the private sector and make money go round.
If you take evolution seriously , this willl be the most obvious rational outcome .
The counterpoint to these would be that while oil states have gotten a lot of money and increased spending, their spending is rather unequally distributed, and thus not helping most of the students. I don't know if this is true.
Hello Steve, I confess I haven't looked into this issue much before but I think your point is that higher educational spending has not resulted in better IQ performance (at least in Saudi), and that international differences in PISA scores are due to evolution?
The amount of money spent per pupil on education has not changed the outcome of education. We've known about this for at least 40+ years. The reason why most people don't know is that the media actively hides this "hate fact.".
If you really want to know, you should read Freddie Deboer for starters:
You can also look at Texas school district web sites. They're very transparent on the amount of money spent per pupil. School districts with poor Whites score higher than mostly Black middle class districts. Yes, there's more money spent on mostly Black districts to try to "equalize" things. It doesn't work. We've known about this for decades. The left doesn't like talking about it because this is prima facie evidence that genes matter and it matters a lot.
Hi David, I will look into FD’s post, thanks for linking. I don’t know if he looks into the culture aspect but I think the stats on education spending might reinforce the importance of culture, particularly at home. I think these is broad consensus that the home environment generally has a greater impact on kids than school?
I also think that if the bulk of the difference in these test scores was truly genetic then the difference in national development should somehow compound over generations and lead to an ever greater divide between ‘smart’ and ‘dumb’ nations.
But there was a time, coincidentally before the advent of mass international travel, when the West was not at the forefront, which I think somewhat deflates a purely genetic explanation for the changing fortunes of nations.
The differences won't compound national development. There's a ceiling to how well your civilization can develop based on IQ minus handicaps (malnourishment, oppressive system, laziness, shitty economical philosophy, etc).
NW Europeans had an IQ around 92 in the roman era. It increased around 8 points by the end of the middle ages.
The people who started civilization, anatolian neolithic farmers probably had an IQ in the low 80s (but would increase to low 90s once bronze age started) They didn't even have alleyways in the first proto-cities, you had to use ladders.
It's all selection for the most impactful group differences. Sub-speciation differences are random and niche.
The far right side of the bell curve are behind a people's most impressive accomplishments, civilizational milestones and prosperity.
Doing selective breeding to multiply the far right side of the bell curve, and getting those on the left side of the bell curve to assist the far right side in reproduction will advance culture and society. Fertility clinics, cryobanks, gifted donors (especially ones with g loaded family), making embryos for any family to incubate and raise as their own.
It can all be cooperative. And this increases the value of the lower classes many times over as they can help bring gifted people into the world.
Group differences can change generation by generation. Gifted whites fertility rates has been horrible, so our downfall was going to happen without radical reforms
There has been tons of studies on "cultural" explanations as well. Most of the studies that show that environmental and cultural changes raise test score all suffer from fade out effects. Long term, it does not change the outcome.
As for compounding effects of genes, yes you're exactly right IF the people select partners and have children based mostly intelligence. But a country cannot control who its citizens marry right? And given the low fertility rate in most developed countries and increased low IQ immigration into developed countries, there are a lot of dysgenic effects at play.
If it’s true that certain interventions can raise scores, albeit temporarily, then that suggests something environmental and malleable is at play rather than something genetic and fixed. And if those effects fade over time, then that would be consistent with this view (assuming the environment eventually ‘relapses’ to its former state).
I think the impact of low fertility and inter-racial marriage have probably not had the time or the scale to significantly impact national averages ‘yet’ (unless there are indeed massive ethnic differences, in which case you would also have to question why normal IQ individuals are hooking up with obviously sub-normal partners).
Can somebody recommend first hand accounts of interactions with people in Saudi Arabia, UAE, or other wealthy oil states?
I have visited the UAE but had no chance to interacting with the locals because the country is entirely run by foreigners. Up to 80% of the country is foreign. If their average IQ is around 85, I imagine that at least half of the population has difficulty reading or doing simple math. It'll be very interesting to see how the average person live their life.
1.4 billion people in a fairly small geography (~483 people per square mile compared to US ~93) but not a lot of light.
Those on the lower end of the IQ scale can do alright within a setting where there are family members to keep track of them and tell them what to do, and there are clear tasks and responsibilities, manual labor to do, etc. By Western standards they struggle, but by the standards of the third world they get by alright; no one is expecting them to do math or be able to read well. The bar is really low.
Yes people with sub-normal intelligence can of course be supported to live more independently, but if we ascribe their difficulties to genetics then that support is unlikely to come from family members.
I think acknowleding the truth is the first step towards reaching any reasonable solution or a step towards solution .
Here how the chain reaction likely works
Higher IQ ( cognitive ability ) - Sophisticated culture + high trust - Advance and sophisticated institutions - Better living Standards + art/ sophiticated movies with dense plot/ progressism + kantism + HIGH GDP PER CAPITA
Oil Money = low iq + no sophisticated art / culture / sophistication
India = low iq + Advance institution ( parliamentary democracy ) STILLL one of the lowest per capita income
Also , important to note that East Asian have the highest IQ but STILL China has lower per capita income than Mexico . European WEIRD ness and non clann ness makes it more innovative ,creative , individualistic and overall a high trust society which flourishes .
I'm not sure I understand the equations, but I think you're right to point to differences in culture. Given the history of the rise and fall of nations over the centuries, I think the causal relationship may be more in the direction of cultural factors promoting higher (or lower) population IQ rather than the other way around.
I think your mistake is in how you define "live more independently". They don't live independently in a Western sense; by our standards they would practically be wards of their parents/extended family, and be piteously poor. Yet even in the US people with very subnormal intelligence hold down jobs, menial jobs to be sure, but jobs. They rely on help and families, so are not "independent" but they can earn their keep.
Now take that and apply it to a society where the average person is really poor by US standards. Large numbers of people have menial jobs and rely heavily on their family and are poor. That isn't surprising; you'd expect them to be very poor, and they are.
As to family genetics, IQ is heritable, but that doesn't mean everyone in the family has very low IQ. The guy with 95 is the smart one in the family that everyone goes to for advice, and members with 80 tend to the day to day etc. You don't need a ton of intelligence to manage day to day at a sufficient level of performance to not die, and that person can keep an eye on a number of less intelligent family members.
Again, it seems crazy if one assumes India is very much like the US or Western countries in terms of technological advancement and wealth. It very much is not.
I’ve worked with droves of Indians over 15 years. I’ve ment one or two I liked. The rest did everything they could to annoy, network, waste time, smile to your face while diving a dagger into your back, etc. The “online right-winger” is anyone who has worked with multiple Indians for more than six months. I do not know a single American, Brit, German, Ozzy, Kiwi, Frog, etc. who doesn’t eventually become fatigued of the Indians they work with.
You are just giving the conventional leftwing view here. You believe that it is all nurture, all the time. "If only we would provide adequate resources... if only we wouldn't judge by western standards... if only these race scientists weren't so xenophobic..." etc ad nauseam. Listen, I or Emil or others could give a rebuttal, but what's the point? You just need to read more on this topic and develop better arguments. It's exhausting going back to the 1970s again.
But ultimately this piece is extremely biased. It doesn’t account for inconsistencies in curriculums. IQ isn’t a fixed trait. It changes based on development so it makes sense that underdeveloped countries will have lower scores due to the access to education and the style of education. The test is developed to measure against a strong western education. So this is really just a conjured talking point with not enough substance to merit any truth. All it does (as designed) is encourage more animosity towards immigrants. It’s thinly veiled xenophobia.
You are just giving the conventional leftwing view here. You believe that it is all nurture, all the time. "If only we would provide adequate resources... if only we wouldn't judge by western standards... if only these race scientists weren't so xenophobic..." etc ad nauseam. Listen, I or Emil or others could give a rebuttal, but what's the point? You just need to read more on this topic and develop better arguments. It's exhausting going back to the 1970s again.
The arguments are unified by having consistent results.
To you, the counter arguments are unified by prejudice, but that’s a second order effect of the results being true. You can’t make everyone look at each other in a way that’s measurably false. American culture has been trying to do that for decades and it just keeps failing. We aren’t going along with this anymore.
Steven Pinker (Harvard) wrote Blank Slate more than 20 years ago. Yet people are still clinging onto "cultural and environmental" explanations. This goes to show how the far left media and education system conspire to censor any genetic explanation for disparate human achievement.
And the far left all think of themselves as Great White Saviors of blacks and browns because they're the ones that will give them money and education and opportunities. Preferably by taxing Elon Musk out of existence of course.
Do you have any idea how much money the US and Australian governments have thrown at Blacks and Aboriginals to try to help them? Not to mention the billions in aid to Africa. They're a tax to society. They have jobs because of DEI but even with the DEI income they still manage to not create lasting wealth. Their children still have very low test score and continue to need affirmative action.
Must admit I haven’t read the book, though I believe Pinker himself was advocating for cultural and environmental explanations rather than a biological one for inter-group differences in test performance.
I did however read Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics 2 (or at least part of it), which as I recall devoted an uncomfortably large section to international differences in penis size (no pun intended), in which once again Indians did not exactly cover themselves with glory.
Pinker was never cancelled for a reason - same thing for Robert Plomin. They know how to walk the line without stepping over - focus on heredity of individuals and avoid the obvious group differences, lol.
I'd like to think (bias alert!) that it's possible Pinker was being genuine.
Genes are certainly significant, the strength of IQ heritability attests to that, but as far as I'm aware the idea that some groups are evolutionarily smarter doesn't track neatly with world history.
I don't think that Pinker hasn't been genuine, but just that he is justifiably cautious. I don't blame him in that - I do the same thing.
The issue of group selection for intelligence is well established. Intelligence is no different from any other trait (the brain is a physical organ, after all). Just as individuals will have adaptive advantages so too do collections of such individuals into groups. Using the measure of world history as the gauge for intelligence isn't quite right though, as there are far more factors at play, such as moral decline, religiosity, war etc. that complicate things. Yes, there is more to life than mere intelligence, but for the contemporary world intelligence is the single greatest predictor of success. Some races excel at intelligence, and some don't.
Hello Azzy, intelligence tests are standardised for age (i.e. you wouldn't give a 12 year old the same test as an adult), though you're right that education does make a difference. I'm not sure if a truly pure intelligence test is even possible.
How come you used the North Korean defector samples when it’s well known that they’re mostly made up of upper class North Koreans? 102 isn’t representative at all and NKs (who, supposedly have an iq of 102) in SK tend to have higher drop out rates and lower prestige jobs
Although I don't think the studies above are too biased, most of tests, I suppose, have been carried out in government schools. (I haven't read the studies). However, only the poor go to government schools, but again these are somewhat old, when many were still poor. But I won't be too surprised if the 'real' average IQ is more like 80.
Indians have greatly improved their standing in chess. They have the current World Champion, 3 Indian players are right now in the world's top 10 and they have the second strongest national team with a very large pool of young GMs.
Good for the popularity of chess in India but pretty bad for the global popularity of chess as the western public cares about Magnus, Hikaru and even about Hans Niemann more than about the indian players.
Perhaps the Indian economy is the biggest loser in the rise of Indian chess. By raising the prestige of chess, including through subsidies, India is incentivizing talented youngsters to devote their energies to chess, rather than to other pursuits that would probably be both more lucrative, and more economically beneficial.
Not that that's likely to have an appreciable effect on a $4 Trillion economy, but that may be where the largest economic impact lies.
I think that the IQ of 100 in Europe is too low though with the caveat that it's relative. More intelligent doesn't mean intelligent enough. In my country the IQ for the native population is also around that of the USA for the European population being of the same stock, culture and much the same level of advancement.
Yet among my own people they all think that Indians are really smart. They do not understand the concept of selection. This creates an effect where you would see the native population at all levels in society but Indians only occupying the top intellectual jobs as if they're all geniuses. This caused an actual local economic disaster in many areas.
Many were brought in promiscuously expecting to get the same result. This is part of a larger problem which is resulting in the decline and potential total collapse of our civilisation. I believe that for civilisation to be sustainable then relative to our native IQ it may need to be dozens of points higher and it may even be an error to operate according to mean with a standard distribution.
There has never been an indefinitely sustainable high level civilisation at our level in history. Though it has not fully bottomed out it can be shown that ours is not sustainable as it has reached the point that collapse is inevitable. This is a problem.
A major caveat is that IQ might not be all their is to it. You can also argue that the overwhelmingly prevalent behavioural characteristics of humans makes is the problem with higher intelligence in the form as measured by IQ needed to compensate for that but ultimately being insufficient.
Thousands of small groups (jatis) practicing long-term endogamy must have negative genetic effects. We could quantify the magnitude of these effects by finding people who exit such groups and outbreed. Measure their IQ, their spouse's IQ, their children's IQ. Since a single generation of outbreeding suffices to eliminate the deleterious effects of a hundred generations of inbreeding, their children's IQ will reveal how much intelligence the endogamously produced parent lost to inbreeding. After adjusting for other factors (eg, regression to the mean), a child 5 points above the parental average would indicate the affected parent lost 10 points to inbreeding.
Thousands of small groups (jatis) practicing long-term endogamy must have negative genetic effects. We could quantify the magnitude of these effects by finding people who exit such groups and outbreed. Measure their IQ, their spouse's IQ, their children's IQ. Since a single generation of outbreeding suffices to eliminate the deleterious effects of a hundred generations of inbreeding, their children's IQ will reveal how much intelligence the endogamously produced parent lost to inbreeding. After adjusting for other factors (eg, regression to the mean), a child 5 points above the parental average would indicate the affected parent lost 10 points to inbreeding.
Makes me think the USA IQ measures have been falling over the years due to more immigrants being tested than before. Sheer number based on % of population
obviously .
Road to Brazilisation.
Or it’s fallen less than it would.
Can't say much about the IQ estimates from India proper but those seem like unusually low estimates for Indian Americans (and incongruent with academic achievement/income/etc) - this article suggested an IQ around 110 based on SAT score:
https://humanvarieties.org/2023/09/06/sat-act-scores-by-detailed-race-ethnicity-2021/
Any idea why these estimates would be so different?
I forgot about the SAT one, but did include the other 2 studies I could find. There's also that study based on digit span with a small sample. All of these studies produce results in 101-110 range.
As an ethnic Indian born and raised in the UK, this is disappointing news! It makes me wonder what intelligence is, how we measure it, and what IQ results mean in practice.
One thing that strikes me is that, assuming you get roughly the same spread of scores in different groups, the Indian results are shifted almost 2 standard deviations to the left. This would mean almost half the population might qualify as having an intellectual disability (IQ<70).
In terms of daily functioning, this would have huge consequences in terms of the numbers of people who would likely need some level support with activities such as budgeting / planning / social interaction etc. A problem on this scale would be visible from space! That said, there is clearly something going on, because the IQ difference is so stark and also shows up in gaming ability.
However, although the headline implication might be to suggest a genetic difference, I suspect factors such as nutrition and culture (particularly during childhood) may be more important. This would also be consistent with the apparent observation that a nation's intelligence tends to be positively correlated with its level of development, as I believe is thought to have happened in Western countries (and perhaps also in the opposite direction in some former colonies).
I know you're an expert on these things Emil and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. Thanks.
Hi Saj,
Yes, disappointing, but not surprising given how bad India is by western standards. Note that as Russell Warne has also elaborated on, mental retardation is not generally diagnosed simply in terms of intelligence, but also in behavioral problems. It was in fact an important realization by Arthur Jensen in the early days. While hundreds of millions of humans around the globe have intelligence about 2 standard deviations below the northwest Europeans, the vast majority of these are not retarded in the clinical sense. When we think of the retarded as a clinical group, we generally mean those with some kind of severe genetic defect or birth trauma that resulted in this, typically Down syndrome (mean IQ about 50), fragile X syndrome, or the like. People with such major trauma do not develop normally in behavior, intelligence aside, and their behavior is severely affected. Thus, a large % of Europeans with IQs below 60 or so are rather abnormal looking and poorly behaved due to these major defects. This is not true for lower scoring populations where such people are the regular left-side of the bell curve. Their behavior is relatively unaffected, but they are poor in intelligence.
See here:
https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/african-iqs-and-mental-retardation
Hi Emil,
Thanks for getting back. Yes another commenter linked to that article and it was very helpful. It sort of suggests there are two tests of ability - the cognitive and the functional - and that the majority of people with a low IQ from developing countries do poorly in cognitive tests, whereas those in developed countries do poorly in both (because of a wider syndromic / brain problem). I'm not sure what the apparent implication that these tests aren't necessarily as closely associated as we might expect means, but it probably tells us something.
On the point about development standards as a proxy for national intelligence, this is exactly what I was wondering with regards to whether / what we can learn from history. There was a time - in the middle of the so-called 'dark ages' (a term which I think is only applied to Western Europe) - when the middle and far East were significantly ahead in many aspects. To my mind, this is clearly not consistent with the idea that people from those parts of the world are genetically - perhaps even evolutionarily as some have suggested - intellectually inferior. Equally, I don't think anyone would suggest Europe experienced the dark ages due to a mysterious dip in genetic intelligence.
While there is clearly something troubling going on with international cognitive tests over the last few decades, I am sceptical to what extent the difference in scores should be mostly attributed to an inherent ethnic advantage / disadvantage. No doubt I'm biased, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some who perhaps accept an ethnic explanation a little too readily. That's not to say genetics doesn't play any role, as there has been growing evidence about how genes and environment interact and that epigenetics can sometimes have an important influence within just 1 or 2 generations. But the important point here would be that it is not some inescapable fact of ethnicity that results in adverse genetic intelligence but the ancestral environment, which history shows can change for the better or the worse.
There are no tests of this kind of functioning. It is more of a rating scale used by clinicians when they are trying to establish a diagnosis, typically for a child. They look at developmental delays, learning to speak, walking, following a gaze, social interaction, and so on. Persons with syndromic retardation are sorely behind on these metrics, but persons of merely low intelligence are usually not so far behind. Due to the race differences in average intelligence, the behavior of those with <70 IQ can be quite different. In the case of US blacks, it's about 15% of them, almost none of them with syndromic retardation. Among US whites, perhaps 50% will be syndromic cases.
It's possible that in the year 1000 (or -1000), the worldwide intelligence ranking between races was much different. Our work on ancient Rome suggests they were quite bright genetically, but lost this advantage.
It is easy to make these historical arguments, however. There can be other reasons why some areas and people was falling behind at some point historically. Persia was once great, on multiple occasions, but nothing of global interest has happened there for 100s of years. China was also very backward until recently (communism was and is bad, but before that, it was easily conquered by Europeans too), but their genetic intelligence was in place. I think the world has become increasingly meritocratic and less contingent, such that genetic intelligence is more clearly reflected in socioeconomic development. Again, I don't think this kind of reasoning is very useful without harder data backing it up. We don't know the extent to which intelligence scores went up and down in human history. Perhaps they did so together with civilizations in those places, perhaps not.
Hi Emil,
Yes there are no functional tests as such, I was thinking more of the assessments of basic living skills that are done to determine what level of support someone might need. I was wondering what the apparent dissociation between these assessments and cognitive tests might mean, and how far down the IQ scale this can be reasonably extrapolated.
So for instance, while it might be plausible to suggest that those in the 60 to 70 range can still be functionally independent, can this still be said of those who are below 60 / 50 / 40 etc.? In a population with an average IQ of 70 the numbers of people with these profoundly low scores would be huge, which doesn’t seem consistent with common sense.
I agree it’s difficult – probably impossible – to do a robust analysis of ethnic IQs through history and how this might relate to societal development. Nevertheless, some contemporary commentators do make these sorts of comparisons, though typically only in regards to the current context. While it might be easy to claim Western civilization is more developed because tests show the people are smarter (and vice versa), as you point out it's not as simplistic as that and there are various reasons nations rise and fall over time. Nobody seriously suggests other parts of the world must have been ‘ethnically smarter’ at various points in history because they were more developed.
It's also interesting that your work shows genetic intelligence can vary over time, which again suggests ethnicity cannot in itself be the key determinant. Instead, there are likely to be other more malleable issues at play, such as environmental factors (both social and physical) that can influence gene expression, and selective pressures that either by accident or design end up segregating groups by knowledge / performance. These sorts of processes would lead to group-differences in IQ much more quickly than an evolutionary process tied to ethnicity, and are therefore potentially more consistent with the sweep of human history if IQ is indeed closely linked with development.
I’ve never really looked into all this before but it’s clearly a complex issue and certainly not as straightforward as some seem to suggest! Thanks for your help.
I don't know. In western countries, it is almost impossible to find someone with an IQ of 40 who doesn't have some large genetic issue. There are a number of studies of the living conditions of the mentally retarded, but these studies usually mix the left-tail people with Down's syndrome and other syndromic cases, making the results uninterpretable for this discussion.
When Lynn was asked this question once in an interview for the Hjernevask documentary, he replied that persons of IQ 70 or so can make fine workers in certain simple jobs, say, farmhand or garbage collector (that we have mostly automated now).
Ethnicity/race is just a proxy for the polygenic score suite that goes with that group at that time. By itself race isn't very interesting and doesn't cause anything.
Contra : Qatar , Saudi Arabia
Infact , Saudi Arabia has spent nearly 8 % gdp on education for last 40 years . Students competing in PISA from poorest deprived 20 quintile in Japan score higher than Saudi multi millionaire kids .
Saudi Spends per capita 8 times than Jordan and score similar on PISA test .
Vietnam spends one fifth on student per capita as compared to Saudi Arabia and scores closer to UK .
Vietnam economy will beat Southeast Asian ones in fews years.
Malaysia is nearly apartheid state massively favouring malays in every sphere of life, even then Chinese rule the private sector and make money go round.
If you take evolution seriously , this willl be the most obvious rational outcome .
The counterpoint to these would be that while oil states have gotten a lot of money and increased spending, their spending is rather unequally distributed, and thus not helping most of the students. I don't know if this is true.
I asked AI but it wasn't very useful.
Hello Steve, I confess I haven't looked into this issue much before but I think your point is that higher educational spending has not resulted in better IQ performance (at least in Saudi), and that international differences in PISA scores are due to evolution?
The amount of money spent per pupil on education has not changed the outcome of education. We've known about this for at least 40+ years. The reason why most people don't know is that the media actively hides this "hate fact.".
If you really want to know, you should read Freddie Deboer for starters:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/is-the-conventional-wisdom-on-educational
You can also look at Texas school district web sites. They're very transparent on the amount of money spent per pupil. School districts with poor Whites score higher than mostly Black middle class districts. Yes, there's more money spent on mostly Black districts to try to "equalize" things. It doesn't work. We've known about this for decades. The left doesn't like talking about it because this is prima facie evidence that genes matter and it matters a lot.
Hi David, I will look into FD’s post, thanks for linking. I don’t know if he looks into the culture aspect but I think the stats on education spending might reinforce the importance of culture, particularly at home. I think these is broad consensus that the home environment generally has a greater impact on kids than school?
I also think that if the bulk of the difference in these test scores was truly genetic then the difference in national development should somehow compound over generations and lead to an ever greater divide between ‘smart’ and ‘dumb’ nations.
But there was a time, coincidentally before the advent of mass international travel, when the West was not at the forefront, which I think somewhat deflates a purely genetic explanation for the changing fortunes of nations.
The differences won't compound national development. There's a ceiling to how well your civilization can develop based on IQ minus handicaps (malnourishment, oppressive system, laziness, shitty economical philosophy, etc).
NW Europeans had an IQ around 92 in the roman era. It increased around 8 points by the end of the middle ages.
The people who started civilization, anatolian neolithic farmers probably had an IQ in the low 80s (but would increase to low 90s once bronze age started) They didn't even have alleyways in the first proto-cities, you had to use ladders.
It's all selection for the most impactful group differences. Sub-speciation differences are random and niche.
The far right side of the bell curve are behind a people's most impressive accomplishments, civilizational milestones and prosperity.
Doing selective breeding to multiply the far right side of the bell curve, and getting those on the left side of the bell curve to assist the far right side in reproduction will advance culture and society. Fertility clinics, cryobanks, gifted donors (especially ones with g loaded family), making embryos for any family to incubate and raise as their own.
It can all be cooperative. And this increases the value of the lower classes many times over as they can help bring gifted people into the world.
Group differences can change generation by generation. Gifted whites fertility rates has been horrible, so our downfall was going to happen without radical reforms
Do you have any data to back up bronze age IQ stats or just made it it ?
There has been tons of studies on "cultural" explanations as well. Most of the studies that show that environmental and cultural changes raise test score all suffer from fade out effects. Long term, it does not change the outcome.
As for compounding effects of genes, yes you're exactly right IF the people select partners and have children based mostly intelligence. But a country cannot control who its citizens marry right? And given the low fertility rate in most developed countries and increased low IQ immigration into developed countries, there are a lot of dysgenic effects at play.
If it’s true that certain interventions can raise scores, albeit temporarily, then that suggests something environmental and malleable is at play rather than something genetic and fixed. And if those effects fade over time, then that would be consistent with this view (assuming the environment eventually ‘relapses’ to its former state).
I think the impact of low fertility and inter-racial marriage have probably not had the time or the scale to significantly impact national averages ‘yet’ (unless there are indeed massive ethnic differences, in which case you would also have to question why normal IQ individuals are hooking up with obviously sub-normal partners).
Can somebody recommend first hand accounts of interactions with people in Saudi Arabia, UAE, or other wealthy oil states?
I have visited the UAE but had no chance to interacting with the locals because the country is entirely run by foreigners. Up to 80% of the country is foreign. If their average IQ is around 85, I imagine that at least half of the population has difficulty reading or doing simple math. It'll be very interesting to see how the average person live their life.
It is funny you mention that it should be visible from space: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/JBY8GR/india-night-view-from-space-elements-of-this-image-furnished-by-nasa-JBY8GR.jpg
1.4 billion people in a fairly small geography (~483 people per square mile compared to US ~93) but not a lot of light.
Those on the lower end of the IQ scale can do alright within a setting where there are family members to keep track of them and tell them what to do, and there are clear tasks and responsibilities, manual labor to do, etc. By Western standards they struggle, but by the standards of the third world they get by alright; no one is expecting them to do math or be able to read well. The bar is really low.
Yes people with sub-normal intelligence can of course be supported to live more independently, but if we ascribe their difficulties to genetics then that support is unlikely to come from family members.
I think acknowleding the truth is the first step towards reaching any reasonable solution or a step towards solution .
Here how the chain reaction likely works
Higher IQ ( cognitive ability ) - Sophisticated culture + high trust - Advance and sophisticated institutions - Better living Standards + art/ sophiticated movies with dense plot/ progressism + kantism + HIGH GDP PER CAPITA
Oil Money = low iq + no sophisticated art / culture / sophistication
India = low iq + Advance institution ( parliamentary democracy ) STILLL one of the lowest per capita income
Also , important to note that East Asian have the highest IQ but STILL China has lower per capita income than Mexico . European WEIRD ness and non clann ness makes it more innovative ,creative , individualistic and overall a high trust society which flourishes .
I'm not sure I understand the equations, but I think you're right to point to differences in culture. Given the history of the rise and fall of nations over the centuries, I think the causal relationship may be more in the direction of cultural factors promoting higher (or lower) population IQ rather than the other way around.
I think your mistake is in how you define "live more independently". They don't live independently in a Western sense; by our standards they would practically be wards of their parents/extended family, and be piteously poor. Yet even in the US people with very subnormal intelligence hold down jobs, menial jobs to be sure, but jobs. They rely on help and families, so are not "independent" but they can earn their keep.
Now take that and apply it to a society where the average person is really poor by US standards. Large numbers of people have menial jobs and rely heavily on their family and are poor. That isn't surprising; you'd expect them to be very poor, and they are.
As to family genetics, IQ is heritable, but that doesn't mean everyone in the family has very low IQ. The guy with 95 is the smart one in the family that everyone goes to for advice, and members with 80 tend to the day to day etc. You don't need a ton of intelligence to manage day to day at a sufficient level of performance to not die, and that person can keep an eye on a number of less intelligent family members.
Again, it seems crazy if one assumes India is very much like the US or Western countries in terms of technological advancement and wealth. It very much is not.
Yes, on your last point re technology / wealth, that is absolutely true.
Low national IQ and intellectual disability:
https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/african-iqs-and-mental-retardation, https://www.cremieux.xyz/i/153828779/countries-cant-have-mean-iqs-in-the-s
Nutrition and IQ: https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/a-requiem-for-nutrition
Environmental factors and IQ: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-to-stop-worrying-and-learn-to/comment/86319416
Relationship between national IQ and development: https://www.cremieux.xyz/i/153828779/lynn-gets-the-causality-backwards-from-iq-to-gdp
Changes in IQ and general intelligence within nations over the course of development: https://www.sebjenseb.net/p/changes-in-relative-cognitive-performance
I’ve worked with droves of Indians over 15 years. I’ve ment one or two I liked. The rest did everything they could to annoy, network, waste time, smile to your face while diving a dagger into your back, etc. The “online right-winger” is anyone who has worked with multiple Indians for more than six months. I do not know a single American, Brit, German, Ozzy, Kiwi, Frog, etc. who doesn’t eventually become fatigued of the Indians they work with.
Plus one.
You are just giving the conventional leftwing view here. You believe that it is all nurture, all the time. "If only we would provide adequate resources... if only we wouldn't judge by western standards... if only these race scientists weren't so xenophobic..." etc ad nauseam. Listen, I or Emil or others could give a rebuttal, but what's the point? You just need to read more on this topic and develop better arguments. It's exhausting going back to the 1970s again.
But ultimately this piece is extremely biased. It doesn’t account for inconsistencies in curriculums. IQ isn’t a fixed trait. It changes based on development so it makes sense that underdeveloped countries will have lower scores due to the access to education and the style of education. The test is developed to measure against a strong western education. So this is really just a conjured talking point with not enough substance to merit any truth. All it does (as designed) is encourage more animosity towards immigrants. It’s thinly veiled xenophobia.
You are just giving the conventional leftwing view here. You believe that it is all nurture, all the time. "If only we would provide adequate resources... if only we wouldn't judge by western standards... if only these race scientists weren't so xenophobic..." etc ad nauseam. Listen, I or Emil or others could give a rebuttal, but what's the point? You just need to read more on this topic and develop better arguments. It's exhausting going back to the 1970s again.
I am merely pointing out that the arguments need to be unified
The arguments are unified by having consistent results.
To you, the counter arguments are unified by prejudice, but that’s a second order effect of the results being true. You can’t make everyone look at each other in a way that’s measurably false. American culture has been trying to do that for decades and it just keeps failing. We aren’t going along with this anymore.
Steven Pinker (Harvard) wrote Blank Slate more than 20 years ago. Yet people are still clinging onto "cultural and environmental" explanations. This goes to show how the far left media and education system conspire to censor any genetic explanation for disparate human achievement.
https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0670031518/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0
And the far left all think of themselves as Great White Saviors of blacks and browns because they're the ones that will give them money and education and opportunities. Preferably by taxing Elon Musk out of existence of course.
Do you have any idea how much money the US and Australian governments have thrown at Blacks and Aboriginals to try to help them? Not to mention the billions in aid to Africa. They're a tax to society. They have jobs because of DEI but even with the DEI income they still manage to not create lasting wealth. Their children still have very low test score and continue to need affirmative action.
Must admit I haven’t read the book, though I believe Pinker himself was advocating for cultural and environmental explanations rather than a biological one for inter-group differences in test performance.
I did however read Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics 2 (or at least part of it), which as I recall devoted an uncomfortably large section to international differences in penis size (no pun intended), in which once again Indians did not exactly cover themselves with glory.
Pinker was never cancelled for a reason - same thing for Robert Plomin. They know how to walk the line without stepping over - focus on heredity of individuals and avoid the obvious group differences, lol.
I'd like to think (bias alert!) that it's possible Pinker was being genuine.
Genes are certainly significant, the strength of IQ heritability attests to that, but as far as I'm aware the idea that some groups are evolutionarily smarter doesn't track neatly with world history.
I don't think that Pinker hasn't been genuine, but just that he is justifiably cautious. I don't blame him in that - I do the same thing.
The issue of group selection for intelligence is well established. Intelligence is no different from any other trait (the brain is a physical organ, after all). Just as individuals will have adaptive advantages so too do collections of such individuals into groups. Using the measure of world history as the gauge for intelligence isn't quite right though, as there are far more factors at play, such as moral decline, religiosity, war etc. that complicate things. Yes, there is more to life than mere intelligence, but for the contemporary world intelligence is the single greatest predictor of success. Some races excel at intelligence, and some don't.
"It doesn’t account for inconsistencies in curriculums."
The results of an actual test of intelligence are not affected by education.
Of course they are. You’re not gonna test the same at 12 as you will at 26.
Hello Azzy, intelligence tests are standardised for age (i.e. you wouldn't give a 12 year old the same test as an adult), though you're right that education does make a difference. I'm not sure if a truly pure intelligence test is even possible.
And yes I know. I’ve done several. Being the wrong color for all the private institutes I attended. Had to be smarter instead ;)
And when you look at the vast array of age ranges in all the studies then you agree the point is invalidly made
"Of course they are. You’re not gonna test the same at 12 as you will at 26."
That is true, but the reason is not education; it is cerebral development, which is a function of genetics.
LOL
"LOL"
That someone finds that funny is telling about their lack of cerebral development.
Correlation does not imply causation.
How many Indians would have an IQ of above 130 then?
There is this attempt to estimate the number of Indian geniuses, and it is much smaller compared to the number of geniuses in the USA. https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1874239269126234404?t=NkPgi_-bxnMEtIYX98SQgQ&s=19
depends on the genetic variation within the population proportion of different populations and raw numbers
How come you used the North Korean defector samples when it’s well known that they’re mostly made up of upper class North Koreans? 102 isn’t representative at all and NKs (who, supposedly have an iq of 102) in SK tend to have higher drop out rates and lower prestige jobs
52% of women that reach age 21 have been raped
25% of all childbirths are due to incest.
81% of their sewage is untreated
600,000 kgs of human poo ends up being dumped in the sea. PER DAY
I could go on. No need. India needs to be nuked.
Although I don't think the studies above are too biased, most of tests, I suppose, have been carried out in government schools. (I haven't read the studies). However, only the poor go to government schools, but again these are somewhat old, when many were still poor. But I won't be too surprised if the 'real' average IQ is more like 80.
Indians are dirty, smelly people
Indians have greatly improved their standing in chess. They have the current World Champion, 3 Indian players are right now in the world's top 10 and they have the second strongest national team with a very large pool of young GMs.
Good for the popularity of chess in India but pretty bad for the global popularity of chess as the western public cares about Magnus, Hikaru and even about Hans Niemann more than about the indian players.
Perhaps the Indian economy is the biggest loser in the rise of Indian chess. By raising the prestige of chess, including through subsidies, India is incentivizing talented youngsters to devote their energies to chess, rather than to other pursuits that would probably be both more lucrative, and more economically beneficial.
Not that that's likely to have an appreciable effect on a $4 Trillion economy, but that may be where the largest economic impact lies.
Might be useful to look at some studies with data on Indian diaspora performance in countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Mauritius, Fiji etc.
These are not heavily selected populations but some of them are high SES environments.
So should help distinguish the effect of g vs nutrition etc.
You might also get some data from UK. Prior to 2010, Indian immigration to UK wasn’t very selective.
Majority was middle trading/peasant castes like Patels and Jatts.
IIRC second gen Indians in UK have an IQ somewhere in mid-90s but have school performance at par with whites.
I think that the IQ of 100 in Europe is too low though with the caveat that it's relative. More intelligent doesn't mean intelligent enough. In my country the IQ for the native population is also around that of the USA for the European population being of the same stock, culture and much the same level of advancement.
Yet among my own people they all think that Indians are really smart. They do not understand the concept of selection. This creates an effect where you would see the native population at all levels in society but Indians only occupying the top intellectual jobs as if they're all geniuses. This caused an actual local economic disaster in many areas.
Many were brought in promiscuously expecting to get the same result. This is part of a larger problem which is resulting in the decline and potential total collapse of our civilisation. I believe that for civilisation to be sustainable then relative to our native IQ it may need to be dozens of points higher and it may even be an error to operate according to mean with a standard distribution.
There has never been an indefinitely sustainable high level civilisation at our level in history. Though it has not fully bottomed out it can be shown that ours is not sustainable as it has reached the point that collapse is inevitable. This is a problem.
A major caveat is that IQ might not be all their is to it. You can also argue that the overwhelmingly prevalent behavioural characteristics of humans makes is the problem with higher intelligence in the form as measured by IQ needed to compensate for that but ultimately being insufficient.
Thousands of small groups (jatis) practicing long-term endogamy must have negative genetic effects. We could quantify the magnitude of these effects by finding people who exit such groups and outbreed. Measure their IQ, their spouse's IQ, their children's IQ. Since a single generation of outbreeding suffices to eliminate the deleterious effects of a hundred generations of inbreeding, their children's IQ will reveal how much intelligence the endogamously produced parent lost to inbreeding. After adjusting for other factors (eg, regression to the mean), a child 5 points above the parental average would indicate the affected parent lost 10 points to inbreeding.
Thousands of small groups (jatis) practicing long-term endogamy must have negative genetic effects. We could quantify the magnitude of these effects by finding people who exit such groups and outbreed. Measure their IQ, their spouse's IQ, their children's IQ. Since a single generation of outbreeding suffices to eliminate the deleterious effects of a hundred generations of inbreeding, their children's IQ will reveal how much intelligence the endogamously produced parent lost to inbreeding. After adjusting for other factors (eg, regression to the mean), a child 5 points above the parental average would indicate the affected parent lost 10 points to inbreeding.