15 Comments
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Seluvian's avatar

If they're that selected, wouldn't you expect a large regression to the mean? My anecdotal impression of second gen Indian Americans is less intelligent than East Asians but still around 95-100 IQ.

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Iceman's avatar

Probably some regression, and it’s also the case that there are many different regions/castes which might have separate genetic pools if they keep in the caste.

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SC's avatar

Can you explain the immigration in the tech industry? If their IQ is below average, why the HB-1 and concentration in tech. I read a story about Indian nepotism or ethnicism in the US. Is this reality? Thx.

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Emil O. W. Kirkegaard's avatar

A group selected for high SES will be higher in SES than their IQ would predict. In any case, the GSS results are somewhat of an outlier among the American results. More typical is around 100 IQ.

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SC's avatar

But Dr. K are you telling me that these “tech” jobs only require a 100 IQ? The media/corporate propaganda is that we need supper smart people and we don’t have them, thus HB-1. Maybe I don’t understand the nature of the work or the BS. 🤔.

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Emil O. W. Kirkegaard's avatar

There are no particular IQ requirements for any job as such because there are no true threshold functions of IQ. Nevertheless, some jobs require more intelligence than others. But if you select people based on whether they can at least do some programming, you will find some people that aren't particularly bright, but do have coding skills and good work ethics etc., and so who are decent workers in the field.

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Doctor Hammer's avatar

I am curious about that as well. My first guess would be that the relative ease of learning tech skills if you have access to a computer and the internet makes a big difference. You can learn to be a really good coder without a lot of infrastructure compared to say an aerospace engineer.

My second thought is that the somewhat esoteric nature of computer work makes understanding how well the workers are performing more difficult, which benefits foreigners. That is non-obvious, but if you are skating by without being very good at your job, having more plausible deniability helps a great deal. If your IT guy gives an explanation as to why something isn't working like it is supposed to that doesn't make sense is it because you are unable to understand the concept? Is it because his English is really bad? Is it because he is just feeding you a line of bullshit? There is a lot of wiggle room there. Likewise, if you ask a direct question and he lies, then you ask him about it directly and he replies "Oh, sorry, I didn't understand what you meant" and gives a different answer, are you going to be comfortable firing him if HR is just going to claim that he doesn't lie and just has a difficult time with English you racist bastard?

Language and cultural difficulties seem like they would be handicaps, but they often can be advantages when there are less concrete answers. They also allow for nepotism and and the like as you suggest.

Indians are also dirt cheap for tech jobs compared to US folks, and possibly the H1B status makes them less likely to leave and take knowledge capital with them.

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Jon M's avatar

I think you might be overlooking the amounts of this group not working in tech but in stereotypical jobs such as motels and convenience stores.

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Eugine Nier's avatar

I suspect some of this has to do with caste.

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Iceman's avatar
2dEdited

I can see that Indians in the US are much more intelligent than a 75 IQ average, and yeah, probably close to 100. But they also make more money/as much as for example, Taiwanese and Japanese, who I’m sure have around 110 average IQ. (actually if the East Asians are heavily selected they would probably have higher IQ than that, much like the Indians have a grossly higher IQ than their average, though probably by as much) They make based on a cursory comparison, at least anywhere from 20% to 40% or more per capita. And likely immigrants from Taiwan, for example, or China, are also highly motivated to make money. So beating out nearly everyone while having an average IQ (or slightly above average if you count the whole US population, and not Whites as the average, which would would make it around 97 IQ at the lowest), really shows how money-oriented they are.

This pretty much confirms they are evil, nepotistic people as immigrants. I do believe they would be moderately more hard-working than the average, but no way are they more hard-working than Southeast or East Asian immigrants who would have a higher IQ.

Point is: Kick them out.

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Reuben's avatar

It'll be interesting to see the Candian scores--which anecdotally seem to have less selective Indian immigration (but who knows). Britain has ~100IQ IIRC--which probably means even more selection than the US

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Emil O. W. Kirkegaard's avatar

We are doing a meta-analysis. Only found 1 study from Canada so far. It's from 1988, 70 children, IQ 88. This probably doesn't mean much. Hopefully, can find more studies.

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Eremetic's avatar

Hey, love reading your work

I recently came across this smug race denialist

https://youtu.be/CntemqZAvEs?si=8YOCYBsz4k65ZpRm

Could you make a post debunking him, it would be beneficial for future race realists imo, thanks.

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B. E. Gordon's avatar

“Though we can note on the latter that foreign born Whites scored 95 IQ on the test.”

In the US, MENA immigrants such as Egyptians and Iraqis are counted as White, which likely explains the depressed value. And many immigrants from Europe are Bosnian or Albanian, who are low-IQ by European standards.

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barnabus's avatar

Probably environmental gains

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