
IQ and the Wealth of Nations - maxwell
http://www.dekorte.com/blog/blog.cgi?do=item&id=3253
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pg
Surely there are not entire nations where the average IQ is 60. To me this
indicates broken tests.

I believe you'd find a correlation between learned skills like literacy and
GDP. And Occam's Razor implies that's what's being measured here. Any "leaks"
in the IQ tests, in the sense of accidentally testing learned rather than
innate qualities, would tend to produce a graph this shape.

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procrastitron
The entire book is bogus. About 1/3 of the wikipedia article is dedicated to
the criticisms of the book, and they seem pretty damning.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#Cr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#Criticism)

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kingkongrevenge
A Farewell to Alms
[[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html?_r=1&#...</a>] covers
similar territory, and its data is very thorough. I haven't seen any
refutations.<p>Of relevance to this forum are the findings on entrepreneurship
in the industrial revolution. The people who built the companies and science
that made it possible and greatly elevated Britain never made anywhere near
enough to compensate their investments of time and money. They were irrational
actors. Clark argues they acted this way because of genetic predisposition --
a predisposition that was not widespread in other societies.

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procrastitron
Well, I haven't read the book, but the article that you point to seems to
indicate that "A Farewell to Alms" actually makes the opposite point:

'What was being inherited, in his view, was not greater intelligence — being a
hunter in a foraging society requires considerably greater skill than the
repetitive actions of an agricultural laborer. Rather, it was “a repertoire of
skills and dispositions that were very different from those of the pre-
agrarian world.”

Also, the article points out that many people are skeptical of his view that
the behavioral changes have biological causes and not just cultural. For
instance:

'The natural-selection part of Dr. Clark’s argument “is significantly weaker,
and maybe just not necessary, if you can trace the changes in the
institutions,” said Kenneth L. Pomeranz, a historian at the University of
California, Irvine.

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kingkongrevenge
> actually makes the opposite point

It's a related theory, not the same bit on IQ and I didn't mean to imply
otherwise.

> biological causes and not just cultural

I know I mentioned the word "genetic", but really all that matters is we're
talking about a set of heritable traits; nature vs nurture is kind of moot.
That we're talking about something heritable is detailed in the book.

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amichail
In my experience, people do have different kinds of intelligence (e.g.,
creative vs analytic ability).

However, the research literature seems to disagree on this point:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor>

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yters
I found an article at one point that claimed there were multilpe
intelligences, but g indicates a general ability in all areas. A person with a
high g will be good in all or most areas, but it is possible for people to be
very good in particular areas and not so much in others. Sorry I don't have a
link handy.

Another strange thing about IQ is that it isn't normally distributed.

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kurtosis
Do you have a link to a study showing that IQ isn't normally distributed?

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yters
The best reference I could find is this:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant> Search for "fat tail"

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jey
Sounds reasonable... but so what? To me it seems pretty clear that high GDP
causes higher IQ, not IQ causing high GDP (assuming the findings in this book
are accurate). We need to remember that IQ is a measure of how well you score
on IQ tests, and not a measure of "intelligence" (whatever that is).

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bocajuniors
yeah, from an article in the economist: during 20th century every large group
of european immigrants(italians, germans, swedish...) in america have had iq:s
of about 90 shortly after arrival which in all cases have risen to 100 after a
couple of decades when they have been fully integrated into society.this also
explains why there are other groups who have failed to experience this
rise.they have failed to integrate, or society has failed to let them
integrate

------
rms
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88074>

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procrastitron
That comment doesn't pick up on how much of an impact the low quality of the
data has on the outcomes. For instance the commentator points out that there
should be a larger difference between the average IQ's of Hong Kong and
mainland China, given China's massive peasant population. However, the
wikipedia page points out that the Chinese rural population was never tested,
and that the differences in scores was artificially added by the authors:

"For People's Republic of China, the authors used a figure of 109.4 for
Shanghai and adjusted it down by an arbitrary 6 points because they believed
the average across China's rural areas was probably less than that in
Shanghai. Another figure from a study done in Beijing was not adjusted
downwards. Those two studies formed the resultant score for China (PRC).

