Not to mention the salt/gold trade routes
It seems to me that all tests for intelligence are roundabout. They measure intelligence by observing how well a person performs difficult mental exercises which require intelligence. Now such a method is not perfect. It cannot be denied that a person who trains at these exercises will perform better than someone who does not, such that the test does not measure intelligence alone but also the experience a person has had at solving prior problems. Also, different individuals have a natural aptitude for a variety of activities which require higher intelligence. One may have a gift for mathematics but not chess. One may be a strategic genius and a horrible musician. So the scientist attempting to measure must try to control for both the various aspects of intelligence and for environmental influences. This can be done somewhat by having a larger sample doing the tests, choosing individuals from similar environments, and having the test consist of multiple types of exercises.
Overall, after controls for other variables is implemented, there is a general intelligence factor, and different racial groups have different intelligence levels. There is a genetic component of IQ which is inherited from one’s parents. Also, if there is nothing objective about IQ at all, then it is strange that there is such a strong correlation between it and income; an anomaly which begs an explanation.
Gosh, I fully agree. A good test would be to see the first and second degeneration immigrants to the west: how well do they fare? As for Chinese, and generaly asiatic types, I fully agree that those guys must be, on average, the most intelligent on earth. They have never even had a decent religion, for Heaven’s Sake! What more could one ask?
Golly gee wiz, Guess that was stating the obvious.
Dont follow.
I will not return arguments because I know this will cause a sh**storm, but religiosity is the trademark of the undeveloped and childish mind. If an entire people have such low religious feelings as the Chinese, I would expect them to be the most mature people on earth.
Discussion for a different time I guess.
I will post an about this subject I think explains it.
Bullshit.
Whites have had the same IQ for thousands of years. Looking to IQ does nothing to explain the rise and fall of different white civiliations, or explain why the second millenia was filled with unrivalled progress never matched in antiquity.
Which explains why Catholic Europe developed Science but China did not?
I’m afraid that would be unforgivably Eurocentric a view. Until roughly the XIV century Europe was a hellhole of a place, where no decent Chinese or Arab would agree to set foot. An immense amount of discovery has originated in China but of course a look at the map will show that it was impossible for those discoveries to be transmited to Europe often enough for us to notice.
Europe became a rather decent place, on a global scale, somewhere after the Reformation. So one could argue that science developed very fast in China (not very religious), the ancient Fertile Crescent (pagans), Greece (pagans), Rome (pagans) and Arabia (fairly tolerant religiously) and only after the catholic monopoly (which reigned over the dark Ages) was broken and at least some degree of competing views where introduced in Europe did science really take off. Seen like perhaps a monetheistic-centic (yes, that’s a stupid term) view of development could become less tenable, to say the least.
I’m guessing you have nothing to back this up with. Ever heard of the Flynn Effect?
Maybe, maybe not. I can’t really say either way. And neither can you.
I think it does. Until the industrial revolution, mankind was caught in the Malthusian trap. Productivity gains were eaten up by population growth. The major breakthroughs were the result technological discovery rather than capital accumulation. The invention of the steam pump produced the greatest breakthrough. These were the result of people being more intelligent rather than having more capital. So, I disagree.
Move that number a few centuries foward, but the general point is correct.
One can not argue that science developed, at any rate, in China, because the concept of science did not exist there until it was introduced. The Chinese culture was vastly older than any European culture and yet it never developed science. Neither did the Greeks, who despite possessing a vast amount of knowledge, did not engage in science. That has nothing to do with being centric anything.
Historically incorrect. The University of Paris, founded in the 12th century, is but one example of emphasis placed on knowledge in medieval Europe. Roger Bacon was born in 1214.
Why should I believe that Watt was more intelligent than Aristotle?
Obviously, we’re talking about aggregates, not individuals.
This, seriously, this.
A steam pump is capital.
By applying IQ theory of productivity, we can finally explain Russia’s drop in production during the USSR: they got stupider.
@ JB
I never said that institutional factors were not necessary. In fact, the Chinese would have far surpassed Europeans if institutional factors had been equal.
I just think that as a population becomes more intelligent, because of a higher IQ of individuals translating into reproductive success, it is more likely that a member of that population will make a major breakthrough. It is no coincidence that the discovery of agriculture occurred independently in three locations at roughly the same latitude, and a latitude which was not the most favourable to agriculture on the surface of the earth. It is also no coincidence that the industrial revolution started in a northern country, nor that the Germans produced more technological innovations during the Second World War than the English.
But that is my point, those factors weren’t equal despite IQ. IQ is then limited to being only a minor factor.
That may be true, but it has nothing to do with economics. Economics is supposed to tell us how to organize society to achieve optimal use of resources. High IQ individuals is only one of those resources.
anybody can answer this which might have to do with the back and forth here currently.
Is IQ a measure of content-free intelligence, in other words, it’s not determined by the kind of knowledge instead it is a measurement of the skill in using the kind of knowledge available?