GIGO and the Intelligence of Countries: Disordered Thoughts

 

Apologies to the reader. Perhaps I wax tedious. But the question of intelligence is both interesting to me and great fun as talking about it puts commenters in an uproar. It is like poking a wasp’s nest when you are eleven. I am a bad person.

Clearing the underbrush: Obviously intelligence is largely genetic–if it were cultural in origin, all the little boys who grew up in Isaac Newton’s neighborhood would have been towering mathematical geniuses–and obviously the various tests of intellectual function have, at least among testees of similar background, considerable relation to intelligence. Some individuals have more of it than others. For example, Hillary, a National Merit Finalist, scored higher than  99.5 percent of Illinois and can reliably be suspected of being bright. Some groups are obviously smarter than other groups.

Mensans and Nobelists are smarter than sociologists. Of course, so are acorns.

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