Over the last few decades, economists and psychologists have quietly documented the many ways in which a person’s IQ matters. But, research suggests that a nation’s IQ matters so much more.
As Garett Jones argues in Hive Mind, modest differences in national IQ can explain most cross-country inequalities. Whereas IQ scores do a moderately good job of predicting individual wages, information processing power, and brain size, a country’s average score is a much stronger bellwether of its overall prosperity.
Drawing on an expansive array of research from psychology, economics, management, and political science, Jones argues that intelligence and cognitive skill are significantly more important on a national level than on an individual one because they have “positive spillovers.” On average, people who do better on standardized tests are more patient, more cooperative, and have better memories. As a result, these qualities—and others necessary to take on the complexity of a modern economy—become more prevalent in a society as national test scores rise. What’s more, when we are surrounded by slightly more patient, informed, and cooperative neighbors we take on these qualities a bit more ourselves. In other words, the worker bees in every nation create a “hive mind” with a power all its own. Once the hive is established, each individual has only a tiny impact on his or her own life.
Jones makes the case that, through better nutrition and schooling, we can raise IQ, thereby fostering higher savings rates, more productive teams, and more effective bureaucracies. After demonstrating how test scores that matter little for individuals can mean a world of difference for nations, the book leaves readers with policy-oriented conclusions and hopeful speculation: Whether we lift up the bottom through changing the nature of work, institutional improvements, or freer immigration, it is possible that this period of massive global inequality will be a short season by the standards of human history if we raise our global IQ.
* There are some charts here of projections of falling global mean IQ from 1950 to 2050.
* Read Garret Jones’s comments on mass immigration from here:
But from there you conclude that low-IQ immigrants should be allowed to come to countries with good institutions. That might be reasonable as a moral case but I’m no expert on morality so I’ll leave that to others.
I would emphasize a different conclusion: That the low-IQ immigrants will tend to worsen the institutions of the higher-IQ countries they move to. Low IQ immigrants will, to some degree, tend to make the country they move to more like the country they came from.
Jones is also an econ professor at GMU. He clearly sees a negative impact on host countries from mass immigration but seems to avoid the controversial subject in a public light. That is completely understandable because it is often frowned on for serious technical experts to get involved in public controversies.
Bryan Caplan has expressed huge admiration for Jones and hosted him as a guest blogger. Jones avoided immigration in his blogging. I find it odd that Caplan is such a fanatical public advocate for mass immigration policy, yet his peers sharply disagree. And their views don’t seem to logically inhabit the same universe. The mass immigration skeptics like Jones seem completely reasonable and sane.
* All the schooling in the world and all the “better nutrition” (whatever the hell that means for r-breeding-strategy populations that have doubled in numbers again and again eating dirt cookies and bats) may in fact “raise” their IQ. Eventually. At huge cost to the more advanced host/overseer population.
From a mean of 65 or 70 or 75 to a mean of 70 or 75 or 80.
At those massively costly minorly improved levels, at plus-one SD the bulk of the population will still fall well below 95. You’d think somebody using the hive metaphor would understand population distributions a bit better.
And that’s ignoring the panoply of problematic behavioral traits that have been selected for in r-breeding-strategy populations (the opposite of patience, cooperation, and long/complex/abstract memory). Those traits will still be there even if IQ does raise the few meager points.
Also, the far more advanced host population will continue to develop its IQ base, ever shifting to the right. I.e., the undertow never will catch up and will only drain the host.
* Hilarious account of how many online “news” sites cannot handle disagreement or public opinion, so they are being forced to end reader comments. They want to have a monopoly on the narrative, and on being nasty.
* Is it possible to have a decent comment section in a very general forum like mainstream news without real names for commenters? Even with real names, for the most general mainstream news that have a mass audience, the pool of potential commenters is big enough that enough people who don’t mind ranting and dominating conversations (like the proverbial crazy Uncle at Thanksgiving dinner) will be attracted to the comment threads.
* Your comment and some subsequent comments regarding immigration and IQ made me think of something that happened over here a couple of years ago.
There was a trial in London (England) which began on 5 February 2013. Vicky Pryce (wife of a Member of Parliament) was charged with perverting the course of justice.
The trial collapsed because the jury, who it seems were mostly new Londoners, were too stupid to understand what was going on.
““After 30 years of criminal trials I have never come across this at this late stage. Never,” said Mr Justice Sweeney after reluctantly discharging a jury which had told him it was “highly unlikely” to reach a verdict on whether or not Vicky Pryce had been guilty of perverting the course of justice. “
“they didn’t even understand basic concepts such as “reasonable doubt”.
“A reasonable doubt is a doubt that is reasonable. These are ordinary English words that the law does not allow me to help you with,” replied the judge to question four (out of 10 the jurors had submitted). T heN there was arguably the most stupid question of the lot which the jurors had asked in all seriousness: “Can a juror come to a verdict based on a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it?” In other words: is it OK if we just guess? “The answer is a firm no,” responded the judge, “because it would be completely contrary to the instructions I have given you.” ”
The Daily Mail noted that:
““Of the eight women and four men on the Vicky Pryce jury, only two were white — the rest appeared to be of Afro-Caribbean or Asian origin.””
And..
“At least twice, the court finished 30 minutes early because a jury member had a ‘religious observance’ to keep.”
* The MOST successful countries (e.g. Japan, Singapore, etc.) have a uniformly high average IQ but there is another model that works, somewhat – the Brazil/S. Africa/Israel model. You have one small high IQ group that is smart enough to run things and then you can have a much large class of people who provide the labor and who don’t have to be all that smart. If this doesn’t go well and the dumber group ends up running the show, you have Zimbabwe or Detroit, but if you can maintain the status quo more or less you have a viable (if not ideal) society. You do tend to end up with a lot of people working as security to keep the have-nots from taking the haves’ stuff.
This is where the US is heading (and Europe t00). It won’t resemble the America or Europe of the past but the demographic die is cast and it will be what it will be. If you look at the US today, on the one hand you have places like MIT and Google which are tops in the world with people who couldn’t possibly be any smarter and then you have places like Benjamin Franklin High School in Philadelphia where 1% of the students are proficient in science.
The real issue is that we don’t have ANY use for many of the latter group. There are only so many waiters and bus drivers, etc. that you need to begin with and many of those positions are going to be automated out of existence by the MIT/Google guys in the next 20 years.
* Brazil’s demographics are ~48%/8%/43% white/black/mixed. South Africa is 8%/80%/9% white/black/mixed. Israel is 75%/21% Jewish/Arab.
No one thinks South Africa is going well.
* 8% is clearly pushing the minimum needed for a long term viable society. A very talented group (e.g. Ashkenazi Jews) can punch at perhaps 10x their weight (i.e. the 2% of the US population that is Jewish can produce 20% of the Nobelists, billionaires, etc.) but for an average white population that’s too much to ask. Detroit at 10% white was not a viable city either.
Israel’s demographic issue is not only Arab/Jew but Ashkenazi/Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) Jews. The Mizrahi (often called Sephardic but properly this refers only to the descendants of those expelled from Spain, which is a much smaller group) range from quite talented and Europeanized (the former Syrian and Lebanese Jews) to Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews who are not much brighter than their fellow countrymen – they average out well below 100IQ and are around 1/2 the Jewish population. Even so, Israeli GDP is pushing European levels – having a population that is 1/3 Ashkenazi is enough to drive an economy.
I guess of the 3 countries I mentioned, the future of the US and Europe will most resemble that of Brazil. Again, not an ideal society but if you look at the skyline of Sao Paulo , they are not living in grass huts either.
* My belief is that juries are around 1SD dimmer than the population. Brighter people, while arguably more civic minded, would have important things to do in their lives and could more easily conjure methods for being excused. This also plays into racial jury nullification which has become a major issue in criminal trials in many jurisdictions. Sailer’s VDare colleague Nicholas Stix has written extensively on this phenomenon where African juries will simply refuse to convict African defendants regardless of facts in evidence adduced.
