Yorkshire Miner has translated
this article from the Dutch PvdA (
Labour Party) website:
Aboutaleb shocked at Young Criminals’ IQ
Rotterdam is going to work together with Minister van der Laan (Integration) to look at what the State can do about the development level, especially in relation to Antilles and Moroccan youths.
Burgemeester Ahmed Aboutaleb is very shocked by what he has heard from police circles, he said yesterday during the presentation of the Safety Index 2009. “The IQ and the mental ability of arrested youths is so low that you can’t do much with them. When they are on there own they are great, but when there are two they do the most crazy things.” What’s more, with Moroccans there is often a severe form of schizophrenia present.
- - - - - - - - -
Aboutaleb will also ask that the GGZ and the Ministry for Health Welfare and Sport be involved in discussions to see what can be done. “We must do everything that will help and not hinder, such as tackling leaving school early.”
This article appeared in the Metro 16 April 2009.
The Labour Party Chairman Peter van Heemst is happy that Burgermeester Aboutaleb and Minister Van der Laan are taking the problem seriously. Van Heemst asked in May 2008 for an inquiry into the background and mental abilities of young criminals.
32 comments:
Which brings us to the very politically incorrect subject of IQ. The main hypothesis of Michael Hart's book Understanding Human History is that when early humans left Africa and settled on other continents, the average IQ was about 70, or certainly not higher than that. This IQ slowly rose during thousands and tens of thousands of years due to evolutionary pressures, but it rose more in some regions than in others. Basically, he supports the "cold weather" hypothesis which says that as the climate got colder, people developed higher intelligence in order to survive in the challenging natural environment, which essentially means that the further north you get, the higher the average IQ becomes.
Theoretically speaking you should see the same trend in the Southern Hemisphere the further south you get, but Antarctica has always been uninhabited by humans until very recently. In practice, therefore, this principle only applies to the Northern Hemisphere. People from Sweden or Russia should have significantly higher IQs than people from the Nile Valley. Similarly, Koreans or Japanese people should have higher average IQs than people from South India or New Guinea. Both of these examples roughly correspond to observed reality.
Several arguments are raised against using IQ as a measurement. By far the most common one is that it is immoral. This is an anti-scientific argument which should be dismissed.
The second argument is that because IQ-measurements were invented by Europeans, they are by nature "Eurocentric" and biased. This is a silly argument. Virtually all measurements of everything from electric charge to pressure were invented by Europeans. All temperature scales in use in the modern world were developed by men from Western Europe. As far as I know, Europeans were also the only ones to invent the barometer and to develop a method to measure atmospheric pressure. In order to be consistent you have to reject the meteorological terms "high pressure" and "low pressure," too, since these correspond to a Eurocentric bias as well. I wish those individuals good luck in developing a non-Eurocentric weather forecast.
It is true that human intelligence is a complex thing consisting of several factors, not all of which are measured by IQ, but we have indications that at least some aspects of intelligence can indeed be measured by IQ tests. The ethnic group with the highest average IQ is Ashkenazi Jews, who have produced by far the highest number of Nobel Prize winners per capita of any ethnic group on Earth. The country with the highest average IQ is probably Japan, a fact which corresponds well with Japan's high technological and economic level. Northeast Asians, Koreans, Japanese and Chinese people, all have high IQs. In the Western university system where people from all over the world compete, it is generally Jews, East Asians and Europeans who perform the best, and they are all high-IQ groups.
That being said, there are a few things that average IQ does not explain. It is interesting to notice that the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions took place among Europeans, not among East Asians, despite the fact that the latter have at least as high average IQs. This could indicate that IQ does measure something that is relevant about intelligence, but not everything. It is also theoretically possible that whites, i.e. people of European stock, have a higher standard deviation than East Asians, which means that we have more idiots and more people with extremely high intelligence. Geniuses drive scientific and technological progress forward. In order to establish the laws of universal gravity you needed one individual who was as smart as Newton, not one thousand individuals who were just pretty smart.
Finally, it is quite possible that once you have a minimum level of average intelligence, perhaps around 100 as many European nations typically have, other forces and factors come into play as well, for instance religion.
Hart writes about human history from the point of view of the theory of evolution and intelligence measured in IQ. He mentions a long list of scientific, mathematical, artistic and literary contributions made by the ancient Greeks. Why did they achieve so much? Possibly the geography of Greece made the Greeks a seafaring nation much more than the ancient Egyptians had been, and led them to engage in exploration and trade. But while this hypothesis may be partly correct, there were many other peoples who enjoyed a similar geographic advantage, too, and the Phoenicians, while great seafarers and traders, did not make anything resembling the scientific achievements of the Greeks as far as we know. According to Hart, a simpler explanation is that the extraordinary Greek achievements were due to the high native intelligence of the Greeks. The northern, Indo-European speaking peoples who were the immediate ancestors of the Greeks had, on average, significantly higher IQs than the Egyptians, Minoans, Sumerians and the various Semitic peoples of the Near East. However, we know that many of the other European peoples had similar and perhaps slightly higher average IQs than the Greeks, so high intelligence alone does not explain this:
"The best explanation for the Greek phenomenon lies in a combination of genetic and geographic factors. The peoples living in the cold regions of Europe had, over a period of many millennia, evolved higher average intelligence than the peoples living in the Middle East. However, because of the mild climate in the Middle East, and the availability of a large assortment of useful domesticable plants and animals, the inhabitants of the Middle East developed agriculture long before the peoples of northern Europe. The early advent of agriculture and cities in the Middle East enabled them to make major progress during the Neolithic Era and the early historic era, and to get a big jump on the rest of the world in technology and in intellectual matters. In time, the superior genetic endowment of the Europeans would enable them to overcome that head start. However, between European groups, the one most likely to advance first was the one which had the earliest opportunity of learning from the civilizations of the Middle East and Egypt. Because of their geographic location, the Greeks were the first European people to come into contact with those civilizations."
This does not mean that Hart attributes a genetic explanation to everything. For instance, why did the (Western) Roman Empire collapse? Many different explanations have been suggested by historians and no real consensus has so far been reached. Loss of the traditional religion, where the growth of Christianity was both an effect and a cause, was one factor. Loss of patriotic and nationalist feelings could be another one. Roman expansion began from the city of Rome and surrounding regions, but when Roman citizens were no longer just Romans or even Italians but, from the third century AD, all free subjects of the Empire, there was no longer any strong ethnic loyalty to the Empire. The decline of feelings of traditional religion and loyalty indirectly followed increased public corruption. Hart’s conclusion is that the cause of the collapse of Rome is still an undecided question but that he favors some combination of the social decay hypotheses and perhaps climate changes, but not a genetic explanation.
Moreover, why did the Industrial Revolution begin in Britain? According to Hart, it could only have begun in a country where the average intelligence of the inhabitants was very high. However, it was unlikely to originate in a region where the average IQ was very high but the total population was low, for instance the Scandinavian and Nordic countries. It was more likely to arise in a region where slavery was rare or absent, as an abundance of cheap labor decreased the need for labor-saving machinery. It was more likely to originate in a region where there was considerable intellectual ferment (the Inquisition crushed the expression of heterodox opinions in Spain and Portugal; Russia was politically repressive). In some countries in Western Europe, the effects of overseas explorations added to the intellectual ferment. This was to the comparative disadvantage of countries such as Germany, Italy and Poland. The IR was less likely to originate in a region which was politically fragmented, such as Italy or Germany, as the free trade zone was less and the internal market smaller.
The IR was more likely to arise in a country with abundant iron ore and coal, as those resources were especially important during the IR. Finally, the IR was more likely to arise in a country where property rights were secure. Although a number of these factors were present in several countries, the only place where all of them were present was Britain. This does not prove that the Industrial Revolution was predestined to start in Britain, but it was more likely to start there than anywhere else.
Fjordman, on this topic you might want to seek out Jon Ray, who has a very large number of blogs devoted to all sorts of things but who likes to pontificate on the subject of IQ. Personally I do have... issues with the theory, because it cuts close to experiences in my own family, but I understand the explanation for why the chinese or east asia in general didn't experience the industrial revolution.
It's that pesky average. The average intelligence of east asians, particularly the chinese and japanese and their relatives, is slightly higher than the west. THe problem is, that average doesn't reflect the spread of intelligence - the bellcurve,as I'm sure you're aware it's called. In teh west that bell curve is very broad. You get a lot of very dumb people and a lot of incredibly smart people (and both extremes of intelligence are dominated by men, oddly enough). The industrial revolution was driven by these very smart people. In the east the bell curve is very narrow. Most people are close to the average, so they don't have the genius minds of the sort that drove the industrial revolution.
Add in the cultural factors (in China the only people with the time and inclination to actually progress in theoretical science tended to be court eunuchs, for instance) and you have a recipe for a civilisation that is competent but not innovative.
Fjordman,
Careful. You are wandering dangerously close to CJs Nazi territory and may cause his head to explode. Again. ; )
If I where to suggest publicly in my own country that immigrants and certainly immigrants from a certain geographical area has lower iQ tha us, I would soon run into a lot of trouble. The PC-crowd would hastily attack me like a cobra spitting out that I'm a racist. Even if I could prove it scientifically it wouldn't matter anyway. Not if you don't want to be accused of being a nazi at least.
Spackle: I couldn't care less about what CJ and his few remaining cheerleaders think about anything.
I actually disagree with Michael Hart on a number of issues. Understanding Human History is provocative and worth reading, but it relies a little bit too much on IQ as an all-purpose explanation. IQ does not explain why East Asians have usually been so weak in creating mathematics. For most of the past 2500 years, the West has been superior to East Asia in mathematics, sometimes by a very wide margin. Despite the fact that China clearly has a higher average IQ than India, I would claim that the peaks of Indian mathematicians have been higher than those of Chinese mathematicians.
He also claims that it has generally been people from the north conquering people from the south, and he attributes this to the higher level of average intelligence among northerners. For instance, China has never been conquered from the south but has been conquered from the north or northwest several times, by the Mongols and the Manchus among others. Even within China itself, Chinese civilization emerged in the north and spread to the south. The same can be said about India.
However, while it is true that it is more common that people from the north conquer people from the south, there are some very important exceptions to this rule, few more visible than the Muslim conquests and raids in Europe. Moreover, I think IQ fetishists push the issue of IQ even in cases where it is not the main issue or does not apply at all. The Viking Age was not caused by high IQ alone. I don't think there were major differences in intelligence between Scandinavians and other Europeans during the Early Middle Ages. Those who favor a genetic explanation for everything also cannot explain why medieval Scandinavians were greatly feared as warriors whereas their direct genetic descendants are today considered to be soft and weak.
An interesting case would be Greeks vs. Jews. The scientific contribution of the Greeks 2500-1800 years ago vastly exceeded the relatively minor scholarly contributions made by Jews during the same period, yet this picture has been almost exactly reversed during the past two hundred years: We now have Jewish geniuses such as Einstein, but no longer any Greek geniuses remotely comparable to Aristotle or Archimedes. We have no indications that Jews in Antiquity had very high intelligence, and Jews from the Middle East or Ethiopia do not have so today. Only European Jews do. This strongly indicates that the very high average intelligence among European Jews is the product of the past 2000 years, perhaps even the past 1000 years. This again indicates that evolution is a continuing factor among human populations even in historical times.
My cousin works as a social worker in Rotterdam. He works as a kind of teacher with criminal youth and he is really good at what he does. Aside from a few ethnic Dutch, most of his pupils are Black and Muslim. He told me 12 years ago that the average IQ of his pupils is 55 points.
At some point it was forbidden to take tests, but after Leefbaar Rotterdam became a power in the municipal council it was mandated again.
Hence these figures.
There is no way, NO WAY, you can use so many of these people in a modern economy.
Regards,
Snouck
Fjordman,
"Spackle: I couldn't care less about what CJ and his few remaining cheerleaders think about anything."
Just so we are clear. I was joking. But I (think?) you got that.
Much as I respect Fjordman the IQ factor is, in my perception, only PART of the equation. IQ measurement is NOT an exact science and to some degree at least IS affected by education and environment and, more lately,by TV and the internet.
The UK Labour Government for example SEEM to claim that they have advanced IQ/ability in just 12 short years.
Nonsense of course - they simply reduced the "pass" marks and devalued the exams to make it even easier and to produce the perception that the kids are more intelligent because of their policies. That will confound Darwinism!
And of course there ARE several different systems of measuring IQ so it isn't entirely consistent.
For those from , let's say,more tribal type communities the drive to become educated is less universally established and that in itself MIGHT affect measured IQ.
MOST importantly cultural values are FAR FAR different and "rob thy neighbour" is a NORM in some societies - if they can get away with it. SOME argue that in Islam the taking of booty and harming "infidels" is a religious duty. I'm sure it is for many, but not all, Muslims. At the very least the Koran and the Hadiths and Sura CAN be, and are, used to support such behaviour.
In their countries of origin then I'm sure that immigrants and their descendants would be horribly dealt with if caught committing such crimes against other Muslims, and perhaps even against "infidels".
Here in the West though we now are SO soft and "liberal" (poor soul had a bad childhood) that we release killers to kill again and in the UK we give community orders and laughable sentences for serious crimes.
Whichever community the criminals come from the punishment, if they are actually caught, are SO light that they have no fear and KNOW they can continue offending throughout their lives. IQ has LITTLE to do with it. It is a red herring and they ALL have sufficient IQ to know that crime IS profitable even if caught.
I well remember in my youth. The "village idiots" could add up pounds shillings and pence (12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound) rather faster than me and knew exactly what the change should be!!! Mensa reckon my IQ is 155!!
Just a few thoughts.
JUST to be clear. I DID work in Personnel (aka human resources) and studied industrial psychology AND IQ tests and other psychology based techniques although my MAIN job was Management Consultancy in which I was particularly qualified.
Some of my colleagues (above average IQs) became fixated on psychometric testing - a sort of variation on IQ tests linked with personality testing - in recruitment processes. I opposed that for very good reason (too mechanistic) but recruitment wasn't my speciality or responsibility so I lost out.
Well guess what it WORKED - but much less often than it didn't work. Draw your own conclusions.
JUST this week three people from an ethnic minority ( actual race unknown and likely NOT Muslim - African or Caribbean) have been given "life" sentences (just 19 years in the UK it seems and likely 50% off for good behaviour) for murdering an apparently innocent white kid because one of their number thought he'd "disrespected" him. THAT is the measure of the differences.
I "disrespect" people daily but fortunately we so far have few immigrants here so ALL that might happen is that I may be "disrespected" in turn. I WILL NOT be murdered.
You forget the basic factors that affect IQ. You search among a population where you think all factors are consistent across the entire population when there is a big soaring hole between western and muslim styles of raising children.
The brain is a very, very energy intensive organ. The very reason we have a head is the same reason we have datacenters : if they weren't separated from the rest, it wouldn't be possible to cool them.
We have a head, and a very vulnerable neck that it stands on, because our brain would not be able to survive with any energy intensive organ (such as digestive tract) next to it.
BUT the energy use of brains is not consistent. It varies from as little as 30W to over 250W. This is a constant energy usage, and is quite a lot. 250W is more than enough to power a reasonably powerfull computer, screen and everything included. You could power 5 powerful laptops from the power that a well-fed brain uses.
That also means the brain needs to get that energy. Apparently the energy feeding rate of the brain is decided in young children.
So the first, absolutely guaranteed way to convict a kid to having the iq of a turnip is to ill-feed the little guy. Not breast feeding an infant, or irregular feeding of artificial milk will guarantee substandard development. That, by the way, is the only factor that can generate iq's in the fifties (other than physical disabilities like underdeveloped myelin). Intensive long-term breast feeding (every 2 hours -very- gradually decreasing to every 6 hours) is the best way to initially guarantee optimal development (obviously a breast feeding woman should not -absolutely not- be dieting intensively). As soon as the kid wants it (but no sooner than 3 months of age) feed it more, fruit. A kid will not get fatter or thinner, no matter the amount of food you let it eat, putting a kid on a diet is an extremely dangerous exercise in futility.
Yes, black skin is an indication of lower IQ, but the amount of difference is somewhat amplified by the simple fact that there are a lot of malnourished blacks.
Giving a kid the chance of a high iq is a very intensive job for both parents. Unfortunately it requires the woman stay at home (or returns every 2 hours at least), and the kid should be constantly cared for not by a creche, but by it's mother (there is the question of the effects of another recent mother providing breast milk). Certainly breast milk cannot be replaced by the artificial products we have.
While, yes, it's true that blacks have on average a low IQ, parents taking perfect care of their black child, however, will raise a kid that has an excellent chance of beating the white average, simply because there are many slightly underfed white kids too.
But muslims don't have children to make those children the best human beings they possibly could, they have children for honor. Muslim child-rearing practices, especially for boys, at least where I live, look a hell of a lot like "just throw the little kids on the streets as soon as they can be reasonably expected not to die the first day".
If a kids IQ drops due to energy shortage though, there does not seem to be a way to get it back up.
Michael Hart deals with the issue of whether it is immoral to even consider the possibility there could be differences in intelligence between various ethnic groups, and that believing so makes you a "Nazi." He suggests, however, that the potential existence of such differences is not a moral question at all, but merely a factual question:
"Such differences (if they exist) are merely facts of nature; as such, they may be unfortunate, but cannot be immoral. Plainly, if such differences actually exist it is not immoral to believe that they exist, nor to honestly state one’s belief that they exist, nor to study the differences. And even if the differences do not exist, a belief that they do (if honestly held) is not immoral, nor is a serious inquiry into the question immoral. The attempt to turn factual questions into moral questions is the essence of dogmatism, and has long been a hindrance to scientific progress. A well-known example involves the conviction of Galileo by the Inquisition in 1633. The members of the court that condemned him were turning a factual question (‘Does the Earth revolve about the Sun?’) into a moral question (‘Is such a belief contrary to scripture, and therefore heretical?’)"
It could be added here that in the infamous case of Galileo vs. the Inquisition, the attempted censorship had limited practical effects in Europe and did not change physical reality. In contrast, the current censorship of everything related to genes and IQ has the potential to permanently and irreversibly erase entire nations, or even Western civilization as a whole. This makes the current anti-racism hysteria the most serious case of anti-scientific censorship in recorded human history. It is worth keeping in mind that these censorship efforts are primarily upheld by Marxists and self-proclaimed scientific rationalists from the secular Left, not by Christians.
Copernicus’s book about heliocentrism did not produce an immediate upheaval, although it certainly did offend the sensibilities of conservative religious thinkers and professors of Aristotelian natural philosophy. However, during the Catholic Counter-Reformation, any heterodox opinion became more dangerous than it had previously been. Scholar James Evans explains:
“But it was not until 1616 that heliocentrism was officially declared erroneous. De revolutionibus was placed on the Index of books that were prohibited ‘until corrected.’ In principle, De revolutionibus could be circulated and read only if erroneous passages (asserting the mobility of the Earth) were removed. Four years later, a list of ten specific corrections was issued. Owen Gingerich has examined nearly all the surviving copies of the 1543 and 1566 editions of De revolutionibus, which total more than 500 books. The majority of copies in Italy were censored in conformity with the decree. But the decree had almost no effect elsewhere. Not even in Catholic Spain or Portugal were copies censored. The condemnation of De revolutionibus had very little impact on the acceptance of the heliocentric hypothesis. Even the famous trial of Galileo for continuing to advocate heliocentrism after the condemnation only served to popularize the new cosmology. We should qualify this general proposition with a curious exception. After the condemnation, Jesuit missionaries in China, who introduced the Emperor’s astronomers to European astronomy, were forbidden to teach Copernicanism. They therefore continued to teach the Tychonic system long after it had gone out of style in Europe.”
O my...is n't life strange.. Mr. Abu Taleb is going to be very sorry for stirrung up this kettle of trouble :-)
He of course is not familiar with being called a racist, a xenofobe or a crypto nazi - otherwise he would never have been so candid..
This is a bit OffT, or then again maybe not... Anyway, keep your eyes on Malmö tomorrow. The Reclaim the streets-movement is going to have a "street party" which in reality means rioting amuck running generally. These guys and gals are definetively leftists as they want a class-less society. I wouldn't be surprised if their pals in AFA/Antifa and those boys from Rosengård joins in.
The blog Politiskt Korrekt has a great article on it. Just translate it via google.
http://politisktinkorrekt.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/mobilisera-vastra-hamnen-i-malmo-13-maj-ingen-gatufest-i-vara-kvarter/#comments
RTS/AFA/Rosengård-islamists definetively have a low IQ as far as I'm concerned. Looks like an interesting saturday coming up here.
Have never been fully convinced by IQ tests, the idea of genetic memory passing on experiences and knowledge plus environment is more convincing.
I know too many bright african-americans and african-africans to adhere to the evolutionary stance. I think the post concerning diet has more validity. Also, intrafamily breeding amongst a certain segment of the criminal population could skew the numbers.
"The effects of an animal's environment during adolescence can be passed down to future offspring ... The findings provide support for a 200-year-old theory of evolution that has been largely dismissed: Lamarckian evolution, which states that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring."
They only need to be "smart" enough to invade your country (as "refugees", "guest workers", "asylum seekers", "victims of colonialism", etc.) mooch off your kind-hearted naivete, milk your welfare system, outbreed you, and eventually they win more than any I.Q. test will ever grant.
"Smart" is relative to what your goals are.
In the oil producing Arab states where I have worked for many, many years, one doesn't see children cast out in the streets. They are in schools and universities. In all of these states more schools and universities are being opened every year.
Profitsbeard: True, they are smart enough to colonize us now, but they wouldn't have been able to do so if they didn't receive substantial aid from high-IQ groups of collaborators from within our own ranks.
Andre Servier in the Psychology of the Musulman (Fr, 1923) describe islam as the secretion of the Muslim mind. All that mantra and diktate mush sloshing around in the Muslim head makes you stupid. It is possible for cultures to regress and I assume it's members become stupider as they get more confined in Islam.
Fjordman-
Agreed. "The Treason of the Intellectuals"- Part 2, has been going on since immigration laws were changed (in the mid-1960's in the U.S.) and an influx of agressively non-assimilating aliens was encouraged to enter Europe and America ...cheered on by naive "useful idiot" idealists, marxists/anti-capitalists, and anti-semitic crackpots forming a poisonous cabal of suicidally-stupid, self-loathing, anarchistic imbeciles in the West.
This Fifth Column unwittingly invites its own doom, as well, by welcoming those it thought would merely assist in their own ascent to power by undermining of the "decadent" society they despised.
Failing to grasp that intolerant, anti-liberal, misogynistic, anti-gay and homicidally imperialistic Islam will decapitate their empty heads as readily as any other infidel dog's.
One can only have the greatest contempt for our fellow Westerners who aid the theocratic tyranny of Mohammad in its invasion and erosion their own homelands.
Cousin Marriage Cousin Marriage Cousin Marriage.
Cousin Marriage for 1000 years is plenty of explanation for all kinds of genetic damage. It would be surprising if none of that affected IQ.
The discussion of IQ vs. achievements vs. crime is interesting. Here, in complete absence of politically correct nutjobs, we can even afford to actually discuss it. Here are my 2 cents.
First, the East Asians. The Chinese political climate cannot be overlooked. If we look at the last 400 years, when the Chinese and Europeans have come to frequent mutual contact...
China at that time was a centralized bureaucratic, sclerotic state. Any sufficiently capable people were perceived as a threat to the emperor, and as potential sources of disruption. The European missionaries were quick to notice this: "everyone who possessed some kind of talent was at the same time paralyzed by fear that his actions will result in punishment rather than in personal well-being".
Europe, at the same time, was a mixture of states. Some of them went the way of China: for example, Spain, which turned from an expansive, sea-faring society of the early 1500s into a paralyzed empire living on slave labour in less than 100 years. But Spain was Spain, not the whole continent; and talented people from Spain would simply run away to northern Italy or France or the Netherlands, where an entirely different mindset ruled, and where they would be welcome with their skills.
It is also interesting to look on Japan. In the 16-th century, individual states were warring against each other, and every technological advantage was welcome. At that time, Japanese would welcome Europeans with open arms and eagerly learn any skills, especially military skills, from them. Around 1580, Japan produced probably more muskets than the whole Europe together. Japanese rejected Christianity early, but were still eager for secular knowledge - and the Dutch and the Portuguese were still eager to provide it to them.
But once the shogun won control of the whole Japan, the entire foreign lore was banned, the muskets destroyed, and the society fell into 200-year stupor designed to keep the shogun in power forever.
Second, the rule of the IQ outliers - well, you forget the fact that, in 16th century, the Chinese population was about 20x bigger than the English population. Even if the Chinese IQ had less outliers, you would still expect to find some Chinese Newtons in sample 20 times larger.
Look no further than the Northern and Southern Korea. There are 3 times as much Southern Koreans than Northern Koreans, but, from the technological and economical point of view, the Southern society is light years ahead, even though they started from roughly the same point in 1953. I would say that this is because of the extremely static and ideological nature of the NK society. High-IQ individuals there must be of good "political" profile to be allowed to the university; and even then, why should they study hard sciences or technology, if they stand to gain no material or societal advantages from it? The tops of the ladders are occupied by the apparatchiks, "stomping on human faces forever".
Chinese and mathematics - hmm, in the last 20 years, Western universities are full of Chinese students of mathematics, and it has already produced some significant results. So far, "we" have some advantage, but do not count on it for long.
The Indians are quite good in mathematics, but they usually seem to perform their best outside India. Maybe the Indian university system suffers from some bureaucratic sclerosis as well. I know of one large exception, and that is Kanpur Institute of Technology.
My conclusion
The well-being or wrong-being of a nation depends on whether the best and brightest individuals have free way to use and develop their skills at will. There are always such individuals, though some nations may have more of them, and some less. But a society which will persecute them or force them into inactivity through bureaucratic means, stands to lose the most. Especially in the modern world, where mobility of workforce is higher than ever.
Marian: Regarding mathematics I would still claim that the contributions of East Asians to creating mathematics over the past 2500 years do not match their numbers and average IQ. As late as the seventeenth century the Chinese believed that the Earth was flat and had still not invented trigonometry. In this case, and in several others, they were quite literally two thousand years behind Europeans. That difference may well be in the process of leveling out now and may not remain so pronounced in the future, but in the past it usually was.
If you read Toby Huff's material on this, which you should, he places a lot of emphasis on the education system, where there was far more room for creativity and critical thinking at European universities and other institutions of learning than in Chinese or Islamic ones. This is why so many Asians want to study at the best Western institutions, although this advantage, too, may be declining right now as the quality of Western education itself is arguably declining. We had different legal traditions as well. The creative use of Roman law made possible the establishment not only of universities with a high degree of autonomy, but also of corporations that pioneered modern capitalism.
It is quite possible to claim that the reason why Japan was the first non-Western country to successfully industrialize was due to their very high native intelligence; Japan is probably the one country in the world with the highest average IQ. European Jews are the one ethnic group on the planet with the highest average IQ, but as we know they have never had their own country. Israel is a predominantly Jewish state, but Middle Eastern and Ethiopian Jews do not have a such high IQs.
The IQ hypothesis does not explain, however, why high-IQ Japan performed better during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than high-IQ China did. My personal opinion is that this was caused by mental and cultural flexibility and humility rather than IQ. Precisely because the Japanese were living next door to China, they knew that they were not the center of the world and they already had a long history of creative borrowing. It was more difficult to learn from the West for countries with a strong cultural superiority complex, especially the Islamic and the Chinese ones. I could add here that the Chinese are acting very differently at the turn of the twenty-first century; the deliberate, large-scale borrowing from other countries, as the Chinese are doing with Western countries today, has no precedent in Chinese history, which is precisely why it may work out.
In many ways it is more interesting to talk about what cannot be explained by IQ, and in this case Hart's book has a number of weaknesses. The backwardness of the Ukraine cannot be explained entirely by IQ. The Ukraine is after all the most likely candidate as the cradle of the entire Indo-European family, the most influential language family in human history. Its current weakness is caused by corruption and a long history of political repression. Similarly, Russia did not lose the Cold War because of low IQ, but because of political repression and lack of ideological and economic freedom.
Fjordman,
I agree what much of what you say but I want here to defend the indefensable:
"(the Inquisition crushed the expression of heterodox opinions in Spain and Portugal; Russia was politically repressive)"
Not necessary. The Inquisition targeted mainly Jews and muslims and stopped any Reformist/Protestant advances.
And then it was just there to "put the people in line". The Inquisition was the instrument the Catholic Church (and the King) found to built a "moral" society by force and immorality if needed be.
Also, considering advancement in Iberia in that time, just consider the Jesuits. They pratically created everything great and European in Latin America. And there's much of it.
If you want to compare Portugal and Spain to Britain and the Nordic Countries I think that what stood Portugal and Spain back was their lack of "self-centred" "ethnocentrism" if you can understand what I'm thinking of.
While the Nordic Countries and Brittain worried mostly with theirselves, Portugal and Spain were waging an almost milenar war against the muslims. Especially in Brittain, one can see the peoples slowly and naturally evolving competitively but without many set backs that were not dependent on them. Brittain's an Island!
After the war with the muslims that was indeed eternal to various generation - not to mention that the Peninsula was more or less cutted off from Europe in that period - the Portuguese and Spanish started to explore the seas and colonise.
It was the best elements among the people, usually young males, who went away. Britain did nothing of the like. In the XVII century there was already big Iberian comunities in the Americas. It was "The people" of the land, not the renegades or the very poor like it was in Britain.
In the 1600s 12% or so of the Portuguese immigrated to Brazil or something of the like.
So, I agree with you Fjordman. I just think the Inquisition is not really the reason.
The Reconquista, the Discoveries and Colonisation were. And since then, we can blame Napoleon. But I don't think Inquisition smacked "advancement". It just did not left any space to what was not deemed correct to Catholicism. It was repressive only in a ethical/moral way.
P.S. - Sorry for the bad english.
Fjordman,
As always, you have raised some very interesting points and provided some very interesting reference.
I think the differences in average IQ are obvious, even just on a daily experience basis; but of course in this current marxist climate it is the worst offence possible to dissent from the holy grail of racial uniformity.
Truth is no defence.
Anyhow, I thought you might be amused by this Swedish liberal - part of the sheeple herd - completely bemused by the blindingly obvious:
"...the study shows that foreign-born school children lagged behind their Swedish-born counterparts, with students born in Africa falling far behind their native peers by 9th grade, even if they came to Sweden at a pre-school age.
"The differences in schooling, especially for Africans, shows how they are not eligible in the same way as other groups for upper secondary education, as they are not achieving the right grades, even though we take into account how long they have been in Sweden," said Persson.
"We don't really know why this is.”
http://www.thelocal.se/16452/20081218/
I think I do.
"Europe, at the same time, was a mixture of states. Some of them went the way of China: for example, Spain, which turned from an expansive, sea-faring society of the early 1500s into a paralyzed empire living on slave labour in less than 100 years. But Spain was Spain, not the whole continent; and talented people from Spain would simply run away to northern Italy or France or the Netherlands, where an entirely different mindset ruled, and where they would be welcome with their skills."
Please, you know nothing about Spain. It would be better for you to refrain from speaking of Spain as if you know somthing about it.
Fjordman,
"...why did the (Western) Roman Empire collapse?"
Actually, I had always wondered about this myself but now I know why: moral and intellectual bancruptcy among the Quisling ruling elite during a time of massive barbarian invasion. This is exactly the same process we observe today and it will produce the same result!
Oh, by the way, you are a "Racist!" for believing as you do. (Note that "racist" is spelled with a capital "R" and an exclamation point.)
You and me both.
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