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There’s efforts to correct the record on the Middle Ages too for this reason. The History Unplugged POD cast for example has a series on it. Intelligence is al

There’s efforts to correct the record on the Middle Ages too for this reason. The History Unplugged POD cast for example has a series on it. Intelligence is also a function of knowledge too however, it’s not purely a trait you’re born with. So the more correct knowledge you have on how to think and approach problems the smarter you are. You can easily see this today with the different decisions people make arround the world, where the base intelligence rates are the same but the decisions people make aren’t the same quality.

klenwell 8y ago
I feel Jared Diamond illustrated this beautifully in his prologue to Guns, Germs, and Steel: From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is. At some tasks that one might reasonably suppose to reflect aspects of brain function, such as the ability to form a mental map of unfamiliar surroundings, they appear considerably more adept than Westerners. Of course, New Guineans tend to perform poorly at tasks that Westerners have been trained to perform since childhood and that New Guineans have not. Hence when unschooled New Guineans from remote villages visit towns, they look stupid to Westerners. Conversely, I am constantly aware of how stupid I look to New Guineans when I'm with them in the jungle, displaying my incompetence at simple tasks (such as following a jungle trail or erecting a shelter) at which New Guineans have been trained since childhood and I have not. The whole prologue is worth reading when contemplating the fraught question of nature and nurture and the importance of IQ. https://archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel/Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_S...
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klenwell 8y ago

I feel Jared Diamond illustrated this beautifully in his prologue to Guns, Germs, and Steel: From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is. At some tasks that one might reasonably suppose to reflect aspects of brain function, such as the ability to form a mental map of unfamiliar surroundings, they appear considerably more adept than Westerners. Of course, New Guineans tend to perform poorly at tasks that Westerners have been trained to perform since childhood and that New Guineans have not. Hence when unschooled New Guineans from remote villages visit towns, they look stupid to Westerners. Conversely, I am constantly aware of how stupid I look to New Guineans when I'm with them in the jungle, displaying my incompetence at simple tasks (such as following a jungle trail or erecting a shelter) at which New Guineans have been trained since childhood and I have not. The whole prologue is worth reading when contemplating the fraught question of nature and nurture and the importance of IQ. https://archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel/Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_S...

deleted 8y ago
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