> More specifically, although not everyone in semiconductor manufacturing requires a PhD, pretty much everyone has to be of above average intelligence and many

> More specifically, although not everyone in semiconductor manufacturing requires a PhD, pretty much everyone has to be of above average intelligence and many will need to be in the top echelons of IQ. The entire article is predicated on this asspull. Where's the evidence? Has someone done a study on the average IQ of TSMC workers? This assumes so many things: 1) That semiconductor manufacturing is more complex than manufacturing commonly done in the US. We make rockets! Complex pharmaceuticals! Nuclear weapons! What's the complexity factor of semiconductor manufacturing to those processes? 1.1x? 2x? 100?? 1000x??? 2) That just because the manufacturing process is more complex, the skill of a line worker in that process must be higher than a line worker in a simpler industry. Maybe ASML makes very user-friendly machines? Again, it's possibly true, but it's just asserted as ground truth with no evidence. 3) That the higher skill required of workers must correlate 1:1 (or roughly so) with IQ. "A single speck of dust"--that sounds like workers must be detail-oriented and follow processes to the letter, and any veering off that path would have disastrous consequences. Does that sound like an environment where Feynman or Einstein or Curie would thrive just because they had "high IQ"? And instead of justifying the central leap of logic the entire article is premised on, the author instead spends their time on such insights as "half the American population is below 100 IQ"...