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I'm saying it's completely bonkers. Are you kidding me? an average IQ of 63? you're talking about a kind of person who needs constant supervision and can barely
by axiom 19y ago
I'm saying it's completely bonkers. Are you kidding me? an average IQ of 63? you're talking about a kind of person who needs constant supervision and can barely dress himself. A far FAR more reasonable explanation is that Ethiopia is poor because of political instability, not low IQ.
Note, I'm not saying IQ is a bad measure. In fact from what I've seen, IQ is probably the best measure of ability we have (it's not a coincidence that the average nobel nobel laureate has an IQ of 140.) It correlates nicely with a lot of things you would expect. Although it's still far from a perfect measure.
Anyway, I'm saying the study in that wikipedia article is nonesense on the face of it.
- _h4xr 19y agoWell, yeah. I mean, if you were to ask me before I'd heard about the IQ thing, I would have said the same. But new data caused me to reexamine my old assumptions -- why doesn't that work with everyone? An IQ that low doesn't imply what you think it does. It makes it hard for someone to handle life in a highly regimented society, where not knowing the difference between "Walk" and "Don't Walk" will get you killed in a week. But a person with an IQ of 50 will end up with the intelligence of a nine-year-old, and under some circumstances, you could expect a nine-year-old to, say, dress himself and forage for food.