Seven billion and counting

[alternative-energy]

Well why bother with education, why test doctors, surely it would be nicer if anyone who wants to be a doctor or a engineer would just be given a piece of paper saying you are now a doctor or engineer.

Surely that would mean less hurt feelings.

You think IQ tests have something to do with education?

[jonny2mad]

I think if you have a population with very low IQ your less likely to be able to produce many brain surgeons .

So far people have said things like well maybe this group have low IQ scores but they sing well or they have intuition not logical thinking, well I think for some things you need logical thinking .

Even with the study that biff sent me to, their estimate for sub Saharan Africa had a average IQ of 82, we would class that as borderline mental functioning, a IQ of 59 would be mild mental retardation and remember thats the average for the country .

Well if someone came to me and said I have this country or continent, its falling to pieces their all starving and they mentioned that the average person in the country had learning difficulty's I'd consider that may be part of the reason why.

[biffvernon]

Now if, instead of IQ, we tested people's ability to post on internet forums without making grammatical or other typographical errors....

[jonny2mad]

I'd be more concerned if you could bring me up on errors of logic

[alternative-energy]

Now if, instead of IQ, we tested people's ability to post on internet forums without making grammatical or other typographical errors....

I knew you were keeping tabs; you old teacher you!
(Was the semi colon necessary?)

[alternative-energy]

I'd be more concerned if you could bring me up on errors of logic

In a bit, watchin Newsnight.

[biffvernon]

No, it should have been a comma.

See: http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/dep ... ode17.html

(I'm not sure that this source can be entirely trusted; he used 'which' instead of 'that' in this line:

(2) There is no connecting word which would require a comma, such as and or but;

Fowler would have disapproved.)

[Kieran]

This is a pretty good article:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/ ... -tell-you/

[alternative-energy]

No, it should have been a comma.

See: http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/dep ... ode17.html

(I'm not sure that this source can be entirely trusted; he used 'which' instead of 'that' in this line:

(2) There is no connecting word which would require a comma, such as and or but;

Fowler would have disapproved.)

[biffvernon]

In a bit, watchin Newsnight.

Ah, now that should have had a semicolon as it joins two complete sentences into a single written sentence, thus:

In a bit; watchin Newsnight.

Of course claiming that 'In a bit' and 'watchin Newsnight' are complete sentences is pushing things, but had you written 'I will answer your question in a bit' and 'I am watching Newsnight at present' then the point would be better, though more verbosely, made.

[/coat]

[alternative-energy]

Coat and tumble weed...

Newsnight talking about 7 billion world population. Looks like lots of stupid people are very hungry. Looks like lots of smart people are ripping them off.

Anybody completed an empathy test?

[alternative-energy]

I'd be more concerned if you could bring me up on errors of logic

I think the issue for me here is that you seem to ascribe more worth to a person, a research scientist in your example, than you do for a person with a supposedly lower IQ. This for me is the error in your logic.

[RogueMale]

Why didn't the aborigines invent the wheel?

Why didn't Europeans invent the boomerang?

why were they still in the stone age when discovered by the rest of the world ,

Because they didn't run out of stones.

could average IQ have something to do with the levels of development in Asia and europe and in Africa .

There's a huge difference in levels of development between North and South Korea; bugger all genetic difference between North and South Koreans.

Anyway I'm interested in peoples reaction to this research but its a very contentious issue, on latoc we had a thread on race and IQ and it just produced bad feeling

We've had a few threads here, where I've already said most of what I want to say. Lynn's research is of very poor quality. I don't expect anyone on opposing sides of the argument to change their views though.

[jonny2mad]

Well traditionally all things being equal it would be to your advantage to be able to think clearly in a logical way .

Imagine two tribes in competition, they both work hard and try to survive, but one tribe is twice as smart as the other tribe, I'd think that tribe would be more likely to win in the competition .

Its a bit like choosing a football team, you would chose anyone because everyone has equal worth and you don't want to have people who feel left out , I'd try to choose the best footballers, I think my team would be more likely to win .

Humans have always been in competition with other humans for resources, they have also had to deal with very difficult environments , to make the tribe stronger they have done things like kill the disabled and the old, this was common practice in many or most tribal society's .

You are a product of those society's , life is harsh and yes I would prefer to be in a society with lots of smart people, I would be concerned if my tribe was getting dumber by the year .

Lets imagine your in the imaginary football team, but instead of it just being a game it was a matter of your survival, would you prefer to be in a team that couldn't run or see the ball, would you think that would increase your chances of survival

[jonny2mad]

yup roguemale its one of the most contentious areas to debate this so reminds me of the latoc thread I'm not really sure how we got here I think it may have been me telling smart people go have more children