An army of Indian workers earning $4 a day are putting together your next iPhone

[Markoni35]

You're clearly not acquainted with history or current events. First, advanced civilizations in the Middle East, North Africa, and India long predates the earliest civilizations in what is now China by 1200-3000 years.

Second, there are plenty of intelligent Indian STEM folks around the world in math, engineering, IT, etc. Doctors of Indian descent are common in the West if you live in a developed Western nation. Intelligence is clearly not an issue.

Third, 40 years ago, China's GDP per capita was as low as the poorest SubSaharan country and the lack of toilets meant people were sh1tting in the fields and using it to fertilize crops. The Chinese Communist Party's retarded state socialist policies killed tens of millions (including policies such as mass killing sparrows/birds because they ate grains), and intellectuals and anyone with an education were considered "capitalist roadies" and were attacked, tortured, and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution.

What do you say about a society that viewed intelligence and education as bad and had so many retarded policies? Bad DNA?

1. Greeks were once the greatest nation, and where are they now?
2. Romans were once the greatest nation, where are they today?
3. Mongolians had the biggest empire of all times. Nothing left from that empire.

It doesn't mean if something was great in ancient times that it's still good today.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

1. Greeks were once the greatest nation, and where are they now?
2. Romans were once the greatest nation, where are they today?
3. Mongolians had the biggest empire of all times. Nothing left from that empire.
It doesn't mean if something was great in ancient times that it's still good today.

China was still dirt poor and its people pooping in the fields due to the lack of toilets in the 1970s. Ignorance and stupidity was widespread - with people mass killing sparrows because the CCP claimed they were eating some grains, and mobs attacking educated people and intellectuals as capitalist roadies and traitors during the Cultural Revolution.

Yet today, after almost 40 years of market capitalist reforms first started by Deng Xiaoping, China has become a relatively advanced middle income nation with a growing middle class.

What does this mean? It means that just because some group of people are poor today doesn't mean they will remain poor forever.

The point you're missing here is that YOU claimed Indians can't amount to much in the future because they are very poor today, because you seem to have completely forgot your history that China itself was also very poor not too long ago.

 

[Markoni35]

What does this mean? It means that just because some group of people are poor today doesn't mean they will remain poor forever.

It's not about being poor. It's about being efficient and organized. Chinese have demonstrated they can adapt fast. Not just once in history. The same is true for most of East-Asian countries. Regardless whether they are rich or poor. North Korea is poor, but they have higher level of education, higher average IQ on tests and higher level of organization than many countries with a higher GDP.

That's because they are still Koreans. They are ready to work hard, and to cooperate for the mutual benefit. Not just for their family, but for the entire society. East-Asians are like that. You want responsible people to build your electronics, and not someone who will do as little work as possible.

Take a look at this video from India. You won't see this happening in China:

 

[Squid Surprise]

It's not about being poor. It's about being efficient and organized. Chinese have demonstrated they can adapt fast. Both in far history, and in recent history. The same is true for most of East-Asian countries. It's not about being poor, it's about being organized. North Korea is poor, but they have higher level of education, higher average IQ on tests and higher level of organization than many countries with a higher GDP. That's because they are still Koreans. They are ready to work hard, and to cooperate to create higher levels of organization, in order to achieve their goal.

That's the whole story. Can you adapt, integrate and cooperate on higher levels of organization. East-Asians can clearly do so.

Wow... you a proponent of eugenics too? Care to provide some evidence for this racist crap you’re spouting? What IQ tests? Those are notoriously unreliable and biased - are there standardized IQ tests that are being taken by Koreans and Mexicans now (just an example, cause I’m sure you think all Mexicans are lazy and stupid!).

People are people - the differences between nations are usually brought about by geography... there is absolutely zero evidence that an “Asian” is any different than an “African” or “American” other than where they live!

 

[Bluescreendeath]

It's not about being poor. It's about being efficient and organized. Chinese have demonstrated they can adapt fast. Both in far history, and in recent history.

Actually, China's history shows extreme variations in efficiency and organization ranging from good to bad. China's economy stagnated for decades under Mao and its economy was one of the least efficient and least economically productive in the world at the time on a per capita level. When you try to get uneducated farmers to scrap their cookware and tools to "attempt" produce steel, economic productivity and efficiency is going to be very poor. China's GDP per capita pretty much stagnated for many decades. The end of the Qing Dynasty also was famously disorganized and stagnated, and there was plenty of disorganization in the early to mid 1900s during periods of warlordism.

The same is true for most of East-Asian countries. It's not about being poor, it's about being organized. .

Poverty, social-government structure, and organization are closely tied. A poor nation with a centralized authority can be organized (eg. North Korea), and a wealthier nation with a decentralized authority can also be organized (eg. Western democratic nations).

If you look at history, much of history shows the Indian subcontinent being organized into larger empires or smaller kingdoms that coexisted with each other, as well as other times of more disorganization and chaos. India is actually a "relatively" organized nation today considering the fact that they have thousands of different ethnic groups and hundreds of languages that have been mostly unassimilated, because they didn't have assimilation of minorities to the same extent the Chinese had (starting with the Qin/Han eras).

North Korea is poor, but they have higher level of education, higher average IQ on tests and higher level of organization than many countries with a higher GDP. That's because they are still Koreans. They are ready to work hard, and to cooperate to create higher levels of organization, in order to achieve their goal. That's the whole story. Can you adapt, integrate and cooperate on higher levels of organization. East-Asians can clearly do so.

1) No it has little to do with them being Koreans, but much more to do with their government and culture. North Korea has higher levels of education because the centralized state provides education for everybody. Education is free and mandated by the state. Education is also important because they've been influenced by Confucian values which emphasize education. This is just a combination of cultural influence + centralized state mandating a lot of education.
Edit: Furthermore, I also wonder how the test was conducted/what the same size was. North Koreans living in cities are typically "elites" - from what I understand, people in Pyongyang are only allowed to live in the city because they are loyal party members, and are given better food, resources, etc. Did these tests only test the city people or also the poorer rural people?

2) Furthermore, nobody takes generalized IQ for entire nations seriously today. You must be talking about the few outdated books from the 1990s which talked about IQ averages - which is debunked as bad science today. If you do more research into that book, you'll realize that most the countries didn't even have IQ tests and most of the numbers were just "made up" based on what neighboring countries had. Furthermore, the book had laughably small sample size with basically no controls. For example, the work used around 50 teenagers in Colombia, and then a hundred or so pre-teenagers in Egypt as a way of estimating IQ.
They're not only comparing people with extremely different age ranges (IQ is heavily altered by age due to how it is calculated) and very different sample size, but they also didn't account for other factors.

 

[Markoni35]

Wow... you a proponent of eugenics too? Care to provide some evidence for this racist crap you’re spouting? What IQ tests? Those are notoriously unreliable and biased - are there standardized IQ tests that are being taken by Koreans and Mexicans now (just an example, cause I’m sure you think all Mexicans are lazy and stupid!).

I'm a proponent of genetic improvement and evolution, yes. And regarding genetic differences, of course they exist between people living in different climate and geographic regions. Denying those differences would be denying evolution.

For example, people living near equator, in a very hot climate, historically didn't do much work during the day. Because nobody can work at +43 centigrade. So they did only as much as necessary, and took rest whenever possible, at least until the sun went down. Also, if the weather is similar entire year, you don't have to plan too much in advance, since not much will change from month to month.

Those living closer to the polar regions had the opposite problem. They had to do everything during the day. Also, there are seasons. So they had to plan forward, prepare things during the summer, to be ready for the winter. Those who didn't prepare - well, they died. And removed themselves from the genetic pool. That's how climate affected the DNA of entire nations.

Which means there ARE genetic differences between people living closer to equator, relative to those living near polar regions. Also, those living closer to big rivers or lakes, relative to those living in deserts. Our planet affects our DNA.

Everyone knows there's a gradient of change in genetics from equator towards poles. Most of people don't know the reason why, but they can see the differences in behavior patterns.

So please, don't try to deny reality.

And regarding the IQ test, you're again trying to deny reality. This is the averaged result from 9 international studies between 1990 and 2010. Are you calling those researchers liars?

https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php

 

[Bluescreendeath]

I'm a proponent of genetic improvement and evolution, yes. And regarding genetic differences, of course they exist between people living in different climate and geographic regions. Denying those differences would be denying evolution.

You quoted Squid Surprise's post, so I'm not sure why you edited the quote to say I made the post..

And regarding the IQ test, you're again trying to deny reality. This is the averaged result from 9 international studies between 1990 and 2010. Are you calling those researchers liars? https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php

I also refuted the earlier IQ studies claims that broadly different countries in my post above. It's bad science from mainly social scientists. The people who made the earlier studies didn't follow basic scientific principles such as having controls, standard testing methodologies, and sufficient sample sizes. Also, it makes no sense to compare debunked 1990s data to better conducted 2010s data because the studies would be of varying quality, be completely different, and done with different methodology on different people in different circumstances.

The 1990s studies you're quoting probably comes from Charles Murray's book the Bell Curve. Murray is a political scientist. Or it might come from Arthur Jensen, an education psychologist, and his compilation of some earlier works. Most of these works for some reason comes from political scientists or psychologists...all social science. Few comes from evolutionary biologists who are better educated to study this issue.These works are criticized by prominent scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould, who is an evolutionary biologist and paleontologist. Stephen Jay Gould even wrote a book on how people keep misusing IQ in biology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man

http://biopolitics.kom.uni.st/Stephen Jay Gould/The Mismeasure of Man (148)/The Mismeasure of Man - Stephen Jay Gould.pdf

I challenge you to come up with an actual scientific study (from a natural scientist rather than another social scientist) that follows good scientific methodology from around the same time-period that actually makes a better attempt at measuring IQ variations in different countries.

See my response to your IQ post below:

North Korea is poor, but they have higher level of education, higher average IQ on tests and higher level of organization than many countries with a higher GDP. That's because they are still Koreans. They are ready to work hard, and to cooperate to create higher levels of organization, in order to achieve their goal. That's the whole story. Can you adapt, integrate and cooperate on higher levels of organization. East-Asians can clearly do so.

1) No it has little to do with them being Koreans, but much more to do with their government and culture. North Korea has higher levels of education because the centralized state provides education for everybody. Education is free and mandated by the state. Education is also important because they've been influenced by Confucian values which emphasize education. This is just a combination of cultural influence + centralized state mandating a lot of education. Furthermore, I also wonder how the test was conducted/what the same size was. North Koreans living in cities are typically "elites" - from what I understand, people in Pyongyang are only allowed to live in the city because they are loyal party members, and are given better food, resources, etc. Did these tests only test the city people or also the poorer rural people?

2) Furthermore, nobody takes generalized IQ for entire nations seriously today. You must be talking about the few outdated books from the 1990s which talked about IQ averages - which is debunked as bad science today. If you do more research into that book, you'll realize that most the countries didn't even have IQ tests and most of the numbers were just "made up" based on what neighboring countries had. Furthermore, the book had laughably small sample size with basically no controls. For example, the work used around 50 teenagers in Colombia, and then a hundred or so pre-teenagers in Egypt as a way of estimating IQ.

So these studies are not only comparing people with extremely different age ranges (IQ is heavily altered by age due to how it is calculated) and very different sample size, but they also didn't account for other factors. Even if we presume what they're doing is valid, their methodology is so bad that this information is basically useless.

And that's presuming IQ is being validly used in the first place...which it is not. Prominent evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould even wrote a book on how people keep misusing IQ in biology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man

http://biopolitics.kom.uni.st/Stephen Jay Gould/The Mismeasure of Man (148)/The Mismeasure of Man - Stephen Jay Gould.pdf

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Furthermore, I'd like to point out that even among those who consider IQ a valid measure and seek to use better methodology in measuring it, scholars are still unsure on how to interpret the cause and effects.

There are quite a few studies that show that IQ changing - eg. actually increasing over time: "We found [China's] FIQ increased by 6.19 points, PIQ by 6.55 points, and VIQ by 1.91 points." "In Japan, Lynn and Hampson (1986) reported an average gain of 7.7 IQ points per decade for samples born from 1940 to 1965."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000901

Assuming they had a decent methodology, good sample size, and accounted for the huge ethnic and genetic variation in China (idk if they did or not), China basically went from average IQ/slightly below average IQ in the 1980s to above average IQ in the 2000s.

A 90s French study of 5000 children showed that IQ can greatly change over time. It included a study of 65 neglected children with an average IQ of 77 (borderline retardation) and showed that being adopted into better low socioeconomic families boosted their IQ to 85 when tested a few years later. The ones that got adopted into higher socioeconomic families boosted their IQ to 98.

"From 5,003 files of adopted children, 65 deprived children, defined as abused and/or neglected during infancy, were strictly selected with particular reference to two criteria: (I) They were adopted between 4 and 6 years of age, and (ii) they had an IQ <86 (mean = 77, SD = 6.3) before adoption. The average IQs of adopted children in lower and higher socioeconomic status (SES) families were 85 (SD = 17) and 98 (SD = 14.6), respectively, at adolescence (mean age = 13.5 years). The results show (I) a significant gain in IQ dependent on the SES of the adoptive families (mean = 7.7 and mean = 19.5 IQ points in low and high SES, respectively), (ii) IQs after adoption are significantly correlated with IQs before adoption, and (iii) during adolescence, verbal IQs are significantly lower than performance IQs."

https://www.pnas.org/content/96/15/8790

"The French study, published Thursday in the journal Nature, found that children who were either born to, or raised by, parents of high socioeconomic status had IQs 12 to 15 points higher than children born to, or raised by, parents of low status. ..... "It really is nature and nurture," she said. Pierre Roubertoux, director of the University of Paris genetics lab where researchers Christiane Capron and Michel Duyme did their study, said the research is the first to show that children born to high-status parents but adopted by low-status parents have lower IQs than similar children adopted by high-status parents. That is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for an environmental effect, he said. "This has never been shown before..."

"While the study looked at only 38 adopted children, researchers in the field said its design allowed it to pick up a larger environmental effect on IQ than earlier studies. The children's average age was 14... Capron and Duyme found that adopted children who had been born to high-status parents had an average IQ nearly 12 points higher than children born to low-status parents, regardless of the status of the adoptive parents. This showed that biology plays a role in intelligence. But the study indicates that upbringing plays an important role as well. The researchers found that children adopted by high-status families had an average IQ more than 15 points higher than children adopted by low-status parents -- regardless of the status of their birth parents."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...dy-says/59ed01e3-2489-4600-b405-18ba4dd71919/

I don't know how valid these tests are either...but it just goes to show that the academic community doesn't have a consensus on many many issues regarding IQs. If these studies are at least somewhat credible, then it supports the fact that IQ scores are influenced by genes but also heavily influenced by the environment. Which goes back into some of the criticism of how IQ is even calculated (many scientists are skeptical of the g value and its calculation) and how it is often misused to make the claim of "better genes."

 

[mailpup]

Enough off topic, please.