I wasn’t even aware of the Flynn effect in Ireland. How does that
leave him with any confidence to make these kinds of pronouncements?
100 years ago, anyone using aggregate IQ scores to say anything about
the innate cognitive potential of the Irish would have been horrendously
mistaken. But the exact same metrics are for some reason more
reliable in 2022? Every confounding contingent factor has shaken out
somehow, trust me bro? What the fuck?
I don't see what's so hard to understand.
When the Irish were classified as less white they had less IQ. When they became more white, they became more IQ.
More white = more IQ
QED
So maybe Scott Alexander isn't capable of a cohesive worldview? Like, he periodically says something relatively normal and contra the little cult he's adjacent to, but then goes right back to being basically the same as all the rest of those dudes but with more handwringing.
EDIT: So here's what started this little subthread:
>\>Why Isn’t The Whole World Rich? Professor Dietrich Vollrath’s introduction to growth economics. What caused the South Korean miracle, and why can’t other countries copy it?
>
>Sorry, but this article is absolutely horrendous. Just inexcusably bad. It doesn't even pretend to consider heritable factors, even just to dismiss them. Not a single mention of intelligence, IQ, heredity, genetics, or biological variation of any kind. Isn't it bizarre that high intelligence populations /just happen/ to build good institutions?
>
>Saying that South Korea proves that dirt poor countries can become rich quickly is at best extremely misleading, because South Korea did not enjoy the benefits that poor countries have today in the form of highly developed global trade networks, the internet and availability of knoweldge etc. Nigeria has all the non-intelligence advantages in the world over 1960 South Korea. If South Korea of 1960 sprung into existence today it would industrialize insanely fast.
Ah, unexamined assumptions about inherent genetic ability? There we go
> If South Korea of 1960 sprung into existence today it would industrialize insanely fast.
Nothing more rational than making up a hypothetical and stating it as fact!
Well yeah, if Nigerians were smarter, they would have put their country right next to a major Communist superpower during the Cold War, clearly they must have low IQ to not have thought of that!
I heard a wild stat the other day, the US gave more in foreign aid to South Korea during and after the Korean War than they did to all African countries combined, making the Nigeria comparison even more absurd.
Even before that, though the foreign investment was obviously an accelerant on development, was the Japanese occupation. I can't speak for Nigeria, but the subtext of lord-bondsman dialectic is still at play in East Asia.
I like how he goes from "here's a thing I haven't done any particular research on" (is Nigeria developing quickly?) to "here's some evidence I made up" (if you magically brought 1960s SK to the present it would industrialize) to "therefore racism is real and good" in like a paragraph. It's a refreshing change of pace from spending 80,000 words to say the same thing with the same amount of evidence.
Also, you'd think the presence of a *North* Korea would suggest to these people that maybe not all of South Korea's development can be explained by superior Korean genetics. Or is there some horrifying wrinkle to their racial typology that explains that away too?
If they were interested in anything but validating their preconceptions the North/South divide would seem to be an ideal experimental situation. Buuuuut
It’s not a thing, I made it up: what would a “salon de cerebral” be if you said it with an exaggerated french accent? Brainy people having intelligent discussion about the inferiority of the natives over opium and coffee, shit like that.
A salon is a social gathering of eminent people (authors, politicians, artists) by invitation of some other celebrity or socialite. "Salon de" is just a fancy way of saying eminence in, well, whatever.
Actually I think the lack of trade helped. We routinely strangle
nascent native industry in the cradle because our global reach means
that they can’t build fast enough to be able to compete with their
global competitors. If you start making cars in Nigéria, they’ll be more
expensive than American or Japanese cars, and unless you can
artificially raise the price of foreign cars to parity, they can’t even
hold the local market let alone export. They’ll die, because nobody
wants to overpay. In 1960, trade was hard enough that you could start a
local manufacturing company, protect it with tariffs and build an
industrial base. Which is what Korea did.
Yeah didnt korea also do the planned economy thing (which is often seen as one of the evils of communism) to build up their high tech industries very quickly? Iirc SK is really an exception in a lot of ways, but not because of the IQ stuff.
E: yep, the [5 year plans of South Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plans_of_South_Korea)
[Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1032019.Bad_Samaritans) is a pretty good account of the ways the IMF wreck small economies and why it didn't happen in South Korea.
How can someone say something so controversial and yet so brave
I wasn’t even aware of the Flynn effect in Ireland. How does that leave him with any confidence to make these kinds of pronouncements?
100 years ago, anyone using aggregate IQ scores to say anything about the innate cognitive potential of the Irish would have been horrendously mistaken. But the exact same metrics are for some reason more reliable in 2022? Every confounding contingent factor has shaken out somehow, trust me bro? What the fuck?
checks who posted that
Oh No.
Shut the fuck up you fucking asshole
Christ this smarmy breezy faux salon de cerebral high conversationalist shit just makes me nothing but mad
Fucking Steve Sailer responded to that
I used to be a genius, but then I gave all my money to MIRI.
Actually I think the lack of trade helped. We routinely strangle nascent native industry in the cradle because our global reach means that they can’t build fast enough to be able to compete with their global competitors. If you start making cars in Nigéria, they’ll be more expensive than American or Japanese cars, and unless you can artificially raise the price of foreign cars to parity, they can’t even hold the local market let alone export. They’ll die, because nobody wants to overpay. In 1960, trade was hard enough that you could start a local manufacturing company, protect it with tariffs and build an industrial base. Which is what Korea did.