David Becker has released a new version of the World’s IQ. Each country has a score showing the cognitive abilities of their citizens, this being a blend of genetics and the environment of each country, particularly as regards education and health. The world’s global score is 82. This is 12th percentile rank on the Greenwich... Read More

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has tweeted a set of remarks about intelligence research. He has now gathered those together into one format, with links and explanations. There is no lack of confidence in his essay. There is much to discuss here, and what follows covers what I see as the main points. I have added some... Read More

“‘How could any man in our village claim that his family had been poor for three generations? If a man is poor, then his son can’t afford to marry; and if his son can’t marry, there can’t be a third generation” China’s poor were continually removed from the gene pool, their places taken by downwardly... Read More

A few years ago I put up a post, WORDSUM & IQ & the correlation, as a "reference" post. Basically if anyone objected to using WORDSUM, a variable in the General Social Survey, then I would point to that post and observe that the correlation between WORDSUM and general intelligence is 0.71. That makes sense,... Read More

Children making pillow lace for a home workshop. Germany, 1847. During the early stages of Europe’s market economy, successful entrepreneurs would expand their workforce by having more children. There are several obstacles to our understanding of geographic variation in human mental performance. First, the subject is taboo. When people do discuss it, they often resort... Read More