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This is a common fallacy in the nature v. nurture argument.
Just because it is possible to mess up a high IQ society does not mean it is possible to redeem a low IQ society.
Communism can ruin North Korea. But good government can't fix India. At least, not if the Indians are allowed to vote.
Consider this analogy. You could raise Lebron James in a cave and starve him of nutrients and thereby ruin his athletic potential. But that doesn't mean you can take an average person and turn him into an NBA player with great training. Nature determines your potential. Nurture helps you realize it.
Are the English a high IQ society? I'd consider them middling at best. Germany and Switzerland are both probably better off, and most Jewish sub communities within Europe, like in Hungary were easily way higher.
The industrial revolution started in England. It was undoubtedly good policies and culture that got them there, because their smart neighbors had to play catch-up rather than leading the way. And they were arguably filled with a bunch of malnutritioned low-IQ idiots breathing smoke and drinking alcohol constantly while they accomplished the whole thing, its possible they were much worse off in "biological" potential than India is today.
In your analogy you are talking about a zero sum competition: "being an NBA player". There are limited spots and not everyone can do it. But I don't think that applies to having a high standard of living and a working civilization. In the analogy it would be more like "can you learn to play basketball at all". I think a 4ft tall not very bright child can learn to play basketball. And I think having a working civilization requires about a similar level of biological potential.
The reason it doesn't happen more often is that getting the culture and the policy correct is the actual really difficult part.
Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms suggests eugenic selection pressures as the primary reason behind the industrial revolution starting in England.
One can always quibble with an analogy. I can easily break a glass cup by throwing it. It's much more difficult to assemble a bunch of glass shards into a cup. Dropping a baby would be an easy way to lower its expected IQ, not so easy to improve a baby's IQ beyond the basics of housing, feeding him or her, sending him or her to school or homeschooling. As dictator you can at your leisure lower the IQ of your country by Pol Potting the smart fraction, not so obvious how to improve your country's IQ, or a segment of your country's IQ. Stateside progressives have been trying for decades with taxpayer money, resources, and children.
Clark's point raises the question "why Britain in the late 1700's?". The selection effect he talks about has been in place just about everywhere in history. The rich upper class reproduced in high numbers and crowded down the poor into subsistence and eventually starvation. Why not a continental European country? Honestly take your pick and they probably looked similar to England.
I don't think I was "quibbling" with the analogy. I do think that happens sometimes, when you can stretch the analogy to make a point that doesn't make any sense in reality. But my point stands outside of the analogy: a working civilization does not require a high IQ population. It requires good culture and policy. Reproducing those things is hard, but does not require high biological potential.
Is there one—or better yet, multiple you can pick—or any arbitrary continental European country(ies) I can pick and you demonstrate as such like Clark did with England?
To circle-back to a basketball metaphor, this does not sound too different from from the claim height isn't required to be good at basketball, it just requires good skills and feel for the game. It dodges the empirical finding that height, is in fact, quite vital and overwhelmingly so to being good at basketball, and crowds out other factors, despite height not being ex-ante necessary nor sufficient for being good at basketball.
France.
And I'm tempted to just rewrite exactly what I wrote above. Working civilization is not a zero sum game like competitive basketball. It's not about being better than everyone else, it's about being good enough to cross a threshold. More like can you shoot a basket, rather than can you win a game of basketball.
Okay, and France how so? Along the lines of the evidence of what Clark described.
Please provide more than argument by assertion. I shouldn’t have to ask. Nor am I wedded to Clark’s hypothesis.
And it’s noted that you tried to dodge your previous claim of “Honestly take your pick and they probably looked similar to England,” and the basketball metaphor in general, skipping over the possibility that I select the country or countries to be evaluated. Maybe I was too charitable in leaving you a potential out.
Ditto… one can always re-assert.
Ah I had a reversed understanding of what you were asking. Like I was gonna pick a country and you'd demonstrate why it doesn't work.
But no I'm not really gonna put that level of investment into this discussion.
I'm gonna gesture at things and ideas, and in return I'll not expect much more than other people just gesturing at things and ideas.
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What's your basis for saying that?
Not necessarily - there are some other pretty compelling arguments as to why it was specifically 18th century Britain where the factors leading to the industrial revolution converged (i.e. the access to coal, and economic viability of mining it)
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Mostly spearheaded by Scots, IIRC.
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The average IQ in Europe is about 100 (tautologically, most of the IQ tests are normed here), the average IQ in India is 76.
What India has (thanks to the caste system) is thousands of different ethnic groups, some of which are clearly very intelligent. It hardly makes sense to talk about Indians as an ethnic group, any more than it makes sense to talk about Americans as an ethnic group.
Could the industrial revolution have started in East Asia if their economic policies and political systems were different? Absolutely. Could it have started in India? I'm skeptical. An intelligent smart fraction (that is kept smart through not intermarrying with the masses) can certainly do a lot (see South Africa), but median must matter too. If it didn't, we would see a lot more wealthy countries than we do.
Europe's average IQ is 100 today. And that "100" has been a has changed in meaning over the last century with the Flynn effect.
We don't know what it was in 1800, because the test didn't exist at the time. We do know that a bunch of things with negative impacts on IQ were part of their daily lives. Everyone was drinking beer and wine, since it was the main way to get clean water. Which means alcohol during pregnancy, and early adolescence. They were burning coal and wood constantly to keep warm, that destroys health. There were rolling famines in Ireland, and refugees from it were suffering from malnutrition in early childhood.
I would not be surprised if the average IQ of Britain was in the 75-85 range in the late 1700s. They dealt with it and built a world spanning empire because of superior culture and policy.
Well the developed world has also had dysgenic fertility since the 1800s, so it could well be a case that the two things balance out.
You have to also consider that the rest of the world also had famine, disease and pollution in 1800. You're comparing India now to (a rough outline of) Britain in 1800, as opposed to comparing India in 1800 to Britain in 1800.
India's average IQ is far too low to merely be a product of not having gone through the full Flynn Effect. Maybe once it's more developed it'll be 86 instead of 76, but India is not going to see IQ scores like we see in East Asia, the gap is too vast.
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Its common because it it is observably true. Whatever effect "biocapital" might have is small when compared to the effects of culture and policy.
The million dollar question that everybody here seems to be dancing around is that IF all this nonsense about "bioleninism" and "elite human capital" are true, why are the "best" in India struggling with issues that the "middle" in states like Mississippi and Alabama solved 100 years ago when said states are supposed to be degenerate backwaters only barely removed from the third-world?
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