Really, really, really doubtful that correlations between national IQ and, well, anything prove anything besides that certain countries are generally better off than others. That correlation is probably just differentiating First World countries from Third World countries in general—the First World has better health and education, and also better government. Although I’m agnostic on the existence of racial IQ differences, those aren’t what’s going on here, considering the wide variation in success of countries with similar races.
Same with IQ versus religion within and between countries: it’s probably just an artifact of religion vs. wealth correlations. I scanned those articles and I didn’t see anything saying they’d adjusted for it; if there is, then I’ll start getting excited.
The national/regional IQ literature is messy, because there are so many possible (and even likely) feedback loops between wealth, schooling, nutrition, IQ and GDP. Not to mention the rather emotional views of many people on the topic, as well as the lousy quality of some popular datasets. Lots of clever statistical methods have been used, and IQ seems to retain a fair chunk of explanatory weight even after other factors have been taken into account. Some papers have even looked at staggered data to see if IQ works as a predictor of future good effects, which it apparently does.
Whether it would be best to improve IQ, health or wealth directly depends not just on which has the biggest effect, but also on how easy it is and how the feedbacks work.
it’s probably just an artifact of religion vs. wealth correlations.
If religion is negatively correlated to wealth, then presumably one would attach some likelihood to increasing wealth leading to decreased religious belief. We all take cognitive enhancers causing us to get richer, then we all stop believing in silly things, like God. This still results in increased IQ leading to truer beliefs.
This is a good old causation/correlation debate; but it seems to me that without further evidence we should take the IQ/religiosity study as weak evidence in favour of the hypothesis that IQ causes non-religiosity, possibly mediated by wealth:
Really, really, really doubtful that correlations between national IQ and, well, anything prove anything besides that certain countries are generally better off than others. That correlation is probably just differentiating First World countries from Third World countries in general—the First World has better health and education, and also better government.
The paper you are referring to—reference 3 - “Estimating state IQ: Measurement challenges and preliminary correlates”—is looking at variation over US states, e.g. Alaska, Alabama, … not countries. You should re-write your comment taking this into account.
Really, really, really doubtful that correlations between national IQ and, well, anything prove anything besides that certain countries are generally better off than others. That correlation is probably just differentiating First World countries from Third World countries in general—the First World has better health and education, and also better government. Although I’m agnostic on the existence of racial IQ differences, those aren’t what’s going on here, considering the wide variation in success of countries with similar races.
Same with IQ versus religion within and between countries: it’s probably just an artifact of religion vs. wealth correlations. I scanned those articles and I didn’t see anything saying they’d adjusted for it; if there is, then I’ll start getting excited.
The national/regional IQ literature is messy, because there are so many possible (and even likely) feedback loops between wealth, schooling, nutrition, IQ and GDP. Not to mention the rather emotional views of many people on the topic, as well as the lousy quality of some popular datasets. Lots of clever statistical methods have been used, and IQ seems to retain a fair chunk of explanatory weight even after other factors have been taken into account. Some papers have even looked at staggered data to see if IQ works as a predictor of future good effects, which it apparently does.
Whether it would be best to improve IQ, health or wealth directly depends not just on which has the biggest effect, but also on how easy it is and how the feedbacks work.
If religion is negatively correlated to wealth, then presumably one would attach some likelihood to increasing wealth leading to decreased religious belief. We all take cognitive enhancers causing us to get richer, then we all stop believing in silly things, like God. This still results in increased IQ leading to truer beliefs.
This is a good old causation/correlation debate; but it seems to me that without further evidence we should take the IQ/religiosity study as weak evidence in favour of the hypothesis that IQ causes non-religiosity, possibly mediated by wealth:
high-IQ -----> non-religiosity
high-IQ -----> high-Wealth ------> non-religiosity
Or intelligent people are just better at getting wealthy.
This is almost certainly true. Therefore, we have
high-IQ -----> high-Wealth ------> non-religiosity
The paper you are referring to—reference 3 - “Estimating state IQ: Measurement challenges and preliminary correlates”—is looking at variation over US states, e.g. Alaska, Alabama, … not countries. You should re-write your comment taking this into account.