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To: Zhang Fei

The Chinese and Jews score higher on IQ tests because they have larger brains?

LOL (not laughing at you, just appreciate the absurdity)

What the hell have the Chinese invented?

They couldn’t even build an ICBM until Hillary and Bill Clinton sold them the technology in exchange for campaign contributions.

That article is seriously delusional.

There may be some genetic differences in brain size among the races but correlating brain size to IQ seems preposterous and certainly hasn’t been proven by the scientific method.

Again, socio-economic and cultural factors would be the Occams Razor explanation both from an American and International perspective.


148 posted on 03/25/2015 1:43:24 PM PDT by Rome2000 (SMASH THE CPUSA)
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To: Rome2000
What the hell have the Chinese invented? They couldn’t even build an ICBM until Hillary and Bill Clinton sold them the technology in exchange for campaign contributions.

In antiquity, gunpowder, paper, silk, and any number of agricultural, architectural, engineering and industrial techniques. Don't confuse your lack of knowledge on this subject with reality. Until the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago, the Chinese and Western economies were not very different. And it was only after the Industrial Revolution that Western armies were able to defeat Chinese military units somewhat consistently, although the Korean War demonstrated the limits of superior technology against an intelligent and well-trained infantry force, given strategic constraints and modern rules of warfare.

As to ICBM's, the first ICBM the Chinese fielded was in 1981. The first Chinese ballistic missile was fielded in the 1960's. The Chinese did not copy US technology to make ballistic missiles - they copied Russian technology. And both the Russians and the US copied German technology, courtesy of scientists on permanent loan from Hitler. And at bottom, all rocket technology originates in gunpowder invented by the Chinese and used in primitive rocketry 1000 years ago.

So why did Chinese efforts not advance beyond that? The likelihood is that in antiquity, Chinese rulers and grandees have always placed a high importance on funding engineering research, and none at all on basic science and math research. A Finnish commentator suggests that Western rulers have in the past, been unique in their sponsorship of subjects their rulers could not understand even if explained to them:

That is art and art is often at its height in tyrannical and radically fractured societies that have some cultural competition going on. Science isn’t. Even mathematics requires political stability and infrastructure because mathematicians are people, people need to eat and funding mathematicians is not a high priority for most societies. Art that pleases the tyrant on the other hand will get funded even if the peasants are starving.

The big achievement of the West is not some magically higher number of geniuses, it’s the culture of cultivation of geniuses. Godfrey Hardy used to say that discovering Ramanujan was his biggest achievement in mathematics. If he hadn’t dragged the guy out of India no one would know about his work. Hardy himself used to say that he didn’t want to do any “useful”, applied work because it could be used for war.

In England, these guys could get paid to work on their “useless” number theory which actually has found a lot of use and Hardy would probably be disappointed by how much of his innocent number theory is now used in cryptography and war. In just about any other society Ramanujan would have been dismissed as a freak and Hardy would have been considered useless. The culture that tolerates and supports an academic subculture that produces nothing that the rulers can even understand, that is a rare achievement.

As to being delusional, what did Jews invent prior to the Industrial Revolution? What great civilization did they found? Where are the continent-wide relics of their great civilization? Where were the Hebraic contributions to math, science and so on before the last couple of centuries?
151 posted on 03/25/2015 2:22:50 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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To: Rome2000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions


154 posted on 03/25/2015 3:15:44 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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To: Rome2000
If I had to guess why China failed to keep up, I'd posit the explanation that, in addition to the lack of financial backing for eccentrics who chose theoretical math and science as their pursuits in life, their thinkers thought exclusively in engineering terms - they lacked the language of theoretical math and science in much the same way that ancient Britons lacked a script with which to record, analyze and synthesize new thoughts, and draw on the wisdom of those who came before them:

As Toby E. Huff notes, pre-modern Chinese science developed precariously without solid scientific theory, while there was a lacking of consistent systemic treatment in comparison to contemporaneous European works such as the Concordance and Discordant Canons by Gratian of Bologna (fl. 12th century).[40] This drawback to Chinese science was lamented even by the mathematician Yang Hui (1238–1298), who criticized earlier mathematicians such as Li Chunfeng (602–670) who were content with using methods without working out their theoretical origins or principle, stating:

The men of old changed the name of their methods from problem to problem, so that as no specific explanation was given, there is no way of telling their theoretical origin or basis.

Even after Britons adopted the Roman script, it took a thousand years before Britain could be said to have decisively overtaken the successors to Rome (i.e. the Italian principalities). The speed of transmission of people, goods and knowledge in the modern era is why China has overtaken half the countries in the world in the economic sphere (i.e. in per capita income terms), from its near-rock bottom position 36 yeas ago.

Only time will tell if China will become a scientific pioneer in the years ahead. Japan has caught up with Western economies without any earth-shaking new discoveries. In fact, the US hasn't had any earth-shaking new discoveries in a while. Where are the Jetson-age personal airplanes and helicopters every household was supposed to be piloting by now? Weren't we supposed to have colonized and terraformed the Moon and Mars decades ago? What happened to the plans for inter-galactic space travel?

157 posted on 03/25/2015 4:33:45 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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