[poconopundit]

Good analysis. I suspect there are a lot of farmers in China who have never seen an IQ test, so I’m not sure how the average worked out for them.

Another story for your intellectual amusement — H.L. Mencken Predicted Donald Trump.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3453208/posts

Some very nice discussion about the intelligence of the public — from the 1920’s.

Cheers.

[Zhang Fei]

[I suspect there are a lot of farmers in China who have never seen an IQ test, so I’m not sure how the average worked out for them.]

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Anyone who understands the farming business at all knows that it’s a tough business. Terrible harvest? You won’t have enough crops to sell, so you’ll starve. Excellent harvest? Everyone else will have one as well, so the prices you get from the wholesaler will be rock-bottom, meaning you’ll also starve. Given that China, as a longstanding unitary empire, has lacked, on average, the wars that depopulated Europe every few decades, its numbers have always skirted the Malthusian edge. Only the smartest farmers passed on their genes through repeated famines over the millennia.

The issue with China isn’t a lack of good genetic material, cognitively-speaking - it’s terrible government, including the current one. However rotten the government though, the fact that they’re sitting on a gold mine of human resources means that things can only get so bad before a functional (though crappy by Western standards) leader seizes the reins of power.