David Craig, on October 31st, 2019(Thursday blog)
Stating the obvious?
As I meandered through cyberspace yesterday, I began to wonder whether there had been many studies of the link between intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) and the tendency to violence, particularly violent crime and social breakdown.
I found loads of learned academics who managed to state the obvious – that violent crime was linked to lower levels of intelligence – in the most obtuse, convoluted and verbose ways. But this was one of the most intelligible results I found :
Studies consistently reflect the fact that chronic or repeat criminal offenders have a lower average IQ than non-offenders. This is true among both juvenile repeat offenders (who average about 92) and adult repeat offenders (who average about 85). IQ tests are normed for a populace to 100. Every few years the tests are re-normed due to IQ drift, which tends to be upwards (commonly referred to as the ‘Flynn effect’).
More evidence comes from a study conducted in the Texas prison system which found that more than 20% of criminal offenders had an IQ below 80. IQ’s at such a level begin to seriously impede a person’s chances at life success and it is thought that a life of crime then becomes an alternative (dangerous and risky) path for such persons. Additionally, those who have IQ scores around 80 and below have significant problems in balancing short-term vs long-term desires. This is sometimes referred to as “the ability to delay gratification” and is related to time-preference (‘I want what I want and I want it now by any means necessary’ vs ‘I want X but will work slowly, methodically, and legally or morally to attain it’).
This is not, however, to say that those of moderate to high IQ do not commit crimes. The presumption here is that those of higher IQ tend to commit crimes which they are able to conceal or are harder to detect for a host of reasons. Chronic offenders do tend to be involved in far more physical crimes: burglary, assault and battery, car-jacking, drunk-driving accidents, rapes, homicides and the like.
But I couldn’t easily find any studies which dared link levels of social and political breakdown to intelligence levels. However, I did find this table of IQ results by country:
Obviously every country’s IQ levels will follow a standard Bell Curve:
Anyone with an IQ of below 85 is going to struggle to thrive in a modern Western democracy. Any country where the average IQ is 90 or below is going to find it difficult to develop beyond a certain point. And any country where the average IQ level is below 80 is likely to forever be a failed state.
There seems to be a remarkable correlation between each country’s average IQ and its level of development. I suspect that it would be politically-incorrect and racist and white-supremacist and colonialist and neo-colonialist and imperialist and neo-imperialist and a heinous ‘thought crime’ to write any more………..
So, I’ll move on to something else
I know how to save the planet
As schoolchildren demand governments act to stop ‘Global Warming’ or ‘Climate Change’ or ‘Climate Breakdown’ or ‘Climate Emergency’ or whatever it’s called this week and as cowed governments push up fuel prices by closing down good old coal-fired power stations and giving massive, taxpayer-funded subsidies to useless bird-choppers and other eco-fuel idiocies, I had an idea to help save the planet. This winter, all heating in government offices and schools should be turned off. And there should be no air-conditioning in schools or government offices during the summer. Moreover, all schoolchildren and their teachers should have to walk or cycle to school unless they live more than five miles from their schools. After all, our Greta-crazed kids, their lefty, eco-idiot teachers and our public-sector eco-loons surely want to do their bit to save humanity from extinction?
Then, when the brainwashed kids and their dumb-ass teachers and government workers start to feel a little discomfort from their idiotic demands, maybe they will take the time to do some research to educate their slow little brains. Hey, they might even discover that no amount of protesting and no amount of extra taxes can alter the Earth’s orbit around the Sun?
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Yeah, good idea about the kids and their teachers. That would concentrate the minds.
But what can be done about it? Nobody seems to have an answer. In the early part of the 20th century Sweden wanted to stop those with a lower IQ breeding with the objective of creating a nation of higher intelligence. Several thousand women were apparently sterilised when giving birth by caesarean section. It is said that Hitler got his ideas on creating a superior race from them.
You mention the inability to function in a modern society. Does this mean that IQ was less relevant say 150 years ago? There was obviously crime but there wasn’t that much to steal. Does evolution need a high IQ? Our modern societies do, but there has been rapid development in the last 70 years which has brought change that was unthinkable.
Did you really move onto something else? Surely a high IQ implies the ability to think rationally. The climate crisis believers are not rational but do they all have a low IQ? I doubt it, so what does that mean for our future? The energy policies as a result of the belief in a climate crisis are far more damaging than criminal activity. The children will not see your proposal as suffering, they will see it as a sign that they have to do more and build more wind turbines, stop eating meat, etc.
We had climate change when I was a nipper in the 30’s. It was called Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. But after examining that list of IQ’s, I’m now thinking of emigrating to Equatorial Guinea where I’ll be worshipped as a genius!
IQ as measured by us lot is okay for us. The tests are also a measure of our culture and environment.
I was considered by my fellow pupils to be a moron when my parents left me at boarding school because I didn’t know where swallows went in winter, or from what tree we got conkers.
Equally I had little time for their lack of knowledge about mangoes, or that alligators laid eggs and did I laugh at their attempts to eat a pomegranate (a pin to pick out each fleshy seed – yuck). All everyday stuff in Guyana.
I’ve spent time in Qatar, indeed the whole of Arabia Felix – and much of that before oil propelled them into consumerism. They were not that good with a host of things, our toilets being one that I see at airports even now, when they’ve squatted using the rim, and the marks from their shoes leave proof.
But bung them into a desert and they come alive; saw one old guy show an oil company the best route from a to b for a pipeline. He did that at ground level and when they surveyed it using a helicopter he was pretty well bang on the button.
The issue with these, largely Muslim, areas is their emphasis on male children, so if half the population has never been educated, then the average IQ will be lower. That applies to almost all poor countries, boys are their pension fund.
In all other respects I agree with your analysis, with Bernie Madoff proving you can be a hugely intelligent person – and a thief. Lots more like him out there. But that raises the issue of greed and gullibility – and the world’s packed solid with them!