SG_5840Is America smart enough? In his new book, Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own, economist Garett Jones explores the important role of national IQ in creating national prosperity.  I recently sat down with him to discuss how exactly a country’s cognitive firepower translates into a better economy — and what we can do about, if anything.

Jones is the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at The Mercatus Center, and associate professor at George Mason University. He has worked on Capitol Hill, and has contributed to C-Span’s Washington Journal, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business Week, Fox Business, and the New York Times. He holds a BA from Brigham Young University, a MPA in Public Affairs from Cornell University, a MA in Political Science from UC-Berkeley, and a PhD in Economics from UC-San Diego.

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  1. Dex Quire Inactive
    Dex Quire
    @DexQuire

    The conservative movement worship of IQ shows intellectual immaturity at its most complete. Cunning, deceit, camouflage, pig-headed stubbornness are much more valuable tools for survival and overcoming than IQ. Don’t conservatives read Nietzsche for cryin’ out loud?

    Show me the connector genes among flat noses and lots-0-melanin and intelligence (or lack thereof) and I will go along with the gag. But you won’t because you can’t. Beyond culling for math skills IQ is largely useless. We don’t even know what intelligence is…

    • #1
  2. PsychLynne Inactive
    PsychLynne
    @PsychLynne

    I was so excited to see this.  This book is on my list for 2016 reading!

    • #2
  3. Freesmith Member
    Freesmith
    @

    The lowest scores are in Sub-Saharan Africa? Uh, oh!

    Group IQ causes group prosperity.

    Smarter people are more patient (delayed gratification), are more cooperative, more pro-market, take advantage of skills more and are more influenced by better behavior within their group (rather than bad behavior).

    Could we term the above “acting white?” (Some folks in this society do.) The opposite behavior, occurring in populations/nations with dumber people, tend to most easily be categorized as “Third World countries.”

    “For reasons that are still poorly understood, those places – East Asia….and northwestern Europe – tend to have the highest test scores.” Mr. Jones is looking for trouble – real trouble.

    And he thinks he’ll avoid it by saying IQ is predominantly environmental. But then Jones goes along with James Flynn’s nonsensical argument that the reason we don’t have the proof that IQ is more environmental than genetic is because the trained academics who would do the research are afraid that their research will prove that theory wrong, so they don’t do the research.

    In other words, we don’t have proof because the mostly Leftist social scientists, economists and political scientists are all unconscious racists, saying in their classrooms that blacks are not inferior while believing in their hearts that blacks actually are.

    How facile!

    Mr. Jones is another man who, although he knows a coach can’t teach “speed,” thinks a teacher can educate “smart.” He believes for some reason that evolution stops at the neck.

    • #3
  4. Kephalithos Member
    Kephalithos
    @Kephalithos

    I’m curious. If the Internet has rendered crystallized intelligence superfluous, how should future schools treat those subjects which require only (or primarily) crystallized intelligence? Why bother teaching history or literature? Why not teach only as much English as is useful in the world of business? (Civics education, I assume, will always be needed.)

    Jones’s observations are surely correct. I work with people who, though business-savvy (and no doubt blessed with plenty of fluid intelligence), have the worldliness of a turnip. A society that needs little knowledge will bestow little knowledge. (Or bestow only knowledge of “relevant” things, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yik Yak, and Reddit.)

    • #4
  5. Naudious Inactive
    Naudious
    @Stoicous

    Freesmith:The lowest scores are in Sub-Saharan Africa? Uh, oh!

    Group IQ causes group prosperity.

    Smarter people are more patient (delayed gratification), are more cooperative, more pro-market, take advantage of skills more and are more influenced by better behavior within their group (rather than bad behavior).

    Could we term the above “acting white?” (Some folks in this society do.) The opposite behavior, occurring in populations/nations with dumber people, tend to most easily be categorized as “Third World countries.”

    “For reasons that are still poorly understood, those places – East Asia….and northwestern Europe – tend to have the highest test scores.” Mr. Jones is looking for trouble – real trouble.

    And he thinks he’ll avoid it by saying IQ is predominantly environmental. But then Jones goes along with James Flynn’s nonsensical argument that the reason we don’t have the proof that IQ is more environmental than genetic is because the trained academics who would do the research are afraid that their research will prove that theory wrong, so they don’t do the research.

    In other words, we don’t have proof because the mostly Leftist social scientists, economists and political scientists are all unconscious racists, saying in their classrooms that blacks are not inferior while believing in their hearts that blacks actually are.

    How facile!

    Mr. Jones is another man who, although he knows a coach can’t teach “speed,” thinks a teacher can educate “smart.” He believes for some reason that evolution stops at the neck.

    Except that a coach can train speed…

    The evolutionary logic doesn’t add up. Over the course of time that the races developed, there is ample reason for the difference in skin and hair. The physical environment requires this. There is no reason intelligence would develop much differently across regions. Stupid kills in Europe, Stupid kills in Africa. Unlike Skin color, which lighter skin is good in Europe, bad in Africa, hence the difference.

    Environmental Reasons easily fill the gap. Oppressed regions have depressed success across time. African Colonialism held back Africa and impoverished Africa. The Occupation of the South ended in a retardation of the former Confederacy.

    If I point out that the South has poor intelligence results, you wouldn’t say its because Southerners are genetically stupid. Its because the South is poorer and economically depressed. And the South has been free 2.5x Longer than Africa (since the end of Reconstruction in 1877 v. the end of colonialism in the 1960s), and was much less devastated by the Civil War than Africa was by centuries of colonialism.

    • #5
  6. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Dex Quire (View Comment):

    The conservative movement worship of IQ shows intellectual immaturity at its most complete. Cunning, deceit, camouflage, pig-headed stubbornness are much more valuable tools for survival and overcoming than IQ. Don’t conservatives read Nietzsche for cryin’ out loud?

    Show me the connector genes among flat noses and lots-0-melanin and intelligence (or lack thereof) and I will go along with the gag. But you won’t because you can’t. Beyond culling for math skills IQ is largely useless. We don’t even know what intelligence is…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNcJpbPHwdM

    • #6
  7. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Stoicous (View Comment):
    The evolutionary logic doesn’t add up. Over the course of time that the races developed, there is ample reason for the difference in skin and hair. The physical environment requires this. There is no reason intelligence would develop much differently across regions. Stupid kills in Europe, Stupid kills in Africa. Unlike Skin color, which lighter skin is good in Europe, bad in Africa, hence the difference.

    Not necessarily. Europe had winter, people needed to figure out how to survive the winter so they needed to plan for the future. In Asian countries, rice farming is more cognitively demanding than other forms of agriculture and there has been a long history of Asian people becoming bureaucrats if they passed a difficult test. Once they became bureaucrats they could get more wives and prevent their families from starving. 

    Jews males who could argue with Rabbis were considered more sexually desirable than Jews who fell asleep in class. 

    Mental traits develop similarly to physical traits. 

    • #7
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