According to the chart, here are a few other countries where the average is “dumber than the average human”:
Australia
Belgium
Belize
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Czech Republic
Denmark
France
Finland
Germany
India
Israel
Italy
Mexico
I suppose dunking on those stupid Belgians isn’t as eye catching of a headline as good, old fashioned America Bad bait.
Miserable fat Belgian bastards!
Israel dumb woo!
Obviously. They think stealing from and murdering your neighbors brings peace. They dumb as hell.
I should be another one of those “dumber than the average human” folks (and yesterday Lemmy told me so because they are saying two different apps on my phone are the same app…?) but am pretty sure the thing with Israel went off the Hanlon’s razor long ago.
I have been to Czechia few times, the people there are definitely not dumb, lol.
As an Estonian, I am glad to see Finland on the list.
I’m impressed you can do so well on the test while being estoned 24/7.
I wish weed was legal here. That would be amazing, but no we deal with horrific prices, horrific taxes and pretty bad pay. Atleast the country itself is beautiful (mostly).
You chose the worst example in the list, because Belgians are famously the butt of “haha they’re dumb” jokes, getting it from both their French and Dutch neighbours (maybe Germans too?).
I’d pick the Danes since they’re typically seen as a more evolved people.
For France, it just makes sense tbh.
Also the whole galaxy.
https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Belgium
“You stupid Ghent” - Ford Prefect
There’s also this.
Do you think many Beliz…ians loudly proclaim themselves the greatest nation on earth, and act like it too? Has Chile squandered a good deal of the world’s productive output to produce a literally civilisation ending military capability and put it in the hands of morons?
A blind person on the bus is only a problem if they’re driving.
No me not
So entire countries are, according to this article, functionally mentally disabled? I find that hard to believe given the bell curve of IQ results.
We probably need to put some national safeguards in place that keep the states from fucking their own educational systems over.
There should be a national minimum for educational standards that the states are not allowed to bypass.
you must be American, because there is a federal dept of education. Betsy Devos ring a bell?
problem with having a federal department of anything is conservative agendas tend to “poison the well”.
one way to combat this is department heads should be elected not appointed, and they should have term limits imposed.
It’s nearly impossible to do anything good when you have a major conservative party set on doing bad.
You could have a position of “We should provide food to all children so they can learn without being distracted by hunger” and people would be like “that’s communism i’d rather those kids starve”
Which is something that happened recently.
but not in Minnesota! those fuckers got outclassed by Walz.
Shocker. The places that basically have forced study schools top out but only just barely.
I mean, by definition half of the countries will be below average. It’s a normal distribution— literally by definition since the distribution is set that way.
Could it be possible that the author was making a joke, and the people who don’t get it are the dumb ones?
On TIL? A shitpost, sure it’s possible, but I see people not understand averages pretty regularly.
I don’t think there are many non-Americans in this thread who are surprised by this.
deleted by creator
Iirc the show “Where in the World is Carmon Sandiego?” was created by the government of the US because something like half of US Americans couldn’t identify the Pacific Ocean on a map.
Edit: it was 25%
The show was created partially in response to the results of a National Geographic survey indicating little knowledge of geography among some of the American populace, with one in four being unable to locate the Soviet Union or the Pacific Ocean.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_in_the_World_Is_Carmen_Sandiego%3F_(game_show)
They also couldn’t find the Soviet Union on the map (literally the biggest country in the world) in 1991.
“Let’s make a TV show to teach kids instead of actually fixing our education system”
I’m not sure you understand how governments work. PBS decided to make this show. They can’t change the school funding.
Yeah, but it had an awesome theme song. Do it, Rockapella!
I mean…yeah. They COULDN’T find the soviet union in 1991. It disolved in 1990.
It dissolved in December 1991.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union
Do not confuse a poor education with a lack of intelligence. This is because the American educational system is broken. It says nothing about the average American’s intelligence.
True. Unfortunately, we don’t have a way to measure intelligence that isn’t inherently racist.
Is not “we have most if the world’s wealth, we’re aware that 25% of our populationvm can’t find the biggest ocean in the world in a map, and we also won’t allocate funds to schools to fix this” a sign of low intelligence?
No, it’s a sign of greedy people wanting to keep a population ignorant.
Ignorance is not the same as unintelligence. To use the example I gave elsewhere, an indigenous Amazonian couldn’t find the Pacific Ocean on a map either. That doesn’t mean they’re stupid, and they’re far more likely to survive long-term in the Amazon than people the West regard as geniuses.
Yes. We cannot measure intelligence. We can only measure culturally-relevant knowledge
Generally, its in the interest of a country to have knowledgeable people. Its an investment that pays back well in $$$
Qualitatively, I argue that a country that doesn’t allocate funds to make their population knowledgeable is not an intelligent country, regardless od what knowledge they try to teach (be it the three sisters or geography or mathematics or whatever)
I agree. Hence my comment about the American educational system being broken. It hasn’t been invested in for a long time.
But that doesn’t mean that Americans are, on average, less intelligent. It means that the system failed them.
OK, so I guess you’d agree that the people who control the US government are either unintelligent or very bad at their joba
As I said above:
No, it’s a sign of greedy people wanting to keep a population ignorant.
An ignorant population is a compliant population. That’s why so many other nations have ruined their education system and replaced it with propaganda.
Nuh, africa is the biggest country!
Like, that’s the biggest ocean and biggest country in the world. I wonder how many in the 75% just randomly pointed at blue and got lucky at identifying the Pacific Ocean.
The actual number of people who didn’t know where is the Pacific Ocean must be higher, because of the ones who guessed and got lucky.
They only got the number to 75% after putting the labels back on the map
LPT. If you know any new parents, one of the best gifts is a world map for the baby’s room. Teach them colors and shapes when they are little; then numbers and letters; finally history and politics.
I think a globe, but sure
Thats a really good idea for a gift. I usually buy condoms.
It’s for parents with a new baby. Condoms would be quite early for the later and much too late for the former.
The purpose isn’t to change the past, but to prevent it from happening again
Can’t your read? It says American not English.
I can’t believe I’m saying this to defend the people who most often used it to justify their racism but the IQ test is not an objective measure of intelligence and was designed by eugenicists.
I’ve said this so many times. There’s not even only one kind of intelligence. I once made a music video for what would be the best country fiddle player you ever heard. He literally couldn’t write his own name when he signed the contract.
We can’t even come up with a test that transcends all cultural biases. If we could come up with an objective test, the smartest person in the world could turn out to be an indigenous Brazilian living a stone-age life in the middle of the Amazon.
And if the smartest person in the world was from Slovenia, they probably wouldn’t be able to do anywhere near as well in the Amazon as some of the stupidest members of communities who live there.
Totally. The history of intelligence has sadly also been the story of eugenics. Fortunately, there have been process-based theories and contextual theories that have defined intelligence in more humane and useful ways. In this view, IQ tests do not measure an underlying characteristic, but a set of mental skills. Seen this way, intelligence becomes something people can gain with nurturance. If you’re interested, check out Relational Frame Theory.
Only when you’re behind. Lol.
Also, the difference between the countries with the highest average IQ and the US was 10 points, which is the same kind of increase you can get in IQ testing scores if you tell the tester that they’ll get $10 if they do well.
Or if they played Tetris regularly. (Although that might be correlational only).
Part of the test is pattern recognition. Playing Tetris trains that.
I don’t think it was designed by eugenicists. I think it was used by eugenicists and the original creator warned against it being used that way. Basically like Darwinism.
Never have they smashed the down arrow quite as hard .😆
Oh look, all the stupid Africans. Jesus, how could anyone not question this?
I mashed the down arrow because it’s probably more strongly correlated with GDPPPP or access to free, high quality education than an inherent measure of intelligence. Crappy correlations to pseudomeasurements and concepts with racist results? What is this, the SATs?
Well they would, if they could read
Am American and 100% agree. Our country is extremely stupid on average. I def hit upvote lol
not sure whether to up vote or downvoted this comment
If you’re not sure, you should do nothing…
I don’t know why you would downvote it. Does it spread hate or misinformation? If not, dont downvote
Well…yeah I mean Q.E.D. right?
Nicolas Cage, “You don’t say?”
This is a well written article. I’m not sure how the OP came to their conclusion. The US ranks 24th on average IQ (with an IQ of 98) and is in good company with France, Denmark, Australia also at 98. For those curious, Canada, Finland and Germany were 99.
24th out of 102 should not be considered “dumber than average”. Additionally, as the article clearly states, the average has been going up, approximately 3 points per decade, and this is partly due to an increase in logical thinking.
East Asia is the outlier here, with many countries at 101 or higher (China at 105) though I find it curious that Hong Kong and Macau were singled out separately from China.
I wonder if these higher numbers have something to do with the homogeneity within these cultures, the average age of the county’s population, and/or, as another commenter mentioned, the way in which the higher IQ countries approach education.
24th out of 102 should not be considered “dumber than average”.
Isn’t, by definition, a score of 100 in the test supposed to be average…? If so, 98 would definitely be below average, though not by much.
Consider the numbers presented. If you can figure out the math on how to get the 24th ranked countries out of 102 rankings to be below 100, then I’ll reconsider.
The countries who rank higher than 100 only have about 1.5 billion people within them and their average is only slightly higher compared to the countries that have an average significantly lower. For example, India with its 1 billion people is on there at an average of 82.
The math doesn’t add up for an average global human. I think we need to know more about how the scores in the study are calculated.
IQ doesn’t measure intelligence.
Says you?
Says experts. This is why its illegal to use IQ tests for placements in many places. Because its racist. It does not measure intelligence.
What does the abbreviation stand for?
Per the Wikipedia definition:
An intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from a set of standardised tests or subtests designed to assess human intelligence.
What does DPRK stand for?
Just because something stands for something, doesn’t mean it is that thing
Believe it or not, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is not a democracy or a republic.
Do you mean to tell me that you are not actually a flying squid!?
Now you’re going too far.
