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When the results of PISA 2018 were unveiled, there was significant skepticism about the much improved results from Sweden, based on the unimpressive coverage ratio (86%, vs. 99% in Germany) and large share of pupils excluded on account of being "new arrivals" (11%, vs. 0.4% in Germany) Expressen reports: Sweden's PISA success is based on... Read More
Map of Spanish PISA results via /u/bulfcc on Reddit: As usual, clear N-S gradient, if not as steep as in Italy. Incidentally, the north is in demographic free-fall (2x deaths as births), while the south is stable (births~=deaths). Here's the data from 2018: Not good, but a predictable pattern. *** Thanks to another Twitter user... Read More
PISA 2018 results dropping in a few hours. Use this thread for discussing them. In particular, I am excited to finally get some definitive answers on the Ukrainian Question. (And Belarus). *** UPDATE: The results are in. Raw data. *** My classic IQ related articles: Through A Glass Ceiling Darkly: Racial IQ Disparities And The... Read More
We are reaching levels of neoliberalism that shouldn't even be possible. In the USSR, getting a "red diploma" in university - the rough equivalent of a American summa cum laude - was contingent on acing the courses on scientific communism and similar crap. Interesting to see neoliberalism.txt developing in a similar direction. Andreas Schleicher, the... Read More
From Turkey's PISA 2015 National Report: In 2015, Richard Lynn and coauthors did one of their standard national IQ analyses on Turkey (based on the results of PISA 2012). Summary: There are seven points of interest in the results. First, the total PISA scores adopted as IQs were significantly positively correlated with per capita income... Read More
Well, apart from the Gulf states - thanks in large part to coming from such a low base that even subcontinental coolies are an improvement over the natives. Otherwise, the cognitive impact of immigration - at least as proxied by the differences in performance on the PISA tests between the national average, which includes immigrant... Read More
The commenter "m" did some calculations to work out the relative performance of different countries in PISA vs. TIMSS, and in Math vs. Science. m writes: Overperformance in TIMSS relative to PISA can arguably be used as a proxy for schooling quality, since it's more dependent on academic/curricular skills than on raw intelligence. I am... Read More
Source: Report: There were problems with data collection in Argentina, Kazakhstan, and Malaysia, so their results must be treated with caution. Furthermore: "Because the results of Kazakhstan in 2015 are based only on multiple-choice items, they cannot be reliably compared to the results of other countries, nor to Kazakhstan’s results in previous assessments" (pp. 81... Read More
Here is the download link: (1) China B-S-J-G (Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangdong) has a PISA-equivalent national IQ of 102. This is actually worse than the IQ=103 leaked 2009 results based on 12 provinces, which I posted about a few years ago. Even more curiously, Beijing, Shanghai, and Jiangsu all constitute three of the top five Chinese provinces based... Read More
I had been meaning to post about this for a long time. Better late than never, I suppose.The TIMSS and PIRLS are international assessments of academic ability in math, science and literacy that are conducted once every four years. They are similar to the PISA tests, although the latter are less purely academically focused and... Read More
In one of the recent posts on corruption, commentator AP wrote: Is this true? Seeing as how the Russian state doesn't release Unified State Exam (USE) results by region, probably due to PC considerations, at first this assertion might appear to be unanswerable. However, there is a way to get round the problem. (1) We... Read More
India backs out of global education test for 15-year-olds. Which of these Soviet leaders does this remind you of? Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev are all travelling together in a railway carriage. Unexpectedly the train stops. Lenin suggests: "Perhaps, we should call a subbotnik, so that workers and peasants fix the problem." Stalin puts his... Read More
A few months ago I posted a table and map of Russian IQ's as derived from regional PISA performance. Those figures are based on Jarkko Hautamäki’s slideshow comparing regional PISA performance in Finland and Russia. That material is a bit inadequate because, as had been my custom up that point, I was only making IQ... Read More
My post on Indian IQ (max potential is low to mid 90's) spawned an interesting analysis by commentator rec1man. It is not very well organized but he does have a ton of useful information that deserves to be highlighted. It's reprinted in full below interspersed with occasional commentary by myself: 75% of the Indian population... Read More
He writes: China isn't anywhere near as backward as he portrays it. (1) The urban-rural ratio was essentially 50/50 according to the 2010 Census. Furthermore, rural Chinese don't really suffer from the absolute destitution common to peasants in Third World countries. They own their own land and it is almost impossible for them to lose... Read More
The question of Indian IQ is a big puzzle. Far trickier than China's IQ which I think I've basically figured out (101-102 today; 106-108 genetic ceiling). The PISA-adjusted IQ of India - as extrapolated from the states of Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, which are relatively rich and are reputed to have good school systems... Read More
As human capital is so important for prosperity, it behoves us to know China's in detail to assess whether it will continue converging on developed countries. Until recently the best data we had were disparate IQ tests (on the basis of which Richard Lynn's latest estimate is an IQ of 105.8 in his 2012 book... Read More
In recent days Ron Unz's article Race, IQ, and Wealth (The American Conservative) has been making the rounds in the HBDsphere. Broadly speaking it argues for the predominance of cultural and environmental factors as opposed to genetic in forming IQ. It is fairly long but it's also one of the best statements of that position... Read More
There are several ways to influence national mean IQ levels. One is to improve nutrition and education, but vitally important though they are, they suffer from diminishing returns as populations bump up against their genetic ceilings. Another is to promote eugenic policies, or at least policies to mitigate the dysgenic trends that are typical of... Read More
Now that I'm done with the Necessary Caveats, it's time we had a look at why exactly HBD/IQ theories are both valid, and relevant to the real world. As I see it, their main import (as interpreted by me) can be distilled into a few logically consecutive, falsifiable statements: IQ tests are a valid, culturally... Read More
Today I discovered this really nifty tool, Target Map. It allows you to generate color-coded global and national maps just by uploading an Excel database. In what will probably surprise no-one who follows my interests, my first map illustrates average PISA scores for Math, Reading, and Science for the 65 regions in the original 2009... Read More
Despite the unremitting hostility of its Russian neighbor, which crescendoed in a military occupation of a chunk of its territories, plucky Georgia's commitment to reform and democratic values will ensure its rapid development into a "booming Western-style economy." Under its charismatic Western-trained President, Saakashvili, it has rooted out corruption, ushered in untold prosperity and freedoms,... Read More
Human capital (primarily education) is the single most important factor behind long-term productivity gains, and hence economic growth. The relatively high human capital of Russia and China, which is comparable to developed country levels, is the most important reason why I rate their future prospects much higher than those of the other two BRIC's, Brazil... Read More
One of the key criticisms of my last post on the tight connections between (educational) human capital and economic performance is that correlation need not imply causation. An alternate (and PC-compliant) explanation is that "you get the education system you could afford, and the level of human capital in the kids is mostly determined by... Read More
Just in case you thought the correlation between human capital and economic development was an artifice of the post-socialist world, here is a similar graph (R2=0.4273) for all the world's countries that have participated in the Math and Science portions of the PISA or TIMMS (8th grade) international standardized student assessments. The methodology is the... Read More
That title sure caught you attention? Good. Now for the 1000-words-in-a-picture evidence. Human capital refers to educational attainment, as measured by the results of the PISA and TIMMS standardized tests*. As you can see, there is a very close correlation between human capital and GDP (PPP) per capita. The exceptions all confirm the rule. For... Read More
It is not a secret to longtime readers of this blog that I rate India's prospects far more pessimistically than I do China's. My main reason is I do not share the delusion that democracy is a panacea and that whatever advantage in this sphere India has is more than outweighed by China's lead in... Read More
This April, Michael Bohm, editor at the Moscow Times, published the article New Kremlin Dreamers, which questioned Russia's stated intention of becoming an advanced industrial nation by 2020. I wasn't much impressed by its pessimistic assertions - for instance, regarding Russia's hopes of becoming the world's fifth largest economy by 2020, he falls into the... Read More
What are the reasons behind the wealth and poverty of nations? Since this question has exercised the minds of thinkers from Adam Smith to David Landes, Jared Diamond and Richard Lynn, I decided to take a look at it myself. I came to the conclusion that while geography, macroeconomic policies, resource windfalls and the microeconomic... Read More
I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.
One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.
Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.
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