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Old 06-27-2010, 08:55 PM   #10
hoconnor6605

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Oct 2005
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501
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I agree. Some of the Native Amerians from Brazil counted only up to 3, and yet their "ethnic" brethren from Central America (the Mayas) indedepently discovered the zero and precisely calculated the duration of the year. The latter were sedentary, and the former were hunter gatherers nomads, which may explain it to me to a large extent. The "ethnic" reason here does not really explain it, as they belonged basically to the same "cluster" so to say.
I can't believe that. Mapuches, for instance, have a decimal system ordered in a positional system. Incas have the same systems, as theirs quipus shows.

Anyways, as I always repeat, what the IQ test measures is the skills to solve abstract puzzles.

If you are good at crosswords, playing Chess, arithmetic, algebra, geometry or abstract music, of course you will do a lot better than a person that only plays basketball.

Even more, half of the puzzles are linguistic, so just imagine how difficult would be to solve them if the population measured is semi-analphabet or if speak a language different from the test.

Now, the test measures culture as much as rough intelligence because a simple reason: there are SOME cultures that prepares people for intellectual activities better than other. Which cultures? Don't you guess? Jewish and Asian cultures are a lot more concerned with the development of the abstract thinking than Western or Third World cultures.

Samples:

(1) Jewish kids in a traditional family learn to read pretty early, because theirs need to understand the Torah. They usually know at least a bit of a Semitic language, and they are functionally billinguals. Besides, they learn history from the Bible.
Even more, Jewish tradition has the Kabalah as an integral part of the culture. And Kabalah is a mystic numerology. So, do you wonder from where the love to numbers come from?
When Jews finally comfront the topics tought in the Western curricula they are already familiarized with history, linguistic, mathematics, traditions, psycology, etc. So no wonder they do well.

(2) Asians love mathematics, chess and abstract thinking. Solving puzzles and playing games like Chinese chess, Go or standard chess is part of theirs milenary traditions. They are also exposed to extremely complex languages like ideographic Mandarin, that requires a lot of effort to learn, even for locals.
At the end, when they are confront to western syllabus, things looks relatively easy.
If you add that to a military discipline to studies, you will see why Asians succeed where Westerners fail.

There are differences in IQ? Yes, there are, but there are more than a reason why they show.
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